Winter

Fifty-Three

The water hit her like concrete. The force pounded through her body. Every limb vibrated, first with the hard slap of the water, then from its icy cold.

It swallowed her down. She was still reeling from the hit as the air left her lungs in a burst of froth and bubbles. Already her chest was burning. Her body rolled over like a buoy, her heavy left leg dragging her down.

A red warning light filled up the darkness.

LIQUID IMMERSION DETECTED. SHUTTING DOWN POWER SUPPLY IN 3 …

That was as far as the countdown got. Blackness pulled at the back of Cinder’s brain, as if a switch had been turned off. Dizziness rocked her. She forced her eyes open and looked toward the surface, only able to orient herself because she could feel her leg pulling her down, down.

White sparks were creeping into the corners of her vision. Her lungs tightened, begging to contract.

Slippery weeds reached up to grasp at her, sliming her right calf where her pants had bunched around her knee. Willing herself to stay conscious, Cinder aimed her finger’s flashlight into the blackness at her feet and tried to turn it on, but nothing happened.

With just enough light from the palace filtering through the muck and water, Cinder thought she detected a series of pale bones caught among the grasses. Her metal foot sank into a rib cage.

She jolted, surprise clearing her thoughts as the bones crushed beneath her.

Gritting her teeth, Cinder used every ounce of energy left to push herself off the lake bottom, struggling back toward the surface. Her left leg and hand weren’t responding to her controls. They had become nothing but dead weights at the end of her limbs, and her shoulder screamed where the mutant soldier had dug his teeth into her flesh. It took every ounce of remaining energy to claw her way upward.

Her diaphragm twitched. Overhead, the glare on the surface grew brighter, lights flickering like a mirage over the surface. She felt the strength draining out of her, her waterlogged leg trying to drag her back down …

She burst through the surface with a sputter, sucking huge mouthfuls of air into her lungs. She managed to tread water for one desperate moment before she was pulled down again. Her muscles burned as she kicked, bobbing back up at the surface, straining to keep her head above the water.

As the flashes in her vision began to recede, Cinder swiped the water from her eyes. The palace towered above her, ominous and oppressive despite its beauty, stretching along either side of the lake. Without artificial daylight brightening the dome, she could see the spread of the Milky Way beyond the glass, mesmerizing.

On the balcony far above her, Cinder caught shadows moving. Then a wave crashed into her and she was underwater again, her body battered against the current. She lost her sense of direction, up or down. Panic burst again in her head, her arms flailing for control against the buffeting waves. Her shoulder throbbed. Only when she felt herself sinking did she reorient herself and flounder back to the surface.

She tried to swim away from the palace, toward the center of the lake, though there was no end in sight. She hadn’t gone far before her muscles started to burn, and every joint on the left side of her body was screaming at the useless weights of her prosthetic limbs. Her lungs felt scratched raw, but she had to survive. She couldn’t stop fighting—couldn’t stop trying. Kai was still up there. All her friends were on Luna somewhere, needing her, and the people of the outer sectors were counting on her, and she had to keep pushing, pushing …

Holding her breath, Cinder ducked beneath the surface and tugged off her boots, letting them sink. It wasn’t much, but she felt lightened enough to scramble against her body’s lopsided weight, propelling herself through the waves.

The lake seemed never-ending, but every time she glanced back and saw how far the Lunar palace had receded into the distance, Cinder felt a new surge of strength. The shore was lit now by mansions and tiny boat docks. The far side of the lake had disappeared over the horizon.

She rolled onto her back, panting. Her leg was on fire, her arms made of rubber, the wound in her shoulder like an ice pick jammed into her flesh. She couldn’t go any farther.

It occurred to her, as a wave crashed over her body and she almost didn’t bother to reach for the surface, that she didn’t know if she’d reserved enough energy to make it to the shore. What if they were waiting for her there? She couldn’t fight. Couldn’t manipulate. She was done. A half-dead, beaten girl.

Cinder’s head collided with something solid.

She gasped, her loss of propulsion sending her beneath the surface again.

She lashed out with her foot, forcing herself back up, and spat the water from her mouth. Her hands slapped against the hard, slick surface she’d run into. The dome.

She’d reached the edge of Artemisia.

The enormous curved wall acted like a dam, holding the lake back, while on the other side of the glass the crater continued for miles in each direction—dry and pocked and disturbingly, horrifyingly deep.

Bobbing against the glass, Cinder stared at the bottom of the crater hundreds of feet below. She felt like a fish in a fishbowl. Trapped.

She turned toward the shore, but couldn’t make herself move. She was shivering. Her stomach was hollow. Her weighted leg pulled her down again and it took the strength of a thousand wolf soldiers for her to climb back to the surface. Water flooded her mouth and she spat as soon as her head broke through the waves, but it was useless.

She couldn’t.

Dizziness rocked over her. Her arms flopped against the water. Her right leg gave out first, too tired for one more kick. Cinder gasped and she was dragged down, one hand sliding down the slimy glass wall.

There was a strange release as blackness engulfed her. A pride in knowing that when they combed the lake they would find her body way out here and they would know how hard she had fought.

Her body went limp. A wave pushed her back and she struck the wall, but hardly felt it. Then something was gripping her, dragging her upward.

Too weak to fight, Cinder let herself be carried. Her head broke into the air and her lungs expanded. She coughed. Arms wrapped around her. A body pressed her against the wall.

Cinder drooped forward, settling her head against a shoulder.

“Cinder.” A man’s voice, strained and vibrating through her chest. “Stop slacking off, would you?” He adjusted her in his arms, shifting her weight to cradle her in one elbow. “Cinder!”

She turned her bleary eyes up. Catching glimpses of his chin and profile and the wet hair plastered to his brow. She must have been delirious.

“Thorne?” The word stuck in her throat.

“That’s Captain … to you.” He gritted his teeth, straining to pull them toward the shore. “Aces, you’re heavy. Oh, there you are! How nice of you … to help out…”

“Your mouth uses up a lot of energy,” someone growled. Jacin? “Roll her onto her back so her body’s not fighting against—”

His words turned into a sharp yell as Cinder’s body slipped out of Thorne’s hold, sinking into the comforting lull of the waves.