Winter (76 page)

Not yet.

But he would.

There was Aimery’s nightmare smile, but it was crossed with a snarl. “You are as inferior to me as a rat.” His attention switched to Winter. His lip curled in disgust. “Yet she still made her choice, didn’t she?”

Winter’s heart pummeled against her rib cage, Aimery’s words echoing inside her frazzled skull.
Strangle. Impale. Plunge.

He would. Not yet. But he would.

A chill crawled over her skin from the pure hatred she saw in Aimery’s face.

“You should have accepted me when you had the chance,” he said.

She tried to swallow, but her saliva felt like paste. “I could have,” she said, “but it would have been no more real than the visions that plague me.”

“So you chose a pathetic guard.”

Her lips quivered. “You don’t understand. He is the
only thing
that is real.”

Aimery’s expression darkened. “And soon he will be dead, little princess.” He spat the title like an insult. “Real or not, I will have you. If not as a wife or a willing mistress, then as a possession to be displayed in a pretty bejeweled case.” His eyes took on a hint of madness. “I have waited too many years to let you go now.”

Jacin’s back was to Winter, his shoulders knotted. A line of blood curled down his elbow and dripped along his wrist. Splattered to the ground below. He was powerless to do anything but stand there and say cold and callous things and hope no one detected how afraid and frustrated he really was.

But Winter knew. She had lived her life with that fear too.

Aimery looked pleased as he focused again on Jacin. “I have been waiting for this since you were brought before the court. I should have watched you bleed on the throne room floor that day.”

Winter convulsed.

“That must have been such a disappointment for you,” said Jacin.

“It was,” agreed Aimery, “but I do think I will enjoy this moment even more.” His cheek twitched. “How shall it be done? By my hand? By your own?” His eyes glistened. “By
hers
? Ah—how inconsolable she would be then, to be the instrument of her own beloved’s death. Perhaps I will have her bash in your skull with a rock. Perhaps I will have her choke you with her pretty fingers.”

Nausea rolled over her.

Jacin—

Jacin.

“I rather like that idea,” Aimery mused.

Winter’s hands stirred. She did not know if they would be strangling or choking or bashing or impaling. She knew Aimery had her now and Jacin was in danger and this was the end. There was no gray area. There were no winners. She was a fool, a fool, a fool.

Winter kept her eyes open against the hot tears.

Jacin turned to face her as her hands wrapped around his neck. Her thumbs pressed into the flesh of his throat. There was a gasp, and if he wanted to push her away, Aimery wouldn’t let him.

Winter couldn’t look. Couldn’t watch. She was crying uncontrollably and the awful feel of Jacin’s throat under her thumbs was too awful, too fragile, too—

A flash of red sparked through the pooling tears.

Scarlet, creeping behind Aimery. Inching over the fallen bodies. A knife in her hand.

Seeing that Winter had spotted her, Scarlet raised a finger to her lips.

Aimery turned his head.

Not toward Scarlet, but toward an enormous, roaring figure.

Aimery laughed, waving one hand through the air. Wolf was steps away when he collapsed, howling in pain. “I am the queen’s own thaumaturge!” Aimery yelled, eyes blazing as he snarled down at Wolf’s twitching body. “You think I cannot feel you sneaking up on me? You think I cannot handle one pathetic mutant and a weak-minded guard and an
Earthen
?”

He pivoted to face Scarlet. She was still half a dozen paces away from him and she froze, her knuckles clenched around the knife handle.

Aimery’s smile faded. His brow twitched as he realized that the bioelectricity around Scarlet’s body was already claimed.

His eyes narrowed and he searched the graveyard they stood on, but there was no one there to be controlling Scarlet. No one who could have undermined his own powers. Except …

Scarlet lumbered closer to him. Her gait was stunted and awkward. Her arm trembling as she raised the knife.

Aimery stepped back and his attention turned and locked on to Winter. In the moment he’d been distracted by Wolf—poor, tortured Wolf—he had released Winter’s hands and mind. Jacin was still rubbing his throat and struggling for breath and Winter …

Winter was staring at Scarlet. Horrified. Trembling. But fierce.

