Cress (The Lunar Chronicles #3) - Marissa Meyer Page 0,85

sniffed. His frown deepened. “Where’s Scarlet?”

Cinder grimaced. She had known the question would be coming. She had known that she wouldn’t know how to answer when it did.

His expression darkened. “I can’t smell her. Like she hasn’t been here in … like she isn’t here.”

Dr. Erland pressed a thermometer against Wolf’s brow, but Wolf snatched it away before it could gauge his temperature. “Where is she?”

Miffed, the doctor fisted his hand on his waist. “Now that is precisely the type of jerky movement you should be avoiding.”

Wolf snarled, showing his sharp teeth.

“She’s not here,” said Cinder, forcing herself not to shrink away when Wolf turned his glare on her. She struggled to form an explanation. “The thaumaturge took her. During the fight on the ship. She was alive—I don’t think she was even injured. But the thaumaturge took her aboard the podship. Jacin thinks she needed Scarlet to pilot it.”

Wolf’s jaw went slack. With terror, with denial. He jerked his head, no.

“Wolf…”

“How long? How long ago…?”

She scrunched her shoulders against her neck. “Five days.”

He grimaced and turned away, his face contorting with pain that had nothing to do with his wounds.

Cinder took half a step toward him, but paused. There were no words that would mean anything to him. No explanation, no apology.

So she braced herself for Wolf’s anger instead. She expected fury and destruction. His pupils had narrowed to pinpricks and his fists started to flex. Though Cinder had practiced her mind control sporadically on Jacin and the doctor since they’d arrived in Farafrah, it would be a true test of her abilities if Wolf lost control.

And she could sense it brimming inside him. Fear burning and roiling. Panic writhing inside his chest. The animal straining to be unleashed inside the man.

But then Wolf’s breath hitched and all the fury drained out of him with a shudder. Like a man shot fatally through the heart, he collapsed over his knees, covering his head with his good arm like he wanted to block out the world.

Cinder stood, staring. All her senses were attuned to Wolf, focused on the energy and emotions that clouded around him. It was like watching a candle extinguish.

It was like watching him die.

Gulping, Cinder sank into a crouch in front of him. She considered reaching out and placing a hand on his arm, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It was too much like an invasion, especially when her gift was attuned to him like this. When she was watching him break and crumble in front of her. She longed to put him back together. To take away the vulnerability that didn’t fit him. But it was his right to mourn. It was his right to be terrified for Scarlet, as she was.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But we will find her. We’re trying to come up with some way to get to Luna, and we’ll find her. We’ll rescue—”

His head jolted up so fast that Cinder nearly fell over from surprise. His eyes had brightened again.

“Rescue her?” he seethed, his knuckles turning white. “You don’t know what they’ll do to her—what they’ve already done to her!”

It happened fast. One moment he was a broken man, crumpled over his own knees. The next he was on his feet, grabbing the frame of the bed and upending it against the wall. The medical kit crashed to the floor. The room shook. Crying out, Cinder scurried backward.

Then the chaos quieted, just as suddenly. Wolf froze, teetered on his feet, and fell so hard onto the floor that the hotel trembled from the impact.

Dr. Erland stood above his prone body, empty syringe in hand, glaring at Cinder over his thin-framed spectacles.

She gulped.

“Wouldn’t it be handy,” said the doctor, “if we had someone here with the mental faculties capable of controlling one of his kind when he goes on just that sort of a tirade?”

Hands shaking, Cinder pushed her mess of hair out of her face. “I was—getting around to it.”

“Well. Faster next time, if I might make a suggestion.” Sighing, he tossed the syringe onto the room’s small desk and glowered down at the unconscious man. Blood was beginning to seep through the bandages beneath Wolf’s shoulder blade. “Perhaps it will be best to keep him sedated, for the time being.”

“Perhaps.”

The doctor’s lips puckered, wrinkles creasing down his cheeks. “Do you still have those tranquilizer darts I gave you?”

“Oh, please.” Cinder forced herself to stand, though her legs still shook. “Do you have any idea how many times