Two guards flanked her on either side.
“Our second prisoner, Linh Cinder,” said Aimery, pacing in front of her, “has been charged with the following crimes: unlawful emigration to Earth, rebelliousness, assisting a traitor to the crown, conspiring against the crown, kidnapping, meddling in intergalactic affairs, obstruction of justice, theft, evading arrest, and royal treason. The punishment for these crimes is immediate death by her own—”
“No,” said Queen Levana, smiling. It was clear she’d thought a lot about this moment. “It has proven to be too difficult to manipulate her, so an exception is to be made. Her punishment shall be immediate death by … oh, what shall it be? Poison? Drowning? Burning?”
Her eyes narrowed with the last word and Cinder had a stark memory—a nightmare she’d dreamed a hundred times. A bed of red-hot coals charring her skin, her hand and leg crumbling into ash.
“Dismemberment!” a man yelled. “Starting with those horrendous appendages!”
His suggestion was met with a roar of approval from the crowd. Levana allowed the tittering for a moment before she raised a hand for silence. “A rather vile suggestion, for a rather vile girl. I’ll allow it.”
Cheers exploded through the room.
Kai leaped to his feet. “Are you savages?”
Levana ignored him. “Another idea comes to mind. Perhaps the honor of enacting this punishment should be none other than my newest, most loyal subject. I do believe she is quite eager to please.” Levana curled her fingers. “Linh Adri. Won’t you step forward again?”
Adri looked about ready to faint. She took two uncertain steps forward.
“Here is an opportunity to prove that you are loyal to me, your future empress, and that you despise your once-adopted daughter as much as she deserves.”
Adri gulped. She was sweating. “You … you want me to…”
“Dismember her, Mrs. Linh. I suppose you’ll need a weapon? What would you like? I’ll have it brought up. A hatchet perhaps, or an axe? A knife seems like it could get messy, but a nice sharp axe—”
“Stop this,” said Kai. “It’s revolting.”
Levana leaned back in her chair. “I am beginning to think you do not appreciate your wedding gift, my dear. You are free to leave if these proceedings unsettle you.”
“I won’t let you do this,” he hissed between his teeth, his face flushed.
Levana shrugged at Kai. “You can’t stop me. And you won’t stop the coronation. There is far too much at stake to risk it all for some girl … some cyborg. I know you’ll agree.”
Kai’s knuckles whitened and Cinder imagined him striking the queen, or attempting some equally stupid thing.
“Wire cutters,” she said, the tone of voice and the random declaration enough to draw everyone’s attention back to her. Kai’s brow furrowed, but only in that moment between confusion and when her manipulation hit. She felt for his energy, crackling and heated, and did her best to soothe it. “It’s all right,” she said, relieved to see his muscles relax.
He would probably be angry about this later.
Snarling, Levana shoved away the tray of appetizers and stood, knocking the servant onto his side. He scrambled away. “Stop manipulating my husband.”
Cinder laughed, her gaze slipping back to the queen. “Don’t be a hypocrite. You manipulate him all the time.”
“He is mine. My husband. My king.”
“Your prisoner? Your pet? Your trophy?” Cinder took a step forward, and a guard was there, a hand on her shoulder, holding her back, while another half-dozen guards jumped to attention. Cinder sniffed. It was nice to know she could make Levana jumpy, even with her hands bound. “It must be so rewarding to know that every relationship you have is based on a lie.”
Levana’s lip curled, and for a moment, a scrambled, inconsistent picture cascaded over Cinder’s retina display. Something was wrong with the left side of Levana’s face. One half-shut eyelid. Strange ridges along her cheek. Cinder blinked rapidly, wondering if Levana’s anger was causing her to lose control of the glamour, or if this was her own optobionics trying to make sense of the anomaly before them.
She flinched at the overload of visual data, trying to disguise her loss of focus.
The guards started to relax as their queen did.
“You are the lie,” said Levana, her voice level. “You are a fraud.”
Cinder’s attention was caught on the queen’s mouth, usually so perfect and crimson red. But something was off now. A weird downward curl to one side that didn’t fit the queen’s usual apathetic smile.
There was damage there beneath the glamour. Scarring of some sort. Maybe even paralysis.
Cinder stared, her pulse thundering through her head. An idea, a hope, began to build in the back of her thoughts.
“Believe me, I’ve been called worse,” she said, schooling her expression back into nonchalance, though she could tell it was too late. Levana had seen the change in her, or perhaps felt it. The queen was instantly guarded again, suspicious.
