“What’s most interesting to me,” the doctor said, scratching his ear and acting as if he hadn’t heard her, “is that the first documented case of letumosis occurred twelve years ago. And yet, you’ve been collecting antibodies for much longer than that. In fact, it would have been your sister who began the experiments, if my math is correct.”
Levana splayed her fingers on the counter. “You have reminded me why you were such a terrible loss for our team, doctor.”
He swiped his arm across his damp forehead. His skin seemed translucent beneath the bright lights. “This disease is all your doing. You’ve manufactured death to bring Earth to its knees, so that when the time was right, you would be there to save them with your miraculous antidote. One that you’d had stashed away all along.”
“You give me too much credit. It was the team working beneath my parents that created the disease, and those beneath my sister who perfected the antidote. I simply implemented their research by determining a means of getting the disease down to Earth.”
“By exposing Lunars to it and then sending them here, having no idea what they were carrying.”
“Sending them to Earth? Absolutely not. I simply made sure that my security personnel looked the other way when they … escaped.” The last word held a bite. She wasn’t fond of the idea that some of her people chose to run away from the paradise she’d given them.
“It’s biological warfare.” Dr. Darnel coughed into his elbow, leaving spots of dark red. “And Earth has no idea.”
“And they will continue to have no idea. Because I’m going to stand here and watch you die.”
He laughed shrilly. “You honestly think I would carry this secret to my grave?”
A twinge of annoyance traipsed down her spine.
The doctor’s eyes were glazing over, but his smile was enormous as he studied the window. “This is a very large mirror I’m looking into. So impossible to hide from what I am … what I’ve become. My Queen, you would not like to die in this room. I suspect you would tear off your own flesh if forced to stare at it for so long.”
She squeezed her hands into fists, digging her nails into the palms of her hands.
“Your Majesty.”
Exhaling, she forced her hands to open. Her palms stung.
Aimery had returned with Jerrico, her captain of the guard, looking as though he’d been in an impressive scuffle.
“Finally. Where have you and Sybil been? Report.”
Jerrico bowed. “My Queen, Thaumaturge Mira and I, along with five of my top marksmen, managed to surround Linh Cinder and her companions on the emergency landing pad on this tower’s rooftop.”
Hope warmed her chest. “And you got them? They haven’t escaped after all?”
“No, Your Majesty. We failed in our objective. Two of my men are dead, the other three severely injured. I, myself, was unconscious when the spacecraft escaped with the traitors and Emperor Kaito aboard.”
Her fury began to claw at her spine again, desperate to be unleashed. “And where is Thaumaturge Mira?”
He respectfully lowered his gaze. “Dead, Your Majesty. Linh Cinder used her gift to torture her mind—I heard her screams myself. Those who were conscious have reported that, after the spacecraft departed, Thaumaturge Mira threw herself from the rooftop. Her body was found in the gardens.”
A mad giggling echoed through the room. Levana spun back as the doctor doubled over his knees, kicking his heels against the table. “She deserved it, the snake. After keeping my little golden bird locked up in her cage for so long.”
“Your Majesty.”
Levana faced Jerrico again. “What?”
“We found one of Linh Cinder’s accomplices aboard their ship prior to the confrontation. Her new pilot, it would seem.” Jerrico gestured toward the hall. Footsteps clicked, and a moment later, two men entered. Another guard escorting—
Her smile was quick. “Dearest Sir Clay.”
Though his wrists were bound behind his back, he stood straight and proper and seemed as healthy as ever. He clearly hadn’t been treated like a prisoner aboard Linh Cinder’s ship.
“My Queen.” He dipped his head.
She scraped her Lunar gift over him, testing for signs of derision or rebellion, but there were none. He was as blank and malleable as ever. “My understanding is that you abandoned your thaumaturge in a pivotal battle in order to side with Linh Cinder against the Lunar crown. Your being here leads me to understand that you are also involved with the kidnapping of my betrothed. You are a traitor to myself and to my throne. How do you plead?”
“Innocent, My Queen.”
She laughed. “Of course you are. How can you plead thus?”
He held her gaze without remorse. “During the battle aboard the spaceship, Thaumaturge Mira was consumed with the effort to control a Lunar special operative who has joined the side of the rebels. With my own faculties open, Linh Cinder forced me to comply with her will and fight against my thaumaturge, ultimately leading to her abandoning the ship and leaving me aboard. Realizing this was an opportunity to ingratiate myself to the rebels, I have spent these past weeks acting as a spy with the intention of reporting weaknesses and strategies when I was finally able to return to my queen, who I am most honored to serve.”
She smirked. “No doubt your eagerness to return encompassed a desire to see your beloved princess as well.”
There—finally. The tiniest ripple of emotion, before the lake was once again still as glass. “I live to serve all members of the Lunar royal family, My Queen.”
She smoothed her fingers down her skirt. “How can I believe that you remain loyal to me when you are standing before me in chains, having been dragged from the enemy’s own ship?”
“I would hope my actions prove my loyalties. Had I wanted Linh Cinder to succeed in her objectives, I would not have sent Thaumaturge Mira a comm informing her where and when I would be arriving with that ship.”
