A group of nearby Lunars started to titter and cry out in mocking fear, “A bomb, oh stars, not a bomb!”
Kai narrowed his eyes. He didn’t know if the sound had been caused by an explosive or not, but his companion’s fear had given him an idea.
The portscreen Levana had thrown was still on the floor beside the altar. He marched toward it and gathered together the pieces. A couple plastic panels had snapped off and there was a permanent dent in the corner, but it hummed to life when he turned it on.
As the screen brightened, though, it was jumbled and pixilated, full of black spots and broken icons. He cursed, sweeping his fingers over the screen, jabbing at the controls. Nothing changed.
“Your Majesty?” Torin crouched beside him.
Kai held up the broken portscreen. “What would Cinder do? How would she fix it?”
A crease formed across Torin’s brow. “You want to comm for help?”
“Sort of.” He buried a hand in his hair, thinking, thinking. He pictured Cinder at her booth at the market. She would have been surrounded by tools and spare parts. She would have known what to do. She would have—
He hopped to his feet, his pulse racing, and whapped the corner of the portscreen hard on the top of the altar. Torin jerked back.
Kai looked again and let out an excited whoop. Half the screen had cleared.
He opened a comm.
“How did you do that?” said Torin.
“I don’t know,” he said, typing in a hasty message, “but you’d be surprised how often that works.”
A bout of laughter pulled his attention back to the audience. A group of Lunars had formed a circle around one of the servants who had been locked inside with them. The servant girl was dancing, but with jerky, uncomfortable movements. There were tears on her face, even though her eyes were shut and her expression was twisted in an attempt to imagine herself elsewhere. The look made Kai’s heart shrivel in his chest.
Somehow he knew this was not an unusual occurrence for the girl. He wondered if she had ever gone an entire day without someone else’s will being forced upon her limbs.
“That’s not a waltz at all!” a Lunar cried, smacking his companion on a shoulder. “Let me have a try at it. I can make her much more graceful than that.”
“She needs a partner, doesn’t she?” someone else said. “Let’s get one of those Earthens up here and have ourselves a bit of puppet theater while we wait.”
“Hey—how about that sweet young girl from the Commonwealth, the one that’s related to the cyborg? Remember her from the trial? Where is she?”
Kai heard a whimper. Cinder’s stepmother and stepsister were kneeling on the floor between two rows of chairs, clutching each other in an attempt to go unnoticed.
He ripped his gaze away and clipped the port back to his belt. “That’s enough,” he said, stalking toward the group. “Release the servant at once!”
“Ah, it looks as though the pretty emperor wants to dance too.”
The cheers that greeted Kai sounded cruel, but to his relief, no one took control of his body, even as he put an arm around the servant girl and hugged her against his side. She stopped dancing at once and slumped against his body, exhausted.
“You are addressing your king,” he said, enunciating each word. He was glad that he still wore the spindly Lunar crown, even though king consort was not a title that carried much power. He could hope that not everyone knew that, though. “You don’t seem to comprehend the situation. We are all prisoners in this room, each and every one of us. That also makes us allies, whether we like it or not.” He jabbed a finger toward the back wall. “Once Levana realizes she’s overpowered—and she is—she will retreat. And where do you think she’s going to come?”
He fixed his gaze on those closest to him. They were smirking. Humored by Kai’s outrage.
“She didn’t lock us in here for our protection, or because she wanted us to go on having a big party. She’s keeping us here as her reserves. Once her guards fall, you are going to be her next line of defense. She will use your bodies as shields. She will turn you into weapons. She will sacrifice every person in this room and she won’t feel a hint of remorse so long as she survives. Don’t you get it? She doesn’t care about you. All she cares about is having more bodies at her disposal when she needs them.”
The eyes around him still glimmered. It was impossible to tell if his words were having an impact, but he continued, “We don’t have to sit here and wait for her to come back. With your help, we can get out of this room. We can all get down to the royal port where we’ll be safe and where Levana won’t be able to use us to fight her battles.”
A man standing not far away clicked his tongue. “Oh, poor pathetic Earthen king, talking to us as if we are powerless little children who will bow to him just because he wears a crown. We are not allies, Your Grace, nor would we ever stoop to consider ourselves equals with your kind. Our queen may have seen the benefit of making you her husband and crowning you our king, but in truth, you and your companions are hardly worthy of washing the spaces between our toes.”
The room erupted into laughter. The man who had spoken smirked at Kai while his words were rewarded with shouted suggestions of all sorts of other vile things the Earthens were not worthy of.
“Fine,” Kai growled, his tone icy. “Allow me to persuade you.”
Unlatching his portscreen, he pulled up a holographic map of Luna, enlarging it to hang over their heads. The image filled up the space within the great hall, the moon’s cratered surface touching the lofted ceilings. Kai adjusted the map so everyone had a good view of Artemisia Central and the eight city sectors surrounding it. Then he lit up the space fleet that he had ordered to take up position in neutral space earlier that day—sixty ships that had reacted swiftly to his comm. Sixty ships that were making their way toward Luna’s capital.