He took in the hospital gown and hovering chair as if he’d forgotten about them. “Spades, I am bad at this, aren’t I? Do you want to lie down? You should lie down.”
Without waiting for a response, he swept an arm beneath her knees and lifted her out of the chair, gentle, as if he were picking up a priceless dream doll. She buried a hiss of pain in her throat as he carried her to the bed.
“Better?” he said, easing her on top of the covers.
“Better,” she admitted.
But he didn’t let go, and he was awfully close when she met his eyes. “Cress, look. I’m obviously no good at this. At least not when it’s … when it’s you.” He seemed frustrated. His fingers curled, gathering up the flimsy material of the hospital gown. “But I am good at this.”
He leaned closer and his lips found hers, pressing her into the soft pillows. She gasped and dug her fingers into his shirt, afraid he would pull away before she could memorize this moment. But he didn’t pull away, and Cress gradually dared to kiss him back. The mattress shifted—Thorne bringing a knee up to keep from crushing her. His cast brushed her hip, clumsy at first, but less so when he raised it to the side of her face to trace his bare thumb against her jaw. And his lips followed. To her chin. Her neck. The dip of her clavicle.
Her body became liquid, and she thought, if they could bottle him, he would make the best pain medication.
Thorne stopped kissing her, but she could still feel the brush of his hair against her jaw, the warmth of his breath on her shoulder.
“Twenty-three,” he said.
“Mm?” She opened her dazed eyes. Thorne pulled back, looking guilty and worried, which made some of her euphoria fade away.
“You once asked me how many times I’d told a girl I loved her. I’ve been trying to remember them all, and I’m pretty sure the answer is twenty-three.”
She blinked, a slow, fluttering stare. Her lips pursed in a question that took a while to form. “Including the Lunar girl who kissed you?”
His brow furrowed. “Are we counting her?”
“You said it, didn’t you?”
His gaze darted to the side. “Twenty-four.”
Cress gaped. Twenty-four girls. She didn’t even know twenty-four people.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I need you to know I never meant it. I said it because I thought that’s what you’re supposed to say, but it didn’t mean anything. And it’s different with you. This is the first time I’ve been scared. Scared you’ll change your mind. Scared I’ll screw it up. Aces, Cress, I’m terrified of you.”
Her stomach fluttered. He didn’t look terrified.
“Here’s the thing.” Thorne crawled over her legs and lay down beside her, boots and all. “You deserve better than some thief who’s going to end up in jail again. Everyone knows it. Even I know it. But you seem determined to believe I’m actually a decent guy who’s halfway worthy of you. So, what scares me most”—he twisted a lock of her hair between his fingers—“is that someday even you will realize that you can do better.”
“Thorne…”
“Not to worry.” He kissed the lock of hair. “I am a criminal mastermind, and I have a plan.” Clearing his throat, he started to check things off in the air. “First, get a legitimate job—check. Legally buy my ship—in progress. Prove that I’m hero material by helping Cinder save the world—oh, wait, I did that already.” He winked. “Oh, and I have to stop stealing things, but that’s probably a given. So I figure, by the time you realize how much I don’t deserve you … I might kind of deserve you.” His grin turned smug. “And that’s how that speech was supposed to go.”
“That was a good speech,” she said.
“I know.” Scooting closer, he kissed her shoulder. Goose bumps erupted down her arm.
“Captain?”
“Cress.”
She couldn’t not say it, although she realized he was right. It was sort of scary. Much scarier than it had been the first time she’d told him, out in the desert. It was different now. It was real. “I’m in love with you.”
He chuckled. “I should hope so, after all that.” He leaned forward and pressed a kiss against her temple. “And I love you too.”
Ninety-Six
Winter picked up a stick from the ground and tossed it toward the protective fence around the enclosure, but the ghost Ryu just tilted his head to one side.
Sighing, she dropped her hands into her lap.
Her fits still came and went, but she’d been deemed lucid enough that the doctors allowed her to make the decision: Would she rather remain in the med-clinic, where she could be restrained when her outbursts came, or would she rather be outfitted with shock bracelets that could incapacitate her when needed? She had chosen this imaginary freedom, thinking of Ryu and how his own collar would never let him leave the enclosure that must have seemed very escapable at first.
Jacin hated the idea. He had argued that her mind was fragile enough without fearing random shocks. But Winter had needed to get out of the clinic. She had needed to get away from the nightmares that haunted her.
She came to the menagerie often since her release, finding it one of the few serene places in a city that was fluttering with talk of reconstruction and political change. This was all very important, of course. She had always wanted her country to be a place where the people could speak their mind and be treated fairly, where people were given choices over the life they wanted to live. But the talk of it made her head hurt. When the world started to spin out of control she found it best to remove herself to somewhere peaceful and solitary, where she couldn’t hurt anyone but herself.
The delusions were no longer constant like they had been in the days following the battle, although her mind still tricked her into seeing her stepmother’s shadow in the palace, waiting with a sharpened knife and cruelly kind words. Or the flash of Aimery’s eyes following her down the corridors. Too often she smelled the blood dripping down the walls.
The first time she’d come to the menagerie, Ryu’s ghost had been waiting for her.
In the uncertainty of the revolution, the gamekeepers had run away, and had yet to be found. The animals had been hungry and restless, and Winter had spent the whole day hunting down the storage rooms where the food was kept, cleaning out the cages, and turning the menagerie back into the sanctuary she’d always known it to be. When Jacin had come looking for her, he conscripted servants to help too.
Staying busy helped. It was not a cure, but it helped. As far as anyone cared, she was the gamekeeper now, though everyone still called her Princess and pretended she didn’t smell like manure.
Ryu laid his head in Winter’s lap and she stroked him between the ears, this sad ghost who wouldn’t play fetch anymore.
“Princess.”
Ryu evaporated. Jacin was leaning against the enclosure wall, not far from where he’d faked her murder. Where she’d kissed him and he’d kissed her back.
With that memory, Winter was submerged. In water and ice, in hot and cold. She shivered.
Jacin’s brow twitched with concern, but she stuffed the memory down. Not a hallucination. Just a normal fantasy, like a normal girl might have when she had a normal crush on her best friend.