Levana raked her gaze over Jacin before glancing at Jerrico. “Is this true?”
“I can’t say. Thaumaturge Mira did seem confident of the location when we went to intercept the traitors, but she didn’t say anything about a comm. And she seemed furious when we found Jacin in the cockpit. It was under her order that we took him into custody.”
“All due respect,” said Jacin. “I did shoot her during our last engagement. And the comm was sent anonymously—she may not have realized I was the one who had sent the tip in the first place.”
Levana waved away the statement. “We will investigate further, Sir Clay. But as you claim to have been gathering information for weeks, tell me, what useful things have you learned about our enemies?”
“I’ve learned that Linh Cinder has the ability to control a Lunar special operative,” he said, reciting the information with as much emotion as an Earthen android. “However, she is untrained and lacks focus. She shows no talent for simultaneously engaging in both mental and physical battles.”
“Interesting speculation,” Levana mused. “In your estimation, would she have the mental focus required to torture an enemy, driving them to the brink of insanity?”
“Absolutely not, Your Majesty.”
“Absolutely not. Well then. You are either much stupider than I ever suspected, or you are lying, as that is precisely what Linh Cinder did today, against my head thaumaturge herself.”
Another spike of emotion announced a sudden bout of nerves, but it was overshadowed by loud thumping from the quarantine.
“Of course he’s lying!” the doctor screeched, his voice breaking. He had managed to haul himself off the lab table and was now pounding on the glass with his palms, leaving smears of bloodied spittle. “She’s capable of killing your head thaumaturge and all your guards and your entire court. She’s Princess Selene, the true heir to the throne. She can kill you all, and she will kill you all. She’s coming for you, My Queen, and she will destroy you!”
Levana snarled. “Shut up! Shut up, you old
man! Why won’t you die already?”
He was too busy gasping for breath to hear her. He collapsed to the ground, hands on his chest, his wheezing punctuated with hacking coughs.
Jacin Clay, when she turned back to him, was staring skeptically at the window. But within moments his eyes began to fill with comprehension. His lips twitched, like he was ready to laugh at a joke he just now understood. It was a rare show of emotion that only angered her more. “Take him away. He will undergo a full investigation on Luna.”
As Jacin was marched back into the corridor, she faced Thaumaturge Park again, her hands fisted at her sides. “You are hereby promoted. Begin planning our departure immediately, and alert our research team to this new strain of letumosis. Also, initiate mobilizing procedures for our soldiers. Linh Cinder is too afraid to face me herself. The people of Earth will suffer for her cowardice.”
“You understand that with the loss of Thaumaturge Mira’s programmer, we are not able to transport our ships to Earth without notice?”
“What do I care if Earth sees them coming? I hope it gives them time to beg for mercy before we destroy them.”
Aimery bowed. “I will see it done, Your Majesty.”
Levana glanced back to see that Dr. Sage Darnel was sprawled out on the floor, his body seizing between his coughs. She watched him writhe and jerk, her blood still boiling at his words.
As far as the people of Luna and Earth knew, Selene had died thirteen years ago.
Levana was going to make sure it stayed that way.
She was the rightful queen of Luna. Of Earth. Of the entire galaxy. No one would take that from her.
Seething, she stepped closer, close enough that she could see the trail of tears left on the doctor’s scourged face.
“Sweet Crescent Moon…,” he whispered, his lips barely able to form the words. He began to shiver. “Up in the sky…” He hummed a few bars of a song, a lullaby that seemed barely familiar. “You sing your song … so sweetly … after sunshine passes.…”
The last word hovered unspoken as he stopped shuddering and lay still, his blue eyes staring upward like empty marbles.
Fifty-Seven
“Satellite AR817.3 … deflect tracker … set alternating timer … and check. Which should just leave Satellite AR944.1 … and … that … should … do it.” Cress paused, breathed, and slowly lifted her fingers away from the cockpit’s main screen, where she’d spent the last three hours ensuring that any satellites in their path would be conveniently turned away from them as they passed. As long as the Rampion’s orbital path held, they shouldn’t be detected.
At least, not by satellite or radar.
There was still the problem of visual sightings, and as the Eastern Commonwealth had announced twenty minutes ago that an enormous monetary reward would go to anyone who found the stolen Rampion, every ship between here and Mars would be on the lookout.
They had to be prepared to run if anyone did spot them, which was made extra difficult now that they no longer had a trained pilot onboard. At least, not one who could see. Thorne had managed to talk Cinder through the liftoff procedures, with vast amounts of help from the Rampion’s new auto-control system, but it had been a rocky takeoff followed by an immediate switch to neutral orbit. If they were faced with anything requiring more complicated maneuvers before Thorne got his eyesight back, they’d be in trouble.
According to Cinder, they’d be in trouble even when he did have his eyesight back.
Cress massaged her neck, attempting to get her thoughts to stop spinning. When she was in the middle of a hack, it tended to fill up her brain until her vision hummed with coding and mathematics, skipping ahead to each necessary task faster than she could complete them. It tended to leave her in a state of drained euphoria.
But for now, at least, the Rampion was safe.
