Winter (26 page)

She tried to imagine it. Would he use his knife? A gun? She had no idea what was the fastest way to die. She didn’t want to know.

Jacin would have had to ask these same questions. All the night before. All that day. He must have been planning how to do it, dreading this meeting as much as she’d been yearning for it.

Her heart broke for him.

Behind her, Ryu started to growl.

“Winter…”

It had been so long since he’d called her by her name. Always
Princess.
Always
Highness.

Her lip quivered, but she refused to cry. She wouldn’t do that to him.

Jacin’s fingers curled around his knife.

It
was
torture. Jacin looked more afraid than when he’d stood on trial. More pained now than when his torso had been stripped raw from the lashings.

This was the last time she would ever see him.

This was her last moment. Her last breath.

Suddenly, all of the politics and all of the games stopped mattering. Suddenly, she felt daring.

“Jacin,” she said, with a shaky smile. “You must know. I cannot remember a time when I didn’t love you. I don’t think such a time ever existed.”

His eyes filled with a thousand emotions. But before he could say whatever he would say, before he could kill her, Winter grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands and kissed him.

He thawed much quicker than she’d expected. Almost instantly, like he’d been waiting for this moment, he grabbed her hips and pulled her against him with a possessiveness that overwhelmed her. His lips were desperate and starved as he leaned into the kiss, pressing her against the rail. She gasped, and he deepened the kiss, threading one hand into the hair at the nape of her neck.

Her head swam, muddled with heat and a lifetime of desire.

Jacin’s other hand abandoned her hip. She heard the ring of steel as the knife was pulled from its scabbard. Winter shuddered and kissed him harder, filling it with every fantasy she’d ever had.

Jacin’s hand slipped out of her hair. His arm encircled her. He held her against him like they couldn’t get close enough. Like he meant to absorb her body into his.

Releasing his shirt, Winter found his neck, his jaw. She felt the tips of his hair on her thumbs. He made a noise and she couldn’t tell if it was desire or pain or regret or a mix of everything. His arm tensed against her back. His weight shifted as he raised the knife.

Winter squeezed her eyes tight.

Having seen so many deaths in her life, she had the distant thought that this was not such a horrible way to go.

His arm jerked downward and Winter gasped, the rush of air separating them. Her eyes flew open. Behind her, Ryu yelped, but the sound turned to a betrayed whimper.

Jacin’s eyes were open too, blue and regretful.

Winter tried to back away but he held her firm. She had nowhere to go anyway, pinned between him and the railing as she was. Over his shoulder, a camera’s light glowed against the ceiling. Her breaths were ragged. Her head spun. She couldn’t tell her heartbeat from Jacin’s.

Jacin.
Whose cheeks were flushed and whose hair was a mess. Jacin, who she had finally dared to kiss. Jacin, who had kissed her back.

But if she’d expected to see desire in his face, she was disappointed. He had frozen again.

“Do me a favor, Princess,” he whispered, his breath warm against her mouth. “The next time someone says they’re going to kill you, don’t just
let them.
”

She stared at him, dazed. What had he done?

Winter’s knees gave out. Jacin caught her, sliding her down the enclosure’s bars. Her hand landed in something warm and wet seeping out from underneath the short wall.

“You’re all right, Princess,” Jacin murmured. “You’re all right.”

“Ryu?” Her voice broke.

“They’ll think the blood is yours.” He was explaining something, but she didn’t understand. “Wait here. Don’t move until I turn out the lights. Got it? Princess?”

“Don’t move,” she whispered.

Jacin pulled away and she heard the knife being ripped from the wolf’s flesh. The body sagged against the bars. Jacin cupped her scarred cheek, studying her to be sure she wasn’t mid-breakdown, to be sure she’d understood, but all she could comprehend was the warm stickiness soaking through her skirt. Blood was flooding the pathway. Gallons and gallons of blood were suddenly dripping from the glass ceiling, splattering on her arms, filling up the pond.

“Winter.”

She gaped at Jacin, incapable of speaking. The memory of the kiss clouded over with something awful and unfair. Ryu. Sweet, innocent Ryu.

