Echoed Lullabies (Lunar Chronicles x Reader)

Chapter 23

Thorne cursed under his breath.

The fall was slow at first, gradual, as the pull of the satellite's orbit was overpowered by the pull of Earth's gravity.

Thorne hiked up his pant leg, using his toe to pry off his left boot. A knife clattered onto the floor and he grabbed for it, yanking my wrists with his reach.

"Careful!"

"Do you want to get out of these binds or not?"

He awkwardly tried to angle the blade towards the blanket around us.

"I swear if you slit my wrist..." I grumbled.

The girl murmured around her gag and shifted toward us. Her binds were much more secure and complex than our own. The thaumaturge had only bothered to have Thorne tie our hands together in between us, but this girl had binds all down her legs, in addition to having her wrists fastened behind her and the gag over her mouth.

With no leverage to press the knife against our own binds, Thorne nodded at the girl. "Can you turn around?"

She flopped and rolled onto her side, pushing off the wall with her feet to turn herself so her hands were toward us. Thorne sawed at the sheet that was cutting into her arms. By the time he'd hacked it off, there were deep red lines carved into her skin.

She ripped the gag off her mouth, leaving it to hang around her neck. A knot of her frayed hair caught in the fabric. "My feet!"

"Can you untie our hands?" I asked.

She said nothing as she snatched the knife from Thorne. Her hands were shaking as she angled the blade toward the binds around her knees.

Sawing through the sheet, she looked like a madwoman—her brow wrinkled in concentration, her hair knotted, her complexion damp and blotchy, red lines drawn into her cheeks from the gag. But the adrenaline had her working quickly and soon she was kicking away the material.

"Our hands," I said again, but she was already grasping for the sink and pulling herself up on trembling legs.

"I'm sorry—the entry procedures!" she said, stumbling out into the main room.

Thorne grabbed the knife as the satellite took a sudden turn. We slipped, and Thorne crashed on top of me as my back collided with the shower door.

"Ow, get off me!"

He messily maneuvered to sit beside me, but our hands were still bound between us. "We're going to have to work together here."

Using the walk as balance, we stumbled to our feet and slowly made our way into the main room after the girl. She had fallen too, and was now scrambling to get over the bed.

"We need to get to the other podship and disconnect," said Thorne. "You need to untie us!"

She shook her head and pressed herself against the wall where the smallest of the screens was embedded, the screen that the thaumaturge had meddled with before. Strings of hair were sticking to her face.

"She'll have a security block on the ship and I know the satellite better and—oh, no, no, no!" she screamed, her fingers flying over the screen. "She changed the access code!"

"What are you doing?" I demanded.

"The entry procedures—the ablative coating should hold while we're passing through the atmosphere, but if I don't set the parachute to release, the whole thing will disintegrate on impact!"

The satellite shifted again and we stumbled. Thorne fell back onto the mattress, pulling me down with him. The knife skittered out of his grip, bouncing off the end of the bed, while the girl tripped and landed on one knee. The walls around us began to tremble with the friction of Earth's atmosphere. The blackness that had clouded the small windows was replaced with a burning white light. The outer coating was burning off, protecting them from the atmosphere's heat.