Winter

Eighty-Two

Cinder’s army surged forward, the civilians pooling through the open gates while the soldiers ran for the fence, scaling to the top and hurling themselves into the gardens on the other side.

The queen did not flinch. Her thaumaturges did not stir.

They had reached the base of the marble steps when Levana raised her hand. Her thaumaturges closed their eyes.

It was a moment of contrasts.

The mutant soldiers, their first line of attack, fell as one. Their enormous bodies crumpled to the ground like forgotten toys, and a hundred men howled from what pain Cinder could only imagine. She had heard such inhuman noises only once, when she herself had tortured Thaumaturge Sybil Mira—driving her to insanity.

The civilians whose minds were protected by Cinder and those who were strongest with their gift pushed forward, heaving themselves over the wolf soldiers as well as they could. But the others began to stumble and halt as the queen claimed them. Many collapsed, their weapons thudding to the ground. Those under Cinder’s control swarmed around them and over them, tripping over fallen bodies, charging forward with weapons raised.

The thaumaturges, Cinder thought, mentally coaxing them toward the distinctive red and black coats. Every dead thaumaturge would equal a dozen soldiers or citizens returned to their side.

But the rush of civilians was met with resistance as the queen’s palace guards formed a wall, dividing the queen and her entourage from the attackers who barreled toward them.

They crashed into one another like a river into a dam. Steel rang. Wooden spears thumped and splintered. Cries of war and pain reverberated down the streets.

Cinder shuddered and moved to step forward, to join the melee and cut her own path through to the queen—but her body wouldn’t move. Her limbs seemed stuck in mud.

Her pulse skipped.

No.

She had not expected—had not thought—

Clenching her teeth, she tried to shake off the manipulation that was being pressed into her thoughts. She imagined the sparks of electricity lighting up inside her brain, the twist of energy as Levana turned her own mind against her. She had always shaken it off before. She had always managed to escape, to be stronger. Her cyborg brain could override the effects of—

A shiver raced down her brain.

Her cyborg brain was broken.

No. No. How could she defend the minds of others when she couldn’t protect her own thoughts from the queen?

She gritted her teeth. If she could free one limb, prove to her body that it could be done …

She groaned and fell to one knee. Her body pulsed with unspent energy and she felt the sudden snap. Her tenuous control over the citizens dissolved. The surrounding howls of pain burrowed into Cinder’s ears.

Within seconds, those allies were taken from her too.

The battle ended before it had truly begun.

Cinder sat panting from the exertion of trying to rid herself of Levana’s mind control, and even still her limbs felt heavy and uncoordinated. The screams of her soldiers dwindled into whimpers and groans of the dying. Even from that brief collision, the iron smell of blood tainted the air.

Levana started to laugh. Delighted and shrill, the sound was as painful to listen to as the screams of a hundred warriors.

“What is this?” said the queen, clapping her hands together. “Why, I had been looking forward to a battle of skill, young princess. But it seems you will not put up the fight I’d been expecting.” She laughed again. Raising a hand, she stroked her fingernails through Wolf’s hair, a gesture that was both endearing and possessive.

“There is an easy treat for you, my pet. Already caught in a snare.”

He growled, his enlarged teeth flashing as he prowled down the steps. The guards parted for him and he stepped over the collapsed citizens as if he didn’t even see them.

Cinder shivered. She had lost count of how many times she’d faced those vibrant green eyes, both as an enemy and as a friend. But never before had she been helpless.

She tried to shake her head. To plead with Wolf, or whatever piece of Wolf was left inside the creature.

“Hey, your queenliness! Over here!”

Cinder’s eyes widened. Iko.

A gunshot ricocheted through the crowd. Levana stumbled. Cinder saw the blood spray on the massive golden doors and there was a moment—the tiniest of moments—in which she was overjoyed. She’d been shot—the queen was shot!

But it was Wolf who roared. Levana had ducked behind him. The bullet had hit near his hip and already his fine uniform was darkening with blood.

