“She did not escape.” Levana’s voice sounded thin and taut, about to splinter. Kai took another step away from her. “She is dead. Tell them she is dead. She could not have survived the fall. And find her! Find her!”
“Yes, My Queen. We will assemble a broadcast informing the people of Linh Cinder’s death immediately. But we cannot guarantee that this alone will subdue the riots…”
“Enough.” Levana shoved the thaumaturge out of her way and stormed toward her throne, planting herself before it. “Barricade the maglev tunnels in and out of Artemisia. Shut down the ports. No one is to enter or leave this dome until that cyborg has been found and the civilians of Luna have repented for their actions. If anyone tries to get through the barricades, shoot them!”
“Wait,” said Europe’s Prime Minister Bromstad, stalking toward Levana. The throne room had mostly emptied of Lunar aristocrats, leaving only the servants who were trying to rid the room of bodies and the Earthens who were trying not to look as shaken as they were. “You can’t lock down the ports. You invited us to a wedding, not a war zone. My cabinet and I are leaving tonight.”
Levana raised an eyebrow, and that simple, elegant gesture made every hair on Kai’s neck stand on edge. She approached the prime minister, and though Bromstad held his ground, Kai could see him regretting his words. Behind him, the other leaders drew closer together.
“You want to leave tonight?” said Levana, the purr having returned to her inflections. “Well then. Allow me to help you with that.”
A nearby servant, who had been attempting invisibility, stopped scrubbing the floor and instead picked up a stray serving fork. On her knees, head bowed, the servant handed the fork to Prime Minister Bromstad.
The second his hand closed around the fork’s handle, fear surged through his face. Not just fear. But a fear in knowing that he was now holding a weapon, and Levana could make him do anything—anything—that she wanted to.
“Stop!” said Kai, grabbing Levana’s elbow.
She sneered at him.
“As I said before, I will not make you my empress if you attack a leader of an allied country. Let him go. Let them all go. There’s been enough bloodshed for one day.”
Levana’s eyes burned like coals, and there was a moment in which Kai thought she might kill them all and simply take Earth with her army, her pathway cleared with all the world leaders gone.
He knew the thought had crossed her mind.
But there were a lot of people on Earth—far more than on Luna. She could not control them all. A rebellion on Earth would be much more difficult to secure if she tried to take it by force.
The fork clattered to the floor and the air left Bromstad in rush.
“She will not save you,” Levana hissed. “I know you think she’s alive and that this little rebellion of hers will succeed, but it won’t. Soon, I will be empress and she will be dead. If she isn’t already.” Schooling her features, she slicked her hands down the front of her dress, like she could smooth out the disaster of the past hour. “I do not know that I will see you again, dear husband, until we stand together for our coronations. I am afraid the sight of you is making me ill.”
Thanks to a warning look from Torin, Kai managed to withhold commentary on this unexpected disappointment.
With a snap of her fingers, Levana ordered one of the servants to have a bath drawn in her chambers and then she was gone, blood clinging to the hem of her gown as she swept from the throne room.
Kai exhaled, dizzy from it all. The queen’s sudden absence. The iron tang of blood mixed with sharp cleaning chemicals and the lingering aroma of braised beef. The way his ears still echoed with gunfire and how he would never forget the image of Cinder launching herself off that ledge.
“Your Majesty?” said a shriveled, frightened voice.
Turning, he saw Linh Adri and Pearl crouched in a corner. Tears and dirt streaked their faces.
“Might we…” Adri gulped, and he could see the fluttering rise and fall of her chest as she tried to gather herself. “Might it be possible for you to … to send my daughter and me home?” She sniffed and brand-new tears pooled in her eyes. Scrunching up her face, she let her shoulders slump, her body barely supported in the corner of the room. “I’m ready … I want to go home now. Please.”
Kai clenched his jaw, pitying the woman almost as much as he despised her. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but it doesn’t look like anyone is leaving until this is over.”
