Cress

“Wh—what are you—how? Where have you been? What’s going on? Why are you wearing that stupid bandanna?”

He laughed. Gripping a wooden cane, he stumbled toward her, waving one hand until it landed on her shoulder. Then he was hugging her, suffocating her against his chest. “I missed you too.”

“You jerk,” she hissed, even as she returned the hug. “We thought you were dead!”

“Oh, please. It’d take a lot more than a satellite plummeting to Earth to kill me. Although, admittedly, Cress may have saved us that time.”

Cinder pushed him away. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“Blind. It’s a long story.”

Her tongue flailed around all the questions stammering to get out, and she finally landed on: “When did you have time to take a mistress?”

His smile faltered. “Don’t talk about Cress like that.”

“What?”

“Oh—wait! You mean Darla. I won her in a hand of cards.”

Cinder gawked.

“I thought she’d make a nice gift for Iko.”

“You … what?”

“For her replacement body?”

“Um.”

“Because Darla’s an escort-droid?”

Slow, gradual understanding. An escort-droid. That would explain the girl’s perfect symmetry and ridiculously lush eyelashes. And the way her presence felt off—because there was no bioelectricity coming off her.

“Honestly, Cinder, to listen to you, people would think I’m a helpless flirt or something.” Tipping back on his heels, Thorne gestured toward the blonde girl. “By the way, you remember Cress?”

The girl smiled uncomfortably. Only then did Cinder recognize her—now with flaking, sunburned cheeks and hair chopped short and uneven.

“Hello,” said Cinder, although the girl was quick to duck behind Thorne and cast her eyes nervously around all the people in the room.

Cinder cleared her throat. “And, Wolf, you’re awake. This is … I’m … er, listen, Thorne—you were spotted in a nearby city. They’re already pulling together search parties. This whole area is about to be flooded with people searching for us.” She faced the doctor. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

“Cinder?”

She tensed. Wolf’s voice was rough and desperate. She dared to meet his eyes. His brow was damp with sweat, his pupils dilated.

“I had a dream where you said … you told me that Scarlet…”

Cinder gulped, wishing she could avoid the inevitable.

“Wolf…”

He paled, seeing it in her face before she spoke.

“It wasn’t a dream,” she murmured. “She was taken.”

“Wait, what?” Thorne listed his head. “What happened?”

“Scarlet was taken by the thaumaturge after we were attacked.”

Thorne cursed. Wolf slumped against the wall, his expression hollow. Silence stole into the room, until Cinder forced herself to stand up straighter, to be optimistic, to not lose hope.

“We believe she was taken to Luna,” she said, “and I have an idea. For how we can get onto Luna without being seen, and how we can find her and save her. And now that we’re all together again, I believe it can work. You just have to trust me. And right now—we can’t stay here. We have to leave.”

“She’s dead,” Wolf whispered. “I failed her.”

“Wolf. She’s not dead. You don’t know that.”

“Neither do you.” He hunched over, burying his face behind both hands. His shoulders began to shake, and it was just like before. The way all his energy darkened and thickened around him. The way he seemed empty, missing.

Cinder took a step toward him. “She’s not dead. They’ll want to keep her for … for bait. For information. They wouldn’t just kill her. So there’s still time, there’s time to—”

His anger flared like an explosion—one moment, nothing. Then a spark, and then, suddenly, he was burning up, raging and white hot.

He reached for Cinder, turning and pinning her against the wall with such force that the netscreen shook and threatened to crash to the floor. Cinder gasped, clamping both hands over Wolf’s wrist as he held her suspended by her throat, feet dangling off the ground. The warnings on her retina display were instantaneous—rising pulse and adrenaline and temperature and irregular breathing and—

“You think I want that?” he growled. “For them to keep her, alive? You don’t know what they’ll do to her—but I do.” In another instant, the fury softened, buried beneath terror and misery. “Scarlet…”

He released her and Cinder collapsed to the ground, rubbing her neck. Over the tumult in her thoughts, she heard Wolf turn and run, his footsteps crashing across the floor, down the hallway toward Dr. Erland’s room.

When they stopped, there was a short silence that filled up the entire hotel. And then howling.

Horrible, painful, wretched howling that sank into Cinder’s bones and made her stomach turn.

“Wonderful,” Dr. Erland drawled. “I’m glad to see you were so much more prepared this time.”

Hissing around the pain, Cinder used the wall to pull herself to her feet, and glanced around at her friends, her allies. Cress was still hiding behind Thorne, her eyes now wide with shock. Jacin was fingering the handle of his knife. Dr. Erland, with his messy gray hair and glasses perched at the end of his nose, could not have looked any less impressed.