Iko cried out, horrified.

Levana snarled and her anger tightened around Cinder and the crowd like a noose. Her control was strangling. Suffocating.

Wolf charged, not toward Cinder, but Iko. She could see it in his eyes, the animal instinct. Attacking his attacker.

Cinder’s stomach roiled. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything. Could hardly even breathe. Her lungs burned, but she was trapped.

Wolf reached Iko while she stood gripping the gun, unsure what to do. His claws swiped at her, tearing more skin fibers from her already-shredded abdomen. She shrieked and scrambled backward, unwilling to shoot him again. He tackled her to the ground. His jaws sank into her synthetic arm and the gun clattered beside her. A wire sparked in his mouth and he let go.

Cinder pleaded with her control panel to wake up, to fight back, to be stronger than her, to win—

“I am Princess Selene.”

The disembodied voice fell over the crowd. Determined. Familiar, yet not.

The dome above them darkened. Like a storm moving in, the glass tinted to near blackness. On the surface, a series of squares brightened. Blue light at first, before the video began to crystallize.

Levana’s voice screeched all around them. “You are an impostor!”

Levana looked up. Her guards and thaumaturges tensed.

“And I am ready to claim what’s mine. People of Artemisia, this is your chance. Renounce Levana as your queen and swear fealty to me, or I swear that when I wear that crown, every person in this room will be punished for their betrayal.”

The throne room came into view, seen from Cinder’s perspective. The servants and the thaumaturges had not changed position. Neither had Kai, in the front row, terrified and desperate.

“That is enough. Kill her.”

Then there was Levana, but not Levana. She was recognizable only by the red wedding gown.

Beneath the glamour, her face was disfigured from ridges and scars, sealing shut her left eye. The destroyed skin continued down her jaw and neck, disappearing beneath the collar of her dress. Her hair was thinner and a lighter shade of brown, and great chunks were missing where the scars had reached around to the back of her head. More scars could be seen on her left arm where her silk sleeve didn’t hide them.

Burns.

They were scars created from burns.

Cinder knew it with absolute certainty.

A wretched scream sent a shock of cold water over Cinder’s body.

“Turn it off! Turn it off!” Levana shrieked. She spun away from the video in the sky, grasping the arms and faces of the thaumaturges nearest her and forcing them to turn away. “Don’t look! Stop looking! I’ll have your eyes ripped out, every one of you!”

Cinder realized she was no longer paralyzed from Levana’s mind control—it was her own shock keeping her rooted to the ground.

It was working. The queen was losing control. She was being forced to see the truth beneath her own glamour, and she could do nothing to stop it.

The video dissolved into a chaos of bullets and screams, blood and bodies.

Levana stared out at the people who were no longer under her control. Her glamour was gone. She was wretched and disfigured and, in that moment, afraid.

A gun fired, but missed. The bullet embedded itself in the palace doors. Someone behind Cinder cursed. Eyes widening, she swiveled her head around. It was Scarlet, her red hair like a spotlight in the crowd. She reloaded her gun and took aim again.

Levana stumbled back two, three steps, then she turned and ran back into her palace, leaving her entourage of shocked thaumaturges behind. Leaving Wolf too, still hunkered over Iko’s body, though she was no longer moving. His focus was on Scarlet, his deformed face twisted in recognition and horror.

For a moment, Cinder found herself immobilized by her own scattered thoughts. She didn’t know what to do. Iko wasn’t moving. She didn’t know if she could trust Wolf. The queen had run, but her path to the palace was still blocked, and there were still enough thaumaturges to control most of the soldiers and the civilians, but everyone was shocked, motionless, reeling from the video—

A howl silenced her racing thoughts.

Cinder gasped, unable to tell where it had come from. She didn’t know if it was one of the soldiers who had joined her side, or if it was one of the other packs Strom had mentioned would soon be surrounding them.

The howl was joined by another, and another. Then everything dissolved into chaos.