Cinder’s stomach roiled. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything. Could hardly even breathe. Her lungs burned, but she was trapped.
Wolf reached Iko while she stood gripping the gun, unsure what to do. His claws swiped at her, tearing more skin fibers from her already-shredded abdomen. She shrieked and scrambled backward, unwilling to shoot him again. He tackled her to the ground. His jaws sank into her synthetic arm and the gun clattered beside her. A wire sparked in his mouth and he let go.
Cinder pleaded with her control panel to wake up, to fight back, to be stronger than her, to win—
“I am Princess Selene.”
The disembodied voice fell over the crowd. Determined. Familiar, yet not.
The dome above them darkened. Like a storm moving in, the glass tinted to near blackness. On the surface, a series of squares brightened. Blue light at first, before the video began to crystallize.
Levana’s voice screeched all around them. “You are an impostor!”
Levana looked up. Her guards and thaumaturges tensed.
“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.”
The throne room came into view, seen from Cinder’s perspective. The servants and the thaumaturges had not changed position. Neither had Kai, in the front row, terrified and desperate.
“That is enough. Kill her.”
Then there was Levana, but not Levana. She was recognizable only by the red wedding gown.
Beneath the glamour, her face was disfigured from ridges and scars, sealing shut her left eye. The destroyed skin continued down her jaw and neck, disappearing beneath the collar of her dress. Her hair was thinner and a lighter shade of brown, and great chunks were missing where the scars had reached around to the back of her head. More scars could be seen on her left arm where her silk sleeve didn’t hide them.
Burns.
They were scars created from burns.
Cinder knew it with absolute certainty.
A wretched scream sent a shock of cold water over Cinder’s body.
“Turn it off! Turn it off!” Levana shrieked. She spun away from the video in the sky, grasping the arms and faces of the thaumaturges nearest her and forcing them to turn away. “Don’t look! Stop looking! I’ll have your eyes ripped out, every one of you!”
Cinder realized she was no longer paralyzed from Levana’s mind control—it was her own shock keeping her rooted to the ground.
It was working. The queen was losing control. She was being forced to see the truth beneath her own glamour, and she could do nothing to stop it.
The video dissolved into a chaos of bullets and screams, blood and bodies.
Levana stared out at the people who were no longer under her control. Her glamour was gone. She was wretched and disfigured and, in that moment, afraid.
A gun fired, but missed. The bullet embedded itself in the palace doors. Someone behind Cinder cursed. Eyes widening, she swiveled her head around. It was Scarlet, her red hair like a spotlight in the crowd. She reloaded her gun and took aim again.
Levana stumbled back two, three steps, then she turned and ran back into her palace, leaving her entourage of shocked thaumaturges behind. Leaving Wolf too, still hunkered over Iko’s body, though she was no longer moving. His focus was on Scarlet, his deformed face twisted in recognition and horror.
For a moment, Cinder found herself immobilized by her own scattered thoughts. She didn’t know what to do. Iko wasn’t moving. She didn’t know if she could trust Wolf. The queen had run, but her path to the palace was still blocked, and there were still enough thaumaturges to control most of the soldiers and the civilians, but everyone was shocked, motionless, reeling from the video—
A howl silenced her racing thoughts.
Cinder gasped, unable to tell where it had come from. She didn’t know if it was one of the soldiers who had joined her side, or if it was one of the other packs Strom had mentioned would soon be surrounding them.
The howl was joined by another, and another. Then everything dissolved into chaos.
Eighty-Three
Standing on the dais on which he’d been crowned the king of Luna, Kai crossed his arms and scowled into the audience. The leaders and diplomats from the Earthen Union were stone-faced in an attempt to hide the anger lurking under the surface. Levana had locked them in the great hall with guards posted outside each door along with hundreds of Lunar aristocrats, who smirked and tittered at the Earthens as though they were exotic animals—adorable and fascinating and harmless.