Cinder (25 page)

Cinder pressed her back into the pillar, nerves humming. “But—I thought every citizen in the city was invited.”

“Indeed, they are.” The man grinned, looking almost gleeful at the prospect of
dis
inviting the girl before him. “But we must ensure that we are receiving those who responded to their invitations. It’s a security measure.”

Gulping, Cinder glanced out toward the dance floor. Kai was still being hounded by Pearl, and now Cinder could see Adri hovering not far off, looking primed to jump into the conversation should Pearl say anything to embarrass her. Pearl had not dropped her shy, flirtatious charm. She stood with her head bowed and one hand gingerly pressed against her collarbone.

Kai still looked perplexed.

Goose bumps racing up her arms, Cinder turned back to the courtier and attempted to channel Peony’s cheerful innocence. “Of course,” she said. Holding her breath, she stretched out her arm. She was concocting a number of excuses, justifications—her RSVP must have gotten mixed up with someone else’s, or perhaps there was confusion as her stepmother and sister had already arrived without her, or—

“Ah!” The man jolted, his eyes staring at the small screen.

Cinder tensed, wondering what her chances were of knocking him out with a quick blow to the head without any of those guards noticing.

His bewildered eyes took another turn over her dress, her hair, and then returned to his screen. She could see the internal struggle as his smile slowly turned up, attempting politeness. “Why, Linh-mèi, what a pleasure. We are so glad you could join us tonight.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “You are?”

The man gave her a stiff bow. “Please forgive my ignorance. I’m sure His Imperial Majesty will be glad you’ve arrived. Please, step this way, and I will have you announced.”

She blinked, dumbly following his arm as he stepped toward the stairs. “Have me what?”

He tapped something into his portscreen, before glancing back at Cinder. His gaze swooped over her again as if he couldn’t believe what he was about to do, but his polite smile didn’t fade. “All personal guests of His Imperial Majesty are duly announced, as recognition of their import. Of course, they don’t usually arrive so…late.”

“Wait. Personal guests of…oh. Oh! No, no, you don’t have to—”

She was silenced by the blare of recorded trumpets through invisible overhead speakers. She ducked at the sound, eyes widening, as the short melody faded. At the last trill of the horns, a majestic voice boomed through the ball room.

“
Please welcome to the 126th Annual Ball of the Eastern Commonwealth, a personal guest of His Imperial Majesty: Linh Cinder of New Beijing.
”

THE BALLROOM TEMPERATURE SPIKED AS HUNDREDS OF
faces turned toward Cinder.

Perhaps the crowd would have turned away a moment later, indifferent, if they hadn’t found the emperor’s personal guest to be a girl with damp hair and mud splatters on the hem of her wrinkled silver dress. As it was, the gazes halted, pinning Cinder to the top of the stairs. Her mismatched feet stuck to the landing as if concrete had hardened around them.

She looked at Kai, his jaw hanging as he took her in.

He’d expected her to come the entire time. He’d reserved a spot for her as his personal guest. She could only imagine how he was regretting that decision now.

Beside him, Pearl’s face had begun to burn beneath the glowing chandeliers. Cinder looked at her stepsister, at Adri, took in their speechless mortification, and reminded herself to breathe.

It was already over for her.

Pearl had almost certainly told Kai that she was cyborg.

Soon, Queen Levana would see her too and know she was Lunar. She would be taken, maybe killed. There was nothing she could do about it now.

But she had taken the risk. She had made the decision to come.

It would not go to waste.

She squared her shoulders. Lifted her chin.

Gathering up the full silk skirt, she fixed her gaze on Kai and made her way slowly down the steps.

His eyes softened into something almost like amusement, as if such a ragged appearance was all one could expect from a renowned mechanic.

A murmur rippled through the crowd and as the heel of Cinder’s boot hit the marble floor with forced precision, the sea of gowns began to shuffle aside. Women whispered behind their hands. Men craned their necks to catch the hushed gossip.

Even the servants had stopped to watch her, holding trays of delicacies aloft. The scent of garlic and ginger clouded around them, twisting Cinder’s stomach into knots. She realized suddenly how famished she was. All the preparations for running away had left little time for eating. Coupled with her anxiety, it almost made her feel faint. She did her best to ignore it, to be strong, but nervousness was expanding through her taut muscles with every step. Her pulse was a drumbeat inside her head.

Every eye swept over her, mocking her. Every head turned to whisper, rumors already taking flight. Cinder’s ears rang, picking snatches of conversation—A
personal guest? But who is she?
And what is that stuff on her dress?
—until Cinder adjusted the audio interface, silencing the words.

Never in her life had she been so glad she could not blush.

