His smile disappeared, and after a long silence, he said, “You probably shouldn’t be singing, now that I think of it. You’ll lose moisture through your mouth.”
“Oh.” Pressing her lips tight together, Cress placed her fingertips against Thorne’s arm, the signal that had come to mean they were starting down a slope, and slogged on. Her skin had been scraped raw by the heat, despite the shelter of her makeshift robe, but she was propelled on by the thought that it was nearly midday. And while midday would bring about the highest temperatures yet, Thorne had also promised a respite from walking.
“All right,” Thorne finally said, as if the words were being dragged up from his throat. “That’s enough. Let’s rest until the temperature goes down again.”
Cress groaned with relief. She would have kept walking all day if he had asked it of her, but how glad she was that he hadn’t.
“Do you see any shade at all? Or someplace that looks like it might be shaded when the sun starts going down?”
Cress squinted across the dunes. Though there was some shade over the occasional hillock, at high noon it was almost nonexistent. Still, they were coming up on a big hill that would soon cast some shadows—it was the best they could do.
“This way,” she said, spurred on by the promise of rest.
But as they crested one more dune, her eye caught on something in the distance. She gasped, grabbing Thorne’s arm.
“What is it?”
She gaped at the glorious sight, struggling to find words to describe it. Blue and green, a stark contrast against the orange desert sand. “Water. And … and trees!”
“An oasis?”
“Yes! It must be!”
Relief spilled over her. She began to tremble with the promise of shade, water, rest.
“Come on—it isn’t far,” she said, plowing through the sand with renewed energy.
“Cress. Cress, wait! Reserve your energy.”
“But we’re almost there.”
“Cress!”
She barely heard him. Already she could imagine the cool water slipping down her throat. The breeze beneath a palm’s canopy. Maybe there would be food, some strange tropical Earthen food she’d never tasted, that would be juicy and crisp and refreshing …
But mostly she thought of collapsing into a nice patch of shade, cooled and protected from the sun, and sleeping until nighttime brought the return of cooler temperatures and endless stars.
Thorne trooped after her, having given up trying to make her stop, and soon she realized she was being cruel to make him go so fast. She slowed a little, but kept her eyes on the lake that shimmered at the base of a dune.
“Cress, are you sure?” he asked when he’d caught his breath.
“Of course I’m sure. It’s right there.”
“But … Cress.”
Her pace slowed. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
He shook his head. “No, just … all right. All right, I can keep up. Let’s get to this oasis.”
She beamed and grabbed his free hand, leading him over the desert’s ripples and tides. Her fantasies took over, eclipsing her fatigue. The towels had nearly rubbed the soles of her feet raw and her calves were sunburned where her sheet didn’t protect them and her brain was swirling with thirst, but they were close. So close.
And yet, as she slipped along the powdery sand, it seemed that the oasis never came any closer. It always lingered at the horizon, as if the shimmering trees were receding with each step she took.
She plowed on, desperate. The distances were deceptive, but soon they would reach it. If only they kept moving. One step at a time, one foot in front of the other.
“Cress?”
“Captain,” she panted, “it’s … it isn’t far.”
“Cress, is it getting any closer?”
She stumbled, her pace slowing drastically until she stopped, gasping for breath. “Captain?”
“Do you see it getting closer? Do the trees look bigger than they were before?”
She squinted at the water, the trees, the most gorgeous sight, and swiped her sleeve over her face. She was so hot, but no sweat was left behind on the cloth.
The truth was so painful, she almost didn’t have the strength to say it. “N-no. But that’s … how could…”
Thorne sighed, but it was not a disappointed sigh, merely resigned. “It’s a mirage, Cress. It’s the light playing tricks on your eyes.”
“But … I can see it. There are even islands in the lake, and trees…”
“I know. Mirages always seem real, but you’re only seeing what you want to see. It’s a trick, Cress. It’s not there.”
She was mesmerized by how the water rippled in little waves, how the trees trembled like a breeze was teasing their branches. It looked so real, so tangible. She could almost smell it, almost taste the cool wind blowing toward her.
Cress barely managed to stay standing, her fear of being scorched by the hot sand alone giving her the strength.
“It’s all right. Lots of people see mirages in the desert.”
“But … I didn’t know. I should have known. I’ve heard stories, but I didn’t … I didn’t think it could look so real.”
Thorne’s fingers brushed against the sheet, finding her hand. “You’re not going to cry, are you?” he said, his tone a mixture of gentle and stern. Crying was not allowed, not with water so precious.
“No,” she whispered, and she meant it. Not that she didn’t want to cry, but because she wasn’t sure her body could make enough tears.
“Good, come on. Find us a sand dune to sit down for a while.”
Cress peeled her attention away from the fleeting, bitter illusion. Scanning the nearest dunes, she led him toward a southward-facing slope. The moment she was over the crest, it was as if a thin string that had been holding her up snapped. Cress let out a pained groan and collapsed into the sand.
