“The barricade.” Cinder sent her flashlight beam into the wall around the iron grate. It would take weeks to dig around it.
“There’s no way through,” said Strom. He was snarling as he looked at Cinder, as if this were her fault. “If this is a trap, it’s a good one. They could kill us all in a heartbeat while we’re stuffed like sausages in these tunnels.”
“Cress was supposed to open them,” she said. “They should have been down by now. Unless…” Unless Cress and Thorne had failed. Unless they’d been caught. “What time is it?”
She looked at Strom, but he had no idea. He didn’t have a clock in his head, either.
Cress was supposed to set all of the barricades surrounding the city to open at once, to keep enthusiastic revolutionaries from sneaking into the city too soon and winding up dead or giving away their surprise. Had Cress failed, or were they early? Kai was still reciting his vows. Cinder shoved down her rising panic.
Strom started to growl. “I smell something.”
The surrounding soldiers turned their noses up, sniffing the air.
“Something synthetic,” said Strom. “Something Earthen. A machine.”
Cinder pressed a hand against the bars, but the soldiers pulled her away, forming a protective wall between her and the barricade. As if she was worth protecting.
Cinder tried not to be annoyed.
Footsteps thumped in the tunnel beyond the gate, growing louder. A kicked pebble skittered along the ground. A flashlight came into view, though the carrier was still cast in shadow.
The beam darted over the gathered soldiers and the figure froze.
The soldiers snarled.
“Well,” she said. “What a menacing bunch you are.”
Cinder’s heart sputtered. “Iko!” she cried, trying to shove her way through, but the bodies blocking her were unshovable.
Iko moved closer and Cinder was able to catch her in the beam of her own light. She gasped and stopped struggling. Iko’s right arm was hanging limp again and there were bullet holes and ripped synthetic tissue and dead wires all over her body. Her left ear was missing.
“Oh, Iko … what happened?”
“More stupid Lunar guards, that’s what happened. He cornered me in the basement of the med-clinic and did this. I had to play dead until he left me alone. Good thing they have no idea how to kill an android here.”
“Iko. I’m so sorry.”
Iko waved her away with her good arm. “I don’t feel like talking about it. Are you being held prisoner right now, or are these bullies on our side?”
“They’re on our side.”
Iko’s attention swooped over the wolves again. “Are you sure?”
“Not entirely,” said Cinder. “But they’re the army Scarlet and Winter recruited and they’re the best we’ve got. They haven’t eaten anybody yet.”
Strom smirked at her around his protruding fangs.
“Iko, what time is it? Shouldn’t the gates be open by now?”
“We’re right on schedule. T minus seventeen seconds, by my—”
The sound of machinery groaned and creaked inside the stone walls. The grate began to descend into the rocky ground.
Iko’s lips puckered. “Cress’s timing is off, not mine.”
Cinder exhaled with relief.
While the grate disappeared, the wolves returned to formation, hands locked behind their backs, chins lifted. It was the most professional Cinder had seen them, making them look more like men than monsters. And very, very much like soldiers.
As soon as the grate was low enough, Iko hurled herself over it and fell into Cinder’s arms, her good hand flopping against Cinder’s back. “You will fix me again, won’t you?”
Cinder squeezed her back. “Of course I will. Broken isn’t the same as unfixable.”
Pulling away, Iko beamed, and the smile was punctuated by a spark flying out of her empty ear cavity. “I love you, Cinder.”
Cinder grinned. “I love you too.”
“Why are we not moving?” said Strom, his voice rumbling through the tunnel. “We grow impatient to shred Levana and her court into tiny, bite-size pieces. We will suck the marrow from their bones and drink their blood as if it were fine wine.”
Iko fixed an uncomfortable look on Cinder. “Good thing they’re on our side.”
Eighty
Wolf had been straining throughout the coronation ceremony. His head ached with the effort, the constant struggle to control his hunger, but he felt like it was gnawing at him from the inside out. Though he had devoured the meat given him, it still raged on. A thousand scents filled his nostrils. Every Earthen. Every Lunar. Every guard and every thaumaturge, each one smelling delicious enough that he couldn’t help but envision sinking his teeth into their flesh, tearing their muscles off their bones, gorging himself on their fat—
The only instinct stronger than his ravenous hunger was the fear of what the thaumaturge would do to him if he misbehaved. He could not stand to be subjected to that agony again. The knife-sharp pain that shot through every muscle and ripped at every tendon.
His mouth watered, but he swallowed the saliva back. He did not move.
His attention locked on the queen. Already Emperor Kaito had knelt before her and accepted the Lunar crown and the title of king consort, to enthusiastic applause, although by the emperor’s expression he could have been accepting a vial of poison.
Now it was the queen’s turn.
The emperor raised the crown of the Eastern Commonwealth and repeated the queen’s speech, ruminating on the political power held by this position, the obligations and duties, the honors and expectations, the symbolism and history contained within that hunk of metal and a hundred glittering jewels.