Kai’s lips twitched, and though he still looked baffled, he did not look angry or disgusted. Cinder gulped. As she got nearer, her arms burned to wrap around herself, to cover her filthy, wrinkled, water-stained dress as best she could, but she didn’t allow them. It would have been futile, and Kai didn’t care about her dress.

If anything, he was probably trying to discern how much of her was metal and silicon.

She kept her head high, even as her eyes stung, even as panic filled her vision with warnings and precautions.

It was not her fault he had liked her.

It was not her fault she was cyborg.

She would not apologize.

She focused only on walking, one thudding step after another, as the crowd parted before her, then closed again in her wake.

But before she reached the emperor, a figure pushed out of the crowd and into her path. Cinder froze, halted by the seething glare of her stepmother.

She blinked, dumbfounded, as reality stumbled in on the still, silent moment. She’d forgotten that Adri and Pearl were there.

Blotchy red cheeks showed through Adri’s translucent white makeup, and her chest was heaving beneath the modest neckline of her kimono. The confused tittering hushed, pushing the questions toward those in the back of the crowd who couldn’t see what was happening but could no doubt feel the tension expanding around them.

Adri’s hand snatched forward, capturing Cinder’s skirt in her fist. She shook the material. “Where did you get this?” she hissed, her voice low as if she were afraid of causing more of a scene than Cinder already had.

Setting her jaw, Cinder stepped back, whipping the dress away from her stepmother. “Iko saved the dress. Peony would have wanted me to have it.”

Behind her mother, Pearl gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. Cinder glanced at her and found Pearl looking down at her feet with horror.

Cinder shuddered, imagining her cyborg leg visible for all to see, until Pearl pointed at her feet and shrieked, “My boots! Those are my boots! On
her
!”

Adri’s eyes narrowed. “You little
thief.
How dare you come here and make a mockery of this family.” She jutted her finger over Cinder’s shoulder toward the grand staircase. “I command you to go home this instant before you embarrass me further.”

“No,” she said, clenching her fists. “I have as much right to be here as you do.”

“What?
You?
” Adri’s voice started to rise. “But you’re nothing but a—” She caught her tongue, even now unwilling to share the mortifying secret about her stepdaughter. Instead, she raised her hand over her shoulder, palm flat.

The crowd gasped and Cinder flinched, but the strike did not come.

Kai stood beside her stepmother, one hand firmly wrapped around Adri’s wrist. Adri turned to him, her face burning with anger, but the look quickly fell away.

She shriveled back, stammering. “Your Majesty!”

“That is enough,” he said, his voice gentle but stern, and released her. Adri shrank into a pathetic curtsy, head bobbing.

“I am so sorry, Your Majesty. My emotions—my temper—this girl is…I am sorry she has interrupted…she is my ward—she should not be here…”

“Of course, she should.” There was a lightness to his words, as if he believed his presence alone could dissolve Adri’s hostility. He fixed his gaze on Cinder. “She is my personal guest.”

He glanced around over the heads of the shocked audience, toward the stage where the symphony had gone silent. “This is a night for celebration and amusement,” he said loudly. “Please, let the dancing resume.”

The band started, shakily at first, until music again filled the ballroom—Cinder could not recall when it had died out, but her hearing was still dulled to the swarming noise around her.

Kai was looking at her again. She gulped and found that she was shaking—with anger and terror and nerves and the sensation of being captured by his brown eyes. Her mind was blank, not sure if she wanted to thank him or turn away and keep yelling at her stepmother, but he didn’t give her a chance to do either.

Kai reached forward and took her hand, and before she realized what was happening, he had plucked her away from her stepmother and stepsister and taken her into his arms.

They were dancing.

Heart hammering, Cinder pried her gaze away from him and looked over his shoulder.

They were the only ones dancing.

Kai must have noticed it too, for he floated his hand briefly away from her waist, gesturing to the gawking crowd, and said in a tone that was part encouragement, part command, “Please, you are my guests. Enjoy the music.”

Awkwardly, those nearby traded glances with their own partners, and soon the floor was filling with bustled skirts and coattails. Cinder risked glancing toward where they had abandoned Adri and Pearl—they were both standing still amid the shuffling crowd, watching as Kai expertly guided Cinder farther and farther away from them.

Clearing his throat, Kai murmured, “You have no idea how to dance, do you?”

Cinder fixed her gaze on him, mind still reeling. “I’m a
mechanic.
”

His eyebrows raised mockingly. “Believe me, I noticed. Are those grease stains on the gloves I gave you?”

Mortified, she glanced at their intertwined fingers and the black smudges on the white silk gloves. Before she could apologize, she felt herself being gently pushed away and spun beneath his arm. She gasped, for a moment feeling light as a butterfly, before she stumbled on her undersized cyborg foot and fell back into his embrace.

Kai grinned, coaxing her back to arm’s length, but he didn’t tease her. “So. That’s your stepmother.”

“Legal guardian.”

