“I smell them approaching. A dozen packs, maybe more, along with their masters. We’ll soon be surrounded.”
Cinder kept her expression composed. “This is your last chance,” she said, holding her aunt’s gaze across the courtyard. “Proclaim before all these witnesses that I am Selene Blackburn, the rightful heir to the Lunar throne. Give me your crown, and I will let you and your followers live. No more lives have to be lost.”
Levana’s lips curved, bloodred against her pale skin. “Selene is dead. I am the queen of Luna, and you are nothing but an impostor.”
Cinder waited one full breath before she returned the smile. “I thought you’d say that.”
Then she let her arm fall.
Eighty-Two
Cinder’s army surged forward, the civilians pooling through the open gates while the soldiers ran for the fence, scaling to the top and hurling themselves into the gardens on the other side.
The queen did not flinch. Her thaumaturges did not stir.
They had reached the base of the marble steps when Levana raised her hand. Her thaumaturges closed their eyes.
It was a moment of contrasts.
The mutant soldiers, their first line of attack, fell as one. Their enormous bodies crumpled to the ground like forgotten toys, and a hundred men howled from what pain Cinder could only imagine. She had heard such inhuman noises only once, when she herself had tortured Thaumaturge Sybil Mira—driving her to insanity.
The civilians whose minds were protected by Cinder and those who were strongest with their gift pushed forward, heaving themselves over the wolf soldiers as well as they could. But the others began to stumble and halt as the queen claimed them. Many collapsed, their weapons thudding to the ground. Those under Cinder’s control swarmed around them and over them, tripping over fallen bodies, charging forward with weapons raised.
The thaumaturges, Cinder thought, mentally coaxing them toward the distinctive red and black coats. Every dead thaumaturge would equal a dozen soldiers or citizens returned to their side.
But the rush of civilians was met with resistance as the queen’s palace guards formed a wall, dividing the queen and her entourage from the attackers who barreled toward them.
They crashed into one another like a river into a dam. Steel rang. Wooden spears thumped and splintered. Cries of war and pain reverberated down the streets.
Cinder shuddered and moved to step forward, to join the melee and cut her own path through to the queen—but her body wouldn’t move. Her limbs seemed stuck in mud.
Her pulse skipped.
No.
She had not expected—had not thought—
Clenching her teeth, she tried to shake off the manipulation that was being pressed into her thoughts. She imagined the sparks of electricity lighting up inside her brain, the twist of energy as Levana turned her own mind against her. She had always shaken it off before. She had always managed to escape, to be stronger. Her cyborg brain could override the effects of—
A shiver raced down her brain.
Her cyborg brain was broken.
No. No. How could she defend the minds of others when she couldn’t protect her own thoughts from the queen?
She gritted her teeth. If she could free one limb, prove to her body that it could be done …
She groaned and fell to one knee. Her body pulsed with unspent energy and she felt the sudden snap. Her tenuous control over the citizens dissolved. The surrounding howls of pain burrowed into Cinder’s ears.
Within seconds, those allies were taken from her too.
The battle ended before it had truly begun.
Cinder sat panting from the exertion of trying to rid herself of Levana’s mind control, and even still her limbs felt heavy and uncoordinated. The screams of her soldiers dwindled into whimpers and groans of the dying. Even from that brief collision, the iron smell of blood tainted the air.
Levana started to laugh. Delighted and shrill, the sound was as painful to listen to as the screams of a hundred warriors.
“What is this?” said the queen, clapping her hands together. “Why, I had been looking forward to a battle of skill, young princess. But it seems you will not put up the fight I’d been expecting.” She laughed again. Raising a hand, she stroked her fingernails through Wolf’s hair, a gesture that was both endearing and possessive.
“There is an easy treat for you, my pet. Already caught in a snare.”
He growled, his enlarged teeth flashing as he prowled down the steps. The guards parted for him and he stepped over the collapsed citizens as if he didn’t even see them.
