Scarlet

Thirty-Eight

Howls filled the theater’s basement. From the corner of her bed, in the cell’s near blackness, Scarlet held her breath and listened. The lonesome cries were muffled and distant, somewhere out on the streets. But they must have been loud indeed to reach all the way to her dungeon.

And there seemed to be dozens of them. Animals seeking one another in the night, eerie and haunting.

There shouldn’t be wild animals in the city.

Peeling herself off the bed, Scarlet crept toward the bars. A light filtered down the hallway from the stairs that led up to the stage, but it was so faint she could barely make out the iron bars over her own door. She peered down the corridor. No movement. No sound. An EXIT sign that probably hadn’t been lit up in a hundred years.

She peered the other direction. Only blackness.

She had the sinking sensation of being trapped all alone. Of being left to die in this underground prison.

Another howl echoed up, louder this time, though still stifled. Perhaps on the street just outside the theater.

Scarlet slicked her tongue over her lips. “Hello?” she started, tentatively. When there was no response—not even a distant howl—she tried again, louder. “Is anyone out there?”

She shut her eyes to listen. No footsteps.

“I’m hungry.”

No shuffling.

“I need to use the bathroom.”

No voices.

“I’m going to escape now.”

But no one cared. She was alone.

She squeezed the bar, wondering if it was a trap. Perhaps they were luring her into a false security, testing her to see what she would do. Perhaps they wanted her to try to escape so they could use it against her.

Or perhaps—just perhaps—Wolf really had meant to help her.

She snarled. If it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. If he’d told her the truth and explained to her what was going on, she would have come up with another plan to get her grandma out, rather than be led like a lamb to the feast.

The joints in her fingers started to burn from clenching the bars too tight.

Then, from the hollowness of the basement, she heard her name.

Weak and uncertain, posed as a delirious question. Scarlet?

Stomach clenching, Scarlet pushed her face into the bars, their coldness squeezing her cheekbones. “Hello?”

She started to shake as she waited.

Scar … Scarlet?

“Grand-mère? Grand-mère?”

The voice went silent, as if speaking had drained it.

Scarlet thrust herself away from the barred door and ran back to the bed, claiming the small chip she’d tucked beneath the mattress.

She returned to the door desperate, pleading, hoping. If Wolf had tricked her about this—

She reached through the bar and flicked the chip across the scanner. It chimed, the same sickeningly cheerful chime it had given when her guards brought her food, a sound she had despised until this moment.

The bars swung open without resistance.

Scarlet lingered in the open doorway, her pulse racing. Again she found herself straining to hear any sound of her guards, but the opera house seemed abandoned.

She stumbled away from the stairwell, into the blackness of the hallway. Her hands on the walls to either side were her only guides. When she came to another iron-barred door, she paused and leaned against the opening. “Grand-mère?”

Each cell was empty.

Three, four, five cells, all empty.

“Grand-mère?” she whispered.

At the sixth door, a whimper. “Scarlet?”

“Grand-mère!” She dropped the chip in her excitement and immediately fell to the floor in search of it. “Grand-mère, it’s all right, I’m here. I’m going to get you—” Her fingers found the chip and she whipped it up before the scanner. A wash of relief covered her when it chimed, although a pained, terrified sound came from her grandmother upon hearing it.

Scarlet yanked the bars open and pushed into the cell, not bothering to stand lest she accidentally trip over her grandmother in the darkness. The cell was rank with the stench of urine and sweat and old, stale air. “Grand-mère?”

She found her huddled on the gritty stone ground against the back wall. “Grand-mère?”

“Scar? How—?”

“It’s me. I’m here. I’m going to get you out of here.” Her words dissolved into sobs and she grasped her grandma’s frail arms, pulling her into an embrace.

Her grandma cried out, an awful, pitiable sound that cut through Scarlet’s ears. She gasped and laid her back down.

“Don’t,” her grandma whimpered, her body sliding limply down to the ground. “Oh Scar—you shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be here. I can’t stand you being here. Scarlet…” She started crying, choking, wet sobs burbling up from her.

Scarlet hovered over her grandma’s body, fear gripping every muscle. She couldn’t remember hearing her grandmother cry before. “What did they do to you?” she whispered, drawing her hands over her grandmother’s shoulders. Beneath a thin, tattered shirt, there were the lumps of bandages and something damp and sticky.

