It was the smile she’d been waiting for.
It didn’t last long.
“Cinder. Look. I am glad I’m not married right now, but this was still a huge mistake. I can’t risk angering Levana. Whatever you’re planning, you have to leave me out of it.”
“I can’t. I need your help.”
He sighed, but it was shaky, and she could tell his resolve was crumbling.
“You think Selene can overthrow her?”
Biting the inside of her cheek, she nodded. “I do.”
“Then I hope she intends to do it soon.”
Dragging her hands down her sides, Cinder felt nervousness pressing against her rib cage. “Kai, she may not be exactly what you were hoping for. I don’t want you to be disappointed. I know you put a lot into trying to find her and—”
“Why? What’s wrong with her?”
Cringing, she knotted her fingers together. Metal and skin. “Well. She was rescued from that fire, but it destroyed a lot of her body. She lost some limbs. And a lot of her skin had to be grafted. And … she’s just not … entirely whole.”
He furrowed his brow. “What do you mean? Is she in a coma?”
“Not anymore.” She braced herself for his reaction. “But she’s a cyborg.”
His eyes widened, but then his attention was darting around the room as though he couldn’t look at Cinder while he adjusted to that information. “I see,” he said slowly, before meeting her gaze again. “But … is she all right?”
The question caught her by surprise and she couldn’t help a startled laugh. “Oh, yeah, she’s great. I mean, half the people in the world want to kill her and the other half want to chain her to a throne on the moon, which is just what she’s always wanted. So she’s fantastic.”
He stared at her like he was once again questioning her sanity. “What?”
Cinder shut her eyes and tried to bury her mounting panic. Opening them again, she spread her hands, placating. Hesitated.
She looked at the ceiling.
Took in a breath.
Met his gaze again.
“It’s me, Kai. I’m Princess Selene.”
Sixty-One
Kai’s face was made up of confusion, like she’d spoken gibberish. His wedding sash slipped out of his hands and drifted to the floor.
When the silence slipped toward awkward, Cinder cleared her throat. “And in case you weren’t sure, I was being sarcastic before about all that ‘great’ stuff. Not that, I mean—I know you have your own things to worry about, so you don’t need to … I don’t … I’m fine, really. It’s just been a rough few weeks with the whole”—she circled her hands wildly through the air—“Peony-ball-Levana-wedding thing. And now Dr. Erland is dead and Scarlet is gone and Thorne is blind and Wolf … I’m not sure. He’s so still these days and I’m really starting to worry about him. But I’ve got it under control. I can do this. I’m—”
“Stop. Please stop talking.”
She clamped her mouth shut.
The silence dragged on.
Cinder opened her mouth, but Kai held up his hand. She shut it again. Bit her lip.
“You?” he finally said. “You are Princess Selene?”
Grimacing, she rubbed at her wrist. “Surprise?”
“All this time?”
She ducked her head, suddenly uncomfortable at the way he was looking at her. “Um, yeah, technically. Dr. Erland figured it out first, when I was taken in for the cyborg draft. He ran my DNA and … yeah. But he decided not to tell me until I was locked up in prison, which complicated a few things.”
Kai guffawed, but not in a mean way. Inhaling a shaky breath, he rubbed the palms of his hands into his eyes. Then, as quickly as his disbelief had come, the comprehension came faster. “Oh, stars. Levana knows, doesn’t she? That’s why she hates you so much. That’s why she’s so determined to find you.”
“Yeah, she knows.”
“And it was you. This whole time, it was you.”
“You’re actually taking this better than I thought you would.”
He dragged both hands down his face. “No, you know, it almost makes sense. Kind of.” He scraped his gaze over her. “Although … somehow, I always pictured the princess … I don’t know. In a dress.”
Cinder laughed.
“And I always thought that when I found her, it would be so easy. We would just … present her to the world and announce her as the true queen, and Levana would crawl away to some hole. I never imagined that Levana would already know. That she would be fighting it.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “I’m beginning to think you may not know your fiancée very well.”
He scowled at her. “That’s it, Cinder. No more secrets. I don’t know if I can survive any more big reveals from you, so if you have anything else to tell me, out with it. Right now.”
Cinder rocked back on her heels, pondering.
Cyborg. Lunar. Princess.
No more secrets. No more lies.
Well, just one.
She thought she might be a tiny bit in love with him.
But there was no way she could tell him that.
“I can’t cry,” she whispered instead, hunching her shoulders.
Kai blinked, twice, then scratched his ear and looked away. “I already knew that.”
“What? How?”
“Your guardian may have said something about it. And I … I’ve seen your medical records.”
“My—” Her eyes widened. “You’ve seen … you know…?”
“You were a fugitive and I needed to know more about you and I … I’m sorry.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. She’d seen the diagram of her cyborg implants. Every wire. Every synthetic organ. Every manufactured panel. Thinking about it made her feel nauseous. She couldn’t imagine what someone else would think when they saw it. What Kai must have thought.
“No, it’s all right,” she said. “No more secrets.”
He took a step toward her. “Your eyes … are they really…?”
“Synthetic,” she murmured, when he couldn’t say the word himself.
“And that’s why you can’t cry?”
She nodded, unable to look up at him, even as he came to stand not two steps in front of her. “I don’t need the tear ducts for lubrication, and they were getting in the way of … um.” She tapped a finger against her temple. “I have a retina scanner and display in my eye. It’s like a really small netscreen, so there’s a lot of wiring. Oh, stars, I can’t believe I’m telling you this.” She buried her face in her hands.
“It’s kind of brilliant,” said Kai.
She nearly choked on her own laugh.
Kai reached for her wrists. “Can I see?”
She groaned, knowing that if she had the ability to blush, her face would be as red as his wedding sash.
Mortified and resigned, she let him pull her hands away and struggled to hold his gaze. He stared into her eyes like he could see through to her control panel, but then, after a moment, he shook his head.
“You’d never even know.”
Trying not to fidget, Cinder raised her eyes to the ceiling, hating herself a little bit for what she was about to do. But what did it matter now? He would never again be fooled into thinking she was human.
“Watch the bottom of my left iris,” she whispered. She turned on the retina display, pulling up a newsfeed she’d been watching before they got to New Beijing—news from the African Union. An anchor was talking, but Cinder didn’t bother to turn on the audio.
Kai dipped his head. It took a moment, but then his lips parted. “There’s … is that…?”
“Newsfeed.”
“It’s so small. Just a dot, really.”
“It looks a lot bigger to me.” A tingle traipsed down her spine at how he was studying her, almost in childish awe, and how he was so close, and how he was still holding her wrists.
He seemed to realize it at the same time. His expression changed suddenly, and she knew he wasn’t looking at the retina display anymore, or even her synthetic eyes. He was looking at her.