Cress

A bead of sweat fell into Scarlet’s eyes, stinging.

“If she were my pet,” continued the lilting voice, “I could practice on her. She must be easy to control. Maybe I would start to get better if I had such a pretty Earthen to play with.”

The tittering stopped.

The frail voice became even quieter, barely a murmur, that still carried like a gunshot in the otherwise silent room.

“Father would have given her to me.”

Scarlet tried to blink the salt from her eyes. Her breaths were ragged from the strain of trying to take back control of her arms and failing.

“I said that you may have her, and you may,” said the queen, speaking harshly, as if to an annoying child. “But what you don’t seem to understand is that when a queen threatens repercussions against someone who has wronged her, she must follow through on those threats. If she does not, she is inviting anarchy to her doorstep. Do you want anarchy, Princess?”

Dizzy with fear, with nausea, with hunger, Scarlet managed to raise her head. The queen was looking at someone seated beside her, but the world was blurring and Scarlet couldn’t see who it was.

She heard her, though. The lovely voice, cutting through her.

“No, My Queen.”

“Precisely.”

Levana turned back to Sybil and nodded.

Scarlet didn’t have a moment to prepare herself before the hatchet dropped.

BOOK

Four

“When Rapunzel saw the prince, she fell over him and began to weep, and her tears dropped into his eyes.”

Forty-Three

Cress stood to the side of the lab table, clutching a portscreen as Dr. Erland held a strange tool beside Thorne’s face, sending a thin beam of light into his pupils.

The doctor grunted, and bobbed his head in comprehension. “Mm-hmmm,” he drawled, changing the tool’s setting so that a green light clicked on near the bottom. “Mm-hm,” he said again, switching to the other eye. Cress leaned closer, but she couldn’t see anything that would warrant such thoughtful humming.

The tool in the doctor’s hand made a few clicking sounds and he took the portscreen out of Cress’s hand. He nodded at it before handing it back to her. She looked down at the screen, where the strange tool was transferring a jumble of incomprehensible diagnoses.

“Mmmm-hmmm.”

“Would you stop mm-hming and tell me what’s wrong with them?” said Thorne.

“Patience,” said the doctor. “The optic system is delicate, and an incorrect diagnosis could be catastrophic.”

Thorne crossed his arms.

The doctor changed the settings on his tool again and completed another scan of Thorne’s eyes. “Indeed,” he said. “Severe optic nerve damage, likely as a result of traumatic head injury. My hypothesis is that when you hit your head during the fall, internal bleeding in your skull caused a sudden pressure buildup against the optic nerve and—”

Thorne waved, bumping the doctor’s tool away from him. “Can you fix them?”

Dr. Erland huffed and set the tool down on the counter that ran the length of the Rampion’s medbay. “Of course I can,” he said, sounding insulted. “The first step will be to collect some bone marrow from the iliac crest portion of your pelvic bone. From that, I can harvest your hematopoietic stem cells, which we can use to create a solution that can be externally applied to your optic system. Over time, the stem cells will replace your damaged retinal ganglion cells and provide cellular bridges among the disconnected—”

“A-la-la-la-la, fine, I get it,” said Thorne, covering his ears. “Please, never say that word again.”

Dr. Erland raised an eyebrow. “Cellular? Hematopoietic? Ganglion?”

“That last one.” Thorne grimaced. “Bleh.”

The doctor scowled. “Are you squeamish, Mr. Thorne?”

“Eye stuff weirds me out. As does any surgery regarding the pelvic bone. You can knock me out for that part, right?” He lay back on the exam table. “Do it fast.”

“A localized numbing agent will suffice,” said Dr. Erland. “I even happen to have something that should work in my kit. However, while we can harvest the bone marrow today, I don’t have the instruments necessary to separate the stem cells or create the injection solution.”

Thorne slowly sat up again. “So … you can’t fix me?”

“Not without a proper lab.”

Thorne scratched his jaw. “All right. What if we skipped the whole stem cells, injection solution thing, and just swapped my eyeballs out for some cyborg prostheses instead? I’ve been thinking how handy X-ray vision could be, and I have to admit, the idea has kind of grown on me.”

“Hmm. You’re right,” said Dr. Erland, eyeing Thorne over the frames of his glasses. “That would be much simpler.”

“Really?”

“No.”

Thorne’s mouth twisted into a frown.

“At least now we know what’s wrong,” said Cress, “and that it can be fixed. We’ll figure something out.”