Winter (The Lunar Chronicles #4) - Marissa Meyer Page 0,141

Konn Torin, seated in the second row, and the American president and the African prime minister and the Australian governor-general and … She stopped looking. They were all there, just as Levana had wanted.

Heart pounding, she scanned the servants, guards, and soldiers again, hoping that maybe Wolf, too, had been brought before the queen. But he wasn’t here. Cinder, Adri, and Pearl were the only prisoners.

Worry gnawed at her. Where had they taken him? Was he already dead?

She swept her gaze back to Kai. If he had noticed the food, he ignored it. She could see his jaw working, wanting to question her presence, wanting to know what the queen was planning. She could see him trying to reason his way out of this, to come up with some diplomatic angle he could use to keep the inevitable from happening.

“Sit down, my love,” said Levana, “or you’ll be disrupting the view for our other guests.”

Kai sat down too quickly for it to have been his own doing. He turned his smoldering glare on the queen. “Why is she here?”

“You sound angry, my pet. Are you displeased with our hospitality?”

Without waiting for a response, Levana tilted her chin up and swooped her gaze from Cinder to Adri and Pearl. “Aimery, you may proceed.”

He paced to the front of the room, smirking at Cinder as he walked past her. Though his coat had been washed of blood, he was still walking stiffly to conceal his injured leg.

Aimery offered his elbow to Adri, who made a half-strangled, terrified sound. It took her a long time to accept it. She looked like she was going to be sick as Aimery led her to the center of the throne room floor.

All around them, the sounds of chewing and the licking of fingers persisted, as if the delicacies were every bit as interesting as the prisoners. The servants were still on their knees, holding the trays above their heads. Cinder grimaced. How heavy must those trays be?

“I present to the court Linh Adri of the Eastern Commonwealth, Earthen Union,” said Aimery, releasing Adri’s arm so she stood alone on her own trembling legs. “She is charged with conspiracy against the crown. The punishment for this crime is immediate death by her own hand, and that her child and dependent, Linh Pearl, be given as a servant to one of Artemisia’s families.”

Cinder’s eyebrows shot upward. Until now she’d been concerned with her own fate, and it hadn’t occurred to her that Adri may have been brought there for any reason other than to annoy her.

She wanted to not care. She wanted to feel nothing but disinterest toward her stepmother’s fate.

But she knew that, for all her many faults, Adri had not done anything to warrant a Lunar execution. This was a power play on Levana’s part, nothing more, and it was impossible not to feel a tinge of pity for the woman.

Adri fell to her knees. “I swear to you I haven’t done anything. I—”

Levana raised a hand and Adri fell silent. An agonizing moment followed in which Levana’s expression was unreadable. Finally, she clucked her tongue, like chastising a small child. “Aimery, continue.”

The thaumaturge nodded. “An investigation has shown that the two invitations with which Linh Cinder’s accomplices were able to invade New Beijing Palace and kidnap Emperor Kaito had been given them by none other than this woman. The invitations were meant for herself and her teenage daughter.”

“No! She stole them! Stole them! I would never give them to her. I would never help her. I hate her—hate her!” She sobbed again, her shoulders hunched so far now she was practically a ball on the floor. “Why is this happening to me? What have I done? I didn’t … She isn’t mine…”

Cinder was finding it easier not to care.

“You must calm yourself, Mrs. Linh,” said Levana. “We will see the truth of your loyalties soon enough.”

Adri whimpered, and made some attempt to compose herself.

“That is better. You have been the legal guardian of Linh Cinder for almost six years, is that correct?”

Adri’s whole body was shaking. “It—it’s true. But I didn’t know what she was, I swear. My husband was the one who wanted her, not me. She is the traitor! Cinder is a criminal, and a dangerous, deceitful girl—but I thought she was just a cyborg. I had no idea what she was planning, or I would have turned her in myself.”

Levana ran a fingernail over the arm of her throne. “Were you with