Winter (The Lunar Chronicles 4)

The swell of conversation started to die out, but it was not until Cinder had breached the line of soldiers that she saw the audience to her left.

The orange light flickered in Cinder’s vision and didn’t go off, no matter where she looked. There were a lot of glamours here.

At the center was Levana, seated upon a massive white throne, the back of which was ornamented with the phases of the moon. She was wearing an elaborate red wedding gown.

Cinder’s retina display began to pick up the queen’s underlying features. It was like being at the ball again, the first time she’d laid eyes on the queen and had realized it might be possible for her optobionics to see beneath the glamour. But it wasn’t an easy task. Her cyborg eyes were in conflict with her own brain and the queen’s manipulation, and her mind couldn’t figure out what it was seeing. The result was a stream of confused data, blurred colors, fragmented lines trying to piece together what was real and what was an illusion.

It was distracting, and already giving her a headache. Cinder blinked the data away.

Five tiers of seats arced around the throne, a crescent of onlookers surrounding Cinder on every side except the one that dropped off to the lake. The Lunar court. Women wore large hats shaped like peacocks and one man had a purring snow leopard draped over his shoulders; dresses were made of gold chains and rubies, platform shoes had beta fish swimming in their heels, skin had been painted metallic silver, eyelashes dotted with rhinestones and fish scales …

Cinder had to squint against the dazzle of it all. Glamour, glamour, glamour.

A chair was pushed back. Cinder’s heart jumped.

The bridegroom stood beside Levana’s throne, wearing a white silk shirt with a red sash. Kai.

“What is this?” he said, his tone somewhere between horrified and relieved.

“This,” said Queen Levana, her eyes full of mirth, “is our entertainment for the evening. Consider it my wedding gift to you.” Beaming, she traced a knuckle down the side of Kai’s face. “Husband.”

Kai ducked away from her touch, redness climbing into his cheeks. Cinder knew it wasn’t embarrassment or bashfulness, though. That was all fury. She could feel it in how the air crackled around him.

Levana twirled a fingernail through the air. “Tonight’s proceedings will be broadcast live, so my people can witness and join in the celebrations of this most glorious day. And also so they may know the fate of the impostor who dares to call herself queen.”

Ignoring her, Cinder examined the ceiling. There were no cameras that she could see, but she knew Levana had a way of creating surveillance devices that were practically invisible.

Given that the queen wasn’t wearing a veil, it was safe to assume any video footage would be focused on their “entertainment.” Levana wanted the people to see Cinder’s execution. She wanted them to lose hope for their revolution.

Levana raised her arms. “Let us begin the feast.”

A line of uniformed servants traipsed single file from behind a curtain. The first knelt at the queen’s feet and whisked a dome off a tray, holding it above his head. The queen’s smirk grew as she selected a large, pink prawn and pulled the flesh between her teeth.

Another servant knelt before Kai, while the others surrounded the room and dropped to their knees before the audience, revealing trays of orange fish eggs and steamed oyster shells, braised tenderloin strips and stuffed peppers. Cinder realized that Kai was not the only Earthen in the room after all. She recognized his adviser, Konn Torin, seated in the second row, and the American president and the African prime minister and the Australian governor-general and … She stopped looking. They were all there, just as Levana had wanted.

Heart pounding, she scanned the servants, guards, and soldiers again, hoping that maybe Wolf, too, had been brought before the queen. But he wasn’t here. Cinder, Adri, and Pearl were the only prisoners.

Worry gnawed at her. Where had they taken him? Was he already dead?

She swept her gaze back to Kai. If he had noticed the food, he ignored it. She could see his jaw working, wanting to question her presence, wanting to know what the queen was planning. She could see him trying to reason his way out of this, to come up with some diplomatic angle he could use to keep the inevitable from happening.

“Sit down, my love,” said Levana, “or you’ll be disrupting the view for our other guests.”

Kai sat down too quickly for it to have been his own doing. He turned his smoldering glare on the queen. “Why is she here?”

“You sound angry, my pet. Are you displeased with our hospitality?”

Without waiting for a response, Levana tilted her chin up and swooped her gaze from Cinder to Adri and Pearl. “Aimery, you may proceed.”

He paced to the front of the room, smirking at Cinder as he walked past her. Though his coat had been washed of blood, he was still walking stiffly to conceal his injured leg.

Aimery offered his elbow to Adri, who made a half-strangled, terrified sound. It took her a long time to accept it. She looked like she was going to be sick as Aimery led her to the center of the throne room floor.

All around them, the sounds of chewing and the licking of fingers persisted, as if the delicacies were every bit as interesting as the prisoners. The servants were still on their knees, holding the trays above their heads. Cinder grimaced. How heavy must those trays be?

“I present to the court Linh Adri of the Eastern Commonwealth, Earthen Union,” said Aimery, releasing Adri’s arm so she stood alone on her own trembling legs. “She is charged with conspiracy against the crown. The punishment for this crime is immediate death by her own hand, and that her child and dependent, Linh Pearl, be given as a servant to one of Artemisia’s families.”

Cinder’s eyebrows shot upward. Until now she’d been concerned with her own fate, and it hadn’t occurred to her that Adri may have been brought there for any reason other than to annoy her.

She wanted to not care. She wanted to feel nothing but disinterest toward her stepmother’s fate.

But she knew that, for all her many faults, Adri had not done anything to warrant a Lunar execution. This was a power play on Levana’s part, nothing more, and it was impossible not to feel a tinge of pity for the woman.

Adri fell to her knees. “I swear to you I haven’t done anything. I—”

Levana raised a hand and Adri fell silent. An agonizing moment followed in which Levana’s expression was unreadable. Finally, she clucked her tongue, like chastising a small child. “Aimery, continue.”

The thaumaturge nodded. “An investigation has shown that the two invitations with which Linh Cinder’s accomplices were able to invade New Beijing Palace and kidnap Emperor Kaito had been given them by none other than this woman. The invitations were meant for herself and her teenage daughter.”

“No! She stole them! Stole them! I would never give them to her. I would never help her. I hate her—hate her!” She sobbed again, her shoulders hunched so far now she was practically a ball on the floor. “Why is this happening to me? What have I done? I didn’t … She isn’t mine…”

Cinder was finding it easier not to care.

“You must calm yourself, Mrs. Linh,” said Levana. “We will see the truth of your loyalties soon enough.”