“I’m sorry,” she said. “I did not mean to interrupt your meal.”
Scarlet groaned. “When she says she’ll never manipulate you, she means it. And she does plan on giving you your freedom back. I doubt you’ll ever get such a promising offer again.”
The grate of ancient hinges startled Winter. The soldiers pulled apart. The huge iron doors creaked open and the soldiers separated, filing into neat rows fast as an oiled machine. Scarlet took the opportunity to snatch up her gun again, tucking it against her side.
Beyond the doors stood eight thaumaturges, one in second-tier red, the rest in black.
The red-coated thaumaturge, a man with silver-gray hair, saw Winter and Scarlet and smiled viper-like at them.
“Hello, Highness. We heard you might be down here.”
Some of the soldiers shifted aside, making a clear aisle between the thaumaturges and Winter.
“Hello, Thaumaturge Holt,” Winter answered, rising onto her wobbly legs, though they were aching. She felt like she should be afraid of these men and women—normally the sight of their coats and embroidered runes filled her with anxiety and dread and a thousand memories of people dying on the throne room floor. But all her fear had been used up.
“When the system picked up on your identification, I thought it must be a mistake. I did not think even you would be crazy enough to come here.” His gaze cut over the soldiers. “Were you not hungry? Or were the girls not appetizing enough for your tastes?”
“Oh, they were very hungry indeed,” said Winter, struggling to her feet. “Isn’t that right, alpha-friends, wolf-friends?” Her head swayed to one side. “But I had hoped they might protect me and fight for me, if I could remind them they were men once, men who did not wish to be monsters.”
“Turns out,” said Scarlet, “they’re just Levana’s trained dogs after all.”
A handful of the soldiers cast them cool glares.
Thaumaturge Holt scoffed. “I’d heard about your sharp tongue.” His gaze dipped toward the stubbed finger on Scarlet’s hand. “Say and think what you want, Earth child. These soldiers know their duty. They were created to carry out Her Majesty’s bidding, and they will do it without complaint.”
“Is that so?”
Winter wasn’t sure which of them had spoken, but the words were so full of loathing they made her skin crawl.
Holt glowered at the surrounding men, cocky and hateful. “I trust this isn’t dissension I’m detecting, Regiment 117. Her Majesty would be disappointed if she heard some of her prized soldiers were showing disrespect to their masters.”
“Prized puppies, you mean,” muttered Scarlet. “Will they each be getting their own diamond collar too?”
“Scarlet-friend,” Winter whispered, “you are being inconsiderate.”
Scarlet rolled her eyes. “They are about to kill us, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Yes, we are,” said Holt. “Men, you may kill these traitors.”
Winter sucked in a breath, but Alpha Strom raised a hand—and none of the soldiers moved. “Interesting that you mentioned our masters before, as you seem to be missing a few.”
The seven thaumaturges behind Holt remained as statues, staring into the ranks. Winter counted. There were eleven packs in this regiment. There would have to be eleven thaumaturges to control them.
“I will forgive your ignorance in this matter,” Holt said through clenched teeth, “as you could not have known that our country is in upheaval. Some of our highest-ranking thaumaturges and guards and even soldiers, like you, were murdered today, along with an attempted assassination on our queen. So you see, we do not have time for discussions. I ordered you to kill these girls. If you refuse, I will do it myself, and you will be punished for failing to obey a direct order.”
Winter felt the bodies around her shift, as they had when they first surrounded her and Scarlet. Moving almost imperceptibly closer. Tightening a knot.
“Too bad you did all that tampering with our brains,” said Alpha Strom. “Otherwise you could have manipulated us, right? Forced us to follow your command. Instead, you’ve turned us into a bunch of wild animals.”
“A pack of hungry wolves,” someone growled.
“Killers,” Winter whispered to herself. “Predators, all.”
They moved around Winter and Scarlet like water around a rock. Winter grabbed Scarlet’s wrist and tugged her close, their shoulders tight together.
