The Lunar boy couldn't have been more than eight years old,
and yet Scarlet was certain that she would wring his neck
like a chicken if she ever got the chance.
He was, without a doubt, the most horrible child that ever lived.
She couldn't help thinking that if all Lunar children were like
this, their whole society was doomed and Cinder would be
better off letting them destroy themselves.
Scarlet didn't know how, exactly, she had ended up
the property of Venerable Annotel and his wife and
the little monster they'd raised.
Maybe it was favoritism from the crown, or maybe they'd
purchased her, like an Earthen family might purchase
a new android.
Either way, for seven days, she had been the new toy.
The new pet.
The new test subject.
Because at eight years old, young Master Charlson was leaning
how to control his Lunar gift.
Evidently Earthens were great fun to practice on, and Master
Charleston had a very sick sense of humor.
Chained from a collar around her neck to a bolt in the floor,
Scarlet was being kept in what she figured was the
boy's playroom.
An enormous netscreen took up one wall and countless virtual
reality machines and sports-tech had been abandoned in the
corners, out of her reach.
His practice sessions are agony.
Since she'd come to the Annette household Scarlet had long-
legged spiders crawl up her nose.
Snakes as long as her arm wriggle their way through her belly
button and wind their bodies around her spine.
Centipedes burrow into her ear canals and creep around the
inside of her skull before emerging on her tongue.
Scarlet had screamed.
She had thrashed.
She had gouged her own fingernails into her stomach
and blown her nose until it bled in an effort to get
the trespassers out.
And all the while, master Charleston had laughed and laughed
and laughed.
It was all in her head of course.
She knew that.
She even knew it when she was royally banging her head on
the floor to try to knock out the spiders and centipples.
YOU ARE READING
Cress
Roman pour AdolescentsTheir best hope lies with Cress, a girl trapped on a satellite since childhood who's only ever had her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker. Unfortunately, she's being force to work for Queen Levana, and she...
