Cress took the lead, walking the narrow corridor of the Rampion with the air of a hostess welcoming important guests into her home. Cinder grinned at her back, thinking of what a change it was from the first time Cress had been aboard the Rampion—all meek and awkward and barely able to say more than two words without hiding behind Thorne.
She took them to one of the small crew quarters—a room long left empty. In fact, as Cress was opening the door, it occurred to Cinder that this had been her room for the brief time she’d sought sanctuary on the ship. She stepped inside with a sense of nostalgic awe … and promptly began to laugh.
The room was full of white crepe paper and tulle, unburned candles and glass lanterns, streamers and small silk bags overflowing with sugared almonds.
Iko gasped and trailed a finger over an enormous tulle bow. “Is this all for the wedding?”
Cress nodded, but her expression was worried as she looked around at the scattered decorations. “Wolf told us to bring whatever we thought might be needed, so we stopped at a wedding supply store in the Republic and just about cleaned out their stock.” Chewing on her lower lip, she glanced back at Iko. “Once we got it all piled in here, though, I started to wonder if it was maybe all a bit on the gaudy side?”
Iko shrugged. “We can work with gaudy.”
The Rampion began to rumble. Cress and Iko each took a spot on the lower bunk bed that took up one wall of the cabin, but Cinder made her way through the jumble of rose-petal-stuffed baskets and empty glass vases and stacked ivory linens until she came to the round window at the back of the room.
Cress was right. Thorne’s takeoffs were still horrendous. But Cinder didn’t move away from that window until the white city of Artemisia was nothing but a glint of light on the moon’s cratered surface.
*
The landing was better, maybe because Cinder was so entertained by Iko’s bubbling monologue about European wedding traditions that she hardly noticed the rocks and sways of the ship. While in space, she had fixed the loose fitting that had caused the rattle and spent the rest of the long flight catching up with Thorne and Cress, learning of all the sightseeing and adventures they’d had in between antidote runs. Thorne, it seemed, had made it a personal goal to ensure that Cress got to see and experience everything she’d ever dreamed of seeing and experiencing, and it was a personal goal he was taking seriously. Cress didn’t seem to be complaining, though it was clear from the way they leaned into each other that it was his company, more than the museums and monuments, that really mattered to her.
“How often have you been to visit Wolf and Scarlet?” Iko asked, kicking her feet against a storage crate in the cargo bay as Thorne powered down the ship’s engines.
“A few times a year,” said Cress. “Scarlet finally built us a landing pad beside the hangar so Thorne would stop flattening her crops.” She glanced toward the cockpit. “I hope he didn’t miss it.”
They could hear Thorne’s growl from the cockpit. “I didn’t miss it!”
The ramp roared and creaked as it began to lower, and Cinder stood, surprised at how her heart started to thunder.
First there was the sky—a strip of impossible blue along the ramp’s edge. Then her first full breath of air. Air that came from trees and plants, not a recycling tank, and it was coupled with the aroma of fresh-churned earth and sweet hay and not-so-sweet animals. There were so many noises, too, distantly familiar. Birds chirping. Chickens clucking. A breeze whistling through the opening the ramp had created. And also … voices. A cacophony of voices. Too many voices.
It wasn’t until the ramp was halfway lowered that Cinder saw them. Not Wolf and Scarlet and their friends, but … journalists.
“It’s her! Selene! Your Majesty!”
Cinder took a step back and felt her serenity slough away, leaving behind the same tension she’d lived with for two long years. That feeling of being in the spotlight, of having responsibilities, of needing to meet expectations …
“Why did you abdicate the throne?” someone yelled. And another: “How does it feel to be back on Earth?” And “Will you attend the Commonwealth ball again this year?” And “Is the upcoming Lunar-Earthen wedding a political statement? Do you want to say anything about the union?”
A loud gunshot blared across the gravel driveway. The journalists screamed and dispersed, some cowering behind the Rampion’s landing gear, others rushing back to the safety of their own hovers.
“I’ll give you a statement,” said Scarlet, reloading the shotgun in her arms as she marched toward them. She sent a piercing glare at the journalists who dared to peek out at her. “And the statement is, Leave my guests alone, you pitiful, news-starved vultures.”
With a frustrated huff, she looked up at Cinder, who had been joined by the others at the top of the ramp. Scarlet looked much the same as Cinder remembered her, only more frenzied. Her eyes had an annoyed, bewildered look to them as she gestured haplessly at the farmland behind her.
“Welcome to France. Let’s get you inside before they send out the android journalists—they’re not as easy to scare off.”