Winter

His finger reached for the release button.

“Wait.” Cinder reached toward her feet and drew two vials from a rack that was secured there. “We’re no longer immune, either,” she said, handing one to him.

They each tossed back the antidote without ceremony. Jacin was opening the vehicle before he could swallow. There was a whoosh of air as the bubbled ceiling of the terrain-speeder split down the middle and peeled open like a cracked nutshell.

Unsnapping his harness, Jacin hauled himself over the top of the vehicle, landing on a squishy patch of moss. Cinder climbed out not quite as gracefully on the other side.

Jacin hadn’t given much thought to this moment. No doubt there were people in this sector who needed the antidote, but to tell them they had entire pallets of it could lead to a brawl.

Snatching a single vial from a tray that was padded against the back floorboards, Jacin tucked it into his palm and strode toward the crowd.

He’d gone four steps when, suddenly, he was not facing a bedraggled assortment of lumberjacks, but a wall of spears and slingshots and a whole lot of sticks.

He froze.

Either he’d been far too distracted to notice they were all armed, or they’d been practicing for a moment like this. A man stepped out of the crowd, gripping a wooden club. “Who are—?”

Recognition was already pooling in their eyes, though, as Cinder wobbled up to Jacin’s side. She held up both hands, showing the metal plating.

“I have no way of proving to you that I’m not using a glamour,” she started, “but I am Princess Selene, and we’re not here to hurt you. Jacin here is a friend of Princess Winter’s. He’s the one who helped her escape the palace when Levana tried to have her killed.” She paused. “The first time.”

“No friend of ours has Artemisian toys like that,” said the man, pointing his club at the speeder.

Jacin snarled. “She didn’t say I was a friend of yours. Where’s the princess?”

“Jacin, don’t try to help.” Cinder cast him an annoyed look. “We know Princess Winter is ill, along with many of your friends and family—”

“What’s going on out here?”

A familiar face emerged from the crowd, her cheeks dirty and her red curls limp with grease. There were dark circles beneath her eyes and an unhealthy pallor to her skin.

Scarlet froze. “Cinder!” But as soon as she started to smile, suspicion crept in and she held up a finger. “Where did you and I first meet?”

Cinder hesitated, but only for a moment. “In Paris, outside the opera house. I tranquilized Wolf because I thought he was attacking you.”

Scarlet’s grin was back before Cinder had finished speaking. She pulled her into a hug, then cursed and stepped back. Half a dozen wolf soldiers had followed in her wake and were crowding around her like overeager security guards. They looked tame, for the moment, but also like they could tear apart every person in this crowd in all of ten seconds if they chose to.

“Sorry—you shouldn’t be here. Levana—” Scarlet started to cough into her elbow, nearly doubling over with the cough’s unexpected force. When she caught her breath, there were dark spots of blood on her sleeve. “It’s not safe here,” she finished, as if it wasn’t obvious.

“Is Winter alive?” Jacin said.

Scarlet crossed her arms, but not in a defiant way. More that she wanted to hide the evidence of the disease. “She’s alive,” said Scarlet, “but sick. A lot of us are sick. Levana poisoned her with letumosis and it spread fast. We have Winter in a suspended—”

“We know,” said Cinder. “We brought the antidote.”

Jacin held up the vial he’d grabbed from the speeder.

Scarlet’s eyes widened, and those clustered around them stirred. Many weapons had lowered once Scarlet and Cinder had embraced, but not all.

Jacin jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Get some of your muscle to help empty the speeder.”

“And take one for yourself,” added Cinder. “There should be enough for every person who’s showing symptoms, and we’ll make sure to ration extras for anyone who might still become ill.”

Squeezing the vial, Jacin neared Scarlet and lowered his voice. “Where is she?”

Scarlet turned to the soldiers surrounding her. “Let him see the princess. He won’t hurt her. Strom, let’s organize a team to distribute the antidote.”

Jacin had stopped listening. As the crowd parted he could see the daylight glinting off the glass of the suspended-animation tank, and he was already forcing his way toward it.

Here, in the dirt pathway that separated the nondescript medical clinic from the shadowed forest, they had created a shrine around her. Crisscrossed twigs and branches formed a lattice around the metal base of the tank, hiding the chamber that contained all the life-giving fluids and chemicals that were being recycled in and out of her system. Daisies and buttercups were strewn over the glass top, though many had slid off and now littered the ground around her.

Jacin paused to take in the sight, thinking maybe Levana wasn’t paranoid after all. Maybe the people really did love Winter enough that she was a threat to her stepmother’s crown, despite not having royal blood.

The vial grew warm in his palm. All the voices muffled in his ears, replaced with the tinny ring of the tank’s machinery, the constant hum of the life support, a beep from the screen that displayed her vitals.

Jacin swiped his arm across the top, scattering the flowers. Beneath the glass, Winter looked like she was sleeping, except the preservation liquid gave her skin a bluish tinge, making her appear sickly and drawing attention to the scars on her face.

Then there was the rash. Raised rings of darkened flesh scattered across her hands and up her arms and neck. A few had appeared on her chin and around her ears. Jacin focused again on her hands, and though it was difficult to tell with her brown skin and the tinted liquid, he could see a shadow around her fingernails. The last fatal mark of the blue fever.

Despite everything, she still looked like perfection, at least to him. Her curly hair was buoyant in the tank’s gel and her full lips were turned upward. It was like she was going to open her eyes and smile at him, any minute now. That teasing, taunting, irresistible smile.

“The tank has slowed down her biological systems, including the progression of the disease.”

Jacin started. An elderly man stood on the other side of the tank with a mask over his mouth and nose. At first Jacin assumed the mask was to keep him from catching the disease, but then he saw the bruises creeping out from beneath the man’s sleeves and realized it was to keep himself from contributing to its spread.

“But it hasn’t stopped the disease entirely,” the man added.

“Are you a doctor?”

He nodded. “If we open the tank, and your antidote doesn’t work, she will die, probably within the hour.”

“How long will she live if we leave her in there?”

The doctor’s eyes fell down to the princess’s face, then darted to the screen embedded at the foot of the tank. “A week, optimistically.”

“Pessimistically?”

“A day or two.”

Clenching his teeth, Jacin held up the vial. “This is the antidote from Her Majesty’s own labs. It will work.”