Biting back her own tears, she traced her grandmother’s chest and ribs. The bandages were everywhere. She stroked the woman’s arms and hands—her hands were shaped more like clubs now, so covered in bandages.

“No, don’t touch them.” Her grandma tried to pull away, but her limbs only twitched uncontrollably.

As tenderly as she could, Scarlet ran her thumb over her grandma’s hands. Hot tears slipped down her cheeks. “What did they do to you?”

“Scar, you have to get out of here.” Each word a struggle until she could barely talk, barely breathe.

Scarlet knelt over her, resting her head on her grandma’s breast and stroking the sticky hair off her brow. “It’s going to be all right. I’m going to get you out of here and we’re going to go to the hospital and you’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.” She forced herself to sit up. “Can you walk? Have they done anything to your legs?”

“I can’t walk. I can’t move. You have to leave me here, Scarlet. You have to get out.”

“I’m not leaving you. They’ve all left, Grand-mère. We have time. We just need to figure out a way—I can carry you.” Tears dripped off Scarlet’s chin.

“Come here, my love. Come closer.” Scarlet swiped at her nose and buried her face against her grandma’s neck. Arms tried to encircle her, but served to only beat weakly against her sides. “I didn’t want to involve you in this. I’m so sorry.”

“Grand-mère.”

“Hush. Listen. I need you to do something for me. Something important.”

She shook her head. “Stop it. You’re going to be all right.”

“Listen to me, Scarlet.” Even her grandmother’s faint voice seemed to drop. “Princess Selene is alive.”

Scarlet squeezed her eyes shut. “Stop talking, please. Save your strength.”

“She went to live in the Eastern Commonwealth with a family by the name of Linh. A man named Linh Garan.”

A sad, frustrated sigh. “I know, Grand-mère. I know you kept her, and I know you gave her to a man in the Commonwealth. But it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s not your problem anymore. I’m going to get you out of here, and I’ll keep you safe.”

“No, darling, you must find her. She’ll be a teenager now … a cyborg.”

Scarlet blinked, wishing she could see her grandmother in the blackness. “A cyborg?”

“Unless she changed her name, she’s called Cinder now.”

The name struck a chord of familiarity in the back of Scarlet’s mind, but her brain was too clouded to pinpoint it. “Grand-mère, please stop talking. I have to—”

“You must find her. Logan and Garan are the only ones who know, and if the queen found me, she could find them. Someone must tell the girl who she is. Someone must find her. You must find her.”

Scarlet shook her head. “I don’t care about the stupid princess. I care about you. I’m going to protect you.”

“I can’t go with you.” Her padded hands rubbed against Scarlet’s arms. “Please, Scarlet. She could make all the difference.”

Scarlet shrank down. “She’ll just be a teenager,” she managed between her renewed sobs. “What can she do?”

She remembered then, the name. The newsfeeds flashed through her thoughts—a girl running down palace steps, falling, landing in a heap on a gravel path.

Linh Cinder.

A teenager. A cyborg. A Lunar.

She gulped. So Levana had already found the girl. Found, but lost her again.

“It doesn’t matter,” she murmured, laying her head against her grandma’s chest. “It’s not our problem. I’m going to get you out of here. We’re going to get away.”

Her mind desperately searched for a way they could escape together. Something to use as a stretcher or a wheelchair or—

But there was nothing.

Nothing that could make it up the stairs. Nothing she could carry. Nothing her grandma could endure.

Her heart broke, the pain of it pushing a wail out of her throat.

She couldn’t leave her like this. She couldn’t let them hurt her anymore.

“My sweet girl.”

She clamped her eyes shut, pushing out two more hot tears. “Grand-mère, who is Logan Tanner?”

Her grandma brushed a light kiss against Scarlet’s forehead. “He’s a good man, Scarlet. He would have loved you. I hope you’ll meet him someday. Tell him hello for me. Tell him good-bye.”

A sob cut through Scarlet’s heart. Her grandma’s shirt was soaked through with her tears.

She couldn’t bring herself to tell her that Logan Tanner was dead. Had gone crazy. Had killed himself.

Her grandfather.

“I love you, Grand-mère. You’re everything to me.”

The heavy bandaged limbs stroked her knees. “I love you too. My brave, stubborn girl.”

She sniffed, and vowed to herself that she would stay until morning. She would stay forever. She wouldn’t abandon her. If her captors came back, they would find them together—kill them together if they must.

She would never leave her again.

The vow was made, the promise determined, when she heard footsteps echoing down the corridor.