Thorne brought the blanket and parachute square out of the pack and laid it out for them to sit on, to keep them off the hot sand, then pulled the corners over their heads like a canopy that blocked out the sun’s brightness.
He put an arm around Cress’s shoulders and tugged her against him. She felt so dumb, so betrayed—by the desert, by the sun, by her own eyes. And now the truth was settling upon her.
There was no water.
There were no trees.
Nothing but endless sand, endless sun, endless walking.
And they may never make it out. They couldn’t go on forever. She doubted she could go on for another day like this, and who knew how long it would take to reach the end of the desert. Not when every sand dune multiplied into three more, when every step toward the mountains seemed to send them even farther into the distance, and they didn’t even know that the mountains would offer any protection when they got there.
“We are not going to die here,” Thorne said, his voice soft and reassuring, like he’d known exactly where her thoughts had been taking her. “I’ve been through much worse than this and I’ve survived just fine.”
“You have?”
He opened his mouth, but paused. “Well … I was in jail for a long time, which wasn’t exactly a picnic.”
She adjusted the towels on her feet. The hair-ropes had begun to cut into her skin.
“The military wasn’t much fun either, come to think of it.”
“You were only in it for five months,” she murmured, “and most of that was spent in flight training.”
Thorne tilted his head. “How’d you know that?”
“Research.” She didn’t tell him just how much she’d researched into his past, and he didn’t ask.
“Well—so maybe this is the worst I’ve been through. But it doesn’t change the fact that we’re going to survive. We’ll find civilization, we’ll comm the Rampion, and they’ll come get us. Then we’ll overthrow Levana and I’ll get loads of reward money and the Commonwealth will pardon my crimes or whatever and we’ll all live happily ever after.”
Cress nestled against Thorne’s side, trying to believe him.
“But first, we have to get out of this desert.” He rubbed her shoulder. It was the kind of touch that would have filled her with giddiness and yearning if she hadn’t been too tired to feel anything. “You have to trust me, Cress. I’m going to get us out of this.”
Twenty-One
“There,” said Dr. Erland, snipping off the ends of the surgery thread. “That’s all I can do for him.”
Cinder wet her lips and found that they had begun to split from dryness. “And? Will he … is he going to…?”
“We have to wait and see. He’s lucky the bullets didn’t puncture a lung, or he wouldn’t have made it this far, but he did lose a lot of blood. I’ll monitor the anesthetics closely for the next day or two. We want to keep him sedated. Levana’s soldiers are designed as disposable weapons—they are very effective when they’re in good health, but their genetic alterations make it difficult for them to rest, even when their bodies need time to recover from injury.”
She stared down at Wolf’s wounds, now sewed together with dark blue thread that formed ugly bumps and ridges where open flesh had been before. Numerous other scars littered his bare chest, long since healed. It was obvious that he had been through a lot. Surely this wouldn’t be the end of him, after everything?
A table beside her held a tray with the two small bullets the doctor had removed—they seemed too small to have done so much damage.
“I can’t let anyone else die,” she whispered.
The doctor looked up from cleaning the surgical tools. “They may be treated as disposable assets to the queen, but they are also resilient.” He dropped the scalpel and tweezers into a blue liquid. “With proper rest, it’s possible that he’ll make a full recovery.”
“Possible,” she repeated dumbly. It wasn’t enough.
She slumped down onto the wooden chair beside Wolf’s bed and slipped a hand into his, hoping he would appreciate the touch, even though she wasn’t Scarlet.
She crushed her eyes shut, the wave of remorse flooding over her. Scarlet. Wolf would be furious when he woke up. Furious and devastated.
“Now perhaps you might deign to tell me how you managed to be in the company of both a Lunar soldier and a Lunar royal guard, of all the possible allies in this galaxy.”
She sighed. It took a while to gather her thoughts and find the beginning of such a story. Ultimately she decided to tell him about tracking down Michelle Benoit, and how she’d been hoping to find out more about the woman who had protected her secret to the death. How she’d been searching for clues about her past, who had brought her to Earth, and why anyone would put so much faith into a child who, at the time, was a mere three years old and on the brink of death after the queen’s attempted murder.
She explained how they’d followed the path of clues to Paris, where she learned that Michelle Benoit was dead, but she found her granddaughter instead. Scarlet … and Wolf. How they became allies. How Wolf was training her to use her mental abilities and to fight.
She told him about the attack aboard the Rampion and how Sybil Mira had taken Scarlet, and now it was only her and Wolf … and this guard, who she wanted to trust, felt she needed to trust, and yet she didn’t even know his name.
“He said that he serves his princess,” Cinder said, the words wispy and thin. “Somehow, he knew about me.”
Erland rubbed at his frizzy hair. “Perhaps he overheard Thaumaturge Mira, or the queen herself talking about you. We’re lucky that his fealty is to the true crown. Many of Levana’s minions would just as soon kill you and claim a reward than see you recognized as queen.”