Jacin’s hand whipped out, backhanding Winter across her face. She crashed against the building wall, but didn’t feel the force of it. Her focus was on Scarlet, only Scarlet, Scarlet and her knife.

Winter was crying and hating herself. She was wretched and cruel but she didn’t relent as she forced Scarlet into battle. Aimery stumbled back again and raised his hands to his own defense. Scarlet hurled herself at him. Aimery tripped over the leg of a dead civilian man and sprawled backward. Scarlet landed on her knees beside him and scrambled forward. Her eyes were confused, her mouth slack with disbelief, but her body was vicious and determined and sure as she plunged the knife into his flesh.

Eighty-Seven

Reality disintegrated. The world was a thousand cumbersome pixels tearing apart, leaving black spaces in between, then smashing back together in blinding sparks.

Winter had made herself as small as she could, huddled in the shop’s doorway off the main thoroughfare of Artemisia. Her own shaking arms made for a protective shield around her body and her feet were pulled in tight. She’d lost a shoe. She didn’t know how or when.

Aimery was dead.

Scarlet-friend had stabbed him nine times.

Winter had stabbed him nine times.

Dear Scarlet. Vicious, stubborn, weak-minded Scarlet.

Once she had started, Winter couldn’t make it stop.
Nine times.
It had been years since she’d manipulated anyone and never with violent intentions. Aimery, in his determination to subdue them all with his gift, had not tried to get away until after the second stab. By that time Winter was already lost. She couldn’t make it stop. She thought only of erasing forever that awful, charming grin. Of destroying his mind so she would not be forced to wrap her hands around Jacin’s neck again and finish what she’d started.

Now Aimery was dead.

The streets were full of his blood. They reeked with the stench of it.

“What’s wrong with her?” some far-off voice shrieked. “Why is she acting this way?”

“Give her some space.” This command was followed by a grunt. Jacin? Could it be her guard, so near, always so near?

Jacin had been the one to tackle Scarlet and rip the knife away, snapping the hold Winter had taken over her. Otherwise she knew she would have kept stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing until Aimery was nothing but chopped bits of flesh and smiles.

Winter’s head was full of distraction, too much to comprehend. The shop’s sign overhead swung on its hinges. There was a torn curtain behind broken glass. Bullet holes in the walls. Roofs caving in. Glass shattered beneath her feet.

“We have to find Cinder.” The voice was insistent, but terrified. “We have to make sure she’s okay, but I can’t … I don’t want to leave Winter…”

Winter arched her back and clawed her hands into her hair, gasping from an onslaught of sensation. Every inch of her skin was a hive of stinging bees.

Arms circled around her. Or maybe they had been there for a long time. She could hardly feel them outside of the cocoon she’d erected, even though it was covered in hairline fractures. “It’s all right. I’ve got Winter. Go.”

A cocoon.

An encasement of ice.

A spaceship harness strangling her, the belt cutting into her flesh.

“Go!”

Winter clawed at the straps, struggling to get out. Those same strong arms tried to hold her still. Tried to secure her thrashing. She snapped her teeth, and the body shifted out of her reach. She was pulled away from the door, their bodies repositioned, so the arms could restrain her without being in danger themselves. She struggled harder. Kicked and writhed.

And screamed.

stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and

Her throat was hoarse.

Maybe she’d been screaming for a long time.

Maybe the sound was imprisoned inside this cocoon, trapped like she was. Maybe no one would ever hear her. Maybe she would scream until her throat bled and no one would ever know.

Her heart split in two. She was an animal. A killer and a predator.

The screams turned to howls.

Sad and broken howls.

Haunting and furious howls.

“Winter? Winter!”

The arms around her were unrelenting. She thought there might be a voice, familiar and kind, somewhere far in the distance. She thought there might be good intentions in that voice. She thought that if she could follow the sound, it would lead her to somewhere safe and calm, where she was no longer a murderer.

But she was already suffocating beneath the weight of her crimes.

