But she was already suffocating beneath the weight of her crimes.
Animal. Killer. Predator. And the wolves all howl, aa-ooooooooooh …
Eighty-Eight
Cinder checked the gun’s ammunition, counting the bullets while she ran. She was breathing hard, but she didn’t feel tired or even sore. Adrenaline was pumping hot through her veins and for once she was aware of it only because she could feel herself trembling with the surge of it, not because her brain interface was telling her so.
The sounds of battle were echoing in the palace, dim and far away. Many floors below. They were inside, she could tell. There would be a lot of casualties, she knew.
She felt like they might be winning. She could win.
But it would fall apart if she didn’t finish what she’d come to do. If she didn’t find a way to end Levana’s tyranny for good, the people would be back under her control by morning.
She took the stairs two at a time. Her hair prickled on the back of her neck as she arrived in the fourth floor corridor. She peered down the empty hall with its artwork and tapestries and shimmering white tiles, listening for any sound indicating an ambush.
Not that ambushes came with warning sounds.
Everything was eerie and haunted after the chaos of the courtyard.
It was no comfort to Cinder that she had reached the throne room without incident. It wasn’t like Levana to make things easy for her, which meant that either Levana was so distraught from the video she was no longer thinking straight, or—more likely—Cinder was walking into a trap.
She held the gun with one hand, the knife in the other, and tried to calm her stampeding heart. She did her best to come up with some sort of plan for when she reached the throne room, assuming Levana was in there, probably with an entire envoy of guards and thaumaturges.
If the guards weren’t already under someone’s control, she would steal them away and form a protective barrier around herself. The moment an opportunity presented itself, she would shoot Levana. No hesitation allowed.
Because Levana wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.
She found herself standing outside the throne room doors, the Lunar insignia carved across their surface. She gulped, wishing she could sense how many people were inside, but the room was too well sealed. Whatever lay beyond these doors was a mystery.
An ambush, common sense whispered to her. A trap.
Licking the salt from her lips, she braced herself and kicked one of the doors open, wedging inside before it could slam back on her. Her body was tense, braced for an impact, a punch, a bullet, anything other than the stillness that greeted her.
Only two people were in the room, making it feel infinitely larger than it had during the wedding feast. The audience chairs were still there, but many of them had been shoved against the walls or crushed in the destruction she had wreaked.
The throne, though, had not moved, and Levana was seated on it like before. Rather than looking smug and cruel as usual, she was slumped on the enormous throne with an air of defeat around her. She wore the colors of the Eastern Commonwealth flag in her gown, a mockery of everything Kai and his country stood for. Her glamour had returned. She had her face turned away from Cinder, hiding behind her wall of glossy hair, and Cinder could see only the tip of her nose and a hint of ruby lips.
The second person in the room was Thorne. Her heart sank, but was lifted by a slim hope. Perhaps it was only a Lunar glamoured to look like Thorne. She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, not daring to go any farther into the room.
“Well, it’s about time,” said Thorne, his voice comfortingly sardonic. “You have no idea how awkward these last few minutes have been.”
Cinder’s heart squeezed, her hope fading. It was definitely Thorne and he was standing precariously close to the ledge of the throne room, the one Cinder had jumped from. His hands were behind his back, most likely bound. The glowing bow tie was gone and his purple suit reduced to just the dress shirt, now unbuttoned at the collar. There was a hole in the thigh of his pants and dried blood above his knee. A lump beneath the fabric suggested hasty bandaging.
Cinder reached for him with her thoughts, but Levana had already claimed him, holding his feet as tight-gripped as iron shackles.
Thorne’s gaze swooped down over Cinder’s bloodstained clothes and the weapon in each of her hands. One eyebrow tilted up. “Rough day?”
Cinder didn’t respond. She was still waiting for that surprise attack. A shot through the heart. A guard appearing out of the shadows and tackling her to the ground.
Nothing happened.
No sound but her own heavy breathing.
“Your leg?” she asked.
Thorne shrugged. “Hurts like hell, but it won’t kill me. Unless the prisons were full of grimy bacteria and the wound gets infected, which, let’s face it, is entirely plausible.”
Glancing behind her to make sure no one was sneaking up from the corridor, Cinder took a hesitant step forward.
Thorne took a step back. One step closer to the edge.
Cinder paused.
“Do not come any closer,” said Levana. Her voice was meek and tired, a far cry from the haughty glee with which she’d ordered Cinder’s execution. She still did not lift her head. “I suggest you do not raise your weapons, either. Unless you think he is as lucky as you are.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s luckier.”
Thorne nodded in agreement, but said nothing, and Cinder didn’t move. Peering at him, she mouthed a single word—Cress?
His indifference dissolved and he gave the smallest shake of his head. She didn’t know if this meant that he didn’t know where she was, or if something bad had happened and he didn’t want to discuss it at the moment.
Cinder was distracted from her curiosity by her hand twitching. She was lifting the gun toward her own head.
It was halfway there when she gritted her teeth and forced her limb to stop. To her relief, it did.
Snarling, she lowered the weapon back to her side.
