Winter (56 page)

“You are too kind.” Winter lifted the second candy from the box. She scanned the inner lining, hoping for some clue Jacin may have left for her, but she saw nothing.

Still. It was a gift. Not only the candies, but to have seen him from afar. To know he was all right.

She placed the candy between her teeth. The woman was watching her, mimicking her movements, and together they bit down. Winter felt the crack of the brittle shell before it melted against her tongue.

The old woman smiled, bits of crimson-colored filling stuck in her teeth. “This has been more satisfying than I could have imagined.”

Winter swallowed. “I’m glad. It’s been my pleasure to … to…”

She blinked, catching a tinge of familiarity in the way the woman watched her. At the particular curve of her grin—something haughty and brimming with contempt.

“Is something wrong, my dear child?”

“No. No. For a moment you reminded me of someone. But my eyes play tricks on me sometimes. They’re not very reliable.”

“Oh, sweet, stupid child.” The kink in the woman’s back began to straighten. “We are Lunars. Our eyes are never reliable.”

Winter shriveled back. The basket slipped from her hold, crashing to the ground.

Before her, Levana shed the guise of the old woman, a snake shedding its skin.

“My researchers assured me the disease would act quickly,” said the queen, her cold eyes roving over Winter’s skin. Curious. Delighted.

Winter’s thoughts spun, puzzling out the truth from the illusion. Her whole life had been spent puzzling out truths from illusions.

Where was Jacin? Why was Levana here? Was this another nightmare, a hallucination, a trick?

Her stomach kicked. She felt ill.

“The infected microbes are being absorbed into your bloodstream even at this very moment.”

Winter placed a hand over her stomach, feeling the devoured candy roiling inside her. She pictured her heart, her arteries, her platelet-manufacturing plant. Little red soldiers marching down their conveyor belts. “Microbes?”

“Oh, don’t worry. Young and able-bodied thing that you are, it should be an hour or two still before you begin to show symptoms. A rash of blood-filled blisters will erupt on your perfect skin. The tips of your delicate fingers will shrivel and turn blue…” Levana grinned. “I do wish I could be here to witness it.”

Winter peered through the forest, toward her allies. Levana would stop her if she tried to run. She wondered if she could get out a scream before Levana sewed shut her lips.

“Thinking of warning your friends? Don’t worry. I’m going to let you go, little princess. I will let you return to them and infect them yourself. They made a mistake when they chose you over me, and that will be their undoing.”

She faced her stepmother again. “Why do you hate me?”

“Hate you? Oh, child. Is that what you think?” Levana placed her cool fingers on Winter’s cheek, over the scars she’d given her years before. “I don’t hate you. I am merely annoyed at your existence.” Her thumb caressed Winter’s cheek. “From the day you were born, you had everything I ever wanted. Your beauty. Your father’s love. And now, the adoration of the people.
My
people.” She drew her hand away. “But not for long. Your father is dead. Your beauty will soon be tarnished. And now that you are a carrier of the blue fever, any citizen who comes close to you will soon come to regret it.”

Winter’s stomach dropped. She imagined she could feel the disease being absorbed through the lining of her stomach. Seeping into her veins. Each beat of her heart pushed it further through her system. It was a detached sort of knowledge. Of all the tortures she had seen her stepmother devise for others, there was something merciful about this death. A slow, calm acceptance.

“You could have their adoration too, you know,” she said, watching as Levana’s condescending smile hardened to her face. “If you were kind to them, and fair. If you didn’t trick them into being your slaves. If you didn’t threaten them and their loved ones for every minor crime. If you shared the riches and the comforts we have in Artemisia—”

Her tongue stilled.

“I am queen,” Levana whispered. “
I
am the queen of Luna and I will decide the best way to rule my people. No one—not you, and not that hideous cyborg—will take this from me.” She lifted her chin, nostrils flaring. “I must go tend to my kingdom. Good-bye, Winter.”

Stumbling back, Winter turned toward the people. If she could see just one person, get off one warning …

But then the forest closed in around her and she collapsed, unconscious, to the ground.

Sixty-Three

“Have you seen Winter?”

