Winter

Forty

Cinder shoved a knuckle into her mouth, biting down hard to keep from screaming. She could feel her companions’ eyes on her, but she dared not look at them.

“You cannot go out there.” Scarlet’s whisper was harsh, no doubt seeing the indecision scrawled across Cinder’s face.

“I can’t let them die for me,” she whispered back.

A hand grabbed her and jerked her away from the window. Wolf glared down at her. Sweet and vicious Wolf, whose mother was down there, with them.

She half expected him to give her away himself, but instead he grabbed Cinder’s shoulders, squeezing tight. “No one is dying for you. If anyone dies today it will be because they finally have something to believe in. Don’t you even think about taking that away from them now.”

“But I can’t—”

“Cinder, get yourself together,” said Thorne. “You are the heart of this revolution. If you give yourself up now, it’s over. And you know what? She’ll probably kill all those people down there anyway just to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

A gunshot made her yelp. Wolf clamped his hand over Cinder’s mouth, but she ripped herself away and threw herself back at the window.

White spots crowded into her vision. Then red as fury blinded her.

In the square below, a man’s body was sprawled out at Aimery’s feet, blood splattered across the ground. Cinder didn’t know who it was, but that didn’t matter. Someone was dead. Someone was dead because of her.

Aimery scanned the stricken faces of those closest to him, smiling pleasantly. “I will ask you again. Where is Linh Cinder?”

They all kept their eyes pinned to the ground. No one looked at Aimery. No one looked at the growing pool of blood. No one spoke.

Inside her head, Cinder was screaming. The gunshot still echoed in her skull, her audio interface repeating it again and again and again. She pressed her hands over her ears, shaking, furious.

She would kill Aimery. She would destroy him.

A body pressed against her back. Scarlet wrapped her arms around Cinder, tucking her face into the crook of Cinder’s neck. To restrain her, she thought, as much as to comfort her.

She didn’t pull away, but she was not comforted.

Below, Aimery signaled to a woman seven rows back, a strategically random choice that would ensure no one felt safe. Another shot fired from one of the guards. The woman convulsed and crumpled against the person beside her.

A shudder pulsed through the crowd.

Cinder sobbed. Scarlet held her tighter.

How long would it go on? How many would he kill? How long could she stand to wait up here and do nothing?

“All it takes is one person to tell me her location,” said Aimery, “and this will all be over. We will leave you to your peaceful lives.”

Something damp fell on Cinder’s neck. Scarlet was crying, shaking every bit as hard as she was. But her arms didn’t loosen.

She wanted to look away, but she forced herself not to. Their bravery left her both speechless and horrified. She found herself wishing someone would betray her just so it would end. Just so the choice would no longer be hers.

Thorne took her hand and squeezed. Wolf formed a barrier to her other side, all three of them acting both as her jailers and her life raft. She knew they shared her horror, but none of them could understand the responsibility she felt clawing at her from the inside. These people trusted her to fight with them, to give them the better future she’d promised.

Did it matter that they were willing to die for her cause? Did it matter that they would sacrifice their own lives so she might succeed?

She didn’t know.

She didn’t know.

All she saw were blinding sparks. All she heard were gunshots pulsing through her head.

Aimery pointed at another victim and Cinder’s knees weakened. It was the young boy who had been so smitten with Iko.

Cinder sucked in a breath, prepared to cry out, to stop it, to scream—

“No!”

Aimery held up his hand. “Who was that?”

A girl a few rows behind the boy had begun to cry hysterically. “No, please. Please, leave him alone.” She was about Cinder’s age. A sister, she guessed.

New tension rolled through the crowd. A few nearby people cast the girl betrayed looks, but Cinder knew it wasn’t fair. This girl didn’t know Cinder. Why should she protect her over someone she loved?

Aimery raised an eyebrow. “Are you prepared to give up the cyborg’s location?”

“Maha Kesley,” the girl stammered. “The cyborg was being housed by Maha Kesley.”

With a flick of Aimery’s fingers, the guard who had targeted the boy lowered his gun. “Where is this Maha Kesley?”

Maha stood up before anyone was forced to betray her, a pillar in the kneeling crowd. “I’m here.”

Wolf took in a shaky breath.

