Scarlet

Kai drew away from the venom in her tone, and couldn’t connect her accusations to his own memories of Cinder. He thought of their paths crossing in the elevator, of her eyes filling with sadness as she spoke of her dying sister. How she’d asked if Kai would save a dance for her in case she miraculously survived.

Or was every memory he had of Cinder truly nothing more than a Lunar trick? What did he know about her, really?

“Are you sure?”

“The reports claimed that the weapon used against the androids was a scalpel, and it all happened just moments after I received the comm telling me that my daughter … my daughter…” Her jaw trembled, her knuckles whitening in her lap. “And I can just see her trying to take Peony’s identity in that inhuman head of hers.” She grimaced. “It chills me to think, but it is precisely something she would have done.”

“And you think she could still have the ID chip with her?”

“That, Your Majesty, I cannot say. But it is a possibility.”

With a nod, Kai stood. Adri and Pearl gawked up at him, mute, before bolting to their own feet.

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Linh-jiĕ. I’ll have a tracker set up for the ID immediately. If she has the chip, we will find her.”

Even as he spoke, he found himself pleading to the stars that Linh Adri was wrong. That Cinder had not taken the ID chip. But that was a stupid wish, an immature wish. He had to find her, and he only had one more day to do it. He had no desire to find out what Levana would do if he failed.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” said Adri. “I only want to know that my daughter’s memory won’t be tarnished because I was once so generous as to allow that awful girl into my family.”

“Thank you,” he started, not sure what he was thanking her for, but it seemed the right thing to say. “If we have any further questions, I’ll have someone contact you.”

“Yes, of course, Your Majesty,” Adri said with a bow. “I only wish to do well by my country, and see this horrid girl brought to justice.”

Kai listed his head. “You do realize that once she’s found, Queen Levana intends to have her executed, don’t you?”

Adri folded her hands prettily before her. “I am sure the law is there for a reason, Your Majesty.”

Pursing his lips, Kai stepped away from the sitting area and led them toward the door.

After two more bows apiece, Pearl glided out of the room with lashes fluttering at Kai until her neck could no longer crane toward him, but Adri paused in the doorway. Bowed one more time. “It was such an honor, Your Majesty.”

He smiled tautly back.

“I do wonder—not that this matters one little bit, but only as a matter of curiosity—should this lead to any discoveries in the investigation … might I be able to expect any sort of reward for my assistance?”

Twenty-Nine

Scarlet’s prison cell had begun life as a dressing room. The vague outlines of mirrors and vanities were burned into the walls and the strips of lightbulbs that had surrounded them had been reduced to empty sockets. The carpet had been pulled up, revealing cold stone beneath, and the solid oak door had been taken off its hinges and left abandoned in the corner, replaced instead with welded iron bars and an ID-sensitive lock.

Scarlet’s fury had kept her pacing and storming about the room, kicking the walls and growling at the bars, for all night and most of the day. At least, it seemed like nearly a full day had passed—it seemed like months had passed—but being trapped in the opera house’s sublevel meant she had no indication of time other than the two meals that had been brought to her. The “soldier” who had made the delivery said nothing when she asked how long they were going to keep her there or demanded to see her grandmother immediately, only smirked at her through the bars in a way that made her skin crawl.

She had finally collapsed on the blanketless mattress, physically exhausted. She glared at the ceiling. Hating herself. Hating these men that kept her prisoner. Hating Wolf.

She gnashed her teeth and dug her fingernails into the worn, broken mattress.

Alpha Kesley.

If she ever saw him again she would scratch his eyes out. She would throttle him until his lips turned blue. She would—

“Finally wore yourself out?”

She jerked upward. One of the men who had first brought her to the cell stood on the other side—Rafe or Troya, she didn’t know which.

“I’m not hungry,” she spat.

He sneered. Every last one of them seemed to carry that same humorless smile, like it had been bred into them. “I’m not offering food,” he said, and swiped his wrist past the scanner. Grasping the bars, he lugged the door open. “I’m taking you to see your precious grand-mère.”

Scarlet scrambled off the mattress, all exhaustion flooding away. “Really?”

“Those are my orders. Am I going to have to bind you or do you intend to come willingly?”

“I’ll come. Just take me to her.”

His gaze dipped over her. Evidently determining she didn’t pose a threat, he stepped back and gestured toward the long, dim corridor. “Then after you.”