Cress

  He could hear Nainsi’s fan whirring, before she said, “I might suggest the alternate explanation that Linh Cinder’s motives stem from Queen Levana’s desire to have her found and executed, Your Majesty.”

  Face flushing, he dropped his gaze to the hand-woven rug beneath his feet. “Right. Or that.”

  But he couldn’t shake the feeling that Cinder’s new objective was about more than self-preservation. After all, she’d come to the ball to warn him against marrying Queen Levana, and that decision had nearly gotten her killed.

  “Do you think she found anything? About the princess?”

  “I have no way of discerning that information.”

  He paced around his desk, staring thoughtfully at the vast city beyond his office window, glass and steel glinting in the afternoon sunlight. “Find out everything you can about this Michelle Benoit. Maybe Cinder is onto something. Maybe Princess Selene is still out there.”

  Hope fluttered again, brightening with every moment. His search for the princess had been abandoned weeks ago, when his life had become too tumultuous to focus on anything other than keeping war at bay. Pacifying Queen Levana and her temper. Preparing himself for a life at her side, as her husband … and that, only if he was lucky enough not to be murdered before their first anniversary.

  He’d been so distracted that he’d forgotten the reason he’d been searching for Princess Selene in the first place.

  If she was alive, she would be the rightful heir to the Lunar throne. She could end Levana’s reign.

  She could save them all.

  Seven

  Dr. Dmitri Erland perched on the edge of his hotel bed, with the worn cotton quilt pooling around his ankles. All his attention was on the battered netscreen on the wall, the one where the sound cut out randomly and the picture liked to tremble and flicker at inopportune moments. Unlike the last time a Lunar representative had come to Earth, this time the arrival was being internationally broadcast. This time, there was no hiding the purpose of the visit.

  Her Majesty, the Queen, had gotten what she wanted. She was going to become empress.

  Though Queen Levana herself would not be arriving until closer to the ceremony date, Thaumaturge Aimery Park, as one of her closest lackeys—er, advisers—was coming early as a show of “goodwill” to the people of the Commonwealth and planet Earth. That, and to ensure all wedding arrangements were being made to suit Her Majesty’s preferences, no doubt.

  The shimmering white spaceship with its decorative runes had landed on the launchpad of New Beijing Palace fifteen minutes ago, and still showed no sign of opening. A journalist from the African Union was droning on and on in the background about trivial wedding and coronation details—how many diamonds were in the empress’s crown, the length of the aisle, the number of expected guests, and of course, yet another mention that Prime Minister Kamin herself had been selected as the ceremony’s officiant.

  He was glad for one thing to result from this engagement, at least. All this ballyhoo had taken the media’s attention off Miss Cinder. He’d hoped that she would have had the sense to take this serendipitous distraction and come find him, quickly, but that had not yet happened. He was growing impatient and more than a little worried for the girl, but there was nothing he could do but wait patiently in this forsaken desert and continue with his research and plan for the day when all his hard work would finally come to fruition.

  Growing bored of the broadcast, Dr. Erland removed his spectacles and spent a moment huffing on them and rubbing them down with his shirt.

  It seemed that Earthens were quick to forget their prejudices when a royal wedding was involved, or perhaps they were simply terrified to speak openly about the Lunars and their tyranny, especially with the memory of the wolf-hybrid attacks so fresh in the collective memory. Plus, since the announcement of the royal engagement, at least two members of the worldwide media who had declared the alliance a royal mistake—a netgroup administrator from Bucharest-on-the-Sea and a newsfeed editor from Buenos Aires—had committed suicide.

  Which Dr. Erland suspected was a diplomatic way of saying “murdered by Lunars, but who can prove it?”

  Everyone was thinking the same thing, regardless of whether or not they would say it. Queen Levana was a murderer and a tyrant and this wedding was going to ruin them.

  But all his anger was eschewed by the knowledge that he was a hypocrite.

  Levana was a murderer?