“Until the lights go out,” he repeated. “Then I want you to get your redhead friend and get off this damned game board.” Jacin’s thumbs rubbed against her skin, stirring her from her shock. “Now play dead, Princess.”

She sagged, finding relief in the command. They were playing a game. A game. Like when they were kids.
It’s a game and the blood isn’t real and Ryu—!

She scrunched her face against the tears. A sob stayed locked in her throat. Jacin propped her against the cage wall and then his warmth was gone. The heaviness of his boots thudded away, leaving a path of sticky footprints in his wake.

Twenty-Nine

Scarlet’s frown felt etched into her face as she stared down the empty pathway of the menagerie. Winter had gone that way what felt like hours ago, and Scarlet knew no guests were supposed to be in the menagerie this late. Probably those rules didn’t apply to princesses, though. Maybe Winter was getting that romantic tryst she’d wanted, after all.

But something didn’t feel right about it. Scarlet could have sworn she’d heard Ryu emerge from his den, but he hadn’t yet come to see her, as was his normal routine. And she’d heard a noise—something that reminded her of the sound a goat makes during slaughter. Something that sent chills down her limbs, despite the menagerie’s warmth and her zipped-up hoodie.

Finally, footsteps. Scarlet wrapped her hands around the bars.

She knew her suspicions were right as soon as the guard came into view, a knife clutched in one hand. Her heart pounded. Even from this distance she could see darkness on the blade. Even not knowing Jacin, she could read the regret on his face.

Her knuckles whitened on the bars.

“What did you do?” she said, choking back the fury that wanted to explode out of her, but would have nowhere to go. “Where’s Winter?”

His gaze didn’t waver as he came to stand outside her cage, and Scarlet didn’t shrink back from him, despite the knife and the blood.

“Hold out your hand,” he said, crouching.

She sneered. “Do you know what happens to people around here who ‘hold out their hand’?”

He stabbed the point of the knife into the soft moss and, before Scarlet could move, reached for her wrist and twisted so hard a scream of pain arced up her shoulder. Scarlet gasped and her hand betrayed her, opening, palm up. It wasn’t mental manipulation, just a plain old dirty trick.

Scarlet tried to rip her arm back through the bars, but his grip was iron. Changing tactics, she pressed her body against the cage and clawed at his face, but he hovered out of reach.

Dodging a second swipe of Scarlet’s nails, the guard removed his scabbard from his belt and tipped it over. A tiny cylinder dropped into her palm.

He released her. Scarlet’s fingers curled around the cylinder instinctively, her body shuddering back out of the guard’s reach.

“Plug that into the security port of a Lunar ship and it will allow royal access. You can figure out the rest. There’s also a message from a friend of yours encoded in there, but I suggest you wait until you’re far away before worrying about that.”

“What’s going on? What did you do?”

He slammed the knife into the scabbard and, to her surprise, tossed it at her. She flinched, but it landed harmlessly in her lap.

“You need to find Artemisia Port E, Bay 22. Repeat it.”

Her pulse was hammering. She looked down the path again, expecting Winter’s black curly hair and glittering dress and the uncanny grace of her walk to appear any second. Any second …

“
Repeat it.
”

“Port E, Bay 22.” She wrapped her fingers around the knife’s handle.

“I suggest going through the gamekeepers’ halls first. Winter will know the way from there. We’ll do what we can about the security, but try not to do anything stupid. And if you’re tempted to try and leave Luna, fight it. You’ll just draw attention, and that little pod isn’t equipped for far distances anyway. Act like you’re going to pick up a delivery in RM-9. That’s where your boyfriend grew up. Understand?”

“No.”

“Just get away from Artemisia. Port E, Bay 22. Sector RM-9.” He stood. “And when you see that princess of yours, tell her to hurry up.”

Scarlet dragged her attention back to him, thinking,
Winter? Winter had better hurry up?
But then she realized he was talking about the other princess. Selene. Cinder.

Jacin rounded the cage to the side with the barred door and pressed his thumbprint into the pad, identifying himself. He entered a code. Scarlet heard the telltale release of the lock, the clunk of the bolt. Her nerves hummed.

“Count to ten.” Without looking at her, Jacin turned and walked away.

