Winter (The Lunar Chronicles 4)

Instinct alone prompted her to raise the gun and fire.

The blast knocked Levana away. Cinder didn’t see where the bullet had gone, but she saw a line of blood arc across the back of the throne.

Her vision glazed over, all white and dancing stars. Her body was pain and blackness and hot and sticky with blood. Stars. It wasn’t just in her head, she realized. Someone had painted stars on the throne room ceiling. A galaxy spread out before her.

In the silence of space, she heard a million noises at once. Faraway and inconsistent. A scream. A roar, like an angered animal. Pounding footsteps. A door crashing against a wall.

Her name.

Muddled. Echoing. Her lungs twitched, or maybe it was her whole body, convulsing. She tasted blood on the back of her tongue.

A shadow passed in front of her. Brown eyes, filled with terror. Messy black hair. Lips that every girl in the Commonwealth had admired a thousand times.

Kai looked at her, the wound, the knife handle, the blade still buried. She saw his mouth forming her name. He turned and screamed something over his shoulder, but his voice was lost to her—so loud, but far, far, far away.

Ninety-One

“I told you, I’m fine,” Scarlet insisted, though her tone was weary. “It’s just been a really long few months.”

“‘Fine’?” Émilie screeched. By the way her eyes blurred and her blonde curls took up the screen, Scarlet could tell that the waitress—the only friend she had back in Rieux—was holding her port far too close to her face. “You have been missing for weeks! You were gone during the attacks, and then the war broke out, and I found those convicts in your house and then—nothing! I was sure you were dead! And now you think you can send me a comm and ask me to go throw some mulch on the garden like everything is … is fine?”

“Everything is fine. Look—I’m not dead.”

“I can see you’re not dead! But, Scar, you are all over the news down here! It’s all anyone will talk about. This … this Lunar revolution, and our little Scarling in the center of it all. They’re calling you a hero in town, you know. Gilles is talking about putting up a plaque in the tavern, about how Rieux’s own hero, Scarlet Benoit, stood on this very bar and yelled at us all, and we’re so proud of her!” Émilie craned her head, as if that would allow her to see more in Scarlet’s background. “Where are you, anyway?”

“I’m…” Scarlet glanced around the lavish suite of Artemisia Palace. The room was a thousand times more extravagant than her little farmhouse, and she hated it with a great passion. “I’m still on Luna, actually.”

“Luna! Can I see? Is it even safe up there?”

“Ém, please stop screaming.” Scarlet rubbed her temple.

“Don’t you tell me to stop screaming, Mademoiselle Too-Busy-to-Send-a-Comm-and-Let-Me-Know-You’re-Not-Dead.”

“I was a prisoner!” Scarlet yelled.

Émilie gasped. “A prisoner! Did they hurt you? Is that a black eye or is it just my port, because my screen’s been acting up lately…” Émilie scrubbed her sleeve over the screen.

“Listen, I promise I will tell you the whole story when I get home. Just, please tell me you’re still watching the farm. Please tell me I have a home to go back to?”

Émilie scowled. Despite her hysteria, she’d been a welcome sight. Pretty and bubbly and so far removed from everything Scarlet had been through. Hearing her voice reminded Scarlet of home.

“Of course I’m still watching the farm,” said Émilie, in a tone that suggested she was hurt Scarlet had doubted it. “You asked me to, after all, and I didn’t want to think you were dead, even though … even though everyone believed it, and I did too for a while. I’m so glad you’re not dead, Scar.”

“Me too.”

“The animals are fine and your android rentals are still coming … you must have paid them very far in advance.”

Scarlet smiled tightly, recalling something about how Cress had set up a few payments in her absence.

“Scar?”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Did you ever find your grand-mère?”

Her heart had built up a strong-enough wall that the question didn’t knock the breath out of her, but Scarlet still felt the pang of remembering. It was impossible to keep away the memories of the prisons beneath the opera house. Her grandmother’s broken body. Her murder, as Scarlet watched and could do nothing.

This and this alone was the one thing she dreaded about returning home. The house wouldn’t be the same without her grandmother’s bread rising in the kitchen or her muddy boots left in the entry.

“She’s dead,” Scarlet said. “She died in the first attacks on Paris.”

Émilie’s face pinched. “I’m so sorry.”

A silence crept in, that moment when there was nothing appropriate to say.

Scarlet straightened her spine, needing to change the subject. “Do you remember that street fighter who was coming into the tavern for a while?”

Émilie’s expression lit up. “With the eyes?” she asked. “How could a girl forget?”

Scarlet laughed. “Yeah, well. It turns out he’s Lunar.”

Émilie gasped. “No.”

“Also, I’m kind of dating him.”

The view on the screen shook as Émilie clasped a hand over her mouth. “Scarlet Benoit!” She stammered for a moment, before—“It’s going to take weeks for you to explain this all to me, isn’t it?”

“Probably.” Scarlet brushed her hair over one shoulder. “But I will. I promise. Look, I should go. I just wanted you to know I’m all right, and to check on the farm—”

“I’ll tell everyone you’re safe. But when are you coming home?”

“I don’t know. Soon, I hope. And, Ém? Please don’t let Gilles put up a plaque about me.”

The waitress shrugged. “I make no promises, Scarling. You are our little hero.”

Scarlet clicked off the portscreen and tossed it onto the bed. Sighing, she glanced out the window. Below, she could see the destruction of the courtyard and hundreds of people trying to put it back together.

Artemisia was beautiful in its own way, but Scarlet was ready for fresh air and home-cooked food. She was ready to go home.

A knock sounded at the door and it opened, just a bit at first, Wolf hesitant on the other side. Scarlet smiled and he dared to come in, shutting the door behind him. He was holding a bouquet of blue daisies and looking immensely guilty.

“I was eavesdropping,” he confessed, hunching his shoulders beside his ears.

She smirked, teasingly. “What’s the point of superhuman hearing if you don’t eavesdrop once in a while? Come in. I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

Wolf took another step and paused. He had a slight limp from the bullet that had hit his side, but it was healing fast. That was one thing to be said for the alterations—Wolf had certainly been made to be tough.

On the outside, at least.

He frowned at the flowers, his ferocious teeth digging into his lower lip.

He’d left to go back to the house that morning—his childhood home. Though his mother’s body had already been taken out to one of the great graveyards in the wasteland of Luna, it had been important to him that he see the house one last time. To see if there was anything worth saving there, anything to remember his parents by, or even his brother.