No. Levana was a monster, but it wasn’t because of the face she’d kept hidden all these years. Her monstrosities were buried much deeper than that.
Another drop of sweat fell into Cinder’s lashes and she swiped it away with the back of her wrist. Then she lifted the gun, aiming at Levana’s heart.
At the same time, Levana lifted the hand that had been tucked into the luxurious fabric. She held the gun that Cinder had shoved toward the dais. Her arm trembled as if the weapon were impossibly heavy and it was clear from the way she held it that she had never held a gun before. She was a queen, after all. She had minions to do the killing for her.
The queen locked her teeth in concentration, and Cinder felt the muscles in her right arm pull in tight against her bones. The tendons started to cramp, the ligaments tightened.
She grimaced and looked at the gun in her hand. At her finger on the trigger.
She tried to pull the trigger.
Urged her finger to pull. Begged it.
Pull the trigger.
Pull it.
Her hand began to shake, the gun wobbling at the end of her arm. Her breaths came in short, stifled gasps as the trigger dug into the pad of her finger.
But she couldn’t pull it. She couldn’t.
Levana’s terror began to melt away. Her lips twitched in what could have been relief if her brow hadn’t been furrowed with so much concentration. She kept a firm hold of Cinder’s arm, the finger, the gun.
Levana’s tongue snaked out of her mouth, wetting her parched lips.
“Ah,” she whispered, gaze flashing with pride. “You are tired too, I see.”
Cinder snarled. An earthquake rumbled inside her body. She settled her focus on the queen’s trembling hand and lashed out with her thoughts.
Levana’s eyes widened. Her hair clung to the scar tissue on her face. She looked down at her own hand, as much a traitor as Cinder’s.
Cinder forced Levana’s arm to bend. She guided the gun upward, every centimeter a battle. Every moment a struggle.
Levana flushed red. She pinched her teeth in renewed concentration, and Cinder felt her own arm following suit. Her traitor of a hand lifted the gun and pressed the barrel against her own temple. She was the mirror image of her aunt, each of them primed to shoot.
“This is how it should have ended the night of the ball,” Levana whispered. “This is how it should be.” She smiled a mad woman’s smile and stared at the place where the gun pressed against Cinder’s damp skin.
Cinder remembered the night clearly, like a nightmare she’d never forget. Levana had controlled her arm, forcing her to take Jacin’s gun and hold it against her temple. Cinder had been sure she was going to die, but her cyborg programming had saved her.
It would not save her this time.
“Good-bye, niece.”
Cinder could not take back her own arm, but her body burned with resolve. She would keep her finger from squeezing the trigger. She would not let Levana pull it. She would not.
The finger twitched. Throbbed, torn between two masters. Such a tiny limb. A tiny, tiny finger.
The rest of her willpower tightened around Levana’s own hand. She could feel the bioelectricity sizzling in the air between them. She listened to the crackle of energy. There was an ebb and flow to their strengths and their weaknesses. Cinder would think she was making progress, curling Levana’s finger inward, only to feel her own finger twitch against her control. A drop of sweat tickled the inside of her elbow. A stray hair clung to her lips. The smell of iron assaulted her nostrils. Every sense was a distraction. Every moment she could feel herself growing weaker.
But Levana’s brow was drawn too. Levana was sweating too, her face contorted with the strain. They were both struggling for breath, and then—
A snap cracked loud inside Cinder’s head.
She gasped, and her hand dropped to her side. Her muscles ached from the strain, but they were her muscles again. She gulped down a breath, dizzy from the effort.
Levana sobbed with frustration. Her body sagged. “Fine. Fine. I surrender.” She spoke so quietly, Cinder wasn’t sure she’d heard right. Though she was still controlling Levana’s hand and still had the gun poised at Levana’s temple, the queen seemed to have forgotten it was there. Her face crumpled, her body wilting into the enormous gown. “I relinquish my crown to you, my country, my throne. Take it all. Just … just let me be. Let me have my beauty again. Please.”
Cinder studied her aunt. Her scars and her matted hair and her sealed-shut eyelid. Her trembling lip and defeated shoulders. She was too exhausted for even her glamour. Too weak to fight anymore.
A shock of pity stole through her.
This miserable, awful woman still had no idea what it meant to be truly beautiful, or truly loved.
Cinder doubted she ever would.
She gulped, though it was difficult around her parched tongue.