Levana could guard herself all she wanted. She could glamour everyone in this room—everyone in her kingdom.
But she couldn’t fool Cinder. Or, rather, she couldn’t fool Cinder’s internal computer.
She stopped fighting the onslaught of data being pieced together by her brain-machine interface. The glamour was a biological construct. Using a person’s natural bioelectricity to create tiny electric pulses in the brain, to change what they saw and thought and felt and did. But the cyborg part of Cinder’s brain couldn’t be influenced by bioelectricity. It was all machine, all data and programming and math and logic. When faced with a Lunar glamour or when a Lunar tried to manipulate her, the two parts of her brain went to war, trying to figure out which side should be dominant.
This time, she let the cyborg side win.
The chaotic jumble of information returned full force. Pieces scrambling to right themselves, like watching a puzzle made up of pixels and binary code work itself out in her head. Like bringing a camera into focus, every glamour in the room was replaced with truth. The purring snow-leopard shawl was nothing more than a faux-fur drape. The fishbowl shoes were nothing more than clear acrylic. Levana was indeed wearing an elaborate red gown, but there were places where it clung too tight or draped too loose, and the skin revealed on her left arm was …
Scar tissue. Not unlike Cinder’s skin around her prostheses.
As the world righted itself and the patchwork reality stopped scrambling and flipping and seaming together, Cinder commanded her brain to start recording.
“I am guilty of the crimes you listed,” she said. “Kidnapping and conspiracy and all the rest of it. But these are nothing compared to the crime you committed thirteen years ago. If there is anyone in this room who is guilty of royal treason, it is the woman sitting on that throne.” She fixed her eyes on Levana. “My throne.”
The crowd stirred and Levana smirked, feigning indifference though her hands were shaking, and the details of them were flicking between lithe, pale fingers, and a pinkie that was shriveled, and the constant changes were making it hard for Cinder to focus.
“You are nothing but a criminal,” said Levana, her voice writhing, “and you will be executed for your crimes.”
Cinder flexed her tongue, testing it, and raised her voice. “I am Princess Selene.”
Levana leaned forward. “You are an impostor!”
“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.”
“That is enough. Kill her.”
At first, the guards did not move, and the brief hesitation was all the information Cinder needed. Levana, in her hysteria, had lost her mental grip on her protectors.
Before the thaumaturges could realize it had happened, Cinder slipped into their minds. Twelve royal guards. Twelve men w
ho were, as Jacin had once told her, like brainless mannequins. Puppets for the queen to shuffle around as it pleased her. Twelve armed protectors, ready to obey her every whim.
Cinder’s retina display flared with information—her accelerated heart rate, the offset of bioelectrical manipulation, the adrenaline flooding her veins. Time slowed. Her brain synapses fired faster than she could recognize them, information being noted and translated and stored away before she could interpret it. Seven thaumaturges: two in black stood behind the queen, the four who had taken Cinder from her cell stood near the doors, and Aimery. The nearest guard stood 0.8 meters to her left. Six wolf soldiers: the nearest 3.1 meters away; the farthest, 6.4 meters. Forty-five Lunars in the audience. Kai and his adviser and five Earthen leaders along with seventeen additional representatives from the Union. Thirty-four servants kneeling like statues, trying to sneak glances at the girl who claimed to be their queen.
Twelve guards, with twelve guns and twelve knives, all belonging to her.
Threats were weighed, balanced, measured. Dangers turned into data, running through a mental calculator. The stiletto knife emerged from the tip of Cinder’s finger.
Every Earthen dived off their seats to take cover, including Kai. Only afterward did she realize she’d forced them to do it.
Then she used eleven of the twelve guards to open fire.
Eleven guns went off, all aiming at the six wolf mutants, while the guard closest to Cinder drew his knife and hacked through the binds around her wrists. In her hurry, she felt the blade clang against her metal palm.
Her hands burst free. Her body and mind were in harmony, just as Wolf had taught her. Her brain ticked down the list of threats.
The wolf soldiers lunged for the guards as another round of bullets exploded around them.
The nearest servant leaped to his feet and charged at Cinder, as if to tackle her.
Cinder grabbed him and shoved him toward a thaumaturge. They collided with a series of grunts, collapsing to the floor.
“Kill her!” Levana’s voice cracked.
More gunshots throbbed against Cinder’s eardrums. Bodies scrambled and chairs screeched and Cinder lost track of where the guards were and if any wolf soldiers had fallen and two aristocrats were running at her from either side and she urged the guards to focus on the thaumaturges, the thaumaturges, now. There was another volley of bullets and the aristocrats cried out and crumpled and tried to scurry out of the fray as soon as they were released.
