Standing, Cinder shoved Thorne’s feet off her chair, freeing her path to the door. “He didn’t know I was cyborg.”
Thorne tilted his head as she passed. “He didn’t?”
“Of course not,” she said, marching out of the small cockpit.
“But he knows you’re cyborg now and he still likes you.”
She spun back to him, pointing toward the screen. “You got that from a ten-minute conference in which he said he’s doing everything in his power to hunt me down and turn me over for execution?”
Thorne smirked. In a terrible, snotty voice that Cinder guessed was meant to be a Kai impersonation, he said, “‘I don’t see that her being cyborg is relevant.’”
Rolling her eyes, Cinder spun away.
“Hey, come back!” Thorne’s boots hit the ground behind her. “I have something else to show you.”
“I’m busy.”
“I promise not to make fun of your boyfriend anymore.”
“He’s not my boyfriend!”
“It’s about Michelle Benoit.”
Cinder sucked down a slow breath, and turned back around. “What?”
Thorne hesitated, as if afraid to move in case he set her off again, before inclining his head toward the cockpit’s dash behind him. “Come take a look at this.”
Heaving a sigh, Cinder trudged back toward him. She settled her elbows on the back of Thorne’s chair.
Thorne dismissed the news channel. “Did you know that Michelle Benoit has a teenage granddaughter?”
“No,” said Cinder, bored.
“Well, she does. Miss Scarlet Benoit. Supposedly she just turned eighteen, but—brace yourself—she doesn’t have any hospital records. Get it? Holy spades, I’m a genius.”
Cinder scowled. “I don’t get it.”
Tilting back, Thorne peered at her upside down. “She doesn’t have any hospital records.”
“So?”
He spun the chair to face her. “Do you know a single person who wasn’t born in a hospital?”
Cinder considered. “Are you suggesting that she could be the princess?”
“That’s precisely what I’m suggesting.”
The netscreen turned to a profile and picture of Scarlet Benoit. She was pretty, with pronounced curves and fiery red curls.
Cinder squinted at the image. A teenage girl without a birth record. A ward of Michelle Benoit.
How convenient.
“Well, then. Excellent detective work, Captain.”
Twenty-Five
Scarlet dreamt that a blizzard had covered all of Europe in neck-deep snow. A child again, she came downstairs to find her grandmother kneeling in front of the wood stove. “I thought I’d found someone who would take you in,” her grandma said. “But they’ll never come for you in all this snow. I guess I’ll have to wait until spring now to be rid of you.”