Cinder shivered. She had lost count of how many times she’d faced those vibrant green eyes, both as an enemy and as a friend. But never before had she been helpless.
She tried to shake her head. To plead with Wolf, or whatever piece of Wolf was left inside the creature.
“Hey, your queenliness! Over here!”
Cinder’s eyes widened. Iko.
A gunshot ricocheted through the crowd. Levana stumbled. Cinder saw the blood spray on the massive golden doors and there was a moment—the tiniest of moments—in which she was overjoyed. She’d been shot—the queen was shot!
But it was Wolf who roared. Levana had ducked behind him. The bullet had hit near his hip and already his fine uniform was darkening with blood.
Iko cried out, horrified.
Levana snarled and her anger tightened around Cinder and the crowd like a noose. Her control was strangling. Suffocating.
Wolf charged, not toward Cinder, but Iko. She could see it in his eyes, the animal instinct. Attacking his attacker.
Cinder’s stomach roiled. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything. Could hardly even breathe. Her lungs burned, but she was trapped.
Wolf reached Iko while she stood gripping the gun, unsure what to do. His claws swiped at her, tearing more skin fibers from her already-shredded abdomen. She shrieked and scrambled backward, unwilling to shoot him again. He tackled her to the ground. His jaws sank into her synthetic arm and the gun clattered beside her. A wire sparked in his mouth and he let go.
Cinder pleaded with her control panel to wake up, to fight back, to be stronger than her, to win—
“I am Princess Selene.”
The disembodied voice fell over the crowd. Determined. Familiar, yet not.
The dome above them darkened. Like a storm moving in, the glass tinted to near blackness. On the surface, a series of squares brightened. Blue light at first, before the video began to crystallize.
Levana’s voice screeched all around them. “You are an impostor!”
Levana looked up. Her guards and thaumaturges tensed.
“And I am ready to claim what’s mine. People of Artemisia, this is your chance. Renounce Levana as your queen and swear fealty to me, or I swear that when I wear that crown, every person in this room will be punished for their betrayal.”
The throne room came into view, seen from Cinder’s perspective. The servants and the thaumaturges had not changed position. Neither had Kai, in the front row, terrified and desperate.
“That is enough. Kill her.”
Then there was Levana, but not Levana. She was recognizable only by the red wedding gown.
Beneath the glamour, her face was disfigured from ridges and scars, sealing shut her left eye. The destroyed skin continued down her jaw and neck, disappearing beneath the collar of her dress. Her hair was thinner and a lighter shade of brown, and great chunks were missing where the scars had reached around to the back of her head. More scars could be seen on her left arm where her silk sleeve didn’t hide them.
Burns.
They were scars created from burns.
Cinder knew it with absolute certainty.
A wretched scream sent a shock of cold water over Cinder’s body.
“Turn it off! Turn it off!” Levana shrieked. She spun away from the video in the sky, grasping the arms and faces of the thaumaturges nearest her and forcing them to turn away. ??
?Don’t look! Stop looking! I’ll have your eyes ripped out, every one of you!”
Cinder realized she was no longer paralyzed from Levana’s mind control—it was her own shock keeping her rooted to the ground.
It was working. The queen was losing control. She was being forced to see the truth beneath her own glamour, and she could do nothing to stop it.
The video dissolved into a chaos of bullets and screams, blood and bodies.
Levana stared out at the people who were no longer under her control. Her glamour was gone. She was wretched and disfigured and, in that moment, afraid.
A gun fired, but missed. The bullet embedded itself in the palace doors. Someone behind Cinder cursed. Eyes widening, she swiveled her head around. It was Scarlet, her red hair like a spotlight in the crowd. She reloaded her gun and took aim again.
Levana stumbled back two, three steps, then she turned and ran back into her palace, leaving her entourage of shocked thaumaturges behind. Leaving Wolf too, still hunkered over Iko’s body, though she was no longer moving. His focus was on Scarlet, his deformed face twisted in recognition and horror.
