Forty
Cinder stood with her hair pinched back in both hands and the palace blueprint blurring on the netscreen before her. She’d been staring at it all day, but her brain kept running in circles.
“All right. What if—if the doctor and I could get some invitations and sneak in as guests … and then Jacin could create a diversion … or, no, if you created a diversion and Jacin came as one of the staff … but, the doctor is so well-known. Maybe Jacin and I could enter as guests and the doctor … but then how would we … ugh.” She threw her head back and glowered at the ship’s metal ceiling with its crossed wires and air ducts. “Maybe I’m overcomplicating this. Maybe I should go in alone.”
“Yes, because you aren’t recognizable at all,” said Iko, punctuating her statement by pulling up Cinder’s prison photo in the blueprint’s corner.
Cinder groaned. This was never going to work.
“Oh! Cinder!”
She jolted. “What?”
“This just came across the local newsfeed.” Iko wiped away the blueprint and replaced it with a map of the Sahara Desert. A journalist was speaking in the background, and as they watched, a circle was drawn around some nearby cities, with lines and arrows connecting them. A ticker read: WANTED-CRIMINAL CARSWELL THORNE SPOTTED IN SAHARA TRADING CITY. EVADES CAPTURE. As the journalist jabbered on, Thorne’s prison photo flashed on the screen, followed by the words, bright and bold. ARMED AND DANGEROUS. COMM AUTHORITIES IMMEDIATELY WITH ANY INFORMATION.
Cinder’s stomach twisted, first with remorse, then with panic.
It was a false alarm. Thorne … Thorne was dead. Someone must have seen a look-alike and jumped to conclusions. It wasn’t the first time. According to the media, Cinder had been spotted multiple times in every Earthen country, sometimes in multiple locations at once.
But that didn’t matter. If people believed they’d seen the real thing, then they would come. Law enforcement. The military. Bounty hunters.
The desert was about to be flooded with people searching for them, and the Rampion was still sitting, obvious and enormous, in the middle of a tiny oasis town.
“We can’t stay here,” she said, pulling on her boots. “I’ll go get the others. Iko, run the system diagnostics. Make sure we’re set for space travel again.”
She was down the ramp before Iko could respond, jogging toward the hotel. She hoped it wouldn’t take long for the doctor to pack up his things, and Wolf—
She hoped his wounds had healed enough that it would be all right to move him. The doctor had started reducing his dosages. Would it be safe to wake him?
As she rounded the corner to the hotel, she spotted a girl leaning against an electric vehicle—the car was just old enough to be beat-up and grungy, but not old enough to have gained any vintage appeal. On the other hand, the girl was perhaps in her late teens and gorgeous, with light brown skin and braids dyed in shades of blue.
Cinder slowed, preparing for a fight. She didn’t recognize the girl as one of the townspeople, and something felt wrong about her, though she couldn’t place it. Was she a bounty hunter? An undercover detective?
The girl’s expression stayed blank and bored as Cinder approached.
No outward recognition. That was good.
But then she smiled and twirled one of her silky braids around a finger. “Linh Cinder. Such a pleasure. My master has spoken so highly of you.”
Cinder paused and studied her again. “Who are you?”
“I’m called Darla. I am Captain Thorne’s mistress.”
Cinder blinked. “Excuse me?”
“He asked me to stay and keep watch over the vehicle,” she said. “He’s just gone inside to be heroic. I’m sure he’ll be glad to know you’re here. I believe he’s under the impression that you’re out in space somewhere.”
Cinder glanced from the girl to the hotel. When it seemed that the girl had no intention of reaching for a weapon or handcuffs or leaving her post against the car, Cinder pushed open the door. She rushed up the stairs, her mind spinning with the girl’s words. It was a joke or a trap or a trick. It could not be possible that she was … that Thorne was …
Her foot slammed into the landing so hard she was almost surprised it didn’t crash through the floorboards. As she turned down the corridor she saw Jacin standing outside Wolf’s room, arms crossed.
“Jacin—there’s a girl down there—she said—she—”
He shrugged and gestured toward the room. “See for yourself.”
Using the wall for balance, Cinder joined him in the doorway.
Dr. Erland was there, with a sizable bruise on his jaw.
And Wolf was awake.
And … stars above.
He was filthy. His clothes ripped and covered in dirt and his hair as shaggy as it had been the day she’d met him in his prison cell. His face was bruised, stubble was claiming his jawline, and he wore, of all things, a red bandanna around his eyes.
But he was grinning, with his arm around the waist of a petite blonde girl, and it was undeniably him.
It was a few seconds before Cinder found her voice and she had to grip the door frame to keep standing.
“Thorne?”
His head jerked around. “Cinder?”
“Wh—what are you—how? Where have you been? What’s going on? Why are you wearing that stupid bandanna?”