Alpha Strom finished demonstrating the upward-stab movement with the staff and handed it back to a young woman, before turning to face Scarlet. “I have not.”

Scarlet scanned the hectic crowd for the thousandth time. “Me either, not for a long time. She has a tendency to wander off…”

Tilting his head back, Strom sniffed a few times at the air, then shook his head. “It seems she hasn’t been around for a while now. Perhaps she’s found somewhere to rest.”

“Or perhaps she’s poking out her own eye with a stick. I’m telling you, it’s not good for her to be left alone.”

Grumbling, Strom gestured at one of the beta members of his pack, then shambled toward a bench. He paused to sniff again, sending his keen eyes into the crowd, before turning and gazing into the forest.

“You’re being creepy,” said Scarlet.

“You asked for my help.”

“Not
technically.
”

When Strom headed into the shadows of the not-really-a-forest, Scarlet followed, though she couldn’t imagine why Winter would have left everyone behind and wandered off all by her—

Never mind. She could imagine it after all.

“She came this way,” Strom said, running his fingers over a tree’s bark. He turned to the right and increased his speed. “I’ve picked up on her now.”

Scarlet trotted along beside him.

“There.”

She saw her at the same moment, and broke into a run before Strom did.

“
Winter!
” she screamed, dropping to her knees. Winter’s body was sprawled out in the patchy grass. Scarlet rolled the princess onto her back and checked for a pulse, relieved to find one fluttering at Winter’s neck.

A hand grabbed Scarlet’s hood and dragged her back. She yelped, flailing to get away, but Strom ignored her pummeling fists. “Let me go! What are you doing?”

“She is sick.”

“What?” Unzipping her hoodie, Scarlet scrambled out of the sleeves and fell at Winter’s side again. “What are you talking about?”

“I can smell it on her,” Strom growled. He didn’t come any closer. “Diseased flesh. Vile.”

Scarlet frowned up at him before refocusing on the princess. “Winter, wake up,” she said, smacking the princess’s cheek a few times, but Winter didn’t even flinch. Scarlet pressed a hand to her forehead. She was clammy and hot. She felt the back of her head, wondering if the princess had hit her head again, but there was no blood and the only bump was from the fight at Maha’s house. “Winter!”

Strom kicked something and it skipped through a tuft of grass and hit Scarlet’s knee. Scarlet blinked and picked it up. A sour apple petite, one of the candies Winter had often brought to her in the menagerie, usually laced with painkillers. It had a bite taken out of it. Picking up Winter’s hand, Scarlet found bits of melted candy shell stuck to her fingertips.

“Poison?”

“I don’t know,” said Strom. “She isn’t dead—just dying.”

“With some sort of disease?”

He gave a curt nod. “You should not be so close to her. It smells—” He looked like he might be sick.

“Oh, pull yourself together. All those muscles and teeth and you’re afraid of a little cold?”

His expression darkened, but he didn’t come any closer. In fact, after a second, he stepped back. “There is something wrong with her.”

“Obviously! But what? And
how
?” She shook her head. “Look, I saw a little med-clinic on the main street. Can you carry her there? We’ll have a doctor check her out. She might need her stomach pumped or—”

Scarlet’s gaze landed on Winter’s arm and she gasped. She skittered away from the princess’s unconscious form, every instinct telling her to hold her breath. To clean the skin that had come in contact with the princess. To run.

“Now she listens.”

Ignoring him, Scarlet cursed, loudly. “When you said she had a disease, I didn’t think you meant she had the
plague
!”

“I do not know what this is,” said Strom. “I have never smelled this before.”

Scarlet hesitated a moment more, then let out a painful, frustrated sound, and forced herself to crawl back to Winter again. She grimaced as she lifted Winter’s arm to inspect the dark spots scattered across her elbow. The red-tinged rings around the bruises had swollen above the skin, puffed and glossy like blisters.

For as long as she could remember, the plague had worked in predictable stages, though how long they took to manifest varied by victim. Once the rash of bruise-colored rings marred a person’s skin, they may have three days or three weeks still to live. But given that Winter hadn’t been gone for more than an hour, the disease seemed to be working especially fast.

