Fairest (The Lunar Chronicles #3.5) - Marissa Meyer Page 0,60

could ever hope for.

To the rest of the Macmillan team, for your tireless creativity and constant efforts on behalf of myself and the Lunar Chronicles.

To all of the folks behind NaNoWriMo, for reminding me every year what I’m capable of when I really put my mind to it.

To Tamara Felsinger, Jennifer Johnson, and Meghan Stone-Burgess, for being brilliant yet again.

To Jesse, for making me laugh even when the writing gets all depressing and stuff.

And lastly, to that girl who came to the Cress launch party dressed up as Queen Levana and pretended to kill me with her crazy-long fingernails. Thank you for not actually killing me with your crazy-long fingernails … Your Majesty.

Bonus excerpt from

Winter

The final book of the

Lunar Chronicles

By Marissa Meyer

(coming in Fall 2015)

BOOK

One

She had a little daughter who was as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony wood.

One

Winter’s toes had become ice cubes. They were as cold as space. As cold as the dark side of Luna. As cold as—

“… security feeds captured him entering the AR-Central med-clinic’s sublevels at 23:00 U.T.C.…”

Thaumaturge Aimery Park smiled as he spoke, his voice serene and measured, like a ballad. It was easy to lose track of what he was saying, easy to let all the words blur and conjoin. Winter curled her toes inside her thin-soled shoes, afraid that if they got any colder before this trial was over, they would snap off.

“… was attempting to interfere with one of the shells currently stored…”

Snap off. One by one.

“… records indicate the shell child was the accused’s son, taken on 29 July of last year. He is now fourteen months old.”

Winter gripped her hands in her lap, hiding them in the folds of her gown. They were shaking again. It seemed like she was always shaking these days. She squeezed her fingers to hold them still. Pressed the bottoms of her feet into the hard floor. Struggled to bring the throne room into focus before it dissolved entirely.

The view was striking from the central tower of the palace. From here, Winter could see Artemisia Lake mirroring the white palace back up to the sky and the city that spread to the very edge of the enormous clear dome that sheltered them from the outside elements—or lack thereof. The throne room itself was built to extend past the walls of the tower, so that when one passed beyond the edge of the mosaic floor, they found themselves on a ledge of clear glass. Like standing on air, about to plummet into the depths of the crater lake.

To Winter’s left, she could make out the edges of her stepmother’s fingernails as they dug into the arm of her throne, an imposing seat carved from white stone. Normally, her stepmother was calm during these proceedings, and would listen patiently to the trials without a hint of emotion. Winter was used to seeing Levana’s fingertips leisurely stroking the polished arm of her throne, not throttling it. But tension had been high in the palace since Levana and her entourage had returned from Earth, and her stepmother had flown into even more rages than usual these past months.

Ever since that runaway Lunar—that cyborg—had escaped from her Earthen prison.

Ever since war had begun between Earth and Luna.

Ever since the queen’s betrothed had been kidnapped, and Levana’s chance to be crowned empress had been stolen from her.

Winter tore her eyes away from the queen’s fingers. The blue planet hung above them in an endless black sky, looking like someone had taken a knife to it and shorn it perfectly in half. They were a week into the long night, and the city of Artemisia was aglow with pale blue lampposts and glowing crystal windows, the lights dancing across the lake’s surface and reflecting off the dome’s ceiling.

One week. Yet Winter felt that it had been years since she had last seen the sun.

“How did he know about the shells?” Queen Levana asked, her voice echoing off the smooth surfaces of the throne room. “Why did he not believe his son to have been killed at birth?”

Seated around the rest of the room, in four tiered rows, were the families. The queen’s court. The nobles of Luna, granted favor with Her Majesty for their generations of loyalty, their extraordinary talents with the Lunar gift, or pure luck at having been born a citizen of the great city of Artemisia.

Then, pitifully outnumbered, was the man on his knees beside Thaumaturge Park. He had not been born