Everything in her screamed to shove that door open and race down the pathway to find Winter, but she refrained. Her fingers twitched. He had given her a weapon and an escape. She didn’t know what was going on, but something told her that
not reacting
for ten measly seconds wasn’t going to kill her.

On the count of four, she shoved the small cylinder into her hoodie’s pocket. On five, she tucked the knife into the back of her torn and disgusting jeans. On six, she neared the bars again and pressed her face against them. On seven, she screamed, “
Winter!
Are you—”

On eight, the lights went out, plunging her into blackness.

Scarlet froze. That
jerk.
Was this supposed to make it easier? Was this supposed to be helpful? Was this—

Oh.
The cameras.

Huffing, Scarlet checked that the knife was secure and pushed open the cage door. She scrambled through it and used the bars to pull herself to her feet. Her legs wobbled from lack of use. She steadied herself and stepped out onto the moss.

First, see if the princess was dead.

Second, find out where the hell Port E was.

“Winter?” she hissed, shuffling across the path. The enclosure wall seemed farther than she remembered, her own muddled senses playing tricks on her. Finally her hand found the railing and she used it to guide her way down the path. “Ryu?”

The wolf didn’t answer. Another oddity.

Above the artificial jungle canopy and the glass wall, stars could be seen twinkling in abundance, and Scarlet’s eyes adjusted to the dim light they provided. As she rounded a corner, she could make out only the shadows of tree boughs overhead and her own hand in front of her face.

She squinted. There was something white in the pathway, which could have been any number of albino animals that had their run of the place, but Scarlet’s instincts told her exactly what it was.
Who
it was
.

“Winter!” She jogged the rest of the way, her hand skimming the rail. The princess’s shape took form, slumped across the bars. Something dark pooled beneath her. “Oh, no—oh, no—
Princess!
” She collapsed to her knees, tilting Winter back and feeling around her throat.

“The walls are bleeding.”

The faint, near-delirious words sent a wave of relief over Scarlet. Winter’s heartbeat was strong when she found it. “Where are you hurt?”

“The blood … everywhere … so much blood.”

“Winter. I need you to talk to me. Where did he hurt you?” She ran her hands over the princess’s arms, shoulders, throat, but the blood was all beneath her. Her back then?

“He killed Ryu.”

Scarlet froze.

The princess sobbed and fell forward, pressing her forehead into the crook of Scarlet’s neck. “He was trying to protect me.”

Scarlet didn’t know if she meant the wolf or the guard. “You’re all right,” she said, more confirmation for herself. She glanced around. The menagerie disappeared in blackness, but she could hear the gurgle of a waterfall, the prowling of small paws, the leaves of a tree shaking as some creature scurried through it. She caught sight of the bundle of white fur behind Winter and her heart twinged, but she quickly smothered the feeling.

Like with her grandmother, there would be time to mourn later. Right now, she was getting them out of here.

Her brain clicked into overdrive.

Guards were always posted at the menagerie doors, and they would no doubt become suspicious when Princess Winter didn’t return. Unless Jacin had something up his sleeve for them, but either way, Scarlet wasn’t about to traipse out into the middle of the queen’s palace.

She looked past Ryu. On the far wall she could make out the vague outline of the door that led into the gamekeepers’ hallways, corridors used to feed the animals and maintain their cages. Jacin had suggested this route, and much as he got under her skin, she had no reason to question him.

“Come on.” She hauled Winter to her feet.

The princess peered down at her hands and started to shake. “The blood…”

“Yes, yes, the walls are bleeding, I get it. Look. Over there. Focus.” Scarlet grabbed Winter’s elbow and spun her around. “See that door? That’s where we’re heading. Here, I’ll give you a boost.” She knitted her fingers together, but Winter didn’t move. “
Winter.
I am giving you five seconds to get your act together and decide to help me out, or else I am leaving you behind with your dead wolf and your bleeding walls. Got it?”

Winter’s lips were parted and her expression dazed, but after three seconds she nodded. Or, her head dipped and Scarlet thought her eyelashes may have fluttered a little, which she was going to count.

“Good. Now step into my hands and get over that rail.”