Fifty-Three
The water hit her like concrete. The force pounded through her body. Every limb vibrated, first with the hard slap of the water, then from its icy cold.
It swallowed her down. She was still reeling from the hit as the air left her lungs in a burst of froth and bubbles. Already her chest was burning. Her body rolled over like a buoy, her heavy left leg dragging her down.
A red warning light filled up the darkness.
LIQUID IMMERSION DETECTED. SHUTTING DOWN POWER SUPPLY IN 3 …
That was as far as the countdown got. Blackness pulled at the back of Cinder’s brain, as if a switch had been turned off. Dizziness rocked her. She forced her eyes open and looked toward the surface, only able to orient herself because she could feel her leg pulling her down, down.
White sparks were creeping into the corners of her vision. Her lungs tightened, begging to contract.
Slippery weeds reached up to grasp at her, sliming her right calf where her pants had bunched around her knee. Willing herself to stay conscious, Cinder aimed her finger’s flashlight into the blackness at her feet and tried to turn it on, but nothing happened.
With just enough light from the palace filtering through the muck and water, Cinder thought she detected a series of pale bones caught among the grasses. Her metal foot sank into a rib cage.
She jolted, surprise clearing her thoughts as the bones crushed beneath her.
Gritting her teeth, Cinder used every ounce of energy left to push herself off the lake bottom, struggling back toward the surface. Her left leg and hand weren’t responding to her controls. They had become nothing but dead weights at the end of her limbs, and her shoulder screamed where the mutant soldier had dug his teeth into her flesh. It took every ounce of remaining energy to claw her way upward.
Her diaphragm twitched. Overhead, the glare on the surface grew brighter, lights flickering like a mirage over the surface. She felt the strength draining out of her, her waterlogged leg trying to drag her back down …
She burst through the surface with a sputter, sucking huge mouthfuls of air into her lungs. She managed to tread water for one desperate moment before she was pulled down again. Her muscles burned as she kicked, bobbing back up at the surface, straining to keep her head above the water.
As the flashes in her vision began to recede, Cinder swiped the water from her eyes. The palace towered above her, ominous and oppressive despite its beauty, stretching along either side of the lake. Without artificial daylight brightening the dome, she could see the spread of the Milky Way beyond the glass, mesmerizing.
On the balcony far above her, Cinder caught shadows moving. Then a wave crashed into her and she was underwater again, her body battered against the current. She lost her sense of direction, up or down. Panic burst again in her head, her arms flailing for control against the buffeting waves. Her shoulder throbbed. Only when she felt herself sinking did she reorient herself and flounder back to the surface.
She tried to swim away from the palace, toward the center of the lake, though there was no end in sight. She hadn’t gone far before her muscles started to burn, and every joint on the left side of her body was screaming at the useless weights of her prosthetic limbs. Her lungs felt scratched raw, but she had to survive. She couldn’t stop fighting—couldn’t stop trying. Kai was still up there. All her friends were on Luna somewhere, needing her, and the people of the outer sectors were counting on her, and she had to keep pushing, pushing …
Holding her breath, Cinder ducked
beneath the surface and tugged off her boots, letting them sink. It wasn’t much, but she felt lightened enough to scramble against her body’s lopsided weight, propelling herself through the waves.
The lake seemed never-ending, but every time she glanced back and saw how far the Lunar palace had receded into the distance, Cinder felt a new surge of strength. The shore was lit now by mansions and tiny boat docks. The far side of the lake had disappeared over the horizon.
She rolled onto her back, panting. Her leg was on fire, her arms made of rubber, the wound in her shoulder like an ice pick jammed into her flesh. She couldn’t go any farther.
It occurred to her, as a wave crashed over her body and she almost didn’t bother to reach for the surface, that she didn’t know if she’d reserved enough energy to make it to the shore. What if they were waiting for her there? She couldn’t fight. Couldn’t manipulate. She was done. A half-dead, beaten girl.
Cinder’s head collided with something solid.
She gasped, her loss of propulsion sending her beneath the surface again.
