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.
“I accept,” Cinder said, dazed. She kept hold of Levana’s trigger finger but allowed Levana to lower the gun. Cinder held out her hand and Levana stared at it for a moment before reaching forward and setting the gun into Cinder’s palm.
In the same movement, she grabbed the forgotten knife and lurched forward, driving the blade into Cinder’s heart.
The breath left her all at once, like her lungs imploding on themselves. Like a lightning bolt striking her from her head to her toes. Shock exploded through her chest and she fell backward. Levana fell with her, her face tight with rage. She had both hands on the knife handle now and when she twisted it, every nerve in Cinder’s head exploded with agony. The world went foggy, vague, blurred in her vision.
Instinct alone prompted her to raise the gun and fire.
The blast knocked Levana away. Cinder didn’t see where the bullet had gone, but she saw a line of blood arc across the back of the throne.
Her vision glazed over, all white and dancing stars. Her body was pain and blackness and hot and sticky with blood. Stars. It wasn’t just in her head, she realized. Someone had painted stars on the throne room ceiling. A galaxy spread out before her.
In the silence of space, she heard a million noises at once. Faraway and inconsistent. A scream. A roar, like an angered animal. Pounding footsteps. A door crashing against a wall.
Her name.
Muddled. Echoing. Her lungs twitched, or maybe it was her whole body, convulsing. She tasted blood on the back of her tongue.
A shadow passed in front of her. Brown eyes, filled with terror. Messy black hair. Lips that every girl in the Commonwealth had admired a thousand times.
Kai looked at her, the wound, the knife handle, the blade still buried. She saw his mouth forming her name. He turned and screamed something over his shoulder, but his voice was lost to her—so loud, but far, far, far away.
Ninety-One
“I told you, I’m fine,” Scarlet insisted, though her tone was weary. “It’s just been a really long few months.”
“‘Fine’?” Émilie screeched. By the way her eyes blurred and her blonde curls took up the screen, Scarlet could tell that the waitress—the only friend she had back in Rieux—was holding her port far too close to her face. “You have been missing for weeks! You were gone during the attacks, and then the war broke out, and I found those convicts in your house and then—nothing! I was sure you were dead! And now you think you can send me a comm and ask me to go throw some mulch on the garden like everything is … is fine?”
“Everything is fine. Look—I’m not dead.”
“I can see you’re not dead! But, Scar, you are all over the news down here! It’s all anyone will talk about. This … this Lunar revolution, and our little Scarling in the center of it all. They’re calling you a hero in town, you know. Gilles is talking about putting up a plaque in the tavern, about how Rieux’s own hero, Scarlet Benoit, stood on this very bar and yelled at us all, and we’re so proud of her!” Émilie craned her head, as if that would allow her to see more in Scarlet’s background. “Where are you, anyway?”
“I’m…” Scarlet glanced around the lavish suite of Artemisia Palace. The room was a thousand times more extravagant than her little farmhouse, and she hated it with a great passion. “I’m still on Luna, actually.”
“Luna! Can I see? Is it even safe up there?”
“Ém, please stop screaming.” Scarlet rubbed her temple.
“Don’t you tell me to stop screaming, Mademoiselle Too-Busy-to-Send-a-Comm-and-Let-Me-Know-You’re-Not-Dead.”
“I was a prisoner!” Scarlet yelled.
Émilie gasped. “A prisoner! Did they hurt you? Is that a black eye or is it just my port, because my screen’s been acting up lately…” Émilie scrubbed her sleeve over the screen.
“Listen, I promise I will tell you the whole story when I get home. Just, please tell me you’re still watching the farm. Please tell me I have a home to go back to?”
Émilie scowled. Despite her hysteria, she’d been a welcome sight. Pretty and bubbly and so far removed from everything Scarlet had been through. Hearing her voice reminded Scarlet of home.
“Of course I’m still watching the farm,” said Émilie, in a tone that suggested she was hurt Scarlet had doubted it. “You asked me to, after all, and I didn’t want to think you were dead, even though … even though everyone believed it, and I did too for a while. I’m so glad you’re not dead, Scar.”
“Me too.”
“The animals are fine and your android rentals are still coming … you must have paid them very far in advance.”
Scarlet smiled tightly, recalling something about how Cress had set up a few payments in her absence.
“Scar?”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Did you ever find your grand-mère?”
Her heart had built up a strong-enough wall that the question didn’t knock the breath out of her, but Scarlet still felt the pang of remembering. It was impossible to keep away the memories of the prisons beneath the opera house. Her grandmother’s broken body. Her murder, as Scarlet watched and could do nothing.
This and this alone was the one thing she dreaded about returning home. The house wouldn’t be the same without her grandmother’s bread rising in the kitchen or her muddy boots left in the entry.
“She’s dead,” Scarlet said. “She died in the first attacks on Paris.”
Émilie’s face pinched. “I’m so sorry.”
A silence crept in, that moment when there was nothing appropriate to say.
Scarlet straightened her spine, needing to change the subject. “Do you remember that street fighter who was coming into the tavern for a while?”
Émilie’s expression lit up. “With the eyes?” she asked. “How could a girl forget?”
Scarlet laughed. “Yeah, well. It turns out he’s Lunar.”