“You didn’t make me to be good at math,” Strom continued, “but by my count, you couldn’t punish all of us, even if you wanted to.”
They had half circled around the thaumaturges, who were showing uncertainty now.
“Enough,” Holt snapped. “I order you to—”
The tension exploded before he could finish. The soldiers converged on their masters, mouths snarling and enormous hands ready to shred and claw and tear.
Like a sonic pulse, dozens of soldiers fell to the ground, writhing and grasping their heads. Knuckles whitened as they pressed their fingertips against their scalps, screaming in pain. The few left standing bounded over their fallen comrades with faces twisted in rage.
Winter flinched, watching as Alpha Strom, who had fallen in front of her, curled into a fetal position and screamed. But it was cut short, and replaced with retching and a whimper, his eyes shut tight as he tried to block out whatever was being done to him.
That whimper cascaded into Winter like a memory. Ryu behind her. The sound of Jacin’s knife. The warm, sticky blood.
Winter dropped to the ground and crawled toward Strom, rubbing her hands over his misshapen face, trying her best to soothe him. The tips of her fingers cracked, devastatingly cold.
The fight, if it could be called a fight, was over in seconds. Winter couldn’t recall the thaumaturges even having the time to cry out. There was the crunch of bones, the tearing of tissue, and it was over. A quick glance confirmed eight bloody bodies inside the cavern’s entrance, and a couple dozen soldiers standing over them, wiping the blood from their chins and digging the flesh from beneath their fingernails.
Winter’s breath fogged in the air. The cold was in her stomach too, icing over.
Her fingers were still in Strom’s hair when he suddenly grabbed her hand and threw it back at her.
Scarlet was there in a second, her elbows hooked under Winter’s arms, pulling her away. All around them, those who had fallen were recovering from whatever torment their masters had inflicted on them. Their faces were glazed from pain, but there was also a satisfaction when they noticed the dead thaumaturges.
Strom pushed himself into a crouch and gave his head a shake. His piercing gaze found Winter. She curled against her fiery friend, shivering.
Strom’s words were slurred when he spoke. “You have Lunar sickness because you cannot control people like they do?”
Winter glanced toward the thaumaturges, or what was left of them, and immediately regretted it. She looked down at her brittle fingertips instead. “Oh, I c-could,” she stuttered through her numb lips. “But I know what it is l-like to be controlled as m-much as you do.”
Strom stood, gaining his strength back faster than many of the others. He inspected Winter and Scarlet for a long while.
Finally, he said, “She will send more of her hounds to punish us for this. They will torture us until we are all begging before them like the dogs we are.” Though his voice was rough, a smile crept across his vicious mouth. “But to know the taste and smell of thaumaturge blood is worth it.”
One soldier howled in agreement and was soon joined by a chorus of howls, splitting through Winter’s ears and making the cavern tremble. Alpha Strom faced the regiment and there was a moment of celebration—fists clasping fists and howls that went on and on.
Winter forced herself to stand, though she was still cold and trembling. Scarlet stayed at her side, a pillar.
Winter’s voice was strong when she asked, “Are you now satiated?”
Strom turned back
, and the raucous congratulations between his men began to fade. Their eyes still showed hunger as they raked over the two girls.
“Are your cravings filled?” asked Winter. “Is your hunger abated?”
“Winter,” Scarlet hissed. “What are you doing?”
She whispered back, “I am thawing out.”
Scarlet frowned, but Winter took a step away from her. “Well? Are you satisfied?”
“Our hunger is never satisfied,” one of the soldiers growled.
“I thought as much,” said Winter. “I know you still want to eat my friend and me, for what a juicy, tasty snack we would be.” She smiled, not as terrified by the prospect as she had been before. “But if you choose to help us instead, perhaps you will soon be feasting on the queen herself. And won’t her flesh be more satisfying than ours? More satisfying, even, than your dead masters in the doorway?”
A silence hovered over them. Winter watched the calculations behind their faces and listened to a few of them sucking on their teeth.