A wolf soldier grabbed Cinder from behind. Pain ripped through her shoulder, his canine teeth tearing at her flesh. She screamed. Hot blood dripped down her arm. Lifting her cyborg hand, she stabbed wildly and the blade connected with flesh. The soldier released her with a roar and she spun, kicking him away.
Shaking from head to toe, she sought to reclaim the minds of the guards, but in that second of distraction the room had been emptied of the guards’ bioelectric waves. Ten of them were dead, ripped to shreds by the soldiers, who had turned on them with surprising ferocity, despite the bullet holes puncturing their chests and stomachs.
In the chaos, Cinder found Kai, who was staring at her, jaw hanging open.
She tore her eyes away and found the queen, still screaming and trying to cast around her orders, but the two remaining guards no longer belonged to her and the wolves did not care who they were attacking and the thaumaturges … dead. All dead. Cinder had killed them all. Except maybe Aimery, who she couldn’t find in the chaos. She wanted him, but she wanted someone else more.
Clearheaded, Cinder bent down to retrieve a gun from one of the fallen guards. She lifted her arm, gritting her teeth against the searing pain in her shoulder, and aimed for the spot between the queen’s eyes.
For a split second, Levana looked terrified.
Then Kai was between them, face slack from manipulation.
Sweat dripped into Cinder’s eyes, blurring the world around her.
The heavy doors crashed open, followed by the sound of boots pounding in the hallway.
Reinforcements had arrived.
Heartened, Levana sent every remaining person in the room charging at Cinder. The Earthens and the aristocrats may not have weapons, but there were a lot of hands and a lot of nails and a lot of teeth. The new guards would be close behind.
What had her sentence been? Death by dismemberment.
Cinder lowered the gun, pivoted, and ran. Past the puppet Lunars in their glittering clothes. Past the mindless servants and the dead thaumaturges and the splatters of blood and the fallen chairs and Pearl and Adri cowering in a corner. She sprinted toward the only escape—the wide-open balcony hanging above the water.
The pain in her shoulder throbbed and she used the reminder to run faster, her feet pounding against the hard marble.
She heard gunshots, but she had already jumped. The black sky opened up before her and she fell.
Fifty-Two
Kai was rooted to the ground, a statue surrounded by turmoil. Levana was screaming—no, screeching—her normally melodic voice turned harsh and unbearable. She was yelling orders—Find her! Bring her back! Kill her!—but no one was listening. There was no one left to listen.
Nearly all of the guards were dead. The thaumaturges, dead. The wolf soldiers, dead. A handful of servant and aristocrat bodies littered the floor as well, tossed among the blood and broken furniture, the victims of hungry hybrid soldiers let loose on an unsuspecting, unarmed crowd.
Beside him, Levana ripped the jeweled necklace off some Lunar woman and threw it at a servant girl who was cowering on the floor, splattered with blood. “You! Bring me more guards! I want every guard and thaumaturge in the palace in this room at once. And you—clean up this mess! What are you all standing there for?”
The servants dispersed, half crawling, half slipping toward the hidden exits in the walls.
Awareness began to burrow its way through the shock, and Kai glanced around, spotting a group of Earthen leaders clustered in a corner. Torin was among them. He looked stricken. His suit was disheveled.
“Are you hurt?” Kai asked.
“No, sir.” Torin made his way to Kai, gripping the backs of chairs to keep from slipping on the bloody floor. “Are you?”
Kai shook his head. “The Earthens—?”
“All accounted for. No one seems to be injured.”
Kai tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry and the saliva got stuck until he tried a second time.
He spotted Aimery emerging from one of the servants’ alcoves, the only surviving thaumaturge from the trials, though more had since arrived. The members of the court who hadn’t yet run from the throne room were plastered to the back walls, sobbing hysterically or jabbering to one another as they tried to relive the traumatic event, piecing together their stories. Who had seen what and which guard had shot whom and did that girl really believe she was the lost princess?
Cinder, half-starved and surrounded by enemies, had caused so much destruction in so little time, right in front of the queen. It was unnatural. Impossible. Sort of amazing.
A laugh burbled up Kai’s throat, trembling uncontrolled in his diaphragm. His emotions were shredded with fear and panic and awe. Hysteria hit him like a punch to the gut. He pressed a hand over his mouth as the crazed laughter spilled out, turning fast into panicked breaths.
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.
Thoug
h 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.”
Winter Page 37