A few steps behind her stood the blond guard, hands clasped behind his back.
Two of Kai’s own royal guards stood at either side of the platform.
That was all. Levana had insisted that no one else greet her at the pad.
Kai dug his nails into his palms in an attempt to keep the sneer from his face, and waited while the heat plastered his bangs to his forehead.
Finally, when the queen seemed to have grown tired of making them suffer, the ramp of the ship descended, revealing silver-furnished stairs.
Two men alighted first—both tall, both muscular. One was pale with wildly unkempt orange hair and was dressed in the same warrior-like body armor and weaponry that Sybil’s guard wore. The other man was dark as a night sky, with no hair at all, and wore a coat like Sybil’s with its bell sleeves and embroidery. His, however, was crimson, announcing that he was beneath Sybil, a second-tier thaumaturge. Kai was glad he knew enough about the Lunar court to recognize that, at least.
He watched the two men as they surveyed the pad, the surrounding walls, and the assembled group with stoic expressions before standing to either side of the ramp.
Sybil slinked forward. Kai swallowed a breath of stifling air.
Queen Levana appeared at the top of the stairs. She still wore her long veil, blindingly bright beneath the relentless sun. Her white dress whispered around her hips as she glided down the steps and accepted Sybil’s hand.
Sybil dipped to one knee and touched her forehead to her queen’s knuckle. “Our separation was insufferable. I am pleased to be in your service once more, my Queen.” Then she stood and with a single graceful motion lifted the veil back from Levana’s face.
The hot air caught in Kai’s throat, choking him. The queen paused just long enough to seem as though she were letting her eyes adjust to the bright daylight of Earth—but Kai suspected she really just wanted him to see her.
She was indeed beautiful, as if someone had taken the scientific measurements of perfection and used them to mold a single ideal specimen. Her face was slightly heart-shaped, with high cheekbones barely flushed. Auburn hair fell in silken ringlets to her waist and her unblemished ivory skin shimmered like mother-of-pearl in the sunshine. Her lips were red red red, looking like she’d just drunk a pint of blood.
A chill shook Kai from the inside out. She was unnatural.
Kai risked a glance at Torin and saw that he held Levana’s gaze without outward emotion. Seeing his adviser’s resolve sent a jolt of determination through Kai. Reminding himself that it was only an illusion, he forced himself to look at the queen again.
Her onyx eyes glittered as they swept over him.
“Your Majesty,” Kai said, folding a fist to his heart, “it is my greatest honor to welcome you to my country and planet.”
Her lips curled. A sweetness lit up her face—an innocence to match a child’s. It unsettled him. She did not bow or even nod but instead held out her hand.
Kai hesitated, staring at the pale, translucent skin, wondering if just touching her was all it would take to destroy a man’s mind.
Bracing himself, he took her hand and brushed a quick kiss against her fingers. Nothing happened.
“Your Highness,” she said in a lilting voice that thrummed along Kai’s spine. “It is my greatest honor to be thus welcomed. Might I again offer my sincerest condolences on the loss of your father, the great Emperor Rikan.”
Kai knew she was not at all sorry for his father’s death, but neither her expression nor her tone hinted at a thing.
“Thank you,” he replied. “I hope everything meets your expectations during your visit.”
“I look forward to the Eastern Commonwealth’s famed hospitality.”
Sybil stepped forward, eyes respectfully averted from Queen Levana. “I inspected your quarters myself, my Queen. They are subpar to our accommodations on Luna, but I think they will be adequate.”
Levana did not acknowledge her thaumaturge, but her gaze softened, and the world changed. Kai felt that the ground lurched beneath him. That the air had been sucked from the earth’s atmosphere. That the sun had gone black, leaving the ethereal queen the only source of light in the galaxy.
Tears pricked at the back of his eyes.
He loved her. He needed her. He would do anything to please her.
He jabbed his fingernails into his palms as hard as he could, nearly yelping from the pain, but it worked. The queen’s control disintegrated, leaving only the beautiful woman—not the desperate adoration of her.
He knew that she was aware of the effect she’d had on him as he struggled to soothe his ragged breathing, and though he wanted to detect cold haughtiness in her black eyes, he saw nothing. Nothing at all.
“If you will follow me,” he said, his voice slightly hoarse, “I will show you to your rooms.”
“That will not be necessary,” said Sybil. “I am quite familiar with the guest wing and can take Her Majesty myself. We would like a moment to speak in private.”
“Of course,” said Kai, hoping that his relief didn’t show.
Sybil led the way, the second thaumaturge and the two guards marching behind. They paid Kai and Torin no heed as they passed, but Kai didn’t doubt they would snap his neck in a second if he made any suspicious movements.
He released a shaky breath when they had gone. “Did you feel her?” he asked, barely above a whisper.