For a moment, Cinder found herself immobilized by her own scattered thoughts. She didn’t know what to do. Iko wasn’t moving. She didn’t know if she could trust Wolf. The queen had run, but her path to the palace was still blocked, and there were still enough thaumaturges to control most of the soldiers and the civilians, but everyone was shocked, motionless, reeling from the video—
A howl silenced her racing thoughts.
Cinder gasped, unable to tell where it had come from. She didn’t know if it was one of the soldiers who had joined her side, or if it was one of the other packs Strom had mentioned would soon be surrounding them.
The howl was joined by another, and another. Then everything dissolved into chaos.
Eighty-Three
Standing on the dais on which he’d been crowned the king of Luna, Kai crossed his arms and scowled into the audience. The leaders and diplomats from the Earthen Union were stone-faced in an attempt to hide the anger lurking under the surface. Levana had locked them in the great hall with guards posted outside each door along with hundreds of Lunar aristocrats, who smirked and tittered at the Earthens as though they were exotic animals—adorable and fascinating and harmless.
He could hear the distant sounds of fighting and stampeding feet, but they were muffled by the thick stone walls.
The threat of revolt and the massacre of thousands of their countrymen was not enough to taint the Lunars’ revelry. They were acting as though they were at a circus. Cheering when the sounds of fighting got louder outside. Placing bets on different thaumaturges and who would have the highest death count when it was done. Making crude jokes about who among them would be going without cashmere wraps and blueberry wine next season if the laborers from the outer sectors didn’t stop playing at war games and get back to work, lazy buffoons that they were.
Listening to it had Kai’s vision blazing red. He didn’t realize his hands had been tightened into trembling fists until Torin settled a hand on his shoulder. Kai started, then forced his fists open and took in a calming breath. “They have no idea,” he said. “They have no clue what it’s like in the outer sectors, no gratitude at all for the workers that allow them to have the luxuries they do. They believe they’re entitled to everything they’ve been given.”
“I agree, it’s sickening and perhaps even unforgivable,” said Torin, “but we should consider that they have been kept in ignorance as much as those in the outer sectors have.”
Kai snarled. He was not in the mood to feel sympathetic toward these people. “It would appear the honeymoon is over.”
“I must say, the queen does have a flair for the dramatic.” Torin cast a sly grin toward Kai. “So, it seems, does her niece.”
He smothered a twitch of pride. Cinder did have a knack for making an entrance. “What have we learned?”
“All of the exits have been bolted shut from the outside, and if the Lunars are to be believed, there are two guards posted at each exit.”
“Guards are easily manipulated, aren’t they?” Kai gestured toward the audience. “These Lunars—do you think they could control the guards through the doors? Cinder always said she could detect people through doors, but I don’t know if she could also manipulate them. But if we could get some of these Lunars to manipulate the guards into unlatching the doors, then clear a path down to the docks … maybe we could get everyone to safety.”
“The docks would offer shelter and the potential for escape should Linh-dàren fail,” said Torin, “but I can’t imagine these Lunars choosing to help us anytime soon.”
Kai blinked. It was the first time he’d heard anyone refer to Cinder as Linh-dàren—a title of high honor.
“You’re right,” he said. “They won’t help us, and they’re idiots for it. Have they even stopped to think why Levana locked them in here too? They think they’re invincible because they’re under her protection, but Levana doesn’t care about them. She’ll use them as quickly as anyone if she thinks it will further her cause.”
A distant rumble shook the palace, followed by yelling, throaty and furious, from what could have been thousands of voices. Then there was a rain of gunfire.
Kai shuddered. Even knowing Levana had gone to meet Cinder and whatever allies she’d persuaded to join her, it hadn’t seemed real. A revolution, a battle … it was incomprehensible. But now there were guns and people were dying and they were trapped.
“That was a bomb!” screamed a representative from Eastern Europe. “They’re bombing the palace! They’re going to kill us all!”
