Winter

Seventy-Three

“Jacin.” Cinder’s tone was full of warning. “Iko did not sacrifice herself so you could crash us into a crater and kill us both.”

“Calm down. I know what I’m doing,” he responded, pretending to be calm while his heart was a hammer pounding against his chest.

“I thought you said you’ve never driven one of these before.”

“I haven’t.” He banked hard and the terrain-speeder careened to the left, fast and smooth.

Cinder gasped and reached for a bar overhead. A hiss of pain followed—probably her shoulder wound acting up again—but she didn’t say anything and Jacin didn’t slow down.

The vehicle was by far the slickest Jacin had ever piloted. Little more than a risky toy to some rich Artemisian, it hovered close to the rocky, uneven surface of Luna, soaring so fast the white ground blurred beneath them. The roof was see-through, making it feel as if they were out in the airless terrain rather than in a protective vehicle.

Though protective was a subjective word. Jacin had the feeling that if he clipped any rocks, this thing would crumple around them like an aluminum can.

Hell, maybe it was aluminum.

They launched off a cliff and the speeder engaged antigravity mode, keeping them on a smooth trajectory as they sailed over the crater below, before descending toward the other side and continuing on as if nothing had happened. Jacin’s stomach flipped—a product of both the high speed and not quite having adjusted to the weightlessness outside of the gravity-controlled domes.

“Just an observation,” Cinder said through her teeth, “but we have a lot of fragile and important vials in the back of this thing. Maybe we don’t want to crash?”

“We’re fine.” His attention dropped to the holographic map above the controls. Any other day this would have been a daring game, but now they were on a mission. Every spare corner of the speeder was full of antidote vials and every moment that passed meant people were dying.

And one of them was Winter.

A dome appeared on the horizon. Even from here he could see the lines of tree trunks on one side and the clear-cut stumps on the other.

Jacin maneuvered the speeder around a series of jagged rock formations. Cinder adjusted the holograph, repositioning the map so Jacin could see the best route to their destination. Most of the domes were clumped together in groups—both because they had been easier to build that way back when Luna was being colonized, but also so they could share ports that connected them to the outside terrain of Luna and allow for supply deliveries independent of the underground shuttle system.

The barrenness of the landscape made distances deceptive. It felt like hours had gone by since the lumber sector had first come into view, and every moment that ticked by drowned Jacin in anxiety. He kept seeing those soldiers carrying the suspended-animation tank between them like pallbearers. He tried to tell himself that he wasn’t too late. Surely they’d put Winter into the tank because they believed there was a chance to save her. Surely the tank would slow down the disease enough to keep her safe until he got there. It had to.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa—wall!” Cinder screamed, bracing for impact.

Jacin swerved at the last moment, tilting the speeder on its side as he careened along the dome’s exterior curve. The holograph magnified their destination—the dock’s entry flickering in the corner of Jacin’s vision. He considered his timing. Straighten the ship, reduce the propulsion, toggle the hoverblades. He jolted forward against the harness as the speeder slowed.

Slowed.

Slowed.

And dropped. A rock plummeting from a cliff.

Cinder yelped.

The dome and the rocky landscape disappeared as dark cave walls surrounded them. Jacin resumed auto-power and their descent turned from death-defying to gradual, bringing them to a steady, controlled hover. A lit landing strip and holding chamber opened before them and Jacin coaxed the speeder inside.

“I’m never getting into a vehicle with you again,” Cinder said, panting.

Jacin ignored her, his nerves still electrified, and not from the fall. Behind them, the holding door slammed shut, and another door opened, an enormous iron beast. Jacin coaxed the speeder forward, relieved when there was no sign of opposition to stop them.

The holographic map changed from the exterior layout of Luna to a map of this port and the surrounding sectors. Jacin gripped the flight controls, mentally tracing their route up to the clinic where Winter was waiting.

This was where they were supposed to get out and go the rest of the way on foot, hauling as many trays of antidote as they could up into the sectors.

Tearing his attention from the coordinates, he eyed the emergency evacuation stairwell that led to the surface. A sign indicated the nearest domes. LW-12 was the third on the list, complete with a helpful arrow indicating which stairwell would take them there.

Jacin calculated. His thumb caressed the power switch.

“Jacin,” said Cinder, following his gaze. “I don’t think we can—”

Her warning dissolved into a scream.

She was wrong. The terrain-speeder did fit up the stairwell, and he only nicked the walls a few times as they soared upward and emerged beneath the biodome of LW-12. By the time he leveled out, Cinder had slumped into the copilot seat with her hand over her eyes and her opposite knuckles tight around the bar.

“We’re here,” he said, adjusting the holograph again. It guided them beneath the canopy of trees toward the outer edge of the dome where a single street of residences and supply shops encircled the forest.

He noticed the thinning of the trees first, then the staggered shapes of people.

A lot of people.

An entire crowd of people was gathered at the forest’s edge. They were gawking at the neon-yellow terrain-speeder as it emerged from their peaceful woods. The crowd retreated, making space, or maybe afraid of being hit. Jacin lowered the speeder to the ground and cut the power.

