“Oh, Iko … what happened?”
“More stupid Lunar guards, that’s what happened. He cornered me in the basement of the med-clinic and did this. I had to play dead until he left me alone. Good thing they have no idea how to kill an android here.”
“Iko. I’m so sorry.”
Iko waved her away with her good arm. “I don’t feel like talking about it. Are you being held prisoner right now, or are these bullies on our side?”
“They’re on our side.”
Iko’s attention swooped over the wolves again. “Are you sure?”
“Not entirely,” said Cinder. “But they’re the army Scarlet and Winter recruited and they’re the best we’ve got. They haven’t eaten anybody yet.”
Strom smirked at her around his protruding fangs.
“Iko, what time is it? Shouldn’t the gates be open by now?”
“We’re right on schedule. T minus seventeen seconds, by my—”
The sound of machinery groaned and creaked inside the stone walls. The grate began to descend into the rocky ground.
Iko’s lips puckered. “Cress’s timing is off, not mine.”
Cinder exhaled with relief.
While the grate disappeared, the wolves returned to formation, hands locked behind their backs, chins lifted. It was the most professional Cinder had seen them, making them look more like men than monsters. And very, very much like soldiers.
As soon as the grate was low enough, Iko hurled herself over it and fell into Cinder’s arms, her good hand flopping against Cinder’s back. “You will fix me again, won’t you?”
Cinder squeezed her back. “Of course I will. Broken isn’t the same as unfixable.”
Pulling away, Iko beamed, and the smile was punctuated by a spark flying out of her empty ear cavity. “I love you, Cinder.”
Cinder grinned. “I love you too.”
“Why are we not moving?” said Strom, his voice rumbling through the tunnel. “We grow impatient to shred Levana and her court into tiny, bite-size pieces. We will suck the marrow from their bones and drink their blood as if it were fine wine.”
Iko fixed an uncomfortable look on Cinder. “Good thing they’re on our side.”
Eighty
Wolf had been straining throughout the coronation ceremony. His head ached with the effort, the constant struggle to control his hunger, but he felt like it was gnawing at him from the inside out. Though he had devoured the meat given him, it still raged on. A thousand scents filled his nostrils. Every Earthen. Every Lunar. Every guard and every thaumaturge, each one smelling delicious enough that he couldn’t help but envision sinking his teeth into their flesh, tearing their muscles off their bones, gorging himself on their fat—
The only instinct stronger than his ravenous hunger was the fear of what the thaumaturge would do to him if he misbehaved. He could not stand to be subjected to that agony again. The knife-sharp pain that shot through every muscle and ripped at every tendon.
His mouth watered, but he swallowed the saliva back. He did not move.
His attention locked on the queen. Already Emperor Kaito had knelt before her and accepted the Lunar crown and the title of king consort, to enthusiastic applause, although by the emperor’s expression he could have been accepting a vial of poison.
Now it was the queen’s turn.
The emperor raised the crown of the Eastern Commonwealth and repeated the queen’s speech, ruminating on the political power held by this position, the obligations and duties, the honors and expectations, the symbolism and history contained within that hunk of metal and a hundred glittering jewels.
Levana knelt. She glowed with anticipation. Her lips trembled with a restrained smile. Her eyes were feasting on the crown as Kai turned toward her.
Wolf swallowed another mouthful of saliva. The queen’s flesh was the most tempting of any of them, sweetened by the knowledge that she was his mistress and his enemy. She had commanded that Wolf be taken from his family. She had ordered that he become this monster. It was at her word that the thaumaturges tortured him.
He would devour her heart if ever he had the chance.
“Do you swear,” said Kai, “to govern the peoples of the Eastern Commonwealth according to the laws and customs as laid down by generations of past rulers, to use all the power bestowed on you to further justice, to be merciful, to honor the inherent rights of all peoples, to respect the peace between all nations, to rule with kindness and patience, and to seek the wisdom and council of our peers and brethren? Do you promise all this to do today and for all the days of your reign as empress of the Eastern Commonwealth, before all the witnesses of the earth and heavens?”
She was watching the crown, not the emperor. “I do,” she breathed.
Kai’s expression was dark. He hesitated, holding the crown aloft. His arms were shaking.
Wolf watched as Kai forced himself to set the crown on Levana’s head. She shut her eyes, her expression tantamount to euphoria.
“By the power given to me by the citizens of the Eastern Commonwealth and our allies in the Earthen Union, as the emperor of the Eastern Commonwealth, I do proclaim you—” He paused. Waited. Wolf could hear the hope shriveling inside him and he thought he understood the temptation to wait a second more, one second more …
The second passed, and Kai set his face in stone.
“—Empress Levana of the Eastern Commonwealth. From this day until the day that one or both of us shall die, you are my wife and I will share with you my throne.”
His voice cracked on the last word. Kai tore his hands away from the crown as if it had burned him.
The crowd erupted, streamers and flower petals emerging from hidden pockets, turning the somber, sacred affair into a cacophony of noise. Levana stood. Arms outstretched, she paced to the edge of the dais, accepting the torrential praise of the Lunar aristocrats.
Before she could speak, the triumphant cheers were interrupted by a shrill screech, the sound stabbing at Wolf’s ears like needles burrowing into his brain. He crouched down, snarling. The audience cowered. The noise erupted from everywhere at once.
Wolf lifted his head. This was his chance. Though the sound had turned his vision white, his oversensitive ears making him want to fall to the ground in convulsions, his hatred for the queen was stronger than the pain.
He lunged forward, his vision full of her and her most fragile spots. Her throat. Her stomach.
He heard a war cry. A guard dove in front of him, blocking his path. Wolf slashed at him with his newly sharpened nails and grabbed the guard’s knife from the scabbard at his side. He raised the knife over his shoulder.
The guard’s yell had drawn attention, even over the screeching. The queen spun as Wolf’s hand whipped forward.
Agony locked down on him all at once, like searing metal vises clamping around his fingers, his wrist, his arm. He released the knife half a moment too soon, knowing it was wrong the second his frozen fingers were empty. The blade grazed the queen’s neck when it should have lodged into her heart, and buried itself in the heavy draperies behind the altar.
Wolf crumpled to the ground, blinded by the torrent of pain that cut through his flesh, ripping his mind apart.
The noise stopped and, with it, the torment.
The sudden absence was like a vacuum sucking out every other sound from the great hall. They were left in crystallized silence, hundreds of bodies paralyzed from shock.