  Well, he had helped her become one.

  It had been years—a lifetime, it seemed—since he was one of the leading scientists on Luna’s genetic engineering research team. He had spearheaded some of their greatest breakthroughs, back when Channary was still queen, before Levana took over, before his Crescent Moon was murdered, before Princess Selene was stolen away to Earth. He was the first to successfully integrate the genetics from an arctic wolf with those of a ten-year-old boy, giving him not only many of the physical abilities that they’d already perfected, but the brutal instincts of the beast as well.

  Some nights he still dreamed of that boy’s howls in the darkness.

  Erland shivered. Pulling the blanket over his legs, he turned back to the broadcast.

  Finally, the spaceship door lifted. The world watched as the ramp hit the platform.

  A gaggle of Lunar nobility arose from the ship first, bedecked in vibrant silks and flowing chiffons and veiled headdresses, always with the veiled headdresses. It had become quite the trend during Queen Channary’s rule, who, like her sister, refused to reveal her true face in public.

  Erland found himself leaning closer toward the screen, wondering if he could identify any of his long-ago peers beneath their cloaks.

  He had no luck. Too many years had passed, and there was a good chance that all those telling details he’d memorized were glamour created anyway. He, himself, had always given off the illusion of being much taller when he was surrounded by the narcissistic Lunar court.

  The guards were next, followed by five third-tier thaumaturges, donning their embroidered black coats. They were all handsome without any glamours, as the queen preferred, though he suspected that few of them had been born with such natural good looks. Many of his coworkers on Luna had made lucrative side businesses offering plastic surgery, melatonin adjustments, and body reconstruction to thaumaturge and royal guard hopefuls.

  In fact, he’d always been fond of the rumor that Sybil Mira’s cheekbones were made out of recycled plumbing pipes.

  Thaumaturge Aimery came last, looking as relaxed and smug as ever in the rich crimson jacket that so well complimented his dark skin. He approached the waiting Emperor Kaito and his convoy of advisers and chairmen, and they shared a mutually respectful bow.

  Dr. Erland shook his head. Poor young Emperor Kai. He had certainly been thrown to the lions during his short reign, hadn’t he?

  A timid knock rattled the door, making Dr. Erland jump.

  Look at him—wasting his time with Lunar processions and royal alliances that, with any luck, would never be realized. If only Linh Cinder would stop gallivanting about Earth and space and start following directions for once.

  He stood and shut off the netscreen. All this worrying was going to give him an ulcer.

  In the hallway was a squirrelly boy who couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, with dark hair cut short and uneven. His shorts hung past his knees and were frayed at the hems and his sandaled feet were coated in the fine sand that covered everything in this town.

  He was holding himself too tall, like he was trying to give the impression that he wasn’t at all nervous, not one little bit.

  “I have a camel for sale. I heard you might be interested.” His voice trembled on the last word.

  Dr. Erland dropped his spectacles to the end of his nose. The boy was scrawny, sure, but he didn’t appear malnourished. His dark skin looked healthy, his eyes bright and alert. Another year or so, and Erland suspected he’d be the taller of the two of them.

 
“One hump or two?” he asked.

  “Two.” The boy took in a deep breath. “And it never spits.”

  Erland tilted his head. He had had to be careful about who he told this code language to, but news seemed to be spreading quickly, even into neighboring oasis towns. It was becoming common knowledge that the crazy old doctor was looking for Lunars who would be willing to help him with some experimentation, and that he could pay them for their assistance.

  Of course, the spreading knowledge of his semi-celebrity status, complete with Commonwealth want ads, hadn’t hurt either. He thought many people who came to knock on his door were merely curious about the Lunar who had infiltrated the staff of a real Earthen palace … and who had helped the true celebrity, Linh Cinder, escape from prison.

  He would have preferred anonymity, but this did seem to be an effective method for gathering new test subjects, which he needed if he was ever going to copy the letumosis antidote the Lunar scientists had discovered.