Levana laughed, but the sound came off as more brittle than charmed. “I thought that might be the case,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “I am … not myself at the moment. Though it seems, neither are you.”
Cinder frowned, wondering why Levana could control her in the courtyard, but failed now. Was it because her own mental strength had been too fragile then, while trying to maintain control of so many people, or was the queen growing weak? Perhaps the video showing her true face had fragmented her abilities.
It did not seem to be affecting her ability to manipulate Thorne, but, to be fair, Cinder was pretty sure a Lunar toddler could have manipulated Thorne.
Levana sighed. “Why, Selene? Why do you want to take everything from me?”
Cinder narrowed her eyes. “You’re the one who tried to kill me, remember? You’re the one sitting on my throne. You’re the one who married my boyfriend!” The word was out before she’d contemplated it, and Cinder thought it was the first time she’d ever said it aloud. She wasn’t even sure if it was true. But it felt sort of right, except for the whole being-married-to-her-aunt thing.
But Levana didn’t seem to be listening.
“You don’t understand how hard I worked for all this. How many years of planning, of laying the foundation. The disease, the shells, the antidote, the soldiers, the operatives, the carefully orchestrated attacks.” She pressed a pale hand against her temple. She looked miserable. “It was done. It was perfect. He would have announced our engagement at the ball, but, no—you had to be there. Back from the dead to haunt me. And you come here, and you ask my people to hate me, and you show that … that horrid video, and fill their head with your lies.”
“My lies! You’re the one who brainwashes them. I just showed them the truth.”
Levana flinched, turning her head even farther away like she couldn’t stand to be reminded of what she was hiding underneath the illusion of beauty.
Exhaling sharply, Cinder st
epped forward.
Thorne stepped back.
She grimaced. So much for hoping Levana was caught up enough in her own delusions to stop paying attention.
“What I can’t understand,” Cinder said, easing her tone, “is how you could have done that to me. I was just a kid, and you…” Her heart twisted. “I know those are burn scars you have. I have the same scar tissue where I lost my leg. Knowing what it’s like, living with that—how could you do it to someone else?”
“You weren’t supposed to survive,” Levana snapped, as if that made it better. “At least I would have had the mercy to kill you, to be done with it.”
“But I didn’t die.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed. It is not my fault someone thought you might be worth saving. It is not my fault they turned you into … into that.” She cast a halfhearted gesture toward Cinder.
Cinder clenched her teeth, wanting to argue the point, but she bit her tongue. Levana had been living with her excuses for a long time.
She stole a glance at Thorne. He was sucking on his teeth and staring up at the ceiling. He looked bored.
Cinder tried taking a step backward, like a show of peace, but Thorne stayed where he was.
“Who did it to you, anyway?” she asked, aiming for gentle. “Who hurt you like that?”
Levana sniffed and, finally, dared to look at Cinder. There was all the beauty glistening on the surface, but now that Cinder had seen beneath it, she couldn’t unsee the truth. Whether it was her cyborg programming or Levana’s own weakness, she could see her as she was now. Scarred and deformed.
There was a twinge of sympathy in her stomach, but only a twinge.
“You don’t know?” Levana asked.
“Why should I?”
“You stupid child.” A lock of hair fell over Levana’s face. “Because it was your mother.”
Eighty-Nine
The word mother was foreign to Cinder’s ear. Mother. A woman who had given birth to her, but that was all. She had no memories of her, only rumors—horrifying tales that said Queen Channary was more cruel even than Levana, though her reign had been much shorter.
“My own sweet sister,” Levana purred. “Would you like to hear how it happened?”
No.
But Cinder couldn’t form the word.
“She was thirteen and I was six. She was learning how to use her gift, taking great amounts of pleasure in manipulating those around her—though I was always her favorite target. She was very good. As I am. As you are. It is in our blood.”
Cinder shivered. It is in our blood. She hated to think that she shared blood with anyone in this family.
“At that age, it was her favorite trick to convince me that she loved me dearly. Having never felt love from our parents, it was not a hard thing to get me to believe. And then, when she was sure I would do anything for her, she would torture me. On this particular day, she told me to put my hand into a fireplace. When I refused, she made me do it anyway.” Levana smiled as she told the story, a deranged look. “As you’ve seen, by the time she let me go, it was not only my hand that suffered.”
Bile was filling Cinder’s mouth. A child so young, so impressionable.
It would have been so easy.
Yet a cruelty too impossible to fathom.
Her mother?
“After that, they started to call me the ugly princess of Artemisia, the sad little deformed creature. While Channary was the beautiful one. Always the beautiful one. But I practiced my glamour, and I told myself that someday they would forget about the fire and the scars. Someday I would be queen and I would make sure the people loved me. I would be the most beautiful queen Luna had ever known.”
Cinder tightened her grip on her weapons. “Is that why you killed her? So you could be queen? Or was it because she … did that. To you.”
One of Levana’s perfect eyebrows lifted. “Who says that I killed her?”
“Everyone says it. Even down on Earth we’ve heard the rumors. That you killed your sister, and your own husband, and me, all for your own ambitions.”
