Cress (The Lunar Chronicles #3) - Marissa Meyer Page 0,174
determined to find you.”
“Yeah, she knows.”
“And it was you. This whole time, it was you.”
“You’re actually taking this better than I thought you would.”
He dragged both hands down his face. “No, you know, it almost makes sense. Kind of.” He scraped his gaze over her. “Although … somehow, I always pictured the princess … I don’t know. In a dress.”
Cinder laughed.
“And I always thought that when I found her, it would be so easy. We would just … present her to the world and announce her as the true queen, and Levana would crawl away to some hole. I never imagined that Levana would already know. That she would be fighting it.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “I’m beginning to think you may not know your fiancée very well.”
He scowled at her. “That’s it, Cinder. No more secrets. I don’t know if I can survive any more big reveals from you, so if you have anything else to tell me, out with it. Right now.”
Cinder rocked back on her heels, pondering.
Cyborg. Lunar. Princess.
No more secrets. No more lies.
Well, just one.
She thought she might be a tiny bit in love with him.
But there was no way she could tell him that.
“I can’t cry,” she whispered instead, hunching her shoulders.
Kai blinked, twice, then scratched his ear and looked away. “I already knew that.”
“What? How?”
“Your guardian may have said something about it. And I … I’ve seen your medical records.”
“My—” Her eyes widened. “You’ve seen … you know…?”
“You were a fugitive and I needed to know more about you and I … I’m sorry.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. She’d seen the diagram of her cyborg implants. Every wire. Every synthetic organ. Every manufactured panel. Thinking about it made her feel nauseous. She couldn’t imagine what someone else would think when they saw it. What Kai must have thought.
“No, it’s all right,” she said. “No more secrets.”
He took a step toward her. “Your eyes … are they really…?”
“Synthetic,” she murmured, when he couldn’t say the word himself.
“And that’s why you can’t cry?”
She nodded, unable to look up at him, even as he came to stand not two steps in front of her. “I don’t need the tear ducts for lubrication, and they were getting in the way of … um.” She tapped a finger against her temple. “I have a retina scanner and display in my eye. It’s like a really small netscreen, so there’s a lot of wiring. Oh, stars, I can’t believe I’m telling you this.” She buried her face in her hands.
“It’s kind of brilliant,” said Kai.
She nearly choked on her own laugh.
Kai reached for her wrists. “Can I see?”
She groaned, knowing that if she had the ability to blush, her face would be as red as his wedding sash.
Mortified and resigned, she let him pull her hands away and struggled to hold his gaze. He stared into her eyes like he could see through to her control panel, but then, after a moment, he shook his head.
“You’d never even know.”
Trying not to fidget, Cinder raised her eyes to the ceiling, hating herself a little bit for what she was about to do. But what did it matter now? He would never again be fooled into thinking she was human.
“Watch the bottom of my left iris,” she whispered. She turned on the retina display, pulling up a newsfeed she’d been watching before they got to New Beijing—news from the African Union. An anchor was talking, but Cinder didn’t bother to turn on the audio.
Kai dipped his head. It took a moment, but then his lips parted. “There’s … is that…?”
“Newsfeed.”
“It’s so small. Just a dot, really.”
“It looks a lot bigger to me.” A tingle traipsed down her spine at how he was studying her, almost in childish awe, and how he was so close, and how he was still holding her wrists.
He seemed to realize it at the same time. His expression changed suddenly, and she knew he wasn’t looking at the retina display anymore, or even her synthetic eyes. He was looking at her.
Her heart pattered.
Kai licked his lips. “I’m sorry I had you arrested. But I’m glad you’re all right.”
“Really? You don’t hate me for … shooting you?”
His lips twitched and he glanced down. Taking her cyborg hand into both of his, he lifted it between them, eyeing the metal fingers. “I don’t remember that medical diagram saying anything about a gun. My security team probably would have found that to be useful information.”