“Come to the front,” said Aimery.

Maha’s slender shoulders were back as she walked among her friends and neighbors. A change had occurred in the short time Cinder had known her. On that first day she had seemed beaten, heavy shouldered, afraid. The woman who stood defiantly before the queen’s head thaumaturge was someone new.

It made Cinder even more terrified for her.

“What is the number of your residence?” Aimery asked.

Maha gave it with a steady voice.

Aimery gestured at the captain of the guard and a female thaumaturge. They stepped away, signaling for one additional guard to join them as they headed toward Maha’s house.

Aimery’s attention had returned to Maha. “Have you been sheltering the cyborg Linh Cinder?”

“I do not know that name,” said Maha. “The one cyborg I know is named Princess Selene Blackburn and she is the true queen of Luna.”

The crowd rustled. Chins lifted. Shoulders squared. If anyone had forgotten why they were risking their lives for a stranger, Maha’s statement reminded them.

Aimery smirked. Cinder’s blood iced over.

As she watched, Maha raised both of her hands over her head so everyone could see. Then she grabbed her right thumb and yanked it back, hard.

Cinder heard the pop even from here, followed by Maha’s cry. She didn’t know if Aimery had forced her to break her thumb or merely dislocate it, and she didn’t care. She made a decision.

In another moment, she had slipped into the minds of her friends and forced them to back away from her.

She spun around. Scarlet, Thorne, and Wolf gawked at her, dismayed.

Wolf recovered first. “Cinder, don’t—”

“It’s the people’s revolution now, not mine. Wolf, you’re coming with me. I’ll keep your mind under control but not your body, just like we did in Artemisia. Thorne, Scarlet, stay here and target Aimery and the other thaumaturges, but don’t shoot unless you have a clear shot, otherwise you’re just giving away your location.”

“Cinder, no,” Scarlet hissed, but Cinder was already leaving her and Thorne behind, forcing Wolf to follow in her tracks.

He growled.

“I have to, Wolf,” she said as they rushed down the staircase to the second landing. Outside, muffled by thick factory walls, she heard another cry of pain from Maha. “I can’t do nothing.”

“He’ll kill you.”

“Not if we kill him first.” She raced down the last staircase and braced herself. She checked that she had control of Wolf’s bioelectricity so no thaumaturge could claim him, then pushed through the factory doors. A third scream from Maha felt like a knife in Cinder’s chest. One look told her that Maha’s first three fingers were bent at crippling angles. Tears were on her pain-clenched face.

“Here I am,” Cinder bellowed. “You found me. Now let her go.”

In one uniform movement, all the guards swiveled, turning their weapons on Cinder. She sucked in a breath, prepared to be riddled with bullets, but no one fired.

Across the sea of prostrated laborers, Aimery grinned. “So the impostor has finally graced us with her presence.”

She clenched her fists and started toward him. The guns followed. So did Wolf, his energy crackling. “You know very well that my claims are true,” she said. “It’s the only reason Levana is so determined to have me killed.” She stretched out her thoughts to the people surrounding her, but none of their minds were available to her. She had expected as much.

She had a trained killer at her side and two skilled shooters at her back. It would have to be enough.

She reached the front row of the gathered civilians. “You came here for me, and here I am. Leave these people alone.”

Aimery cocked his head. His gaze swooped over Cinder, from head to toe and back up, making her feel like easy prey. She knew how she looked in her drab clothing, with her metal hand and clunky boots, her messy ponytail, and most likely, a hearty amount of dust smudged across her face. She knew that she did not look like a queen.

“Imagine how differently this could have gone,” he said, stepping down from the fountain’s ledge, “if you had chosen to claim the minds of these people before our arrival. Instead, you left them adrift on the ocean of their own weaknesses. You turned them into targets and then did nothing to protect them. You are not suited to be a ruler of Luna.”

“Because I would rather my people know freedom than constant manipulation?”

“Because you are not capable of making the decisions a queen must make for the good of all her people.”

She gritted her teeth. “The only people who have benefited from Levana’s regime are the greedy aristocrats in Artemisia. Levana’s not a queen. She’s a tyrant.”

Aimery bowed his head, almost like he was agreeing with her. “And you,” he whispered, “are nobody at all.”

