Cinder gaped at her stepmother, her own anger eclipsed with a surprising jolt of pity. This woman was full of so much ignorance it was almost like she wanted to stay that way. She saw what she wanted, believed anything to support her limited view of the world. Cinder could still remember how she had felt running to the plague quarantines. How she’d desperately clutched the vial of antidote. How she’d been so hopeful she could save Peony’s life, and so devastated when she failed.
She’d been too late. She still hadn’t quite forgiven herself.
Adri would never know, would never understand. To her, Cinder was just a machine, incapable of anything but cruelty.
Five years she had lived with this woman, and never once had she seen Cinder as she was. As Kai saw her, and Thorne and Iko and all the people who trusted her. All the people who knew her.
She shook her head, finding it easier than she’d expected to dismiss her stepmother’s words. “I’m done trying to explain myself to you. I’m done seeking your approval. I’m done with you.”
Kicking at the pile of rock shavings, she jabbed the screwdriver into the wall at the same moment she heard footsteps.
Her jaw tightened. Her time was up. Turning, she reached Adri and Pearl in three long strides. They both shriveled away.
Cinder grabbed the front of Adri’s shirt and pulled her upward.
“If you even think about telling them my foot can be as easily removed as that finger, I will force you to gouge out your own eyes with your fingernails if it is the last thing I do—do you understand me?”
Adri paled and gave a trembling nod before a man’s voice sounded beyond the door.
“Open it.”
Dropping her stepmother back into the corner, Cinder spun back.
The door opened and the cell filled with the corridor’s light, a single guard, Thaumaturge Aimery, plus four additional thaumaturges dressed in a mix of red and black. Five of them. How flattering.
“Her Majesty has requested the pleasure of your company,” said Aimery.
Cinder lifted her chin. “I can’t promise my company will be as pleasant as she expects.”
She strode toward them to show she wasn’t afraid, but suddenly felt herself being thrown against the wall. The pain jolted down her spine, knocking the air from her lungs. It reminded her of all the sparring matches she’d had with Wolf aboard the Rampion, except a hundred times worse because Wolf always looked guilty afterward.
The guard who had thrown her wrapped his hand around Cinder’s throat. Cinder scowled at him, even though she knew he was being controlled and her true attacker was one of the thaumaturges. The guard glared back.
“That was your first warning,” said Aimery. “If you try to run, if you try to fight, if we sense you trying to use your gift, we will not bother with a second one.”
The guard released her and Cinder slumped, bracing herself with locked knees. She rubbed her neck briefly before her wrists were yanked behind her back and bound.
The guard shoved her toward the door. There were four more guards in the hallway, weapons drawn. Unfortunately, they were already under the control of the thaumaturges. She had no hope for turning any of them to her side.
Yet.
But if anyone slipped for a moment, she wasn’t going to bother with a first warning.
“Bring the Earthens too,” Aimery said.
Adri and Pearl whimpered as they were hauled to their feet, but Cinder turned down her audio interface to drown them out. She didn’t know why Levana wanted her stepmother and stepsister, but if she thought Cinder held some affection for them, she would be disappointed.
“Where are we going?” Cinder asked as she was shoved away from the cell.
There was a long silence, and she was sure she was being ignored, but eventually Aimery answered, “You are to be the guest of honor at Her Majesty’s wedding feast.”
She clenched her jaw. Wedding feast. “But I forgot my ball gown on Earth.”
This time, it was one of the females who snickered. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to get blood all over it anyway.”
Fifty
Cinder found herself before a pair of ominous, ebony-black doors. They stood twice her height, and in a palace made almost entirely of glass and white stone, standing before them felt like standing at the edge of a black hole. They were minimally accented with two thick, black iron handles that arched halfway to the floor. The Lunar insignia had been carved into the wood in pristine detail, depicting the capital city of Artemisia and, in the distance, Earth.
Two guards pulled open the doors, and Cinder was facing a gauntlet of yet more thaumaturges and guards and now wolf-mutant soldiers as well. The sight of them made Cinder shudder. These were not special operatives like Wolf. These men had been transformed into something beastly and grotesque. The bones of their jaws were misshapen and reinforced to fit enormous canine teeth; their arms hung awkwardly at their sides, as if their spines were unaccustomed to the weight of their new muscles and extended limbs.
It occurred to her that they weren’t unlike cyborgs. They were both made to be better than what they’d been born as. They were both unnatural. Only, instead of being pieced together with wires and steel, these creatures were a jigsaw of muscle tissue and cartilage.
The guard yanked on Cinder’s elbow and she stumbled forward. The soldiers watched her with keen, hungry eyes.
Wolf had told her these soldiers would be different. Erratic and feral, craving nothing but violence and blood. A powerful Lunar, like the queen, could trick them into perceiving a glamour, but that was it. Even the thaumaturges couldn’t control their minds or bodies, but instead had to train the soldiers like dogs. Misbehave, and they were punished with pain. Do well, and they were rewarded. Only, the rewards Wolf had talked about didn’t strike Cinder as all that appetizing.
Evidently, on Earth, each bloody kill made for its own reward. They were eager to go to war.
Cinder opened her mind to them, trying to sense their bioelectric pulses. Their energy burned white-hot and violent. Hunger and temptation writhed beneath their skin. She was dizzy with the mere thought of trying to control this much raw energy.
But she had to try.
Taking in a measured breath, Cinder reached for the mind of the last soldier. His energy was scalding and ravenous. She imagined it cooling, calming. She imagined the soldier looking at her and seeing not an enemy but a girl who needed rescuing. A girl who deserved his loyalty.
She caught the soldier’s eye, and his mouth curled into a sickening grin around his jagged teeth.
Disheartened, Cinder pulled her attention away.
Nearing the end of the gauntlet, she tried to take in the rest of her surroundings. Lively chatter and laughter and the chaotic clinking of glasses. The aroma of food struck her like a cloud of steam released from a covered pot. Her mouth filled with saliva. Onions and garlic and braised meat and something peppery that stung her eyes—
Her stomach howled at her. Light-headedness crept over her brain like a fog. She hadn’t eaten in over a day, and even that meal had been unsatisfying.
She gulped hard and tried to focus, surveying the room. To her right, enormous windows looked over a lake, bordered on each side by the curved wings of the white palace, like an enormous protective swan. The lake continued as far as she could see. The floor of the room jutted out like a balcony over the water. Although it made for an uninterrupted view, Cinder couldn’t deny a feeling of dread curdling in her stomach. There was no rail to keep a person from falling off the edge.