His finger reached for the release button.

“Wait.” Cinder reached toward her feet and drew two vials from a rack that was secured there. “We’re no longer immune, either,” she said, handing one to him.

They each tossed back the antidote without ceremony. Jacin was opening the vehicle before he could swallow. There was a whoosh of air as the bubbled ceiling of the terrain-speeder split down the middle and peeled open like a cracked nutshell.

Unsnapping his harness, Jacin hauled himself over the top of the vehicle, landing on a squishy patch of moss. Cinder climbed out not quite as gracefully on the other side.

Jacin hadn’t given much thought to this moment. No doubt there were people in this sector who needed the antidote, but to tell them they had entire pallets of it could lead to a brawl.

Snatching a single vial from a tray that was padded against the back floorboards, Jacin tucked it into his palm and strode toward the crowd.

He’d gone four steps when, suddenly, he was not facing a bedraggled assortment of lumberjacks, but a wall of spears and slingshots and a whole lot of sticks.

He froze.

Either he’d been far too distracted to notice they were all armed, or they’d been practicing for a moment like this. A man stepped out of the crowd, gripping a wooden club. “Who are—?”

Recognition was already pooling in their eyes, though, as Cinder wobbled up to Jacin’s side. She held up both hands, showing the metal plating.

“I have no way of proving to you that I’m not using a glamour,” she started, “but I am Princess Selene, and we’re not here to hurt you. Jacin here is a friend of Princess Winter’s. He’s the one who helped her escape the palace when Levana tried to have her killed.” She paused. “The first time.”

“No friend of ours has Artemisian toys like that,” said the man, pointing his club at the speeder.

Jacin snarled. “She didn’t say I was a friend of yours. Where’s the princess?”

“Jacin, don’t try to help.” Cinder cast him an annoyed look. “We know Princess Winter is ill, along with many of your friends and family—”

“What’s going on out here?”

A familiar face emerged from the crowd, her cheeks dirty and her red curls limp with grease. There were dark circles beneath her eyes and an unhealthy pallor to her skin.

Scarlet froze. “Cinder!” But as soon as she started to smile, suspicion crept in and she held up a finger. “Where did you and I first meet?”

Cinder hesitated, but only for a moment. “In Paris, outside the opera house. I tranquilized Wolf because I thought he was attacking you.”

Scarlet’s grin was back before Cinder had finished speaking. She pulled her into a hug, then cursed and stepped back. Half a dozen wolf soldiers had followed in her wake and were crowding around her like overeager security guards. They looked tame, for the moment, but also like they could tear apart every person in this crowd in all of ten seconds if they chose to.

“Sorry—you shouldn’t be here. Levana—” Scarlet started to cough into her elbow, nearly doubling over with the cough’s unexpected force. When she caught her breath, there were dark spots of blood on her sleeve. “It’s not safe here,” she finished, as if it wasn’t obvious.

“Is Winter alive?” Jacin said.

Scarlet crossed her arms, but not in a defiant way. More that she wanted to hide the evidence of the disease. “She’s alive,” said Scarlet, “but sick. A lot of us are sick. Levana poisoned her with letumosis and it spread fast. We have Winter in a suspended—”

“We know,” said Cinder. “We brought the antidote.”

Jacin held up the vial he’d grabbed from the speeder.

Scarlet’s eyes widened, and those clustered around them stirred. Many weapons had lowered once Scarlet and Cinder had embraced, but not all.

Jacin jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Get some of your muscle to help empty the speeder.”

“And take one for yourself,” added Cinder. “There should be enough for every person who’s showing symptoms, and we’ll make sure to ration extras for anyone who might still become ill.”

Squeezing the vial, Jacin neared Scarlet and lowered his voice. “Where is she?”

Scarlet turned to the soldiers surrounding her. “Let him see the princess. He won’t hurt her. Strom, let’s organize a team to distribute the antidote.”

Jacin had stopped listening. As the crowd parted he could see the daylight glinting off the glass of the suspended-animation tank, and he was already forcing his way toward it.

Here, in the dirt pathway that separated the nondescript medical clinic from the shadowed forest, they had created a shrine around her. Crisscrossed twigs and branches formed a lattice around the metal base of the tank, hiding the chamber that contained all the life-giving fluids and chemicals that were being recycled in and out of her system. Daisies and buttercups were strewn over the glass top, though many had slid off and now littered the ground around her.

Jacin paused to take in the sight, thinking maybe Levana wasn’t paranoid after all. Maybe the people really did love Winter enough that she was a threat to her stepmother’s crown, despite not having royal blood.

The vial grew warm in his palm. All the voices muffled in his ears, replaced with the tinny ring of the tank’s machinery, the constant hum of the life support, a beep from the screen that displayed her vitals.

Jacin swiped his arm across the top, scattering the flowers. Beneath the glass, Winter looked like she was sleeping, except the preservation liquid gave her skin a bluish tinge, making her appear sickly and drawing attention to the scars on her face.