  “Come in,” he said, stepping back into the room. Without waiting to see if the boy followed, he opened the closet that he had transformed into his own mini laboratory. Vials, test tubes, petri dishes, syringes, scanners, an assortment of chemicals, all neatly labeled.

  “I can’t pay you in univs,” he said, pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “Barter only. What do you need? Food, water, clothing, or if you’re willing to wait on payment for six consecutive samples, I can arrange one-way transportation into Europe, no documentation required.” He opened a drawer and removed a needle from the sterilizing fluid.

  “What about medication?”

  He glanced back. The boy had barely taken two steps into the room.

  “Shut the door, before you let in all the flies,” he said. The boy did as he was told, but his focus was now caught on the needle. “Why do you want medicine? Are you sick?”

  “For my brother.”

  “Also Lunar?”

  The boy’s eyes widened. They always did when Dr. Erland threw out the word so casually, but he never understood why. He only asked for Lunars. Only Lunars ever knocked on his door.

  “Stop looking so skittish,” Dr. Erland grumbled. “You must know that I’m Lunar too.” He did a quick glamour to prove himself, an easy manipulation so that the boy perceived him as a younger version of himself, but only for an instant.

  Though he’d been tampering with bioelectricity more freely since he’d arrived in Africa, he found that it drained him more and more. His mind simply wasn’t as strong as it used to be, and it had been years since he’d had any consistent practice.

  Nevertheless, the glamour did its job. The boy’s stance relaxed, now that he was somewhat sure that Dr. Erland wouldn’t have him and his family sent to the moon for execution.

  He still didn’t come any closer, though.

  “Yes,” he said. “My brother is Lunar too. But he’s a shell.”

  This time, it was Erland’s eyes that widened.

  A shell.

  Now that had true value. Though many Lunars came to Earth in order to protect their non-gifted children, tracking those children down had proven more difficult than Erland had expected. They blended in too well with Earthens, and they had no desire to give up their disguise. He wondered if half of them were even aware of their own ancestry.

  “How old?” he said, setting the syringe down on the counter. “I would pay double for a sample from him.”

  At Erland’s sudden eagerness, the boy took a step back. “Seven,” he said. “But he’s sick.”

  “With what? I have pain killers, blood thinners, antibiotics—”

  “He has the plague, sir. Do you have medicine for that?”

  Dr. Erland frowned. “Letumosis? No, no. That isn’t possible. Tell me his symptoms. We’ll figure out what he really has.”

  The boy looked annoyed at being told he was wrong, but not without a tinge of hope. “Yesterday afternoon he started getting a bad rash, with bruises all over his arms, like he’d been in a brawl. Except he hadn’t. When he woke up this morning he was hot to the touch, but he kept saying he was freezing, even in this heat. When our mother checked, the skin under his fingernails had gone bluish, just like the plague.”

  Erland held up a hand. “You say he got the spots yesterday, and his fingers were already turning blue this morning?”

  The boy nodded. “Also, right before I came here, all those spots were blistering up, like blood blisters.” He cringed.

  Alarm stirred inside the doctor as his mind searched for an explanation. The first symptoms did sound like letumosis, but he’d never heard of it moving through its four stages so quickly. And the rash becoming blood blisters … he’d never seen that before.

  He didn’t want to think of the possibility, and yet it was also something he’d been waiting for years to happen. Something he’d been expecting. Something he’d been dreading.

  If what this boy said was true, if his brother did have letumosis, then it could mean that the disease was mutating.

  And if even a Lunar was showing symptoms …

  Erland grabbed his hat off the desk and pulled it on over his balding head. “Take me to him.”

  Eight

  Cress hardly felt the hot water beating on her head. Outside her washroom, a second-era opera blared from every screen. With the woman’s powerful voice in her ears, swooning over the incessant shower, Cress was the star, the damsel, the center of that universe. She sang along at full volume, pausing only to prepare herself for the crescendo.

