“But how will you—”
“Really, Cress. I’ll be fine. Maybe you can take a look at that netscreen, see if you can figure out some way to contact the crew.” He grabbed his shirt from the counter and shook it out, sending dust and sand flying, before pulling it over his head. He retied the bandanna over his eyes. “Be honest. Do I look like a famous wanted criminal right now?”
He struck a pose, complete with dazzling smile. With the messy hair, filthy clothes, and bandanna, she had to admit that he was almost unrecognizable from his prison photo. Yet somehow still heart-throbbingly gorgeous.
She sighed. “No. You don’t.”
“Good. I’ll see about getting us some clean clothes while I’m down there too.”
“Are you sure you don’t need me?”
“I was overreacting before. We’re in civilization now. I’ve got this.”
He was all charisma as he blew her a kiss and left.
Twenty-Nine
Stepping back from the Rampion’s hulking side, Cinder shaded her eyes with one arm and peered up at their slipshod work. Jacin was still up on one of the squeaky metal ladders the townspeople had brought them, painting over all that remained of the ship’s signature decoration—the lounging naked lady, the mascot that Thorne had painted himself before Cinder had ever met him. Cinder had hated the painting from the moment she laid eyes on it, but now she was sad to see it covered up. Like she was erasing a part of Thorne, a part of his memory.
But word had gotten out through the media that the wanted ship had this very specific marking, and that was unacceptable.
Swiping a bead of sweat from her brow, Cinder surveyed the rest of their work. They didn’t have enough paint to cover the entire ship, so they’d opted to focus on the main ramp’s enormous side panel, so that it would at least look like that exterior piece had been fully replaced, which wasn’t uncommon, rather than looking like they had tried to cover something up, which would defeat the purpose.
Unfortunately, it seemed that as much black paint had ended up on the dusty ground and the townspeople, who had come out in droves to help them, than had actually ended up on the ship. Cinder herself had paint dried on her collarbone, her temple, clumped in her hair, and stuck in the joints of her metal hand, but she was relatively unscathed compared with some of their assistants. The children in particular, eager to be helpful at first, had soon made a game of seeing who could paint up their bodies to look the most cyborg.
It was a strange sort of honor. Since Cinder had arrived, she’d been seeing this mimicry more and more. The backs of T-shirts illustrated with bionic spines. Shoes decorated with bits of assorted metal. Necklaces hung with washers and vintage lug nuts.
One girl had even been proud to show Cinder her new, real tattoo—wires and robotic joints overtaking the skin of her left foot. Cinder had smiled awkwardly and resisted the urge to tell her that the tattoo wasn’t cybernetically accurate.
The attention made Cinder uncomfortable. Not because she wasn’t flattered, but because she wasn’t used to it. She wasn’t used to being accepted by strangers, even appreciated. She wasn’t used to being admired.
“Hey, mongrels, try to stay in the lines!”
Cinder looked up, just as Jacin flicked his paintbrush, sending a splatter of black paint at the three children beneath him. They all shrieked with laughter and ran for cover beneath the ship’s underside.
Wiping her hands on her cargo pants, Cinder went to look at the finger painting the kids had been doodling on the other side of the ramp’s plating. Simple stick figures depicted a family holding hands. Two adults. Three children of various heights. And at the end—Cinder. She knew it was her by the ponytail jutting out from the side of her head and how one of the stick figure’s legs was twice as wide as the other.
She shook her head, baffled.
The ladder shook beside her as Jacin clambered down. “You should wipe it off,” he said, unhooking a damp rag from his belt.
“It’s not hurting anything.”
Scoffing, Jacin draped the rag over her shoulder. “The whole point of this is to get rid of obvious markings.”
“But it’s so small.…”
“Since when are you so sentimental?”
She blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Fine.” Pulling the rag off her shoulder, she set to scrubbing the paint off before it could dry. “I thought I was the one giving the orders around here.”
“I hope you don’t really think I’m here just to be bossed around some more.” Jacin dropped his paintbrush into a bucket at the ladder’s base. “I’ve taken enough orders in my life.”
Cinder refolded the rag, searching for a spot that wasn’t already soaked through with paint. “You have a funny way of showing loyalty.”
Chuckling to himself, though Cinder wasn’t sure what he found so amusing, Jacin stepped back and peered up at the enormous black square that now made up the ship’s main ramp. “Good enough.”
Scrubbing away the last bit of the painting—her own amateur portrait—Cinder stepped back to join him. The ship no longer looked like the Rampion she’d come to think of as home. It no longer looked like the stolen ship of Captain Carswell Thorne.
She swallowed the lump in her throat.
All around her, strangers were helping to gather up the painting supplies, scrubbing paint off one another’s faces, pausing to take enormous drinks of water, and smiling. Smiling because they’d spent the morning together, accomplishing something.
Somehow, though Cinder knew she was at the center of it all, she couldn’t help feel disconnected from the camaraderie, the friendships that had been forged over years of being part of one community. And soon, she would be leaving. Maybe, someday, even returning to Luna.
“So. When do we start your flying lessons?”
Cinder started. “Excuse me?”
“Ship needs a pilot,” said Jacin, nodding toward the front of the ship, where the cockpit windows were glinting almost blindingly bright in the sun. “It’s time you learned how to fly it yourself.”
“But … aren’t you my new pilot?”
He smirked. “In case you haven’t noticed, people tend to get killed around you. I don’t think that’s a trend that’s bound to stop any time soon.”
A boy a few years younger than Cinder ran up to offer her a bottle of water, but Jacin took it out of his hand before Cinder could and took a few long drafts. Cinder would have been annoyed, if his words—at once so practical and so painful—weren’t keeping her from feeling anything other than shock.
“I’ll start teaching you the basics after we eat,” he said, passing the bottle to her. Cinder took it numbly. “Don’t worry. It’s not as hard as it looks.”
“Fine.” Cinder finished off the water. “It’s not like I’m busy trying to prevent a full-scale war or anything.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” He eyed her suspiciously. “Here I thought we were painting a spaceship.”
A comm pinged in the corner of Cinder’s vision. From Dr. Erland. She tensed, but the comm was only two tiny words that made her entire world start spinning again. “He’s awake,” she said, mostly to herself. “Wolf is awake.”
Turning away from the ship and lingering townsfolk, Cinder thrust the empty water bottle into Jacin’s stomach and took off running toward the hotel.
Wolf was sitting up when Cinder burst into the hotel room. His feet were bare, his torso still covered in bandages. He didn’t look at all surprised to see Cinder, but then, he would have heard her pounding up the old wooden stairs. Probably smelled her too.
“Wolf! Thank the stars. We were so worried. How do you feel?”
His eyes, duller than usual, flickered past her toward the hallway. He frowned, like he was confused.
A second later, Cinder heard footsteps and turned just as Dr. Erland brushed past her, carrying a medical kit.
“He is still under heavy painkillers,” said the doctor. “Try not to ask too many confusing questions, if you would.”
Gulping, Cinder followed the doctor to Wolf’s side.
“What happened?” said Wolf, his words barely slurred. He sounded exhausted.
“We were attacked by a thaumaturge,” said Cinder. Part of her felt like she should take Wolf’s hand, but the most intimate contact she’d ever had with him before was the occasional friendly punch to the jaw. It wouldn’t have felt natural, so instead she stood just within arm’s reach, her hands fisted in her pockets. “You were shot. We didn’t know … but you’re all right. He’s all right, isn’t he, doctor?”