Winter (The Lunar Chronicles #4) - Marissa Meyer Page 0,201

in water.

“Jacin. I’m sorry that I’m not sort of pretty anymore.”

One eyebrow lifted and he looked like he might laugh.

“I mean it.” Her stomach tightened with sadness. “And I’m sorry you have to worry about me all the time.”

His almost-smile faded. “I like worrying about you. It gives me something to think about during those long, boring shifts in the palace.” Tilting her chin down, Jacin pressed a kiss on top of Winter’s head. Her arms fell away from him.

He stood, giving her an illusion of privacy while he scrounged for more towels.

“Will you stay a royal guard after Selene becomes the queen?”

“I don’t know,” he said, tossing a washcloth at her. “But I’m pretty sure that as long as you’re a princess in need of protecting, you’re going to be stuck with me.”

Seventy-Five

It had grown hot inside the cabinet and Cress’s left leg was tingling from too little blood flow when she finally forced herself to move. She didn’t want to. Uncomfortable as the cabinet was, it felt safe, and she was convinced that the moment she moved someone would shoot her.

But she couldn’t stay there forever, and time was not going to move any slower to accommodate her failing courage. Wiping her nose with the faux butterfly wing, she forced herself to nudge open the door.

The hallway light blinded her and Cress shrank back, hiding behind her arm. She was drained of emotions as she crawled out of the cabinet, peering each way down the servants’ hall.

Her eye caught on a smear of blood not far from the cupboard. Thorne. She flinched away and tried to erase the sight from her memory before it paralyzed her.

Cress pounded life back into her leg and slowly stood. She listened, but heard nothing but distant machines and the hum of whatever heating and water systems were working in these walls.

Steeling herself, she checked that the chip was still tucked in her dress before she picked up the gun. The antennae had fallen off again and she left them in the bottom of the cabinet.

Her stomach was in ropes, her heart in tatters, but she managed to backtrack to the corridor Thorne had mentioned. She paused at the corner, peeked her head around, and drew back, her heart pummeling her rib cage.

A guard was there.

She should have expected it. Would all of the elevators be under guard now? The stairwells too?

Hopelessness seeped into her already-delirious thoughts. They were looking for her, and she was vulnerable without Thorne, and she had no plan.

This wouldn’t work. She couldn’t do it alone. She was going to be caught and imprisoned and killed, and Thorne would be killed, and Cinder would fail, and they would all—

She balled her fists into her eyes, pressing them there until she felt the panic subside.

Be heroic, Thorne had said.

She had to be heroic.

Hardly daring to breathe for fear of drawing attention, she strained to think of another way to get to the fourth floor.

Footsteps approached. She scrambled behind a statue with a missing arm and curled into a ball.

Be heroic.

She had to focus. She had to think.

The coronation would begin soon. She had to be in the control center before it was over.

When the guard had gone, and she was relatively sure she wasn’t going to hyperventilate, Cress lifted her head and peeked around the statue. The hall wasn’t wide but it was crammed full of stuff, from cabinets and framed paintings to rolled area rugs and cleaning buckets.

An idea forming, she used the wall for support as she stood and took a few steps away from the statue. She braced herself, then ran at the statue and shoved her shoulder into it as hard as she could.

Her foot slipped from the force and she landed hard on one knee, clenching her teeth against a grunt. The statue tilted on its base. Back. Forth. Back—

Cress covered her head as the statue toppled toward her, hitting her on the hip before shattering on the floor. She pressed a silent scream into her knuckles, but forced herself to hobble back toward the elevator bank, crawling behind a stack of rolled-up area rugs.

It wasn’t long before the guard came running, darting past Cress’s hiding space.

She shoved down the pain in her bruised knee and hip and scurried out from behind the rugs. She ran as hard as she could toward the abandoned elevators. A yell of surprise echoed behind her. She collided into the wall and jabbed her finger into the call button.