  She didn’t have the full translation memorized, but the emotions behind the words were clear.

  Heartbreak. Tragedy. Love.

  Chills covered her skin, sharply contrasted against the steam. She pressed a hand to her chest, drowning.

  Pain. Loneliness. Love.

  It always came back to love. More than freedom, more than acceptance—love. True love, like they sang about in the second era. The kind that filled up a person’s soul. The kind that lent itself to dramatic gestures and sacrifices. The kind that was irresistible and all-encompassing.

  The woman’s voice rose in intensity with the violins and cellos, a climax sung up into the shower’s downpour. Cress held the note as long as she could, enjoying the way the song rolled over her, filling her with its power.

  She ran out of breath first, suddenly dizzy. Panting, she fell against the shower wall.

  The crescendo died down into a simple, longing finale, just as the water sputtered out. All of Cress’s showers were timed, to ensure her water reserves wouldn’t run out before Mistress Sybil’s next supply visit.

  Cress sank down and wrapped her arms around her knees. Realizing there were tears on her cheeks, she covered her face and laughed.

  She was being ridiculously melodramatic, but it was well deserved.

  Because today was the day. She’d been following the Rampion’s path closely since they’d agreed to rescue her nearly fourteen hours before, and they had not deviated from their course. The Rampion would be crossing through her satellite’s trajectory in approximately one Earthen hour and fifteen minutes.

  She would have freedom, and friendships, and purpose. And she would be with him.

  In the next room, the operatic solo began again, quiet and slow and tinged with longing.

  “Thank you,” Cress whispered to the imaginary audience that was going mad with applause. She imagined lifting a bouquet of red roses and smelling them, even though she had no idea what roses smelled like.

  With that thought, the fantasy disintegrated.

  Sighing, she picked herself off the shower floor before the tips of her hair could get sucked down the drain.

  Her hair weighed heavy on her scalp. It was easy to ignore when she was caught up in such a powerful solo, but now the weight of it threatened to make her topple over, and a dull headache was already creeping up from the base of her skull.

  This was not the day for headaches.

  She held up the ends of her hair with on
e hand, taking some pressure off her head, and spent a few minutes ringing it out, handful by soaking handful. Emerging from the shower, she grabbed her towel, a ratty gray thing she’d had for years, worn to holes in the corners.

  “Volume, down!” she yelled out to the main room. The opera faded into the background. A few last droplets from the showerhead dribbled onto the floor.

  Cress heard a chime.

  She pulled her hair through her fists again, gathering another handful of water and shaking it out in the shower before wrapping herself in the towel. The weight of her hair still tugged at her, but was feeling manageable again.

  In the main room, all but the single D-COMM screen were showing the theater footage. The shot was a close-up of the woman’s face, thick with makeup and penciled eyebrows, a lion’s mane of fire-red hair topped with a gold crown.

  The D-COMM screen held a new message.

  FROM USER: MECHANIC. ETA 68 MINUTES.

  Cress was buoyed by giddiness. It was happening. They were really coming to rescue her.

  She dropped the towel to the floor and grabbed the wrinkled dress she’d been wearing before—the dress that was a little too small and a little too short because Sybil had brought it for Cress when she was only thirteen, but that was worn to the perfect softness. It was Cress’s favorite dress, not that it had a lot of competition.

  She pulled it over her head, then rushed back into the bathroom to begin the long process of combing out her wet tangles. She wanted to look presentable, after all.

  No, she wanted to look irresistible, but there was no use dwelling on that. She had no makeup, no jewelry, no perfume, no properly fitting clothes, and only the most basic essentials for daily hygiene. She was as pale as the moon and her hair would dry frizzy no matter how she coddled it. After a moment of staring at herself in the mirror, she decided to braid it, her best hope for keeping it tamed.

  She had just divided it into three sections at the nape of her neck when Little Cress’s voice squeaked. “Big Sister?”