Cress accepted the hand that pulled her to her feet. She turned to Thorne and gathered her courage to give him a small, non-theatrical kiss on the cheek, but as soon as she bent toward him, blood rushed to her head. The world flipped over. White spots pricked at her eyesight, and she collapsed into the sand.
Twenty-Five
Cinder pulled back the drapes and stepped into the shop, holding the curtain for Jacin as she surveyed the shelves around her. Jars were filled with assorted herbs and liquids, many of them labeled in a language she didn’t know, although if she stared at them for too long her netlink would begin searching for a translation. These exotic ingredients were scattered among boxes of drugs and bottles of pills that she recognized from pharmacies in the Commonwealth, along with bundles of gauze and bandages, pasty ointments, portscreen accessories designed for taking various vital stats, massage oils, candles, and anatomical models. Flecks of dust caught on a few streams of light that filtered in from dirty windows, and a fan spun lazily in the corner, doing little to dispel the dry heat. In the corner, a holograph displayed the progression of internal bleeding due to a side injury, occasionally flickering.
Jacin meandered toward the back of the shop, still walking with a slight limp.
“Hello?” Cinder called. Another curtain hung over a doorway on the far wall, alongside an old mirror and a standing sink that was overgrown with a potted plant.
The curtain swished and a woman ducked through, pulling an apron on over plain jeans and a brightly patterned top. “Coming, com—” She spotted Cinder. Her eyes widened, followed by an enormous smile as she yanked the apron strings behind her. “Welcome!” she said in the thick accent that Cinder was becoming familiar with.
“Hi, thank you.” Cinder set a portscreen down on the counter between them, pulling up the list that Dr. Erland had recorded for her. “I’m here for some supplies. I was told you would have these things?”
“Cinder Linh.”
She raised her head. The woman was still beaming. “Yes?”
“You are brave and beautiful.”
She tensed, feeling more like the woman had threatened her than complimented her. In the moments following the unexpected statement, she waited for her lie detector to come on, but it never did. Brave, maybe. At least, she could comprehend why someone would say that after they’d heard the stories about the ball.
But beautiful?
The woman kept smiling.
“Um. Thank you?” She nudged the portscreen toward her. “My friend gave me this list—”
The woman grabbed her hands and squeezed. Cinder gulped, surprised not only by the sudden touch, but at how the woman didn’t flinch when she took her metal hand.
Jacin leaned over the counter and slid the portscreen toward the woman so suddenly that she had to release Cinder’s hand in order to catch it. “We need these things,” he said, pointing at the screen.
The woman’s smile vanished as her gaze swept over Jacin, who was wearing the shirt from his guard uniform, freshly cleaned and patched so that the bloodstains hardly showed on the maroon fabric. “My son was also conscripted to become a guard for Levana.” Her eyes narrowed. “But he was not so rude.”
Jacin shrugged. “Some of us have things to do.”
“Wait,” said Cinder. “You’re Lunar?”
Her expression softened when she focused on Cinder again. “Yes. Like you.”
She buried the discomfort that came with such an open admission. “And your son is a royal guard?”
“No, no. He chose to kill himself, rather than become one of her puppets.” She flashed a glare at Jacin, and stood a little taller.
“Oh. I’m so sorry,” said Cinder.
Jacin rolled his eyes. “I guess he must not have cared about you very much.”
Cinder gasped. “Jacin!”
Shaking his head, he snatched the portscreen back from the woman. “I’ll start looking,” he said, shouldering past Cinder. “Why don’t you ask her what happened next?”
Cinder glared at his back until he had disappeared down one of the rows. “Sorry about that,” she said, searching for some excuse. “He’s … you know. Also Lunar.”
“He is one of hers.”
Cinder turned back to the woman, who looked offended at Jacin’s words. “Not anymore.”
Grunting, the woman turned to reposition the fan so Cinder could catch most of the gentle breeze. “Courage comes in many forms. You know about that.” Pride flickered over the woman’s face.
“I guess so.”
“Perhaps your friend was brave enough to join her guard. My son was brave enough not to.”
Rubbing absently at her wrist, Cinder leaned against the counter. “Did something happen? Afterward?”
“Of course.” There was still pride on her face, but also anger, and also sadness. “Three days after my son died, two men came to our house. They took my husband out into the street and forced him to beg the queen’s forgiveness for raising such a disloyal child. And then they killed him anyway, as punishment. And as a warning to any other conscripts who were thinking of disobeying the crown.” Her eyes were beginning to water, but she held on to a pained smile. “It took me almost four years to find a ship that was coming to Earth and willing to accept me as a stowaway. Four years of pretending that I didn’t hate her. Of pretending to be one more loyal citizen.”
Cinder gulped. “I’m so sorry.”
Reaching forward, the woman cupped Cinder’s cheek. “Thank you for defying her in a way that I never could.” Her voice turned to steel. “I hope you kill her.”
“Do you carry fentanyl-ten?” asked Jacin, returning to the counter and dropping three small boxes onto it.
Pressing her lips, the woman took the portscreen out of his hand. “I will do this,” she said, slipping around the counter and heading toward the front corner of the store.
“That’s what I thought,” he muttered.
Cinder propped her chin on her metal fist, eyeing him. “I never realized royal guard was a mandatory position.”
“Not for everyone. A lot of people want to be chosen. It’s a big honor on Luna.”
“Did you?”
He slid his gaze to her. “Naw. I always wanted to be a doctor.”
His tone was thick with sarcasm, and yet Cinder’s optobionics didn’t peg it as a lie. She crossed her arms. “So. Who were you protecting?”
“What do you mean?”
Something scraped against the floor—the shopkeeper shoving around dusty bins.
“When you were conscripted to be a royal guard. Who would Levana have murdered if you’d refused?”
His pale eyes frosted over. Reaching past the counter, he angled the fan toward himself. “Doesn’t matter. They’re probably going to end up dead anyway.”
Cinder looked away. Because he’d chosen to join her side, his loved ones could suffer. “Maybe not,” she said. “Levana doesn’t know that you betrayed her yet. She could think I glamoured you. That I’m forcing you to help us.”
“And you think that will make a difference?”
“It might.” She watched as the shopkeeper dug through a bin. A fly buzzed near her head and Cinder batted it away. “So how does one get chosen to be a royal guard anyway?”
“There are certain traits they look for.”
“And loyalty isn’t one of them?”
“Why would it be? She can fake loyalty. It’s like with your special-op friend. He would have shown fast reflexes, good instincts, and some amount of common sense. Match him up with a thaumaturge who can turn him into a wild animal, and it no longer matters what he thinks or wants. He just does what he’s told.”
“I’ve seen Wolf fight it,” Cinder said, feeling compelled to defend him now that Scarlet wasn’t here to do it. The first time Cinder had seen Wolf, he’d been covered in blood and crouched threateningly over Scarlet, although Scarlet had always insisted that he wouldn’t have hurt her. That he was different from the others—stronger.
Of course, that was before Wolf had gotten himself shot taking a bullet for a thaumaturge, moments before Scarlet was kidnapped.
“It’s obviously not easy to do,” she amended. “But it is possible for them to fight against the mind control.”