A group of nearby Lunars started to titter and cry out in mocking fear, “A bomb, oh stars, not a bomb!”
Kai narrowed his eyes. He didn’t know if the sound had been caused by an explosive or not, but his companion’s fear had given him an idea.
The portscreen Levana had thrown was still on the floor beside the altar. He marched toward it and gathered together the pieces. A couple plastic panels had snapped off and there was a permanent dent in the corner, but it hummed to life when he turned it on.
As the screen brightened, though, it was jumbled and pixilated, full of black spots and broken icons. He cursed, sweeping his fingers over the screen, jabbing at the controls. Nothing changed.
“Your Majesty?” Torin crouched beside him.
Kai held up the broken portscreen. “What would Cinder do? How would she fix it?”
A crease formed across Torin’s brow. “You want to comm for help?”
“Sort of.” He buried a hand in his hair, thinking, thinking. He pictured Cinder at her booth at the market. She would have been surrounded by tools and spare parts. She would have known what to do. She would have—
He hopped to his feet, his pulse racing, and whapped the corner of the portscreen hard on the top of the altar. Torin jerked back.
Kai looked again and let out an excited whoop. Half the screen had cleared.
He opened a comm.
“How did you do that?” said Torin.
“I don’t know,” he said, typing in a hasty message, “but you’d be surprised how often that works.”
A bout of laughter pulled his attention back to the audience. A group of Lunars had formed a circle around one of the servants who had been locked inside with them. The servant girl was dancing, but with jerky, uncomfortable movements. There were tears on her face, even though her eyes were shut and her expression was twisted in an attempt to imagine herself elsewhere. The look made Kai’s heart shrivel in his chest.
Somehow he knew this was not an unusual occurrence for the girl. He wondered if she had ever gone an entire day without someone else’s will being forced upon her limbs.
“That’s not a waltz at all!” a Lunar cried, smacking his companion on a shoulder. “Let me have a try at it. I can make her much more graceful than that.”
“She needs a partner, doesn’t she?” someone else sa
id. “Let’s get one of those Earthens up here and have ourselves a bit of puppet theater while we wait.”
“Hey—how about that sweet young girl from the Commonwealth, the one that’s related to the cyborg? Remember her from the trial? Where is she?”
Kai heard a whimper. Cinder’s stepmother and stepsister were kneeling on the floor between two rows of chairs, clutching each other in an attempt to go unnoticed.
He ripped his gaze away and clipped the port back to his belt. “That’s enough,” he said, stalking toward the group. “Release the servant at once!”
“Ah, it looks as though the pretty emperor wants to dance too.”
The cheers that greeted Kai sounded cruel, but to his relief, no one took control of his body, even as he put an arm around the servant girl and hugged her against his side. She stopped dancing at once and slumped against his body, exhausted.
“You are addressing your king,” he said, enunciating each word. He was glad that he still wore the spindly Lunar crown, even though king consort was not a title that carried much power. He could hope that not everyone knew that, though. “You don’t seem to comprehend the situation. We are all prisoners in this room, each and every one of us. That also makes us allies, whether we like it or not.” He jabbed a finger toward the back wall. “Once Levana realizes she’s overpowered—and she is—she will retreat. And where do you think she’s going to come?”
He fixed his gaze on those closest to him. They were smirking. Humored by Kai’s outrage.
“She didn’t lock us in here for our protection, or because she wanted us to go on having a big party. She’s keeping us here as her reserves. Once her guards fall, you are going to be her next line of defense. She will use your bodies as shields. She will turn you into weapons. She will sacrifice every person in this room and she won’t feel a hint of remorse so long as she survives. Don’t you get it? She doesn’t care about you. All she cares about is having more bodies at her disposal when she needs them.”
The eyes around him still glimmered. It was impossible to tell if his words were having an impact, but he continued, “We don’t have to sit here and wait for her to come back. With your help, we can get out of this room. We can all get down to the royal port where we’ll be safe and where Levana won’t be able to use us to fight her battles.”