Cress

A wolf yipped, sounding both sorrowful and concerned. Scarlet forced herself onto an elbow so she could see the barred enclosure on the other side of the pathway. The white wolf was sitting there, watching her. He howled, just a short, curious sound, not the haunting howls that Scarlet heard in her dreams. She imagined he was asking if she was all right. She might have been screaming or thrashing during the nightmare, and the wolf’s pale yellow eyes blinked with worry.

Scarlet tried to gulp, but her mouth was parched, her saliva too thick. She must be going crazy to be carrying on silent conversations with wolves.

“He likes you.”

Gasping, Scarlet flipped onto her back.

A stranger, a girl, was sitting cross-legged in her cage, so close Scarlet could have touched her. Scarlet tried to push herself away, but the action sent pain rippling through her bandaged hand. She hissed and fell back onto the ground.

Her hand was the worst of it—the hatchet had taken her left pinky finger to the second knuckle. She had not passed out, though she wished she would have. A Lunar doctor had been waiting to bandage the wound, and he had done it with such precision, Scarlet suspected it was a very common procedure.

But then there were also the scratches on her face and stomach from her time spent in the company of Master Charleson, and countless aches from sleeping on hard floors for—well, she’d lost count of how many nights.

The girl’s only reaction to Scarlet’s grimace was a long, slow blink.

Clearly, this girl was not another prisoner—or “pet” as the extravagantly dressed Lunars called Scarlet when they passed by her cage, giggling and pointing and making loud remarks on whether or not it was safe to feed the animals.

The girl’s clothing was the first indication of her status—a gauzy, silver-white dress that had settled around her shoulders and thighs like snowflakes might settle on a sleepy hillside. Her warm brown skin was flawless and healthy, her fingernails perfectly shaped and clean. Her eyes were bright, the color of melted caramel, but with hints of slate-gray around her pupils. On top of all that, she had silky black hair that curled into perfect spirals, neatly framing her high cheekbones and ruby-red lips.

She was the most beautiful human being Scarlet had ever seen.

Yet, there was one anomaly. Or—three. The right side of the girl’s face was marred by three scars that cut down her cheek from the corner of her eye to her jaw. Like perpetual tears. Strangely, the flaws on her skin didn’t reduce her beauty, but almost accentuated it. Almost compelled a person to stare at her longer, unable to peel their eyes away.

It was with this thought that Scarlet realized it was a glamour. Which meant this was another trick.

Her expression changed from awestruck and blushing—she despised that she was actually blushing—to resentful.

The girl blinked again, drawing attention to her impossibly long, impossibly thick eyelashes.

“Ryu and I are confused,” she said. “Was it a very bad dream? Or a very good one?”

Scarlet scowled. The dream had already begun to wisp away, as dreams do, but the question reignited the memory of Wolf and her grandmother before her. Alive and safe.

Which was a cruel joke. Her grandmother was dead, and last she’d seen Wolf, he’d been under the control of a thaumaturge.

“Who are you? And who’s Ryu?”

The girl smiled. It was both warm and conspiratorial and it made Scarlet shiver.

Stupid Lunars and their stupid glamours.

“Ryu is the wolf, silly. You’ve been neighbors for four days now, you know. I’m surprised he hasn’t officially introduced himself.” Then she leaned forward, dropping her voice to a whisper as if she were about to share a closely guarded secret. “As for me, I am your new best friend. But don’t tell anyone, because they all think that I’m your master now, and that you are my pet. They don’t know that my pets are really my dearest friends. We shall fool them all, you and I.”

Scarlet squinted at her. She recognized the girl’s voice now, the way she danced through her sentences like each word had to be coaxed off her tongue. This was the girl who had spoken during Scarlet’s interrogation.

The girl reached for a strand of filthy hair that had fallen across Scarlet’s cheek. Scarlet tensed.

“Your hair is like burning. Does it smell like smoke?” Bending over, the girl pressed the hair against her nose and inhaled. “Not at all. That’s good. I wouldn’t want you to catch fire.”

The girl sat up just as suddenly, pulling a basket toward her that Scarlet hadn’t noticed before. It looked like a picnic basket, lined with the same silvery material as her dress.

“I thought today we could play doctor and patient. You’ll be the patient.” She removed a device from the basket and pressed it against Scarlet’s forehead. It beeped and she checked the small screen. “You’re not running a fever. Here, let me check your tonsils.” She held a thin piece of plastic toward Scarlet’s mouth.