Animal. Killer. Predator.
And the wolves all howl, aa-ooooooooooh …

Eighty-Eight

Cinder checked the gun’s ammunition, counting the bullets while she ran. She was breathing hard, but she didn’t feel tired or even sore. Adrenaline was pumping hot through her veins and for once she was aware of it only because she could feel herself trembling with the surge of it, not because her brain interface was telling her so.

The sounds of battle were echoing in the palace, dim and far away. Many floors below. They were inside, she could tell. There would be a lot of casualties, she knew.

She felt like they might be winning.
She could win.

But it would fall apart if she didn’t finish what she’d come to do. If she didn’t find a way to end Levana’s tyranny for good, the people would be back under her control by morning.

She took the stairs two at a time. Her hair prickled on the back of her neck as she arrived in the fourth floor corridor. She peered down the empty hall with its artwork and tapestries and shimmering white tiles, listening for any sound indicating an ambush.

Not that ambushes came with warning sounds.

Everything was eerie and haunted after the chaos of the courtyard.

It was no comfort to Cinder that she had reached the throne room without incident. It wasn’t like Levana to make things easy for her, which meant that either Levana was so distraught from the video she was no longer thinking straight, or—more likely—Cinder was walking into a trap.

She held the gun with one hand, the knife in the other, and tried to calm her stampeding heart. She did her best to come up with some sort of plan for when she reached the throne room, assuming Levana was in there, probably with an entire envoy of guards and thaumaturges.

If the guards weren’t already under someone’s control, she would steal them away and form a protective barrier around herself. The moment an opportunity presented itself, she would shoot Levana. No hesitation allowed.

Because Levana wouldn’t hesitate to kill
her.

She found herself standing outside the throne room doors, the Lunar insignia carved across their surface. She gulped, wishing she could sense how many people were inside, but the room was too well sealed. Whatever lay beyond these doors was a mystery.

An ambush
, common sense whispered to her.
A trap.

Licking the salt from her lips, she braced herself and kicked one of the doors open, wedging inside before it could slam back on her. Her body was tense, braced for an impact, a punch, a bullet, anything other than the stillness that greeted her.

Only two people were in the room, making it feel infinitely larger than it had during the wedding feast. The audience chairs were still there, but many of them had been shoved against the walls or crushed in the destruction she had wreaked.

The throne, though, had not moved, and Levana was seated on it like before. Rather than looking smug and cruel as usual, she was slumped on the enormous throne with an air of defeat around her. She wore the colors of the Eastern Commonwealth flag in her gown, a mockery of everything Kai and his country stood for. Her glamour had returned. She had her face turned away from Cinder, hiding behind her wall of glossy hair, and Cinder could see only the tip of her nose and a hint of ruby lips.

The second person in the room was Thorne. Her heart sank, but was lifted by a slim hope. Perhaps it was only a Lunar glamoured to
look
like Thorne. She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, not daring to go any farther into the room.

“Well, it’s about time,” said Thorne, his voice comfortingly sardonic. “You have no idea how awkward these last few minutes have been.”

Cinder’s heart squeezed, her hope fading. It was definitely Thorne and he was standing precariously close to the ledge of the throne room, the one Cinder had jumped from. His hands were behind his back, most likely bound. The glowing bow tie was gone and his purple suit reduced to just the dress shirt, now unbuttoned at the collar. There was a hole in the thigh of his pants and dried blood above his knee. A lump beneath the fabric suggested hasty bandaging.

Cinder reached for him with her thoughts, but Levana had already claimed him, holding his feet as tight-gripped as iron shackles.

Thorne’s gaze swooped down over Cinder’s bloodstained clothes and the weapon in each of her hands. One eyebrow tilted up. “Rough day?”

Cinder didn’t respond. She was still waiting for that surprise attack. A shot through the heart. A guard appearing out of the shadows and tackling her to the ground.

Nothing happened.

No sound but her own heavy breathing.

“Your leg?” she asked.

Thorne shrugged. “Hurts like hell, but it won’t kill me. Unless the prisons were full of grimy bacteria and the wound gets infected, which, let’s face it, is entirely plausible.”