CINDER'S EARPIECE SCREAMED AT HER, AND SHE SILENCED IT with an irritated sigh. Kai would kill her for it as soon as she got back—because, yes, she was coming back—but the impossible task ahead would only get worse if she had to deal with his panicked yelling.
Dangerous. Right. As if every day of her life wasn't dangerous. As if she didn't know what she was getting into when she joined the revolution. As if she didn't know what she was getting into when she took this mission.
She sat up, smoothing out the bunches in her full skirt. Brown hair tickled her neck where it had already escaped from the tight, twisted bun. Ignoring her own discomfort, she made her way down the hallway, glad that the long silk gloves and dress covered the metal eccentricities she'd spent her entire life hiding. Now, in Artemisia, where cyborg bias was worse than anywhere else in the world, it could mean her life if they were seen.
But Cinder knew this. Cinder didn't care. Because she was Cinder. And she was here for more reasons than attending a simple dance.
She was here to spy.
IT TOOK 2.37 SECONDS FOR HER TO SPOT LUNA'S QUEEN. Instead of dancing, Levana stood at the edge of the swirling ball gowns, a glass of blood red wine in hand that never reached her lips. A man stood in front of her while she spoke, and while from here all Cinder could see of him was his guard uniform and blonde ponytail, she caught his eyes when he turned to leave.
Jacin Clay? Cinder could've sworn he was on a different mission, supposed to stay away from the ball, keeping an eye on Levana's room.
Ducking behind a pillar before he could spot her, she breathed deeply and counted to thirty before sliding out and taking another calculating look around. Jacin was gone for the moment, the Lunar Queen was dancing, and—
"May I ask for a dance?"
Cinder turned her head to see sharp, handsome features and a familiar smile. She flew behind the pillar again, dragging him by tie to the spot next to her.
"Cinder—"
"What the spades do you think you're doing here?"
"You turned me off and—"
"Don't you think I had a reason to? Kai, I can do this myself. You're making it worse by being here. You'll just get me caught, and then where we be?"
Kai made choking noises, and she realized she was still gripping his tie. She released him, but her glare and folded arms made it obvious she would not forgive him. Not today.
He tried a grin, rubbing his neck where the tie cut into his neck.
"I'm not used to seeing you in something so...stiff."
"Oh, sorry, Prince. Would you prefer if I smothered myself in grease?"
Kai's smile melted, and he shifted closer.
"I think she saw me."
"Go. Leave. Talk to her, dance, whatever, but she can't see us together."
Kai walked away, before smiling and catching the eye of one of the dancers. He disappeared like that, into the seething mass of people and colors and gems and luxury she never quite got used to.
Absentmindedly fixing her hair, she closed her eyes and breathed until she calmed down.
With Kai here, now it was even more dangerous.
Sneak into Levana's room. Install the new listening device. Get out, meet up with Kai at the gates.
So simple. And it was all her fault she was here, that she didn't follow orders and, instead of leaving, decided she'd go after the Queen herself.
No wonder Kai followed her. For all she knew, this was suicide.
Practicing a smile, she turned her earpiece back on and stepped out into the light. The people cut through its yellow glow, profiles cast in a stunning golden dust. She found herself looking for Kai, picking him out of the crowd, finding him dancing with an girl in a blue dress.
Cinder caught her breath. She'd never seen someone so beautiful before. The Princess.
The song ended, and Kai and Winter separated, Winter swept into the arms of—
Oh. That was why Jacin was there.
Jacin and Winter danced, making their way closer and closer to Cinder. What a typical Jacin thing to do, trying to pull Winter away from the mess about to start. Not that she could blame him; Cinder would do the same if Kai wasn't as much a spy as her and she had any right to protect him.
They burst from the throng of dancers, passing her, both smiling. If she didn't know better, she would've thought they were simply leaving for fresh air. Not to escape. Not to run.
Not to do what she refused to do, what she should do, what made her such a fool. A brave, stupid fool.
Cinder's spine tingled, a soft breeze fluttering against her nape, fingers suddenly closing over the pressure point where neck met shoulder.
"I wasn't aware that you would be joining us tonight." Warm breath, soft voice. Cinder had never been so terrified in her life.
