Winter

Torin pressed a hand between his shoulder blades. “Majesty?”

“Torin,” Kai stammered, struggling to breathe, “do you think she’s all right?”

Though Torin looked doubtful, he answered, “She has shown herself to be quite resilient.”

Kai started to make his way across the throne room, his wedding shoes leaving prints in the sticky blood. Reaching the edge, he peered down into the water. He had not been able to tell from his seat how far the drop was. Four stories, at least. His stomach flipped. He couldn’t see to the opposite shore. In fact, the lake stretched out so far it seemed to run right into the dome’s wall.

Though the air was still, the water was choppy and black as ink. He searched and searched for something to indicate a body, a girl, a sheen of a metal limb, but there was no sign of her.

He shivered. Could Cinder swim? Was her body even designed for swimming? He knew she’d taken showers aboard the Rampion, but to be fully submerged …

“Could she have survived?”

Kai jumped. Levana stood a few feet away with her arms crossed and nostrils flared. Kai moved away from her, spurred by the irrational fear that she was about to push him off the ledge. As soon as he backed away, though, he remembered she could still make him jump.

“I don’t know,” he said. To provoke her, he added, “That was some marvelous entertainment, by the way. I had high expectations, and you did not disappoint.”

She snarled and he was glad he’d backed away.

“Aimery,” she snapped. “Have the lake combed by morning. I want the cyborg’s heart served to me on a silver platter.”

Aimery bowed. “It will be done, Your Majesty.” He nodded toward the group of thaumaturges that had arrived after all the action, who were all trying to look like the destruction of the throne room wasn’t as shocking as it was. Four of them departed. “I am afraid I must inform Your Majesty that there has been a disturb—”

“Clearly there is a disturbance!” Levana bellowed. She jutted her red fingernail toward the lake. “You think I can’t see that?”

Aimery pressed his lips. “Of course, My Queen, but there is something else.”

Her gaze burned. “What else could there be?”

“As you know, the trial and execution tonight was live-broadcast to all sectors. It would appear that as a result of the cyborg’s escape, the people are … they are rioting. In several sectors, it seems. SB-1 is the nearest that our security footage indicates, and there also appears to be a sizable crowd of civilians beginning to march toward Artemisia from as far away as AT-6.”

“She did not escape.” Levana’s voice sounded thin and taut, about to splinter. Kai took another step away from her. “She is dead. Tell them she is dead. She could not have survived the fall. And find her! Find her!”

“Yes, My Queen. We will assemble a broadcast informing the people of Linh Cinder’s death immediately. But we cannot guarantee that this alone will subdue the riots…”

“Enough.” Levana shoved the thaumaturge out of her way and stormed toward her throne, planting herself before it. “Barricade the maglev tunnels in and out of Artemisia. Shut down the ports. No one is to enter or leave this dome until that cyborg has been found and the civilians of Luna have repented for their actions. If anyone tries to get through the barricades, shoot them!”

“Wait,” said Europe’s Prime Minister Bromstad, stalking toward Levana. The throne room had mostly emptied of Lunar aristocrats, leaving only the servants who were trying to rid the room of bodies and the Earthens who were trying not to look as shaken as they were. “You can’t lock down the ports. You invited us to a wedding, not a war zone. My cabinet and I are leaving tonight.”

Levana raised an eyebrow, and that simple, elegant gesture made every hair on Kai’s neck stand on edge. She approached the prime minister, and though Bromstad held his ground, Kai could see him regretting his words. Behind him, the other leaders drew closer together.

“You want to leave tonight?” said Levana, the purr having returned to her inflections. “Well then. Allow me to help you with that.”

A nearby servant, who had been attempting invisibility, stopped scrubbing the floor and instead picked up a stray serving fork. On her knees, head bowed, the servant handed the fork to Prime Minister Bromstad.

The second his hand closed around the fork’s handle, fear surged through his face. Not just fear. But a fear in knowing that he was now holding a weapon, and Levana could make him do anything—anything—that she wanted to.

“Stop!” said Kai, grabbing Levana’s elbow.

She sneered at him.

“As I said before, I will not make you my empress if you attack a leader of an allied country. Let him go. Let them all go. There’s been enough bloodshed for one day.”

Levana’s eyes burned like coals, and there was a moment in which Kai thought she might kill them all and simply take Earth with her army, her pathway cleared with all the world leaders gone.

He knew the thought had crossed her mind.

But there were a lot of people on Earth—far more than on Luna. She could not control them all. A rebellion on Earth would be much more difficult to secure if she tried to take it by force.

The fork clattered to the floor and the air left Bromstad in rush.

“She will not save you,” Levana hissed. “I know you think she’s alive and that this little rebellion of hers will succeed, but it won’t. Soon, I will be empress and she will be dead. If she isn’t already.” Schooling her features, she slicked her hands down the front of her dress, like she could smooth out the disaster of the past hour. “I do not know that I will see you again, dear husband, until we stand together for our coronations. I am afraid the sight of you is making me ill.”

Thanks to a warning look from Torin, Kai managed to withhold commentary on this unexpected disappointment.

With a snap of her fingers, Levana ordered one of the servants to have a bath drawn in her chambers and then she was gone, blood clinging to the hem of her gown as she swept from the throne room.

Kai exhaled, dizzy from it all. The queen’s sudden absence. The iron tang of blood mixed with sharp cleaning chemicals and the lingering aroma of braised beef. The way his ears still echoed with gunfire and how he would never forget the image of Cinder launching herself off that ledge.

“Your Majesty?” said a shriveled, frightened voice.

Turning, he saw Linh Adri and Pearl crouched in a corner. Tears and dirt streaked their faces.

“Might we…” Adri gulped, and he could see the fluttering rise and fall of her chest as she tried to gather herself. “Might it be possible for you to … to send my daughter and me home?” She sniffed and brand-new tears pooled in her eyes. Scrunching up her face, she let her shoulders slump, her body barely supported in the corner of the room. “I’m ready … I want to go home now. Please.”

Kai clenched his jaw, pitying the woman almost as much as he despised her. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but it doesn’t look like anyone is leaving until this is over.”

Fifty-Three

The water hit her like concrete. The force pounded through her body. Every limb vibrated, first with the hard slap of the water, then from its icy cold.