He laughed. Gripping a wooden cane, he stumbled toward her, waving one hand until it landed on her shoulder. Then he was hugging her, suffocating her against his chest. “I missed you too.”
“You jerk,” she hissed, even as she returned the hug. “We thought you were dead!”
“Oh, please. It’d take a lot more than a satellite plummeting to Earth to kill me. Although, admittedly, Cress may have saved us that time.”
Cinder pushed him away. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”
“Blind. It’s a long story.”
Her tongue flailed around all the questions stammering to get out, and she finally landed on: “When did you have time to take a mistress?”
His smile faltered. “Don’t talk about Cress like that.”
“What?”
“Oh—wait! You mean Darla. I won her in a hand of cards.”
Cinder gawked.
“I thought she’d make a nice gift for Iko.”
“You … what?”
“For her replacement body?”
“Um.”
“Because Darla’s an escort-droid?”
Slow, gradual understanding. An escort-droid. That would explain the girl’s perfect symmetry and ridiculously lush eyelashes. And the way her presence felt off—because there was no bioelectricity coming off her.
“Honestly, Cinder, to listen to you, people would think I’m a helpless flirt or something.” Tipping back on his heels, Thorne gestured toward the blonde girl. “By the way, you remember Cress?”
The girl smiled uncomfortably. Only then did Cinder recognize her—now with flaking, sunburned cheeks and hair chopped short and uneven.
“Hello,” said Cinder, although the girl was quick to duck behind Thorne and cast her eyes nervously around all the people in the room.
Cinder cleared her throat. “And, Wolf, you’re awake. This is … I’m … er, listen, Thorne—you were spotted in a nearby city. They’re already pulling together search parties. This whole area is about to be flooded with people searching for us.” She faced the doctor. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
“Cinder?”
She tensed. Wolf’s voice was rough and desperate. She dared to meet his eyes. His brow was damp with sweat, his pupils dilated.
“I had a dream where you said … you told me that Scarlet…”
Cinder gulped, wishing she could avoid the inevitable.
“Wolf…”
He paled, seeing it in her face before she spoke.
“It wasn’t a dream,” she murmured. “She was taken.”
“Wait, what?” Thorne listed his head. “What happened?”
“Scarlet was taken by the thaumaturge after we were attacked.”
Thorne cursed. Wolf slumped against the wall, his expression hollow. Silence stole into the room, until Cinder forced herself to stand up straighter, to be optimistic, to not lose hope.
“We believe she was taken to Luna,” she said, “and I have an idea. For how we can get onto Luna without being seen, and how we can find her and save her. And now that we’re all together again, I believe it can work. You just have to trust me. And right now—we can’t stay here. We have to leave.”
“She’s dead,” Wolf whispered. “I failed her.”
“Wolf. She’s not dead. You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you.” He hunched over, burying his face behind both hands. His shoulders began to shake, and it was just like before. The way all his energy darkened and thickened around him. The way he seemed empty, missing.
Cinder took a step toward him. “She’s not dead. They’ll want to keep her for … for bait. For information. They wouldn’t just kill her. So there’s still time, there’s time to—”
His anger flared like an explosion—one moment, nothing. Then a spark, and then, suddenly, he was burning up, raging and white hot.
He reached for Cinder, turning and pinning her against the wall with such force that the netscreen shook and threatened to crash to the floor. Cinder gasped, clamping both hands over Wolf’s wrist as he held her suspended by her throat, feet dangling off the ground. The warnings on her retina display were instantaneous—rising pulse and adrenaline and temperature and irregular breathing and—
“You think I want that?” he growled. “For them to keep her, alive? You don’t know what they’ll do to her—but I do.” In another instant, the fury softened, buried beneath terror and misery. “Scarlet…”
He released her and Cinder collapsed to the ground, rubbing her neck. Over the tumult in her thoughts, she heard Wolf turn and run, his footsteps crashing across the floor, down the hallway toward Dr. Erland’s room.
When they stopped, there was a short silence that filled up the entire hotel. And then howling.
Horrible, painful, wretched howling that sank into Cinder’s bones and made her stomach turn.
“Wonderful,” Dr. Erland drawled. “I’m glad to see you were so much more prepared this time.”
Hissing around the pain, Cinder used the wall to pull herself to her feet, and glanced around at her friends, her allies. Cress was still hiding behind Thorne, her eyes now wide with shock. Jacin was fingering the handle of his knife. Dr. Erland, with his messy gray hair and glasses perched at the end of his nose, could not have looked any less impressed.
“You all go ahead,” she said. Her throat stung. “Load up the ship. Make sure Iko is ready to go.”
Another long, heartbreaking howl shook the hotel, and Cinder steadied herself as well as she could. “I’ll get Wolf.”