“Fight with me,” she said, when enough time had passed and neither she nor Scarlet had been devoured. “I will not control you. I will not torture you. Help me end Levana’s rule and we will all have our freedom.”
Alpha Strom met the eyes of a handful of the soldiers—the other alphas, she presumed—before fixing a penetrating look on her. “I cannot speak for the entire regiment,” he finally said, “but I will accept your offer. If you swear to never control us as they have done, my pack will fight for your revolution.”
Some of the men nodded. Others growled, but Winter thought it was a growl of agreement.
In response, she lifted her nose to the cavern ceiling and howled.
Fifty-Nine
Scarlet waited until this new round of howls abated, echoing off the cave walls, before throwing herself in front of Winter. “You understand,” she said, shoving a finger at Strom, “that by agreeing to help us, you can only attack Queen Levana and the people who serve her. No civilians whatsoever, not even those obnoxious aristocrats, unless they pose a threat. Our goal is to dethrone Levana, not slaughter the whole city. And we’re not giving you all a free meal ticket, either. We expect you to follow orders and make yourselves useful. That could mean training some of the people from the sectors in how to fight or use weapons, or it could mean carrying injured people out of the line of fire … I don’t know. But it does not mean you get to run rampant through the streets of Artemisia destroying everything in sight. Can you agree to that?”
Strom held her gaze, his ferocity once again turning to amusement. “I understand why your mate chose you.”
“I’m not looking for personal commentary,” she spat.
Strom nodded. “We agree to your demands. And when Levana is gone, we will be free men, able to pursue a life of our choosing.”
“So long as that life follows the laws of society—yes. That’s right.”
Strom surveyed the crowd. If it wasn’t for all the blood, it would look as if the killings of the thaumaturges had never happened. “Alpha Perry? Alpha Xu?”
One by one, he counted off the remaining Alphas, and one by one they accepted Scarlet and Winter’s terms. When it was done, Winter turned to Scarlet with a weary yet endearing smile. “I told you they would join us.”
Scarlet inhaled sharply. “We need to find out what’s happening on the surface. Is there some way to communicate with the sectors? To tell them the revolution is going to happen, even if Cinder…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. She had no idea what had become of Cinder, or Wolf.
Wolf. Ze’ev. Her alpha mate.
Thinking of him cut a hole in her chest, so she wouldn’t. She would believe he was alive, because he had to be alive.
“We have to head to the surface anyway,” said Strom. “These lava tubes don’t connect to the maglev tracks. Or—they do, but it will take us too far out of the way. Better to head up to the nearest sector and infiltrate the tunnels that way.”
“Which sector is that?” asked Scarlet.
“LW-12,” someone said. “Lumber and wood production. Dangerous work, lots of injuries. Doubt they’d be too sympathetic to Her Majesty.”
“We might have luck obtaining weaponry there too,” said another.
“How far is it?” asked Scarlet.
“This used to be the storeroom for LW-12.” Strom pointed at the ceiling. “It’s right over our heads.”
* * *
Once they were back in the caves, it took fewer than ten minutes before a man was prying open a metal door that led to a thin stairwell. It seemed like an endless amount of stairs. The confined space quickly become stifling and hot.
“Scarlet-friend?”
Winter’s fragile voice set Scarlet on edge. Pausing, she glanced down the steps and saw the princess using the ancient rail on the wall to pull herself forward as much as her legs were pushing her. Her breathing was labored, and not from the climb.
“What’s wrong?”
“I am a girl made up of ice and snow,” whispered the princess. Her eyes unfocused.
Cursing, Scarlet scrambled around a group of soldiers to get to the princess. Everyone came to a stop, and Scarlet felt oddly touched at the concern she saw in a few of the soldiers’ eyes.
Leave it to Winter to make a bunch of sadistic, hot-headed predators get all swoony over her. Though Scarlet didn’t like to think that what she and Wolf had was built on Wolf’s animal instincts, she couldn’t help but wonder if the same sort of instincts were at play here. Now that they’d persuaded these men to join their cause, were they shifting away from predator-killers to predator-protectors? Perhaps they’d lived with violence and darkness for so long, a single crack in their armor was all it took to have them craving something more meaningful.
