to be a queen or a savior or a hero.
It would be so simple to let it happen. So simple not to fight back.
Amid the jumbled information clattering through her head, her thoughts landed again on that same quiet moment captured in time.
Kai’s carefree smile at the market.
Huddling in a ball, Cinder cut off the netlink.
The noise silenced. The images and videos snipped to black.
If she didn’t try to stop Levana, what would happen to Kai?
Though she tried to block out the question, it continued to plague her, echoing in her thoughts.
Maybe Dr. Erland was right. Maybe she had to run. Maybe she had to try.
She felt for the prosthetic limbs in her lap and wrapped her hands around them. Lifting her head, she looked up at the grate in the prison door. The guard had never closed it.
A tingle passed down her spine. A strange new electricity was thrumming beneath her skin, telling her she wasn’t just a cyborg anymore. She was Lunar now. She could make people see things that weren’t there. Feel things they shouldn’t feel. Do things they didn’t mean to do.
She could be anyone. Become anyone.
The thought both sickened and frightened her, but the resolve made her calm again. When the guard returned, she would be ready.
As her hands stopped shaking, she slid the stiletto knife out from the new titanium-plated finger and maneuvered the blade against her wrist. The cut was still fresh where she’d started to remove her ID chip before, so they would not be able to track her. This time, there was no hesitation.
Soon, the whole world would be searching for her—Linh Cinder.
A deformed cyborg with a missing foot.
A Lunar with a stolen identity.
A mechanic with no one to run to, nowhere to go.
But they would be looking for a ghost.
Acknowledgments
I’ve been lucky to be surrounded by a wealth of lovely and supportive people who’ve helped me turn a crazy idea into the book you’re holding now.
My deepest gratitude goes to my agent, Jill Grinberg. It’s impossible to express how lucky and honored I feel to be represented by such a rock star. I’m also grateful to the rest of my agency team, Cheryl Pientka and Katelyn Detweiler, for all their work, dedication, and enthusiasm.
So many fathomless thanks go to my editor, Liz Szabla, my publisher, Jean Feiwel, and everyone at Feiwel and Friends. The excitement they’ve shown for Cinder has been truly mind-boggling. I couldn’t have asked for a more amazing group of advocates.
Thanks are due to my online friends, fellow bloggers, and Sailor Moon fandom geeks, who’ve encouraged me every step of the way. In particular, I’d like to thank my early readers for offering input, suggestions, critiques, honesty, support, and the occasional fangirling: Whitney Faulconer, Tamara Felsinger, Jennifer Johnson, Rebecca Kihara, and Meghan Stone-Burgess. Also, thanks to the Circlet critique group for helping me tweak that so-important first chapter into submission, including Naomi Boyd, Dominique Samantha Dulay, Jelena Radosavljevic, and Steve Tara.
I want to send a particularly gigantic thank you to Gina Araner and Jennifer S. De Mello, Ph.D., for helping with my questions on genetics, mutations, and bioelectricity, and filling my head with all sorts of useful vocabulary. I’m also immensely grateful to Paul Manfredi, Ph.D., for his assistance with Chinese honorifics.
Of course, none of this would have been possible without the constant support from my closest friends and family. Mom and Dad, thanks for letting me have all those books when I was growing up, and for letting me sit on the computer and write silly stories during summer vacations when I probably should have been pulling weeds. Big brother Jeff, thanks for a healthy obsession with Star Wars. Sister-in-law Wendy, thanks for appreciating my snark when no one else does. Cousin Lucy, thank you for being a fellow book lover, and for all the wine. Uncle Bob, thanks for taking me and a VW Bug full of teenage girls to anime conventions and instilling in me a hearty respect for cosplay. Best friends Leilani Adams and Angela Yohn, thank you for all the coffee and gossip—, I mean, work-dates.
Finally, thanks to my fiancé, Jesse—who will be my husband by the time he reads this—for bringing me coffee in bed every morning, for telling me to go back to my office when I hadn’t hit my daily word quota, and, mostly, for believing in me. I think it’s safe for you to read it now.
Thank you for reading this FEIWEL AND FRIENDS book.
The Friends who made
Cinder
possible are:
Jean Feiwel
publisher
Liz Szabla
editor-in-chief
Rich Deas
creative director
Elizabeth Fithian
marketing director
Holly West
assistant to the publisher
Dave Barrett
managing editor
Nicole Liebowitz Moulaison
production manager
Lauren Burniac
associate editor
Ksenia Winnicki
publishing associate
Anna Roberto
editorial assistant
Find out more about our authors and artists and our future publishing at macteenbooks.
OUR BOOKS ARE FRIENDS FOR LIFE
A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK
An Imprint of Macmillan
CINDER. © 2012 by Marissa Meyer. All rights reserved.
For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available
: 978-1-4668-0011-3
Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
First Edition: 2012
macteenbooks