Scarlet

Seven

The cluster of icons on Emperor Kai’s netscreen was growing denser by the hour, not only because there were so many things for the new emperor to read and sign, but because he wasn’t putting much effort into reading or signing any of them. With fingers buried in his hair, he gazed blankly at the inset netscreen panel currently elevated out of his desk and watched the icons multiply with a growing sense of dread.

He should have been sleeping, but after countless hours of staring at the shadows above his bed, he’d finally given up and decided to come here instead and attempt to do something productive. He was dying for a distraction. Any distraction.

Anything to chase away the thoughts that kept rotating around in his brain.

So much for those good intentions.

Taking in a measured breath, Kai glanced up at the empty office. It was supposed to be his father’s office, but the room struck Kai as far too extravagant to be a place for work. Three ornate tasseled lanterns were lined up on a red-and-gold ceiling, hand-painted with elegant dragons. A holographic fireplace was set into the wall to his left. A sitting area with carved cypress furniture surrounded a miniature bar in the far corner. Silent videos of Kai’s mother shimmered from picture frames by the door, sometimes paired with flashes of Kai growing up, and sometimes all three of them together.

Nothing had changed since his father’s death, except the room’s owner.

And perhaps the smell. Kai seemed to recall the aroma of his father’s aftershave, but now there was the distinct stench of bleach and chemicals—remnants of the cleaning crew scrubbing the room raw after his father first had contracted letumosis, the plague that had killed hundreds of thousands of people all over Earth in the past decade.

Kai’s attention fell from the pictures and snagged on the small metal foot that sat on the corner of his desk, its joints caked with grease. Like a revolving wheel, his thoughts came full circle yet again.

Linh Cinder.

Stomach tightening, he set down the stylus that he’d been gripping and reached for the foot, but his fingers stalled before they could get to it.

It belonged to her, the pretty young mechanic at the market. The girl who was so easy to talk to. The girl who was so authentic, who didn’t pretend to be something she wasn’t.

Or so he’d thought.

His fingers tightened into a fist and he drew back, wishing he had someone he could talk to.

But his father was gone. And now Dr. Erland was gone too, having resigned from his position, and left without even saying good-bye.

There was Konn Torin, his father’s, and now his, adviser. But Torin, with his ever-present diplomacy and logic, would never understand. Kai wasn’t sure he even understood what it was he felt when he thought of Cinder. Linh Cinder, who had lied to him about everything.

She was cyborg.

He couldn’t dismiss the memory of her lying at the base of the garden steps, a foot disconnected from her leg, a white-hot metal hand having melted away the remnants of a silk glove—gloves that had been his gift to her.

He should have been repulsed by her. Reliving the memory again and again, he tried to be repulsed by the sparking wires and her grime-packed knuckles and the knowledge that she had fake neural receptors taking messages to and from her brain. She was not natural. She was probably a charity case, and he couldn’t help but wonder if her family had paid for the operation or if it had been government funded. He wondered who had taken such pity on her that they’d determined to give her a second life when her human body had been so damaged. He wondered what had caused her body to be that damaged in the first place, or if perhaps she was born disfigured.

He wondered and wondered and knew he should have been more disturbed by each unanswered question.

But he wasn’t. It was not her being cyborg that had curdled his stomach.

Rather, his repugnance had started the moment his vision of her flickered as if she were a broken netscreen. He’d blinked, and she was no longer a helpless, rain-soaked cyborg, but the most intensely beautiful girl he’d ever laid eyes on. She was blindingly, breathtakingly stunning, with flawless tanned skin and shining eyes and an expression so ravishing it threatened to buckle his knees.

Her Lunar glamour had been even more striking than Queen Levana’s, and her beauty was painful.

Kai knew that’s what it had been: Cinder’s glamour, fading in and out even as he stood above her, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

What he didn’t know was how many times she’d glamoured him before that. How many times she’d tricked him. How many times she’d made him out to be a complete fool.

Or had the girl at the market, muddied and disheveled, been the real girl after all? The girl who had risked her life to come to the ball to give Kai a warning, unsteady cyborg foot and all …

“It doesn’t matter,” he said to his empty office, the disconnected foot.

Whoever Linh Cinder was, she was no longer his concern. Soon Queen Levana would be returning to Luna, and she would take Cinder back as her prisoner. It was the arrangement Kai had agreed to.

At the ball, he had been forced to make a choice, and had refused Levana’s offer of a marriage alliance once and for all. He was determined to never subject his people to life beneath such a heartless empress, and by that point Cinder had been his last bargaining chip. Peace, in exchange for the cyborg. His people’s freedom, in exchange for the Lunar girl who had dared to defy her queen.