She stayed stalk still, biting the pain back with even, controlled breathing. Levana removed herself from Cinder, a smile on her lips as if between old friends.
"How did you—"
"You look so much like my dear sister did," Levana said, "before she died."
The last word should've been swallowed by the piercing music, the sound of feet on floor, and the rustling conversations that dampened the rest of the sentence. Instead, it ricocheted through Cinder's mind, and whether it was Levana's intention or not, it ran in lines of text across her vision, over and over, like a chant. Like a prophesy.
Like fate.
Died. Died. Died. Death.
"So, tell me, my precious little niece, how did you survive the fire?"
Niece? Cinder gulped.
"Wha—"
Levana chuckled. "Do you not know? Oh, this is too good."
Levana leaned in, pulling a long, red nail along Cinder's face. Warm blood trickled down her cheek, but she didn't flinch. She didn't so much as blink.
"I'm your aunt, Selene," she whispered in Cinder's ear. "And I'm going to kill you."
CINDER'S MUSCLES ACHED FROM THE BEATING LEVANA'S royal guards gave her on the way to her cell. Her dress now limped around her shivering frame, dirty and ripped and far from its once luminous creamy hue. She'd never been one for dresses, but there seemed something so broken about it, as if she were looking at herself and not a just strangled piece of fabric.
Cinder sighed and held a hand up to her forehead. She was surely going insane if she was comparing herself to a dress. She wouldn't blame herself if she was going insane, though, what with all of the day's events.
Changing the mission. Getting caught. Her heritage revealed. Getting thrown in a cell.
Next thing she knew someone would be writing a novel: How to Ruin Every Mission Ever.
Okay, definitely insane.
Resting her head against the cool, hard floor of the cell, she closed her eyes, letting the obsidian behind her eyelids replace the darkness of her confinement. If she were lucky, she could sleep through this entire thing, until the queen finally came to chop her head off or however she was planned to be killed.
She just hoped it would be quick.
CINDER JERKED AWAKE AT THE SOUND OF METAL DRAGGING against stone and the labored breathing of three or four sets of lungs.
The tall, crumbled form of a man stepped from the hallway, three guards shoving the prisoner forward.
Kai.
"Look, I'll be nice." The guard speaking sneered, taking out his keys. "I'll give you cells by each other. Let the dirt mingle, eh?" He pulled out his keys, unlocking the cell next to Cinder. The guard then pushed Kai hard enough that he slammed against the prison wall. Cinder would've cried out, but not a sound could escape her throat.
Then they left as they came, swearing and grumbling and generally being very not-royal. They must have been the ones hidden from public eyes, the ones stronger and meaner and tougher than normal guards. Normal guards like Jacin. Normal, if he weren't a spy.
Cinder crawled over to the bars separating Kai's cell from her own. The pain in her ribs bit into her every time she moved, and simply breathing hurt. She didn't want to think about speaking.
"Kai," she croaked, pulling herself to a sitting position against the bars with a gasp. "Kai, are you alright?"
Kai stirred, sitting up and touching his forehead. Blood dribbled down, the gash sure to scar. Cinder wondered what that would be like, a scar on his previously smooth, unblemished skin.
He moaned but opened his eyes, seeing her tattered dress and the chains that glowed in whatever light reached them from the hallway.
"Cinder...is that you?"
"I knew you shouldn't have come, I told you not to, but you did, and—" She cut off, gagging, pain arching through her body. She couldn't cry. She couldn't cry. But she wanted to. Oh, if her cyborg eyes could shed tears...
"Are you okay?"
Cinder tried to still the pounding in her head, shutting her eyes and taking slow, shallow breaths until her head and ribs and entire body didn't ache so much.
"I'll be okay. We'll be okay." She didn't believe a word that came out of her mouth. But she said them anyway, in case they were true. She said them anyway, in case she could convince herself they were true.
Because she had to. She had to believe them. Or else she was already dead.
Kai ripped off a portion of his suit jacket where it was already mostly detached, holding it to his forehead, expensive fabric soaking up the red stain of his own blood. He winced, but besides the bleeding forehead, Cinder didn't see anything else too noticeable. He didn't move or breathe in a way that suggested broken bones, though for all she knew he would be covered in bruises by morning.
