Scarlet

But her grandmother had never suggested she could think the same of Scarlet. You’ll be fine, she always said, after a skinned knee, after a broken arm, after her first youthful heartbreak. You’ll be fine because you’re strong, like me.

Heart thumping, Scarlet lowered her gaze to their intertwined fingers. Her grandmother’s very wrinkled, very frail, very soft hands.

Her chest constricted.

Lunars could manipulate people’s thoughts and emotions. Manipulate the way they experienced the very world around them.

Gulping, Scarlet pulled away. Her grandma’s fingers clenched in a brief effort to restrict her, but then let go.

Scarlet staggered out of her seat and backed against the rail, staring at her grandmother. The familiar unkempt hair in its always crooked braid. The familiar eyes, growing colder as they peered up at her. Growing wider.

She blinked rapidly against the hallucination, and her grandmother’s hands grew larger.

Repulsion ripped through Scarlet. She gripped the railing to hold herself steady.

“Who are you?”

The door at the back of the balcony opened, but instead of her guard, Scarlet saw the thaumaturge’s silhouette in the hallway. “Very well, Omega. We have learned as much as we can from her.”

Scarlet faced her grandmother again. A startled cry was wrenched out of her.

Her grandmother was gone, replaced by Wolf’s brother. Omega Ran Kesley sat staring up at her, perfectly at ease. He wore the same shirt she’d seen him in last, wrinkled and flecked with dried mud. “Hello, dear. How nice to see you again.”

Scarlet glared up at the thaumaturge. She could make out the whites of his eyes, the draping of his fancy tunic. “Where is she?”

“She is alive, for now, and unfortunately remains a mystery.” He squinted at Scarlet. “Her mind remains impenetrable, but whatever her secret is, she has not passed it on to her son or her grandchild. I would think if it was a mental trick she were using, she would have at least tried to teach it to you, if not to that pathetic drunkard. And yet, if it is genetic, could it be a random trait? Or is there a shell in your ancestry?” He touched a finger to his lips, analyzing Scarlet like a frog he was about to dissect. “Perhaps you won’t be entirely useless, though. I wonder how lubricated the old lady’s tongue would become if she were to watch as you hammered needles into your own flesh.”

Fury clawed up her throat and Scarlet hurled herself at him with a ragged cry, nails scratching at his face.

She froze with her fingertips millimeters from his eye sockets. The fury drained away all at once and she collapsed, sobbing uncontrollably on the floor. Wondering what was wrong with her. She reached for her hatred again but it slipped continuously from her mind, like trying to hold on to an eel. The harder she tried, the faster and harder the tears came. Choking her. Blinding her. All her anger dissolving into hopelessness and misery.

Her head filled with self-loathing. She was useless. Weak and stupid and insignificant.

She folded in on herself, her cries nearly drowning out the thaumaturge’s unimpressed chuckle above her.

“How unfortunate your grandmother hasn’t been so easy to manipulate. It would make this all so much simpler.”

Her mind hushed, the destructive words slipping back to a far, quiet corner of her thoughts, and the tears faded away with them. Like turning a faucet on and off.

Like toying with a puppet.

Scarlet lay crumpled on the floor, gasping. She swiped the mucus from her face.

Digging her hands into the carpet, she forced her body to stop trembling and pushed herself up, using the doorjamb for support. The thaumaturge’s face twisted in that sickeningly charming way he had.

“I’ll have you escorted back to your quarters,” he said, his tone all syrupy kindness. “Thank you most humbly for your cooperation.”

Thirty

Alpha Ze’ev Kesley’s hard-soled boots clipped harsh against the marble floor as he marched through the lobby, ignoring a handful of soldiers that nodded to him in respect, or perhaps fear. Perhaps even curiosity at the officer who had spent weeks out in the midst of humans, pretending to be one of them.

He tried not to think of it. Being back at the headquarters felt like he’d awoken from a dream. A dream that had once sounded like a nightmare, but not quite so anymore. He had woken up to a reality much darker. He had remembered who he really was. What he really was.

He reached the Lunar Rotunda—an ironic name that had pleased Master Jael greatly. He passed a mirror, pocked and darkened with age, almost not recognizing his reflection with its clean uniform and hair combed neatly back. He snatched his gaze away.