A coolness passed over Levana’s face and she leaned slowly back against her throne. “What I have done, I have done for Luna. My struggles, my sacrifices. Everything has been for Luna. All my life I’ve been the only one who cared, the only one who could see the potential of our people. We are destined for something so much greater than this rock, but all Channary cared about were her dresses and her conquests. She was a horrible queen. She was a monster.” She paused, nostrils flaring. “But no. I did not kill her, though I’ve wished a thousand times that I had. I should have killed her before she ruined everything. Before she had you, a healthy baby girl who would grow up to be just like her!”
Cinder snarled. “I don’t know who I would have become if I’d grown up here,” she said, “but I am not like her.”
“Oh, yes,” Levana mused, skipping from word to word like a stream over rocks. “On that note, I believe you are correct. When I first saw your glamour at the Commonwealth ball, I was surprised at how much you resembled her, once the dirt and grime and awful metal extremities were removed. But that seems to be where the similarities end.” Her lips stretched, bloodred, curving around perfect pearl teeth. “No, little niece. You are much more like me. Willing to do anything to be admired. To be wanted. To be queen.”
Cinder’s body went rigid. “I’m not like you, either. I’m doing this because you’ve given me no choice. You had your chance. You couldn’t have just been fair. Been a good ruler who treats her people with respect. And Earth! You wanted an alliance, Earth wanted peace … why couldn’t you just … agree to it? Why the disease? Why the attacks? Did you honestly believe that was the way to get them to love you?”
Levana peered at her, furious and hateful. But then her lips twitched into something resembling a grin. A furious, hateful grin. “Love,” she whispered. “Love is a conquest. Love is a war. That is all it is.”
“No. You’re wrong.”
“Fine.” Levana dragged her fingers along the arm of her throne. “Let us see how much your love is worth. Relinquish all rights to my throne, and I will not kill your friend.”
Cinder’s lips tightened. “How about we put it to a vote? Let the people decide who they want to rule them.”
Thorne took a step back. His left heel was on the edge now, and there was an expression of dismay as he glanced down at the lake below.
Cinder flinched. “Wait. I could promise to relinquish my throne to you, but there are still going to be tens of thousands of people outside demanding for you to abdicate. The secret is out. They know I’m Selene. I can’t take that back.”
“Tell them you lied.”
She exhaled sharply. “Also, the second you kill him, I’m going to kill you.”
Levana cocked her head to one side, and though she had her glamour, Cinder was seeing the woman from the video. That was her good eye, she realized.
“Then I will change the terms of my offer,” said Levana. “Sacrifice yourself, and I will not kill him.”
Cinder glanced at Thorne, who seemed indifferent to the fact they were negotiating with his life. He clicked his tongue at her. “Even I can see that’s a bad deal.”
“Thorne…”
“Do me a favor?”
She frowned.
“Tell Cress I meant it.”
Her gut tightened. “Thorne—”
He met Levana’s gaze. “All right, Your Queenliness. I’ll call your bluff if she won’t.”
“I am not negotiating with you,” Levana snapped.
“If you kill me, you’ve lost your last bargaining chip and Cinder wins. So let’s talk about your options. You can either accept that your time as queen is over and let us both go, and maybe Cinder will take mercy and not have you executed as a traitor. Or you can throw me off this ledge and—”
“Fine.”
Thorne’s eyes widened. He stepped off the overhang. With a cry, he threw up his arms—one wrist sti
ll bound, the opposite hand gripping the kitchen knife he’d swiped from the mansion. Gasping, his arms cartwheeled, his balance precarious.
Cinder dropped her weapons and rushed toward him.
Thorne fell—throwing his body forward at the last minute. One hand grabbed the ledge. He grunted. Cinder dove.
Levana leaned forward.
Thorne’s fingers let go, just in time for Cinder to reach over the edge and latch on to his arm. Her injured shoulder screamed, but she held tight.
Thorne looked up at her, and it was by far the most fear she’d ever known him to reveal. “Thanks,” he panted. Then his free hand swung upward, punching Cinder on the jaw. She flinched, ducking away without letting go.
“Sorry! That’s not me.”
“I know,” she grunted. Planting her other hand on the floor, she pushed herself backward, dragging Thorne with her until his torso was on the ledge, his feet scrabbling for purchase. She dared not let go, even as he shoved his body onto the floor.
Cinder knew that the second she let go of him, Levana would send him careening to his death again.
Too late, it occurred to her that he’d actually managed to get out of his bindings. He must’ve spent the whole time she was arguing with Levana trying to work himself free. The fall might not have killed him, and with his arms free he’d have been able to swim. But now he was—
Thorne jabbed the knife into her thigh.
Cinder screamed.
“Still not me,” he said, breathless, as his fist ripped the knife back out. He raised his arm overhead, preparing to stab her again.
Cinder tackled him, knocking the knife out of his grip.
Thorne threw his elbow into her throat. The air left her, white spots flecking her vision. Thorne scrambled away, but he didn’t run back to the ledge.
Wrapping a hand around her throat, Cinder massaged the muscles, urging them to take in air again. Still dizzy, she forced herself onto her wobbling legs, ready to lunge at Thorne again.
She heard the click of a gun’s safety being released.
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