Winter (The Lunar Chronicles #4) - Marissa Meyer Page 0,78

the ceiling. Her breaths were ragged. Her head spun. She couldn’t tell her heartbeat from Jacin’s.

Jacin. Whose cheeks were flushed and whose hair was a mess. Jacin, who she had finally dared to kiss. Jacin, who had kissed her back.

But if she’d expected to see desire in his face, she was disappointed. He had frozen again.

“Do me a favor, Princess,” he whispered, his breath warm against her mouth. “The next time someone says they’re going to kill you, don’t just let them.”

She stared at him, dazed. What had he done?

Winter’s knees gave out. Jacin caught her, sliding her down the enclosure’s bars. Her hand landed in something warm and wet seeping out from underneath the short wall.

“You’re all right, Princess,” Jacin murmured. “You’re all right.”

“Ryu?” Her voice broke.

“They’ll think the blood is yours.” He was explaining something, but she didn’t understand. “Wait here. Don’t move until I turn out the lights. Got it? Princess?”

“Don’t move,” she whispered.

Jacin pulled away and she heard the knife being ripped from the wolf’s flesh. The body sagged against the bars. Jacin cupped her scarred cheek, studying her to be sure she wasn’t mid-breakdown, to be sure she’d understood, but all she could comprehend was the warm stickiness soaking through her skirt. Blood was flooding the pathway. Gallons and gallons of blood were suddenly dripping from the glass ceiling, splattering on her arms, filling up the pond.

“Winter.”

She gaped at Jacin, incapable of speaking. The memory of the kiss clouded over with something awful and unfair. Ryu. Sweet, innocent Ryu.

“Until the lights go out,” he repeated. “Then I want you to get your redhead friend and get off this damned game board.” Jacin’s thumbs rubbed against her skin, stirring her from her shock. “Now play dead, Princess.”

She sagged, finding relief in the command. They were playing a game. A game. Like when they were kids. It’s a game and the blood isn’t real and Ryu—!

She scrunched her face against the tears. A sob stayed locked in her throat. Jacin propped her against the cage wall and then his warmth was gone. The heaviness of his boots thudded away, leaving a path of sticky footprints in his wake.

Twenty-Nine

Scarlet’s frown felt etched into her face as she stared down the empty pathway of the menagerie. Winter had gone that way what felt like hours ago, and Scarlet knew no guests were supposed to be in the menagerie this late. Probably those rules didn’t apply to princesses, though. Maybe Winter was getting that romantic tryst she’d wanted, after all.

But something didn’t feel right about it. Scarlet could have sworn she’d heard Ryu emerge from his den, but he hadn’t yet come to see her, as was his normal routine. And she’d heard a noise—something that reminded her of the sound a goat makes during slaughter. Something that sent chills down her limbs, despite the menagerie’s warmth and her zipped-up hoodie.

Finally, footsteps. Scarlet wrapped her hands around the bars.

She knew her suspicions were right as soon as the guard came into view, a knife clutched in one hand. Her heart pounded. Even from this distance she could see darkness on the blade. Even not knowing Jacin, she could read the regret on his face.

Her knuckles whitened on the bars.

“What did you do?” she said, choking back the fury that wanted to explode out of her, but would have nowhere to go. “Where’s Winter?”

His gaze didn’t waver as he came to stand outside her cage, and Scarlet didn’t shrink back from him, despite the knife and the blood.

“Hold out your hand,” he said, crouching.

She sneered. “Do you know what happens to people around here who ‘hold out their hand’?”

He stabbed the point of the knife into the soft moss and, before Scarlet could move, reached for her wrist and twisted so hard a scream of pain arced up her shoulder. Scarlet gasped and her hand betrayed her, opening, palm up. It wasn’t mental manipulation, just a plain old dirty trick.

Scarlet tried to rip her arm back through the bars, but his grip was iron. Changing tactics, she pressed her body against the cage and clawed at his face, but he hovered out of reach.

Dodging a second swipe of Scarlet’s nails, the guard removed his scabbard from his belt and tipped it over. A tiny cylinder dropped into her palm.

He released her. Scarlet’s fingers curled around the cylinder instinctively, her body shuddering back out of the guard’s reach.

“Plug that into the security port of a Lunar ship and it will allow royal