“I am the true ruler of Luna.” Though she put as much conviction behind the words as she could, they fell flat. Within moments, the arrival of the queen’s head thaumaturge had undone all the progress she’d made in this sector. With a flick of his fingers Aimery had taken away all her power and prostrated the people before him.

“You are a child playing at war games,” said Aimery, “and you’re too naïve to see you’ve already lost.”

“I’m surrendering to you,” she said. “And if that means I have to lose so these people can go free, so be it. What you don’t seem to realize is that this isn’t about me. It’s about the people who have lived in oppression for far too long. Levana’s rule is coming to an end.”

Aimery’s smile grew. Behind him, the fountain gushed and spat.

Wolf’s energy surged behind her, hackles raised.

Aimery opened his arms to the crowd. “Let it be known that on this day, the impostor princess surrendered to Her Majesty the Queen. Her crimes will be dealt with swiftly and justly.” His eyes glimmered. “However, I promised that your lives would be spared if any one of you were to give up the cyborg’s location.” He clicked his tongue. “It is a great shame no one came forward sooner. I do not like to be kept waiting.”

A shot fired. A shock wave pulsed through Cinder’s body.

She didn’t know where it came from. She saw blood, but didn’t know who had been hit.

Then Maha’s legs collapsed and she fell face-first onto the hard ground. Her three deformed fingers remained stretched out over her head.

Still reeling from the concussion of the gunshot, Cinder stared at Maha’s body, unable to breathe. Unable to move.

She heard Wolf’s intake of breath. His energy crystallized into something still and fragile.

The world stilled, balancing on a needle point. Silent. Incomprehensible.

Another gun fired, this shot from much farther away, and the noise shoved the world off its axis. Aimery crowed and stumbled back as a spot on his thigh soaked through with blood. His eyes blazed up toward the factory. Another shot hit the fountain behind him.

Wolf roared and leaped forward. The nearest guard blocked his path, but was too slow to shoot. Wolf batted him away like an annoying gnat and rushed for Aimery, teeth bared.

A cacophony of noise and bodies erupted. Every citizen that should have been on Cinder’s side instead surged to their feet and grappled for her and Wolf. Cinder’s body was slammed to the ground. She lost sight of Wolf. More gunshots.

Throwing a punch to someone’s jaw, she rolled once and scrambled back to her feet. She spotted a red coat, raised her hand, and fired. She waited long enough to see the thaumaturge buck back before she was searching for another target, but she didn’t get off another shot as dozens of hands grabbed her, pulled her, wrestled her to the ground.

Cinder thrashed against their hold, blowing a lock of hair from her face. She spotted Wolf. He, too, was pinned to the ground, though it had taken a dozen men to do it. Every limb was held in place, his cheek pressed into the dust. The bodies of two guards and one miner lay not far away.

Aimery loomed above him, panting, his constant smile nowhere to be seen. He had one hand pressed over the wound in his leg. “The shots are coming from that factory. Send a team to search it, and bind these two before they try anything else.”

Cinder strained against the arms holding her. If she could raise her arm, take one clean shot—

Her arms were yanked behind her, her wrists bound. She screamed as her shoulder was pulled just shy of dislocation. She was hauled back to her feet, coughing on dust, her entire body throbbing.

She glanced around, searching for an ally, but only blank faces greeted her.

She sneered, defiant, as she and Wolf were forced to kneel in front of Aimery’s livid face. She was dizzy with her own hatred, but as her thoughts settled, she was hit with the full force of Wolf’s agony beside her.

He was in anguish, his emotions splintering, and Cinder remembered that the body of the miner beside him was his mother.

Cinder shuddered and had to look away. She spotted the red-coated thaumaturge she’d shot, not moving, and another in a black uniform also lying not far away.

That was all. Two thaumaturges and two guards killed, Aimery injured. That was all she had gotten from Maha’s sacrifice, and the brave deaths of two other innocent civilians.

Cinder was more angry than afraid, feeding on Wolf’s devastation and the horror of all the blank faces around her, all these people used like marionettes.

She believed what she’d said before. Levana could kill her, but Cinder had to believe her death wouldn’t be the end. This revolution no longer belonged to her.