It was impossible to know how long such an arrangement would last. Levana still refused to sign the peace treaty that would ally Luna with the Earthen Union. Her desire to be either empress or conqueror would not be sated long by the sacrifice of a mere girl.

And next time, Kai didn’t think he would have anything else to offer.

Crumpling his hair, Kai pulled his attention back to the amendment on the netscreen and read the first sentence three times, waiting for the words to register. He had to think of something else, anything else, before the never-ending questions drove him insane.

A monotone voice interrupted him, making him jump. “Entrance requested for Royal Adviser Konn Torin and Chairman of National Security Huy Deshal.”

Kai glanced at the time. 06:22.

“Entrance granted.”

The office door breezed open. Both men were dressed for the day, though Kai had never seen either of them so disheveled. It was clear they’d gotten up in a hurry, although he suspected from the dark circles beneath Torin’s eyes that he hadn’t gotten much more sleep than Kai had.

Kai stood to greet them, tapping the corner of the netscreen that sent it sinking back into the desktop. “You’re both getting an early start.”

“Your Imperial Majesty,” said Chairman Huy with a deep bow. “I’m glad to find you awake. I’m sorry to inform you of a breach of security that requires your immediate attention.”

Kai froze, his thoughts racing ahead to terrorist attacks, out-of-control protestors … Queen Levana declaring war. “What? What happened?”

“There’s been a jailbreak from New Beijing Prison,” said Huy. “Approximately forty-eight minutes ago.”

Nerves knotting up his shoulders, Kai glanced at Torin. “A jailbreak?”

“Two inmates have escaped.”

Kai pushed his fingertips into the desk. “Don’t we have some sort of protocol in place for this?”

“Generally speaking, yes. However, this is an extraordinary circumstance.”

“How so?”

The lines deepened around Huy’s mouth. “One of the escapees is Linh Cinder, Your Majesty. The Lunar fugitive.”

The world turned over. Kai’s gaze dropped to the cyborg foot, but he snapped it back up. “How?”

“We have a team analyzing the security footage in order to determine her exact method. We understand she was able to glamour a guard and persuade him to move her to a separate wing of the prison. From there, she was able to breach the air duct system.” Suddenly embarrassed, Huy held up two clear bags. One contained a cyborg hand, the other a small, blood-crusted chip. “These were found in her cell.”

Kai’s jaw worked, but he was dumbfounded by the sight. He was simultaneously intrigued and unnerved by the dismembered limb. “Is that her hand? Why would she do that?”

“We’re still working on the details. We do know, however, that she made her way into the prison’s loading dock. We are working to secure all possible escape routes from there.”

Kai paced toward the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the palace’s west-facing gardens. The whispering grasses still glittered with morning dew.

“Your Majesty,” said Torin, the first he’d spoken, “I would advise you to deploy military reinforcements to track down and recover the fugitives.”

Kai massaged his brow. “Military?”

Torin spoke slowly. “It is in your best interest to do everything in your power to recover her.”

Kai found it difficult to swallow. He knew that Torin was right. Any hesitation would be seen as a sign of weakness, and possibly even suggest that he’d assisted with the escape. Queen Levana would not take kindly to it.

“Who’s the other fugitive?” he asked, stalling for time while he struggled to grasp the implications. Cinder—a Lunar, a cyborg, a fugitive, who he’d all but sentenced to death.

Escaped.

“Carswell Thorne,” said Huy, “an ex-cadet for the American Republic air force. He deserted his post fourteen months ago after stealing a military cargo ship. At this time we don’t consider him dangerous.”

Kai neared his desk again, seeing that the fugitive’s profile had been transferred to the screen. His frown deepened. Perhaps not dangerous, but young and inarguably good-looking. His prison photo showed him flippantly winking at the camera. Kai hated him immediately.

“Your Majesty, we need you to make a decision,” said Torin. “Do you grant permission to send in military reinforcements to secure the fugitives?”

Kai stiffened. “Yes, of course, if that’s what you think the situation requires.”

Huy clicked his heels and marched back toward the door.

Kai wanted to call him back immediately as a thousand questions filled his brain. He wanted the world to slow down and give him time to process this, but the two men had both gone before the hesitant “wait” fell from his mouth.

The door shut, leaving him alone. He stole a single glance at Cinder’s abandoned foot before collapsing over his desk and pressing his forehead onto the cool netscreen.

He couldn’t help but imagine his father sitting at this desk, faced with this situation, and knew he would have been sending comms already, doing everything he could to find the girl and apprehend her, because that’s what would be best for the Commonwealth.

But Kai wasn’t his father. He wasn’t that selfless.

Knowing it was wrong, he couldn’t help but wish that wherever Cinder had gone, they would never find her.