Cinder peeled her attention away from the foot and met his gaze, speechless. He couldn’t begin to guess what she was thinking. He didn’t even know what it meant that he’d kept it.
The other girl, Iko, cupped her chin with both hands. “This is so much better than a net drama.”
Cinder briefly lowered her gaze to compose herself, then held her hand toward him. “Please, Kai. We don’t have much time. I need your wrist.” Her voice was gentle and kind, and somehow that gave him greater pause than anything. Lunars—always so convincingly gentle, so deviously kind.
Shaking his head, he pressed his vulnerable wrist against his side. “Cinder, look. I don’t know what you’re doing here. I want to believe you have good intentions, but … I don’t know anything about you. You lied to me about everything.”
“I never lied to you.” Cinder stole another look at the foot. “I maybe didn’t tell you the whole truth, but can you blame me?”
He frowned. “Of course I can blame you. You had plenty of opportunities to tell me the truth.”
The words seemed to surprise her, until she fisted her hands on her hips. “Right. And what if I’d said, oh, sure, Your Highness, I’d love to go to the ball with you, but first you should probably know that I’m cyborg. And then what?”
Kai looked away.
“You never would have talked to me again,” she answered for him. “You would have been mortified.”
“So you were just going to keep it hidden forever?”
“Forever?” Cinder waved her arm toward the window. “You are the emperor of an entire country. There was never going to be a forever.”
He was surprised how much the words stung. She was right. There wasn’t room for such absurdity between them—an emperor. A cyborg. Her words shouldn’t have hurt at all.
“What about being Lunar?” he said. “When was that going to come up?”
Cinder huffed, and he could tell she was growing exasperated. “We don’t have time for this.”
“How many times did you manipulate me? How much of it was just brainwashing?”
Her jaw fell open, as if she were appalled he could even suggest it. Then a fire stoked behind her eyes. “Why? Are you worried that you may have had actual feelings for a lowly cyborg?”
“I’m just trying to figure out what was real, and who this person is.” He gestured from her head to her toes. “One day you’re fixing portscreens at the market, the next you’re breaking out of a high-security prison. And now—you’ve disabled my palace security, you’re waving a knife at me, and you’re threatening to tranquilize my chief adviser if you don’t get what you want. What am I supposed to think? I don’t even know whose side you’re on!”
Cinder clenched her fists, but as his angry words settled, her eyes caught on something over his shoulder. The enormous picture window overlooking the Eastern Commonwealth. Her expression became distant. Calculating.
She took another step toward him. Kai flinched.
“I’m on my side,” she said. “And if you want what’s best for the Commonwealth, and this entire planet, you’d better be on my side too.” She held out her hand, palm up. “Now give me your wrist.”
He curled his fingers. “My responsibility is here. I have a country to protect. I’m not running away from that, and I’m certainly not running away with you.” He tried to lift his chin, though it was difficult when Cinder’s glare was making him feel about as important as a grain of salt.
“Really?” she drawled. “You’d rather take your chances with her?”
“At least I know when she’s manipulating me.”
“News flash: I have never manipulated you. And I hope I never have to. But you aren’t the only one with responsibilities and an entire country of people who are relying on you. So I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but you are coming with me, and you’re just going to have to figure out whether or not you can trust me when we’re not so pressed for time.”
Then she raised her hand and shot him.
Fifty-Two
Within seconds of the dart hitting Kai’s chest, his eyelids fluttered closed and he collapsed into Cinder. The adviser yelped and stood, but Iko intercepted him, pressing the man back as Cinder eased Kai’s unconscious body onto the floor.
For a moment, she was paralyzed, her mind reeling from the things she’d just said—at what she’d just done.
“Cinder? Are you all right?” said Iko.
“Fine,” she muttered, trembling as she propped Kai against the table and pulled out the dart. “He’s going to hate me when he wakes up, but I’m fine.” She couldn’t help glancing up again, at the big picture window hung with heavy silk drapes. At her own reflection looking back at her. At the girl with one metal hand and messy hair, wearing the uniform of a servant.
She let out a slow, head-clearing breath, and pulled Kai’s hand toward her.
“What are you going to do to him?”
Cinder paused long enough to look over at the adviser. His face was red with fury.
“We’re taking him somewhere safe,” she said. “Somewhere Levana can’t get to him.”
“And you think there won’t be repercussions for that? Not only for you, but for everyone on this planet. Don’t you realize that we are in the middle of a war?”
“We’re not in the middle of a war, we’re at the very beginning.” She fixed her gaze on him. “And I’m going to put an end to it.”
“She can put an end to it,” said Iko. “We have a plan. And His Majesty will be safe with us.”
Strangely embarrassed by Iko’s confidence, Cinder refocused on Kai’s wrist. She’d cut out so many ID chips in the past weeks she was almost used to it, though the first incision still reminded her of Peony’s limp hand and blue fingertips. Every time.
A thick drop of blood welled up on his skin and Cinder instinctively tilted his arm so that it would roll down his fingers without soiling his white shirt.
“He believes that you’ve found the lost Princess Selene.”
She paused and, after a beat, glanced up at Iko, then at the adviser. “He … what?”
“Is it true? Have you found her?”
Gulping, she refocused on Kai’s wrist. Waited until her hands stopped trembling before she removed the small chip from his flesh.
“Yes,” she said, her voice wary as she fished some clean bandages from her calf compartment and wrapped them around the wound. “She’s with us.”
“Then you also believe she can make a difference.”
Her teeth clenched, but she forced herself to relax as she secured the bandages. “She will make a difference. The people of Luna are going to rally around her. She’s going to reclaim her throne.” Retracting the knife blade, she met the adviser’s glare again. “But if this wedding goes through, it won’t matter. No revolution on Luna is going to nullify a marriage and a coronation. If you give her this power, there’s nothing I or anyone can do to take it from her. And I know that you’re smart enough to see the repercussions of that.” With a sigh, Cinder rolled down her pant leg again and stood up. “I understand that you have no reason to trust me, but I’m going to ask you to anyway. I promise, no harm will come to Kai while he’s with us.”
She was met with silence and a simmering glare.
She nodded. “Fair enough. Iko?”
Iko stooped and grabbed Kai’s elbow. Together, they hauled him up, an arm over each of their shoulders.
They dragged him four, five steps toward the door.
“He has another chip.”
They paused.
The adviser, still seated on the couch, still glaring, sneered as if irritated with himself.
“What do you mean?”
“There is a second tracking device embedded behind his right ear. In case anyone ever tried to kidnap him.”
Allowing Iko to take the brunt of Kai’s weight, Cinder tentatively reached for his drooping head. She brushed his hair out of the way and pressed her fingers into the indent between his spine and skull. Something small and hard rested against the bone.
She nodded at the adviser. “Thank you,” she said, ejecting the knife again.