Cress (The Lunar Chronicles #3) - Marissa Meyer Page 0,19
had gathered regarding everyone who had even the most tenuous connection to the missing Princess Selene. Michelle Benoit had been one of their top suspects for someone who had possibly helped to hide the princess.
“Yes, Your Majesty. Linh Cinder would have known her name and her previous affiliation with the European military.”
“So?”
“After retiring, Michelle Benoit purchased a farm. That farm is located near Rieux, France, and it was on that property where the stolen ship first landed.”
“So Cinder went there because … do you think she was looking for Princess Selene?”
“That is my assumption, Your Majesty.”
He jumped to his feet and began pacing. “Has anyone spoken to Michelle Benoit? Has she been questioned? Did she see Cinder, talk to her?”
“I am sorry, Your Majesty, but Michelle Benoit disappeared over four weeks ago.”
He stalled. “Disappeared?”
“Her granddaughter, Scarlet Benoit, has gone missing as well. We know only that she boarded a maglev train in Toulouse, France, en route for Paris.”
“Can’t we track them?”
“Michelle Benoit’s ID chip was found in her home the day she went missing. Scarlet Benoit’s ID chip, it appears, has been destroyed.”
Kai slumped. Another dead-end.
“But why would Cinder go there? Why would she care about finding Princess…” He hesitated. “Unless she’s trying to help me.”
“I cannot follow your reasoning, Your Majesty.”
He faced Nainsi again. “Maybe she’s trying to help me. Cinder knows that if she finds the princess, it could be the end of Levana’s rule. I wouldn’t have to marry her. She would probably be executed for treason. Cinder risked her life going to that farm, and she did it … she may have done it for me.”
He could hear Nainsi’s fan whirring, before she said, “I might suggest the alternate explanation that Linh Cinder’s motives stem from Queen Levana’s desire to have her found and executed, Your Majesty.”
Face flushing, he dropped his gaze to the hand-woven rug beneath his feet. “Right. Or that.”
But he couldn’t shake the feeling that Cinder’s new objective was about more than self-preservation. After all, she’d come to the ball to warn him against marrying Queen Levana, and that decision had nearly gotten her killed.
“Do you think she found anything? About the princess?”
“I have no way of discerning that information.”
He paced around his desk, staring thoughtfully at the vast city beyond his office window, glass and steel glinting in the afternoon sunlight. “Find out everything you can about this Michelle Benoit. Maybe Cinder is onto something. Maybe Princess Selene is still out there.”
Hope fluttered again, brightening with every moment. His search for the princess had been abandoned weeks ago, when his life had become too tumultuous to focus on anything other than keeping war at bay. Pacifying Queen Levana and her temper. Preparing himself for a life at her side, as her husband … and that, only if he was lucky enough not to be murdered before their first anniversary.
He’d been so distracted that he’d forgotten the reason he’d been searching for Princess Selene in the first place.
If she was alive, she would be the rightful heir to the Lunar throne. She could end Levana’s reign.
She could save them all.
Seven
Dr. Dmitri Erland perched on the edge of his hotel bed, with the worn cotton quilt pooling around his ankles. All his attention was on the battered netscreen on the wall, the one where the sound cut out randomly and the picture liked to tremble and flicker at inopportune moments. Unlike the last time a Lunar representative had come to Earth, this time the arrival was being internationally broadcast. This time, there was no hiding the purpose of the visit.
Her Majesty, the Queen, had gotten what she wanted. She was going to become empress.
Though Queen Levana herself would not be arriving until closer to the ceremony date, Thaumaturge Aimery Park, as one of her closest lackeys—er, advisers—was coming early as a show of “goodwill” to the people of the Commonwealth and planet Earth. That, and to ensure all wedding arrangements were being made to suit Her Majesty’s preferences, no doubt.
The shimmering white spaceship with its decorative runes had landed on the launchpad of New Beijing Palace fifteen minutes ago, and still showed no sign of opening. A journalist from the African Union was droning on and on in the background about trivial wedding and coronation details—how many diamonds were in the empress’s crown, the length of the aisle, the number of expected guests, and of course, yet another mention that Prime Minister Kamin herself had been selected as the ceremony’s officiant.