Then there was the rash. Raised rings of darkened flesh scattered across her hands and up her arms and neck. A few had appeared on her chin and around her ears. Jacin focused again on her hands, and though it was difficult to tell with her brown skin and the tinted liquid, he could see a shadow around her fingernails. The last fatal mark of the blue fever.

Despite everything, she still looked like perfection, at least to him. Her curly hair was buoyant in the tank’s gel and her full lips were turned upward. It was like she was going to open her eyes and smile at him, any minute now. That teasing, taunting, irresistible smile.

“The tank has slowed down her biological systems, including the progression of the disease.”

Jacin started. An elderly man stood on the other side of the tank with a mask over his mouth and nose. At first Jacin assumed the mask was to keep him from catching the disease, but then he saw the bruises creeping out from beneath the man’s sleeves and realized it was to keep himself from contributing to its spread.

“But it hasn’t stopped the disease entirely,” the man added.

“Are you a doctor?”

He nodded. “If we open the tank, and your antidote doesn’t work, she will die, probably within the hour.”

“How long will she live if we leave her in there?”

The doctor’s eyes fell down to the princess’s face, then darted to the screen embedded at the foot of the tank. “A week, optimistically.”

“Pessimistically?”

“A day or two.”

Clenching his teeth, Jacin held up the vial. “This is the antidote from Her Majesty’s own labs. It will work.”

The man’s eyes crinkled and he glanced past Jacin. Turning, Jacin saw that Cinder and Scarlet had followed him, though they were standing a respectful distance back.

“Winter would trust him with her life,” said Scarlet. “I say we open it.”

The doctor hesitated a moment longer before moving to the foot of the tank and tapping some commands into the screen.

Jacin tensed.

It took a moment to notice any difference, but then he saw a bubble of air form against the glass encasement as the liquid drained out through the bottom, complete with the quiet sound of it being sucked through some invisible tubing. Winter’s profile emerged above the blue-tinted liquid. The difference was striking, to see the lingering redness in her lips and the occasional flutter beneath her eyelids.

She was not a corpse.

She was not dead.

He was going to save her.

Once the liquid had drained, the doctor tapped at the screen again and the lid opened, sliding off the base on skinny rails, leaving a shallow bed where Winter lay.

Her hair, damp from the gel, had settled in limp clumps around her face, and her skin glistened where the light struck her. Jacin reached for her hands, unlacing her fingers so he could slip his own palm beneath hers. Her skin was slick and the blue tinge around her fingernails was obvious now.

The doctor started to remove the needles and tubes from her body, the life forces that had kept her blood oxygenated without breath, that had kept her brain and heart functioning while she slept in peaceful stasis. Jacin’s gaze followed his deft, wrinkled hands, ready to knock the old man away if he thought he was doing something wrong. But his hands were steady and practiced.

Slowly, Winter’s body began to recognize that it was no longer being assisted. Her chest started to rise and fall. Her cold fingers twitched. Jacin set the vial beside her body and lowered himself to his knees amid the scattered branches and flowers. He placed two fingers against her wrist. The pulse was there, growing stronger.

His gaze returned to her face, waiting for the moment when her eyelids would open. When she would be awake and alive and, once again, completely unattainable.

He flinched. It was all too surreal, and he’d almost forgotten. Winter, crowned with flowers and resting upon a bower of tree branches. She was still a princess, and he was still nothing.

The reminder haunted him as he waited. Memorizing her sleeping face, the feel of her hand in his, the fantasy of what it would be like to witness her still, sleeping form each day.

A footstep padded behind him and he remembered that they had an audience. The crowd was pushing in, not so close as to be suffocating, but closer than he would have liked, given that he’d forgotten they were there at all.

And here he’d been thinking of bedrooms and daybreaks.

Scrambling to his feet, Jacin waved his hand at the crowd. “Don’t you have an uprising to plan or something?”

“We just want to know she’s all right,” said Scarlet. She was holding an empty vial in one hand.

“She’s waking up,” said the doctor.

Jacin swiveled back around in time to see her eyelashes twitch.

The doctor had one hand on Winter’s shoulder, the other holding a portscreen over her body to monitor her systems. “Organs are reacting normally to the reanimation process. Her throat and lungs will be sore for a while, but I suggest we go ahead and give her the antidote now.”

Winter’s eyes opened, her pupils dilated. Jacin gripped the edge of the tank. “Princess?”

She blinked rapidly a few times, as if trying to shake the remnants of oil from her lashes. She focused on Jacin.

Though he tried to stifle it, Jacin grinned, overwhelmed with relief. There had been so many moments when he’d been sure he would never see her again.

“Hey, Trouble,” he whispered.

Her lips stretched into a tired smile. Her hand bumped into the walls of the tank as if she wanted to reach for him, and Jacin scooped it up and squeezed. With his other hand, he lifted the vial of antidote. His thumb unscrewed the top.

“I need you to drink this.”