“Right, my mistake. She seems like a real treasure.”

Cinder scoffed and her body started to ease. Without sensation in her foot, it felt like trying to dance with a ball of iron soldered to her ankle. Her leg was beginning to ache from carrying it, but she resisted the urge to limp, picturing ever-graceful Pearl in her ball gown and heels, and wished her body into conformity.

At least her body seemed to be memorizing the pattern of the dance steps, making each movement slightly more fluid than the last, until she almost felt as if she knew what she were doing. Of course, the tender pressure of Kai’s hand on her waist didn’t hurt.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “About her, and my stepsister. Can you believe they think
I’m
the embarrassment?” She made it sound like a joke, but she couldn’t help analyzing his response, bracing for that moment when he asked her if it were true.

If she really were cyborg.

Then, as his smile started to crumble, she realized the moment had come far too soon, and she desperately wished she could take the comment back. She wished they could go on pretending forever that her secret was still safe. That he still did not know.

That he still wanted her to be his personal guest.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kai said, his voice lowering even though the noise of laughter and tapping heels had filled the air around them.

Cinder opened her mouth, but her words snagged in her throat. She wanted to refute Pearl’s claim, to call her a liar. But what would that get her? More lies. More betrayal. The fingers of her metal hand tightened on his shoulder, the hard, unforgiving confines of the limb. He didn’t flinch, just waited.

She wanted to feel relief now that they had no more secrets. But that wasn’t entirely true either. He still didn’t know she was Lunar.

She opened her mouth again, unsure what she was going to say until the faint words came to her. “I didn’t know how.”

Kai’s eyes softened, little wrinkles forming in their corners.

“I would have understood,” he said.

Almost imperceptibly, he inched closer, and Cinder found her elbow crawling up his shoulder in a way that felt impossibly natural. Still, he did not back away. Did not shudder or tense.

He knew, but he wasn’t disgusted? He would still touch her? Somehow, unbelievably, he still even, maybe, liked her?

She felt she would have cried if it had been an option.

Her fingertips tentatively curled around the hair at the back of his neck, and she found that she was shaking, sure he would push her away at any moment. But he didn’t. He did not pull away. Did not grimace.

His lips parted, just barely, and Cinder wondered if maybe she wasn’t the only one having trouble breathing.

“It’s just,” she started, running her tongue across her lips, “it isn’t something I like to talk about. I haven’t told anyone who…who…”

“Who didn’t know her?”

Cinder’s words evaporated.
Her?

Fingers stiffening, she eased them out of his hair and settled her palm back on his shoulder.

The intensity in his gaze melted into sympathy. “I understand why you didn’t say anything. But now I feel so selfish.” His jaw flexed, his brow turned up with guilt. “I know, I should have guessed after you told me she was sick to begin with, but with the coronation and Queen Levana’s visit and the ball, I just…I guess I forgot. I know that makes me the biggest jerk in the world, and I should have realized that your sister had…and why you were ignoring my comms. It makes sense now.” He drew her closer, until she could almost lay her head on his shoulder, but she didn’t. Her body had gone rigid again, the dance steps forgotten. “I just wish you would have told me.”

Her gaze shifted over his shoulder, focusing on nothing. “I know,” she murmured. “I should have told you.”

She felt as though all her synthetic parts were squeezing together, crushing her inside.

Kai didn’t know.

And yet to have felt the comforting presence of acceptance, only to be confined by secrecy again, was even more unbearable than lying to him to begin with.

“Kai,” she said, shaking herself from the misery that threatened her. She pushed back to arm’s length, returning them to the acceptable distance of strangers—or of a mechanic dancing with her emperor. For the first time, Kai missed a dance step, eyes blinking in surprise. She ignored the guilt scratching at her throat.

“I came here to tell you something. It’s important.” She glanced around, ensuring that no one could hear them. Though she caught a few jealous scowls targeting her, no one was close enough to hear over the music, and the Lunar queen was nowhere to be seen. “Listen. You can’t marry Levana. No matter what she wants, no matter what she threatens.”

Kai flushed at the queen’s name. “What do you mean?”

“She doesn’t just want the Commonwealth. She’s going to start a war with Earth either way. It’s just that being empress here will pave the way for her.”

It was his turn to look around, simultaneously molding his look of panic into cool indifference, though up close, Cinder could see the worry in his eyes.

“And there’s more. She
does
know about Nainsi…about what Nainsi found out. She knows you were trying to find Princess Selene, and she’s taken the information you found and is hunting her down now. She has people out looking for her…if they haven’t found her already.”

Eyes widening, Kai looked back at her.

“And you know,” she continued, not allowing him to interrupt, “you
know
that she won’t forgive you for trying to find the princess.” She gulped. “Kai, as soon as you marry her, and she has what she wants…she’s going to kill you.”