“This is how it should have ended the night of the ball,” Levana whispered. “This is how it should be.” She smiled a mad woman’s smile and stared at the place where the gun pressed against Cinder’s damp skin.
Cinder remembered the night clearly, like a nightmare she’d never forget. Levana had controlled her arm, forcing her to take Jacin’s gun and hold it against her temple. Cinder had been sure she was going to die, but her cyborg programming had saved her.
It would not save her this time.
“Good-bye, niece.”
Cinder could not take back her own arm, but her body burned with resolve. She would keep her finger from squeezing the trigger. She would not let Levana pull it. She would not.
The finger twitched. Throbbed, torn between two masters. Such a tiny limb. A tiny, tiny finger.
The rest of her willpower tightened around Levana’s own hand. She could feel the bioelectricity sizzling in the air between them. She listened to the crackle of energy. There was an ebb and flow to their strengths and their weaknesses. Cinder would think she was making progress, curling Levana’s finger inward, only to feel her own finger twitch against her control. A drop of sweat tickled the inside of her elbow. A stray hair clung to her lips. The smell of iron a.s.saulted her nostrils. Every sense was a distraction. Every moment she could feel herself growing weaker.
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 s.p.a.ce, 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 pa.s.sed 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?”