He finally looked up at her again, the hair that was impeccably swept away from his face only hours ago now hanging in his eyes. Pulling himself closer to her on his hands and knees, he sat against the same bars she did, arms almost touching her own.
Anywhere else, she'd be happy to be with him. Especially alone. But now, with metal separating them, with the threat of death looming on their bleak horizon and the new knowledge crashing down on her when at weakest, all she wanted was for him to be as far away as possible, safe, without her, without the burden she bore, and the fate they now shared.
Kai reached through the bars, three of his fingers squeezing through the gap. Cinder placed three of her own on top, and they sat their in silence, the small warmth shared helping for a second to fend off the voices in their heads, the screaming and awful silences and the churning, the churning that would never stop.
"There's something I have to tell you." Cinder broke the silence, the snap reverberating from wall to wall.
"Mmm."
"Levana told me something. Right before she put me in here. She—she told me that—"
Kai moved one of his fingers, a pitiful attempt to reassure her. She almost laughed at how ridiculous it was, three fingers on three fingers, nothing more and nothing less than metal bars separating them by mere inches. But there was nothing funny about what she was to say, about what it meant to both of them and their lives.
"She told me that I'm Princess Selene."
Kai's fingers twitched, but to his credit that was his only sign of emotion.
"Really? Are you sure she wasn't just...manipulating you? Weakening you to make you more vulnerable?"
"She wasn't lying." Cinder didn't tell him that the orange light didn't go off when Levana spoke. Then she'd have to explain she knew when people lied, and that would've been almost as awkward and scary as this conversation. Almost.
Cinder shivered.
"Well, then...what does this mean for us?"
"It means we'll never get out of here alive." Kai's fingers stiffened. "It means she'll never, ever let me go. She'll execute me. And that's that. Maybe...maybe I deserve it."
"Cinder."
She shut her eyes and counted. Her head pounded again. She should be crying.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
"Cinder."
She opened them again, but the pain didn't go away. She wanted to scream, to hit her head against the bars, to tear at her skin and sob and cry and let herself fall apart, right then and there, but Kai was still there, and, somehow, a piece of her was still there too, clinging to the edge of her mind's void.
"Cinder, look at me."
She obeyed, trying to lose herself in brown eyes and soft lips. But she couldn't. Her mind was too blank, too full, too busy with the noise of open space.
"You don't deserve it. If I'm being honest with myself, no one deserves it. As it is, life goes on, and death goes on, but no one deserves it." Kai's eyes shivered, and Cinder wondered what troubled him most. His parents' death? The citizens he'd lost to the plague? Those to Lunar attacks? There was no other on Earth with as much a burden to carry as him.
Oh, how self centered Cinder was, to think of her own as the heaviest.
"People...people die. That's how it is. And some people's deaths bring good, and some deaths bring bad, and some remain neutral, but it has nothing to do with deserving it." A tear slipped down his cheek, and she knew anywhere else, in any other circumstance, he would not be crying. But he was alone with her, and it was dark, and he was spilling his innermost thoughts, ones he'd probably spent days and nights drowning in.
Just like her.
"Cinder."
"Selene," Cinder whispered, looking down at their fingers. "My real name is Selene, it seems."
"Cinder."
She wanted to fall into the darkness. It would be so easy. Just to let go. To let everything consume her until there was nothing left to consume.
"Cinder, I don't think I'll know if I'll ever have the opportunity to say this again. I...I think I love you."
Her eyes snapped up to his, wide and panicked. They'd held hands. They'd kissed. They'd dated. But never had he said something like that.
Kai laughed, a low, painful chuckle.
"That got your attention." Cinder thought he had been kidding at first, but the blush on his cheeks said otherwise. What part of her made her worth it? she thought. What part of her made her worth not falling away, worth existing? What did he even see in her?
Maybe the question was not as rhetorical as it seemed.
"You think we'll escape?" Cinder stared into Kai's eyes, a challenge.
"Yes. Yes, I think we will."
Cinder smiled. Her ribs still ached, but it seemed more dull now, now that she had something to smile about.
"Good. Because I think we will too."
And with that, she leaned forward, until their lips brushed in the three inches in between the bars, where they sat, where they wished, where they dreamed.
Where they escaped.