She lashed out with her foot, forcing herself back up, and spat the water from her mouth. Her hands slapped against the hard, slick surface she’d run into. The dome.
She’d reached the edge of Artemisia.
The enormous curved wall acted like a dam, holding the lake back, while on the other side of the glass the crater continued for miles in each direction—dry and pocked and disturbingly, horrifyingly deep.
Bobbing against the glass, Cinder stared at the bottom of the crater hundreds of feet below. She felt like a fish in a fishbowl. Trapped.
She turned toward the shore, but couldn’t make herself move. She was shivering. Her stomach was hollow. Her weighted leg pulled her down again and it took the strength of a thousand wolf soldiers for her to climb back to the surface. Water flooded her mouth and she spat as soon as her head broke through the waves, but it was useless.
She couldn’t.
Dizziness rocked over her. Her arms flopped against the water. Her right leg gave out first, too tired for one more kick. Cinder gasped and she was dragged down, one hand sliding down the slimy glass wall.
There was a strange release as blackness engulfed her. A pride in knowing that when they combed the lake they would find her body way out here and they would know how hard she had fought.
Her body went limp. A wave pushed her back and she struck the wall, but hardly felt it. Then something was gripping her, dragging her upward.
Too weak to fight, Cinder let herself be carried. Her head broke into the air and her lungs expanded. She coughed. Arms wrapped around her. A body pressed her against the wall.
Cinder drooped forward, settling her head against a shoulder.
“Cinder.” A man’s voice, strained and vibrating through her chest. “Stop slacking off, would you?” He adjusted her in his arms, shifting her weight to cradle her in one elbow. “Cinder!”
She turned her bleary eyes up. Catching glimpses of his chin and profile and the wet hair plastered to his brow. She must have been delirious.
“Thorne?” The word stuck in her throat.
“That’s Captain … to you.” He gritted his teeth, straining to pull them toward the shore. “Aces, you’re heavy. Oh, there you are! How nice of you … to help out…”
“Your mouth uses up a lot of energy,” someone growled. Jacin? “Roll her onto her back so her body’s not fighting against—”
His words turned into a sharp yell as Cinder’s body slipped out of Thorne’s hold, sinking into the comforting lull of the waves.
Fifty-Four
Cress and Iko stood gripping each other on the lakeshore, watching Thorne and Jacin dive beneath the surface. Cress was shivering—more from fear than cold—and while Iko’s body didn’t give off natural heat like a human being, there was a comfort that came from her solidarity. They waited, but there was no sign of Thorne or Jacin or Cinder. They’d been underwater for a long time.
Too long.
Cress didn’t realize she was holding her breath until her lungs screamed. She gasped, the sensation more painful because she knew her companions would have been holding their breath for that long too.
Iko squeezed her hand. “Why haven’t they—” She took a step forward, but paused.
Iko’s body wasn’t made for swimming and Cress had never been in a body of water larger than a bathtub.
They were useless.
Cress pressed a shaky hand over her mouth, ignoring the hot tears on her face. It had been far too long.
“There!” Iko cried, pointing. Two—no, three heads appeared over the dark, chopping waves.
Iko took another step. “She is alive, isn’t she? She … she doesn’t seem to be moving. Do you see her moving?”
“I’m sure she’s alive. I’m sure they’re all fine.”
She glanced at Iko, but couldn’t bring herself to ask the question she knew they’d all been thinking. The live broadcast of the wedding feast had shown them everything. The trial. The massacre. Cinder jumping from the ledge and plunging toward the lake below.
Could Cinder swim?
Everyone had thought it, but no one had asked.
Together, the four of them had sneaked through the city, grateful that the few Lunars they saw were too busy celebrating the queen’s marriage to pay them any attention. Jacin had led the way, familiar with the city and the patterns of the lake, knowing where the bodies that fell into it from the throne room occasionally surfaced. There had been no hesitation between them—they all knew they had to find Cinder while Levana was reeling from the attack.
