Echoed Lullabies (Lunar Chronicles x Reader)

Chapter 59

I was pressed into the corner of a storage closet, my heart pounding in the darkness. Faint strips of light spilled through the slots in the door, allowing me to make out the profiles and bright eyes of the rest of the crew. I could hear the shuffling and thumping as the cargo bay was unloaded beneath our feet.

Ever since we docked, all I had been thinking about was Isaac. There was a slim chance he was anywhere here at all, really. He might have been sent to Earth with the others on the first round of attacks. He might have been deployed again after Kai was captured. He might...he might have not been alive at all.

But I couldn't extinguish the small spark of hope that maybe, just maybe, he was here somewhere on this giant rock.

I glanced at the others. Cinder was beside me, gaze hard and focused ahead. Wolf was on the other side of Cinder, jaw tense and brow set in concentration. Against the opposite wall, Iko was crouched down with both hands over her mouth, like the need to be quiet was torture. In the hollow silence, I could detect a subtle hum coming from the android, a hint at the machinery beneath her synthetic skin. Her neck was fixed now—Kai had brought exactly what Cinder needed.

Standing beside Iko, Thorne and Cress stood shoulder to shoulder in the small space. Tucked against him, Cress seemed paler than usual, her anxiety evident even in the darkness.

We were a ragtag group in the drab clothing Kai had brought them, including a black knit hat to cover Iko's blue hair and heavy gloves for Cinder's cyborg hand.

A blue glow drew my attention back to Cress, who had turned on a portscreen and was pulling up a diagram of Artemisia's royal port. "We're in good position," she whispered, tilting the screen to show us. There were three exits from the port—one that led into the palace above them, one that connected to the city's public spaceship docks, and one that led down to the maglev tunnels, which was our destination. The maglev tunnels made up a complex underground transit system, linking all of Luna's sectors together. We had studied the system so many times I would have had it memorized even without Cinder still having the map downloaded to her brain-machine interface. To me, the system resembled a spiderweb and the capital city of Artemisia was the spider.

Good thing arachnids can be crushed.

Cress was right. The pilots had settled the ship close to the exit that would take us down to the maglev tunnels. It was the best we could have hoped for.

Yet I couldn't deny how tempting it was to abandon the plan, to forget patience, to try to end it here, now. I was at Levana's doorstep. I was so close to the witch who had stolen Isaac from me, who had been responsible for mutilating both him and his memory. My body was wound up tight, ready to storm the palace—an army of one.

I glanced at Wolf. His fists flexed, in and out, in and out. There was murder in his eyes. He would have stormed the palace with me, I knew, in hopes that Scarlet was there. But we didn't even know whether Scarlet was still alive.

But it was desperation goading me, not confidence. Even if I got past Levana's security and somehow managed to kill her, I would end up dead as well and within minutes they'd find the others. Then some other Lunar besides Cinder would step in to take the throne and Luna would be no better off than it had been before.

I shoved the temptation down into the pit of my stomach. This wasn't about assassinating Levana. This was about giving the citizens of Luna a voice and ensuring it was heard.

I tried to distract myself by going over our plan again in my head. This was the most dangerous part, but I hoped Levana and her security team would be so busy with the arriving Earthen guests they wouldn't notice a handful of dockworkers slipping out of the royal port. Our goal was to make it to Sector RM-9 where we hoped to find Wolf's parents and be offered temporary shelter from which to start the next phase of our plan—informing the people of Luna that their true queen had returned.