and she desperately, desperately wished she could tell him that, yes, of course they had a grand master plan that was guaranteed to work. Guaranteed to rid them all of Queen Levana and her tyranny forever. But there was no guarantee. Only a string of hope, and the knowledge that losing wasn’t an option.
She swallowed, hard. “I have a plan, to end this for good. But I need your help.”
Kai pinched the bridge of his nose. “Cinder. I hate Levana as much as you do. But she’s the one pulling the strings here. She has this army … it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Those little skirmishes that killed sixteen thousand people a couple weeks ago? Laughable compared to what she’s really capable of. Plus she has an antidote to letumosis, and we desperately need it—you know how much we need it. So while the idea of marrying Levana and crowning her empress makes me want to gouge out my own eyes, I don’t have a choice.”
“Gouge out your own eyes?” she said softly. “She could make you do that, you know.”
His expression darkened. “So could you, I’m told.”
She looked away. “Kai—Your Majesty—”
He waved his arms through the air. “Kai is fine. I don’t care.”
Cinder pressed her lips. It felt like a victory, but an unearned one. “You have to trust me. We can defeat her. I know we can.”
“How? Even if … let’s say you did. Let’s say you even managed to kill her. There’s still a whole posse of thaumaturges ready to take her place, and from what I’ve seen, they’re not much better.”
“We’ll choose the person to replace her. We … already have her replacement, actually.”
He snickered. “Ah. I see. Because you think the Lunar people will bow to just any … one…” He trailed off, eyes widening. And, for a moment, his anger was gone. “Unless … wait. You don’t mean…?”
She looked at the floor.
He took a single step toward her. “Did you find her? Princess Selene? Is that what this is all about?”
Cinder took the pliers out of her pocket, needing something to fiddle with while her nerves sparked and sputtered. She remembered that her metal hand was still bare, but Kai hadn’t glanced at it once through the whole argument.
“Cinder?”
“Yeah,” she breathed. “Yeah. I found her.”
Kai pointed toward the cargo bay. “Is it that blonde girl?”
She shook her head, and Kai frowned. “The girl from France? What was her name … Scarlet something?”
“No. Not Scarlet.” She squeezed the pliers, trying to direct all her frazzled energy into them.
“Then where is she? Is she on this ship? Can I meet her? Or is she still on Earth somewhere? Is she in hiding?”
When Cinder said nothing, Kai frowned. “What’s wrong? Is she all right?”
“I have to ask you something, and I want you to be honest.”
His eyes narrowed, instantly suspicious, which bothered her more than she cared to admit. She loosened her grip on the pliers. “Do you really think I brainwashed you before? When we met? And all those times, before the ball…”
His shoulders drooped. “Really? You’re changing the subject to talk about this?”
“It’s important to me.” She turned away and started gathering the tools she’d used to fix Iko. “I understand if you do. I know how it must have looked.”
Kai fidgeted with his ceremonial sash, then, after a moment, pulled it over his head and bunched it up in his fists. “I don’t know. I never wanted to believe it, but I’ve had to wonder. And when you fell, and I saw your glamour … Cinder, do you have any idea how beautiful your glamour is?”
Cinder cringed, knowing that he didn’t mean it as a compliment. Painful to look at were the words he’d used at the time.
“No,” she said, distracting herself by returning each tool to its designated place on the magnetic wall. “I can’t see it.”
“Well, it’s … it was a lot to take in that night. But then, Levana has manipulated me plenty of times, so I know what it feels like. And it never felt like that with you.”
She released the last tool.
“Of course, the media wants to think that’s what happened. It would be convenient.”
“Right.” She glanced at him over her shoulder. “A convenient excuse for inviting a cyborg to the ball.”
He blinked. “For inviting a Lunar to the ball.”
The knot that had been tied up in her stomach for weeks began to unravel, just a little. “Not that it makes a difference what I say, but