“Of course,” said Torin. His eyes were drawn to the ship, but he could have been staring at Mars for all the focus in his eyes. “You resisted her well, Your Highness. I know it was difficult.”
Kai brushed his hair off his forehead, seeking a breeze, any breeze, but it didn’t come. “It wasn’t so hard. It was only for a moment.”
Torin’s eyes met his. It was one of the few times Kai had seen true sympathy in that gaze. “It will get harder.”
Book Three
“I can’t let you come with us because you don’t have any clothes to wear and you don’t know how to dance.
We’d only be ashamed of you!”
Chapter Twenty-One
CINDER SLUMPED DOWN AT HER WORK DESK, RELIEVED TO finally be out of that stifling apartment. Not only was the air system down—again—with maintenance nowhere to be seen, but the awkwardness between her and Adri bordered on unbearable. They’d been tiptoeing around each other since she’d returned home from the lab two days before, Adri trying to remind Cinder of her superiority by ordering her to defrag their apartment’s entire mainframe and update all the software that they didn’t even use anymore, while at the same time lurking around as if she were—almost, kind of—ashamed of what she’d done to Cinder.
But Cinder was probably imagining that last part.
At least Pearl had been gone all day and had only shown up when Cinder and Iko were on their way out to work on the car.
Another long day. Another late night. The car was going to take more work than she’d realized—the entire exhaust system needed to be replaced, which meant manufacturing a lot of parts herself, which created any number of headaches. She had a feeling she wasn’t going to get much sleep if they were going to have it road ready by the night of the ball.
She sighed. The ball.
She didn’t regret saying no when the prince had asked her, because she knew how badly that would end. Any number of things were sure to go wrong—from tripping on the stairs and flashing the prince a sexy metal thigh, to running into Pearl or Adri or someone from the market. People would talk. The gossip channels were sure to look into her past, and pretty soon the whole world would know that the prince had taken a cyborg to his coronation ball. He would be mortified. She would be mortified.
But it didn’t make it any easier when she wondered, what if she were wrong? What if Prince Kai wouldn’t care? What if the world were different and nobody cared if she was cyborg…and on top of that, Lunar?
Yeah. Wishful thinking.
Spotting the broken netscreen on the carpet, she peeled herself off her chair and kneeled before it. The black screen was just reflective enough for her to see the outline of her face and body, the tanned skin of her arms contrasted with the dark steel of her hand.
Denial had run its course until it had nowhere else to go. She was Lunar.
But she was not afraid of the mirrored surface, not afraid of her own reflection. She couldn’t understand what Levana and her kind, their kind, found so disturbing about it. Her mechanical parts were the only disturbing thing in Cinder’s reflection, and that had been done to her on Earth.
Lunar. And cyborg.
And a fugitive.
Did Adri know? No, Adri never would have housed a Lunar. If she’d known, she would have turned Cinder in herself, probably expecting payment.
Had Adri’s husband known?
That was a question Cinder would probably never know the answer to.
Nevertheless, she was confident that so long as Dr. Erland didn’t say anything, her secret would be safe. She would just have to go on as if nothing had changed.
In many ways, nothing had. She was every bit an outcast as ever.
A white blob caught her eye in the screen’s surface—Kai’s android, its lifeless sensor staring down at her from its perch on top of her desk. Its pear-shaped body was the brightest thing in the room and probably the cleanest. It reminded her of the sterile med-droids in the labs and the quarantines, but this machine did not have scalpels and syringes hidden in its torso.
Work. Mechanics. She needed the distraction.
Returning to her desk, she turned on her audio interface for some tranquil background music. Kicking off her boots, she gripped both sides of the android and wheeled it toward her. After a quick examination of its external plating, she tipped the android over, laying it horizontal so that it balanced on the edge of its treads.
Cinder opened the back panel and inspected the wiring throughout the cylindrical frame. It was not a complicated android. The interior was mostly hollow, a shell for housing a minimum of hard drives, wires, chips. Tutor androids required little more than a central processing unit. Cinder suspected that the android would have to be wiped and reprogrammed, but she had a feeling that wasn’t a viable option. Despite Kai’s nonchalance, it was clear this android knew something important, and after their conversation in the research hall, she had an uneasy feeling it had something to do with Lunars.
War strategies? Classified communications? Evidence for blackmail? Whatever it was, Kai clearly thought it would help, and he’d trusted Cinder to save it.
“No pressure or anything,” she muttered, gripping a flashlight between her teeth so she could see inside the android. She grabbed a pair of pliers and coerced the wires from one side of its cranium to the other. Its configuration was similar to Iko’s, so Cinder felt a familiarity with its parts, knew exactly where to find all the important connections. She checked that the wire connectors were sound, that the battery held power, that no important pieces were missing, and everything seemed fine. She cleaned out the noise translator and adjusted the internal fan, but Nainsi the android remained a lifeless statue of plastic and aluminum.