When they had caught sight of Cinder’s dark form among the waves, there was a resounding gasp of joy and relief from the whole group, but they still had no idea what state Cinder would be in.
Was she alive? Was she injured? Could she swim?
When the trio in the water was close enough, Cress let go of Iko and waded out to join them. Together they pulled Cinder’s body ashore, laying her down on the white sand.
“Is she alive?” Iko asked, half-hysterical. “Is she breathing?”
“Let’s get her to that boathouse,” Jacin said. “We can’t stay out here.”
Thorne, Jacin, and Iko shared the job of carrying Cinder’s limp body while Cress ran ahead to hold the doors. Three rowboats were stacked on brackets against the two sidewalls, with a fourth laid out in the middle and covered with a tarp. She cleared a mess of oars and fishing equipment from the tarp, making a space for them to lay out Cinder’s body, but Jacin laid her on the hard floor instead. Iko closed the doors, shrouding the room in darkness. Cress scrambled to switch on her portscreen for its ghostly blue light.
Jacin didn’t bother to check for breath or a pulse before he leaned over Cinder and locked his hands together on top of her chest. His eyes hardened as he started to pump down on her sternum with quick, forceful movements. Cress winced at the sound of popping cartilage.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” said Thorne, crouched on Cinder’s other side. He coughed and wiped his mouth with his arm. “Do you need help? We learned this in boot camp … I remember … sort of…”
“I know what I’m doing,” said Jacin.
And he did seem to know, as he tilted Cinder’s head back and formed a seal over her mouth with his own.
Thorne didn’t look comforted, but he didn’t argue.
Kneeling at Cinder’s feet, Cress watched in silence as Jacin started the compressions again. She remembered net dramas where the heroine was revived by the hero with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It had seemed so romantic. Cress had even had fantasies about drowning, dreams in which the press of a man’s lips could breathe life back into her lifeless form.
The dramas had lied. There was a violence to this they hadn’t shown. She grimaced as Jacin’s hands flattened against Cinder’s sternum for a third time, imagining she could feel the bruises on her own chest.
She felt suspended in time. Thorne took up sentinel
by the doorway, peering out through a small, filthy window to keep watch. Iko wrapped her arms around her body and looked about ready to dissolve into impossible tears.
Cress was about to take Iko’s hand again when Cinder jerked. She started to gag.
Jacin eased her head over to the side and water burbled out of her mouth, though not as much as Cress expected. Jacin held Cinder in place, keeping her airway clear, until she had stopped hacking. She was breathing again. Weak and shaky, but breathing.
Cinder opened her eyes and Jacin eased her into a sitting position. Her right arm flopped. Her hand found Jacin’s arm and squeezed. She spat a few more times. “Good timing,” she croaked.
Water was glistening on her lips and chin until Iko reached forward and wiped it away with her sleeve. Cinder looked at her and her eyes lightened, though her eyelids still drooped with exhaustion.
“Iko? I thought…” With a groan, she fell onto her back.
Iko squealed and made to collapse onto Cinder, but reconsidered. Instead, she scurried around Jacin so she could lift Cinder’s shoulders and cradle her head in her lap. Smiling wearily, Cinder reached up to pet Iko’s braids. Her cyborg hand was missing one of its fingers.
“We can’t stay here,” said Jacin, rubbing water droplets from his cropped hair. “They’ll start the search closer to the palace, but it won’t be long before they barricade the whole lake. We need to find someplace for her to recover.”
“Any ideas?” asked Thorne. “We’re not exactly in friendly territory.”
“I need medical supplies,” said Cinder, her eyes shut. “A soldier bit me. Should clean the wound before it’s infected.” She sighed, too exhausted to go on.
“I wouldn’t mind a warm meal and a clothes dryer so long as we’re making demands,” said Thorne. Leaning forward, he stripped off his soaking wet shirt.
Cress’s eyes widened, glued to him as he wrung the lake out of the shirt, water splattering on the concrete.
Jacin said something, but she didn’t catch what.