She turned her attention to a yellow light at the base of the screen that had been annoying her since she’d begun, but that she’d been too preoccupied to deal with. As expected, when she prompted the ejection, a small shimmering D-COMM chip popped out from the screen.
The match to the chip that Sybil had taken from her satellite, cutting off any hope that Cress and Thorne had of contacting their friends.
Friends.
She squinted at the chip as she held it up, wondering if that was the right word. It felt like having friends, especially after they’d survived the mission together. But then, she didn’t have anything to compare this friendship to.
One thing she knew for sure, though, was that she no longer needed to be rescued.
She looked around for something she could use to destroy the chip, and caught the ghost of a reflection in the cockpit window. Thorne stood in the doorway behind her, hands tucked into his pockets.
She gasped and spun to face him, her full skirt twisting around the chair’s base. Though it was dirty and torn in places, she hadn’t had the time to change yet, and wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to. The gown made her feel like she was still living in a drama, and was perhaps keeping her from going into shock at all that had happened that day. “You scared me!”
Thorne flashed a moderately embarrassed grin. “Sorry?”
“How long have you been standing there?”
He shrugged. “I was listening to you work. It’s kind of relaxing. And I like it when you sing.”
She flushed. She didn’t realize she’d been singing.
Feeling his way forward, Thorne took the copilot’s seat, setting the cane across his lap and kicking his boots up on the dash. “Are we invisible again?”
“To radars, for now.” She tucked some hair behind her ear. “Could I see your cane?”
He raised an eyebrow, but handed it to her without question. Cress dropped the D-COMM chip to the ground and crushed it beneath the cane’s tip. A shiver of empowerment ran through her.
“What was that?” Thorne asked.
“The D-COMM chip you used to contact me before. We won’t be needing it again.”
“Seems like that was ages ago.” Thorne ran his finger along the blindfold. “I’m sorry that you didn’t get to see much of Earth while we were down there. And now you’re stuck up here again.”
“I’m happy to be stuck up here.” She twirled the cane absently between her palms. “It’s a great ship. Far more spacious than the satellite. And … much better company.”
“I can’t argue with that.” Grinning, Thorne pulled a small bottle from his pocket. “I came in here to ask if you would help me with this. These are the mystical eyedrops the doctor made. We’re supposed to put three to four drops in each eye, twice a day … or was it two drops, three times?… I don’t remember. He wrote down the instructions on the portscreen.” Thorne unclipped the port from his belt and handed it to her.
Cress propped the cane against the panel of instruments. “He was probably worried you’d forget, after such a high-stress…” She trailed off, her eye catching on the portscreen text.
Thorne cocked his head. “What’s wrong?”
The port had opened to a screen containing instructions for the eyedrops, and also a detailed account of why Dr. Erland believed the plague was a manufactured weapon being used as biological warfare.
But at the top of all that …
“There’s a tab labeled with my name.” Not Cress. Crescent Moon Darnel.
“Oh. It was the doctor’s port.”
Cress’s fingers glided over the screen, and she’d opened the tab before her mind could decide whether it wanted to know what was in it or not.
“A DNA analysis,” she said, “and … a paternity confirmation.” Standing, she set the port on the control panel. “Let’s do your eyedrops.”
“Cress.” He reached for her, his fingers gathering up the folds of her skirt. “Are you all right?”
“Not really.” She looked down at him. Thorne had pulled the blindfold around his neck, revealing a faint tan line around his eyes. Gulping, Cress sank into the pilot’s chair again.
“I should have told him I loved him. He was dying, and he was right there, and I knew I would never see him again. But I couldn’t say it. Am I horrible?”
“Of course not. He may have been your biological father, but you still barely knew him. How could you have loved him?”
“Does it matter? He said he loved me. He was dying, and now he’s gone, and I’ll never…”
“Cress, hey, stop it.” Thorne swiveled his chair to face her. He found her wrists, before sliding his hands down to intertwine with her fingers. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It all happened so fast, and there was nothing you could do.”
She bit her lip. “He took my blood sample that first day, in Farafrah.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “He knew all this time—almost a whole week. Why didn’t he tell me sooner?”
“He probably wanted to wait for the right time. He didn’t know he was going to die.”
“He knew there was a chance we were all going to die.” Her next breath shook inside her diaphragm, and as the tears started, she felt herself being pulled toward Thorne. He drew her into his lap, scooping one arm beneath her legs to keep the enormous skirt from tangling around her. Sobbing, Cress buried her face against his chest and let the tears come. She cried hard at first, the release pouring out of her all at once. But she almost felt guilty when, minutes later, the tears already started to dry up. Her sadness wasn’t enough. Her mourning wasn’t enough. But it was all she had.
Thorne held her until the sound of his heartbeat became louder than the sound of her crying. He smoothed her hair back from her face, and though it was selfish, Cress was glad that he couldn’t see her then, with her red face and puffy eyes and all the unladylike fluids she’d left on his shirt.
“Listen, Cress,” he murmured against her hair once her breaths were almost stable. “I’m not an expert by any means, but I know you didn’t do anything wrong today. You shouldn’t tell someone you love them unless you mean it.”
She sniffed. “But I thought you said you’ve told lots of girls that you loved them.”