She scrutinized Winter’s fingertips, relieved to see them pink and healthy—no tinge of blue. Blood loss to the extremities was the final symptom of the disease before death.

She scowled. Hadn’t Cinder once told her that Lunars were immune to letumosis? This disease shouldn’t even be here.

“It’s called letumosis,” she said. “It’s a pandemic on Earth. It acts fast and no one survives. But … Levana has an antidote. It’s half the reason Emperor Kai is marrying her in the first place. We just … we need to keep Winter alive long enough to get it. We have to keep her alive until the revolution is over. All right?”

She dragged a hand through her hair, but it got caught in a tangle of curls and she gave up before she’d reached the ends.

“That could be days, even weeks,” said Strom. “She does not smell as though she has that much time.”

“Stop talking about how she smells!” she screamed. “Yes, the disease is bad. It’s—
horrible.
But we can’t just leave her here. We have to
do
something.”

Strom rocked back on his heels, eyeing the princess with disgust. Which was still better than the ravenous glint his eyes had had before. “She needs a suspension tank.”

“A what?”

“We use them for healing after surgeries or severe injuries.” He shrugged. “It may slow the progression of the disease.”

“Where do we get one?”

“I expect they’ll have one here. Dangerous work in this sector.”

“Great. Let’s go.” Pushing herself to her feet, Scarlet dusted off her hands. Strom stared at her, then down at Winter. He didn’t come any closer.

“Ugh. Fine.” Crouching again, Scarlet grabbed Winter’s arms and was about to haul her over one shoulder when Strom lumbered forward and lifted the princess into his arms.

“Well, aren’t you a perfect gentleman,” Scarlet muttered, grabbing her hoodie instead.

“Just hurry,” he said, his face already strained in an effort to take shallow breaths.

They practically ran back toward the residences.

Scarlet burst out of the tree line, flushed and panting. Those who were gathered turned to watch as Strom emerged with Winter in his arms.

“The princess has been poisoned,” said Scarlet. “She’s ill with a fatal disease called letumosis. The queen has an antidote, but Winter will likely die if we don’t slow the spread of the disease right away.” She spotted the bearded man who had acted as the leader before. “Is there a suspension tank in this sector?”

“Yes, at the clinic. I don’t know…” He glanced at a white-haired man who was emerging from the crowd.

The white-haired man approached Winter, felt for a pulse, and lifted her eyelids one at a time. A doctor, she guessed. “The tank isn’t in use,” he said, following his quick inspection. “It will take fifteen or twenty minutes to prep the tank and the girl for immersion.”

Scarlet nodded. “Let’s get on it, then.”

The doctor led them through the crowd. The people parted, watching the princess with distraught expressions.

“Who would do such a thing?” someone whispered as Scarlet passed. “To the
princess
,” another voice added.

“Does this mean we have a traitor among our people?” the doctor asked, his voice low.

Scarlet shook her head. “I don’t think so. Whoever did this had to have access to the disease, somehow, and expensive candy. They must have sneaked in for Winter and left.”

“Or they are still among us, wearing a glamour.”

She sniffed. Stupid Lunars and their stupid glamours. Anyone could be an enemy. Anyone she passed could be a thaumaturge or one of those lousy aristocrats or the queen herself, and Scarlet wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

Still, why would anyone come all the way out here just to attack Winter but leave the rest of them alone, knowing they were planning to join Selene’s revolution? Was this a warning? A threat? A distraction?

A sinking thought occurred to her. Perhaps they weren’t leaving the rest of them alone at all. Letumosis was highly contagious, and it acted fast. In closed quarters, with recirculating air …

“Here,” said the doctor, leading them into a building that was only slightly larger than the neighboring houses and just as run-down. A coffin-shaped tank stood against one wall, covered in dust and piled high with worn blankets. The doctor shoved the linens onto the floor. “There are beds in that room if you want to lay her down while I get it ready.”

Strom seemed happy to do just that. His face was still contorted when he returned. “I am going to bring in some of my men to have the tank moved outside.”

The doctor glanced up. “Outside?”

“The people admire her. They should be able to see her—a reminder of what we’re fighting for.”

The doctor blinked rapidly, but gave a small nod. “All right. It won’t affect the treatment.”