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Scarlet

Scarlet made a conscious effort not to look at her mutilated hand as she stumbled along the glass bridge with the others. Cress was leading Thorne by the hand as they ran after Kinney, making sure he didn't slip and fall as they tried to keep up with the Regolith boy's unforgiving pace. Scarlet herself was mainly relying on her fury to keep her going. And Merlin's beard she had plenty of fury.

Anger at her friends for not being more careful about their planning, anger at Levana for threatening them all with torture, yet more anger at Levana for actually forcing her to cut off her own finger with her damn Lunar mind-control, and finally, anger at herself for being so weak throughout the whole thing. For Merlin's sake, she could barely run, all she could focus on was her stupid hand! A part of her knew she was being unreasonable (at least to her friends and herself), but the rest of her was too angry to care.

The white wall that was the only entrance and exit to Levana's glass bridge rippled open for them. One by one they stepped through the hole, first Kinney, then Cinder, then Jacin, then Kai, then Cress and Thorne, and finally Scarlet, who scowled as went in. She hated being behind.

"Yes, you got them out! Guess you are useful for something." A voice remarked by the silver moon statue.

Scarlet cringed at the distinctive tinkling note to the voice. No, it couldn't be…

"Levana?" Kai cried out, yelling what everyone was thinking.

For there she was, standing calmly by the entrance to her office, wearing a crop top and skirt that were way too small for her, balancing easily on a pair of blue high-heels, and looking weirdly cheerful. And, for some reason, her eyes were bright yellow. Didn't Levana have dark eyes? Scarlet supposed she could just change their colour at will, but yellow didn't really seem her style.

"What? I thought Levana got blasted with Cinder's wand. How can she be here?" Thorne asked.

"And with a change in wardrobe." Jacin added, his hateful glare melting into confusion.

Levana raised an ivory-skinned hand in front of her face, staring at it as though she'd never seen it before. "Oh, right! Forgot I still looked like this. Hang on, gimme a sec."

She frowned in concentration and… Scarlet had to blink to actually process what she was seeing. Levana's pale skin turned dark and her form shrank. Her elegant auburn curls lightened to blue and twisted themselves into braids. Soon, rather than looking at the downright tyrannical headmistress that had cut off her finger, Scarlet found herself staring at-

"Iko!" Cinder cried with relief and ran up to embrace the girl.

Iko grinned as she hugged her back. "Hey Cinder, hope things didn't get too rough in there before Kinney finally managed to bust you out."

"Which would have been sooner if you got your Levana impression right quicker." Kinney said loudly.

"That's not my fault! I've never tried to copy a person's appearance that accurately before, and I've definitely never tried it with Levana. Like I'd want to be her for any moment of my life."

"What's going on?" Thorne asked confusedly, "When did Iko get here? What happened to Levana? Since when could Iko copy people's appearances? What's going on?"

Scarlet sighed. They really needed to do something about his blindness.

"I'll explain later." Iko said, "Right now, we need to find somewhere to stay. Preferably somewhere that isn't full of angry centaurs."

"Wait, the centaurs really are attacking?" Cress asked worriedly.

Iko and Kinney shared an uncomfortable look. "Well, we needed some kind of distraction." she said, "And you know what the centaurs are like. All we had to do was say the werewolves were living in the castle-"

"You did what?" Scarlet shrieked.

"-and off they went! What? It worked! And besides, the teachers are already driving them back and the students have all been sent to their dormitories, so really the only thing getting hurt is the polish on the school floors. No harm done."

"Except to the hugely outnumbered staff." Kinney muttered under his breath.

"You remember what I told you, right? Those people are evil! A few nocks from the centaurs are the least they deserve."

Jacin glared at her. "Iko, my father's out there!"

"And my grand-mère!" Scarlet exclaimed.

Iko huffed and placed her hands on her hips. "Look, I never said it was a perfect plan-"

"Only implied it." Kinney grumbled.

"-but trust me, they're all going to be just fine. And, in case you've forgotten, we've got our own problems, like finding a place to hide."

"You didn't include that in your plan?" Kai asked incredulously.

"I was hoping you guys would have some ideas!"

Cinder glanced worriedly back at the silver moon. "Well, we're going to have to think of somewhere quick. I don't know how long Levana's going to stay down."

"Maybe we can try Wolf's room?" Jacin ventured.

"Won't Levana be expecting that?" Scarlet asked, "She think's Wolf's our ally too, remember?"
"Plus, Wolf's not very reliable." Thorne added, "He always hides himself away whenever something bad happens. I don't know about you guys, but I haven't heard from him since the daytime-werewolf incident."

Scarlet glanced at the floor. She hadn't heard from him either, but she felt that, this time at least, Wolf's desire to be alone was justified. He hated the monster he became on the full-moon, and hated even more the thought of hurting people. Scarlet had heard that werewolves retain their memories of their time as wolves even when they're human. That meant that Wolf remembered all those people he hurt, all those people he'd infected, all those people he killed. The students who would never see their graduation day, the teachers who would never again give knowledge to the young, he would have remembered what he'd done to them. And he would've hated it. How could anyone walk around and act as if everything was normal after something like that?

Jacin scowled at Thorne. "I'll grant you, he has a few issues with his conscience, but if every time you stepped out of your room you got attacked by scared and prejudiced students, you'd stay in as well."

"Wait, students have been attacking Wolf?" Scarlet asked with disbelief.

"Well, he did kill a bunch of people." Jacin reminded her.

"But that wasn't his fault! He can't help himself when he's a werewolf!" she protested.

"You think people actually care about that?" he snapped back, "All they know is that their friends were either killed or cursed by this kid. They're going to blame him and hate him for what happened, and not bother to see things from his point of view. That's just human nature, I suggest you get used to it."

Kai cleared his throat. "Um, the way people treat Wolf aside, I think it's probably best that we use his room. Like Jacin said, nobody will go in there except maybe a teacher, and judging from what Iko and Kinney have told us, they're kinda occupied right now. It should work fine, at least for a little while. Okay?"

Iko shrugged. "Hey, it's as good a place as any."

"I suppose it'll have to do for now." Kinney said.

Cinder nodded. "Wolf's part of our group too, he'll help us."

"People ruled by their conscience are typically trustworthy." Cress added with a glance at Thorne.

He sighed. "Fine, fine we'll hide out with Wolf."

When Scarlet didn't say anything, everyone turned to stare at her. She raised an eyebrow at them. "You actually don't know what my opinion is here?"

Cinder smirked. "Alright, Wolf it is."

A/N: I really enjoy writing angry Scarlet.

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