Or maybe it was just Winter, who could make a rock fall in love with her if she smiled at it the right way.
“Are you hallucinating?” Scarlet asked, pressing a hand to Winter’s brow, although she wasn’t sure what she was looking to find there. “You don’t feel cold. Can you walk? Are you still breathing?”
Winter’s gaze dropped downward. “My feet are encased in ice cubes.”
“Your feet are fine. Try to walk.”
With an absurd amount of effort, Winter hauled herself onto the next step. She paused again, gasping for breath.
Scarlet sighed. “Fine. You’re a girl of ice and snow. Can somebody help her?”
The nearest soldier took Winter’s wrist and pulled her arm across his shoulders, so she could use his body as a support to climb the stairs. Soon, he was carrying her.
They made it to the top, emerging into a steel holding tank that would have been used to keep in the artificial atmosphere while the domes were under construction. Then they were outside.
Or, as outside as one could ever be on Luna, which Scarlet felt was a sad representation.
“Is this supposed to be a forest?” she muttered, taking in the short, skinny trees in their perfect rows. Through the trunks in the distance she could see a vast area that had been recently cleared for timber, and to the other side, acres of young saplings.
Straight ahead, in the direct center of the dome, she could make out the shape of a water fountain, identical to the one from the mining sector, situated in a clearing among the trees. The grass looked untended around it.
Alpha Strom took the lead, heading away from the fountain and toward the residences on the perimeter. They could hear people. A lot of people. When they reached the main residential street, Scarlet saw dozens of civilians holding an assortment of weapons (mostly wooden sticks), standing in neat rows and being guided through a series of attack maneuvers. A barrel-chested, bearded man was walking through the rows, yelling things like, “Parry! Jab! There’s someone behind you!”
Even Scarlet’s untrained eye could see that the people’s movements were jerky and uncoordinated, and the people were a sad lot—most as gaunt and hungry looking as those in the min
ing sector. Still, it was heartening to know the people were heeding Cinder’s call.
Scarlet had the gut-wrenching thought that they could be sending these people to their deaths, but she shook it off.
A bewildered scream interrupted the training. They’d been spotted.
Scarlet and a hundred mutants emerged from the forest’s shadows. The scream turned into a dozen more and the rows broke apart, pulled back. But the people didn’t run. Instead, as Scarlet and the mountainous soldiers came nearer, the people lifted their weapons, trying to disguise their terror behind feigned courage. Or perhaps this was the truest courage there was.
The people had probably expected something like this. It would not be a surprise that Levana would punish them for this blatant show of rebellion. But a hundred soldiers must have been far beyond their expectations.
True to their word, the soldiers did not attack, just lumbered forward until they stood twenty paces from the first row of citizens.
Scarlet kept going, separating herself from the crowd.
“I know they’re scary looking,” she said, “but we’re not here to hurt you. We’re friends of Princess Selene’s. And you might recognize Her Highness, Princess Winter.”
Winter’s head rolled against the shoulder of the man who was holding her. “It is a most profound pleasure to meet you all,” she murmured, sounding half-drunk. Scarlet was proud of her for making the effort.
The people tightened their grips around their staffs, or spears, or whatever those were supposed to be.
The bearded man pushed his way to the front of the crowd, looking both tough and anxious at once. “Princess Winter is dead.”
“No, she’s not,” said Scarlet. “The queen tried to have her killed, but she failed. Everything she’s told you has been a lie.”
The man stared at Winter for a long time, his face contorted with suspicion.
“It’s not a glamour,” said Scarlet. “It really is her.” She hesitated, rolling her eyes. “Not that I have any way to prove that. But if we wanted to kill you, why bother with this charade? Look, we’re here to join you in your siege on Artemisia. These men have agreed to fight on our behalf.”