She considered staying where she was, out in the open as it may be. She was shaking from head to toe and every fiber of her body told her that to move would be to get caught.
But logic told her that her body was lying. They would come back. They would send reinforcements. She would be seen.
Distant gunshots made her jump, spurring her into action. The shots were followed by grunts and the sounds of a struggle.
Cress pushed herself out of the corner and turned back in the direction she and Thorne had come from. Two corridors back, he’d said. An elevator.
She went quietly this time, pressing her free hand into the st.i.tch in her side. She pa.s.sed one corridor and heard more footsteps, but couldn’t tell which direction they were coming from. She froze, scanned her surroundings, and yanked open one of the storage cabinets.
Rolls of decorative fabric were stood on end, many of them taller than she was, and all of them lush and glistening in metallics and jewel tones.
Cress climbed inside, squeezing her body into the s.p.a.ce created from the fabric bolts that had toppled to one side. Pulling the door shut, she set the gun on the cabinet’s floor. She was very careful to aim it away from her.
The footsteps grew louder and she was sure she’d been seen, but no one yelled.
Until—
“Stop!”
Another gunshot, this one followed by an instantaneous grunt and a body crashing onto the floor. It sounded close. Cress squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her chin onto her knees. Not Thorne. Please not Thorne.
A heavy sigh was followed by a soothing male voice. “All this over a pesky Earthen? You guards are pathetic.”
Cress pressed her hands against her mouth to keep any sounds from escaping. She stared into the darkness, attempting to shallow her breathing, though she worried she might pa.s.s out if she didn’t get more air soon.
Someone groaned. Not far away from where she was hiding.
“He is definitely one of the cyborg’s allies. The question is, what are you doing in the palace?”
A beat, then Thorne’s voice. “Just kissing my girl,” he said, wheezing a little. Cress scrunched up her whole face and buried it against her knees, choking back a sob. “I didn’t realize that was a … a capital offense around here.”
The man sounded unamused. “Where is the girl you were with?”
“I think you scared her off.”
Another sigh. “We don’t have time for this. Put him in a holding cell—we’ll deal with him after the coronation. I’m sure he’ll make a delightful Earthen pet for one of the families. And keep looking for that girl—alert me the moment you find her. Increase security around the great hall. They’re plotting something, and Her Majesty will kill us all if the ceremony is interrupted.”
There was a thud and another grunt. Cress flinched, her head filling with all the things they could have done to Thorne to cause that grunt—all the things they could still do to him.
She bit her lip until she tasted blood, the pain alone keeping her from crying as she listened to them drag him away.
Seventy-Three
“Jacin.” Cinder’s tone was full of warning. “Iko did not sacrifice herself so you could crash us into a crater and kill us both.”
“Calm down. I know what I’m doing,” he responded, pretending to be calm while his heart was a hammer pounding against his chest.
“I thought you said you’ve never driven one of these before.”
“I haven’t.” He banked hard and the terrain-speeder careened to the left, fast and smooth.
Cinder gasped and reached for a bar overhead. A hiss of pain followed—probably her shoulder wound acting up again—but she didn’t say anything and Jacin didn’t slow down.
The vehicle was by far the slickest Jacin had ever piloted. Little more than a risky toy to some rich Artemisian, it hovered close to the rocky, uneven surface of Luna, soaring so fast the white ground blurred beneath them. The roof was see-through, making it feel as if they were out in the airless terrain rather than in a protective vehicle.
Though protective was a subjective word. Jacin had the feeling that if he clipped any rocks, this thing would crumple around them like an aluminum can.
h.e.l.l, maybe it was aluminum.
They launched off a cliff and the speeder engaged antigravity mode, keeping them on a smooth trajectory as they sailed over the crater below, before descending toward the other side and continuing on as if nothing had happened. Jacin’s stomach flipped—a product of both the high speed and not quite having adjusted to the weightlessness outside of the gravity-controlled domes.
“Just an observation,” Cinder said through her teeth, “but we have a lot of fragile and important vials in the back of this thing. Maybe we don’t want to crash?”
“We’re fine.” His attention dropped to the holographic map above the controls. Any other day this would have been a daring game, but now they were on a mission. Every spare corner of the speeder was full of antidote vials and every moment that pa.s.sed meant people were dying.
And one of them was Winter.
A dome appeared on the horizon. Even from here he could see the lines of tree trunks on one side and the clear-cut stumps on the other.
Jacin maneuvered the speeder around a series of jagged rock formations. Cinder adjusted the holograph, repositioning the map so Jacin could see the best route to their destination. Most of the domes were clumped together in groups—both because they had been easier to build that way back when Luna was being colonized, but also so they could share ports that connected them to the outside terrain of Luna and allow for supply deliveries independent of the underground shuttle system.