She dreamed that she was being chased by an enormous white wolf, its
fangs crops thick with mud that sucked at her shoes, her breath forming
clouds of steam. Her throat stung. Her legs burned. She ran as fast as
she could, but her body became heavier with every step. The shriveled
leaves of sugar beets turned rotten and brittle under her. She spotted a
house in the distance—her house. The farmhouse her grandmother had
raised her in, the windows beaming with warmth.
The house was safety. The house was home.
But it receded into the distance with each painful step. The air around
her became thick with fog, and the house disappeared altogether swallowed
whole by the encroaching shadows.
She tripped, landing on her hands and knees. She rolled over, scrambling
and kicking at the ground. Mud clung to her clothes and hair.
The coldness from the ground soaked into her bones. The wolf prowled
closer.
Its lean muscles moved gracefully under the coat of fur. It
snarled, eyes lit with hunger.
Her fingers fished around on the ground searching for a weapon,
anything they struck something smooth and hard. She grasped it and
pulled it from the squelching mud-an axe, its sharp blade glistening
with moonlight.
The wolf leaped, gaping jaws unhinged.
Scarlet lifted the axe.
Braced herself. Swung.
The blade cut clean through the beast, cutting it into two pieces from
head to tail. Warm blood splattered over Scarlet's faces the two wolf
halves landed on either side of her. Her stomach rolled. She was going to
throw up.
She dropped the axe and collapsed back on the ground. The mud
squished around her ears. Overhead, the moon filled up by the whole sky.
Then the wolf halves began to rustle. They gradually rose up, now
only the soft outer pelt of the beast, shorn in two. Scarlet could make
out vague human-like shapes standing over her, each wearing half of the
snow-white pelt.
The fog cleared and Wolf and her grand-mere were before her. Holding
their arms out.
Welcoming her home.
Scarlet gasped. Her eyes flew open.
She was met with the sight of steel bars, the earthy smell of ferns
and moss, and the chatter of a thousand birds—some trapped in their
own elaborate cages, others flocked in the tree branches that entwined
around the enormous beams supporting the glass ceiling.
A wolf yipped, sounding both sorrowful and concerned. Scarlet forced
herself onto an elbow so she could see the barred enclosure on the other
side of the pathway. The white wolf was sitting there watching her. He
howled just a short curious sound not the haunting howls that Scarlet
heard in her dreams. She imagined he was asking if she was all right. She
might have been screaming or thrashing during the nightmare, and the
wolf's pale yellow eyes blinked with worry.
Scarlet tried to gulp, but her mouth was parched, her saliva too thick.
She must be going crazy to be carrying on silent conversations with
wolves.
"He likes you."
Gasping, Scarlet flipped onto her back.
A stranger, a girl was sitting cross-legged in her cage, so close Scarlet
could have touched her. Scarlet tried to push herself away, but the action
sent pain rippling through her bandaged hand. She hissed and fell back
onto the ground.
Her hadn't was the worst of it—the hatchet had taken her left pinky
finger to the second knuckle. She had not passed out, though she wished
she would have. A Lunar doctor had been waiting to bandage the wound,
and he had done it with such precision, Scarlet suspected it was a very
common procedure.
But the there was also the scratches on her face and stomach from
her time spent in the company of Master Charleston, and countless aches
from sleeping on hard floors for—well, she'd lost count of how many
nights.
The girl's only reaction to Scarlet's grimace was a long, slow blink.
Clearly this girl was not another prisoner—or "pet" as the extravagantly
dressed Lunars called Scarlet when they passed by her cage, gig-going and
pointing and making loud remarks on whether or not it was
safe to feed the animals.
The girl's clothing was the first indication of her status—a gauzy,
silver-white dress that had settled around her shoulders and thighs like
snowflakes might settle on a sleepy hillside. Her warm brown skin was
flawless and healthy, her fingernails perfectly shaped and clean. Her eyes
were bright the color of melted caramel, but with hints of slate-gray
around her pupils. On top of all that, she had silky black hair that curled
into perfect spirals, neatly framing her high cheekbones and ruby-red
lips.
She was the most beautiful human being Scarlet had ever seen.
Yet, there was one anomaly. Or—three. The right side of the girl's face
was marred by three scars that cut down her cheek from the corner of
her eye to her jaw. Like perpetual tears. Strangely, the flaws on her skin
didn't reduce her beauty, but almost accentuated it. Almost compelled a
person to stare at her longer, unable to peel their eyes away.
It was with this thought that Scarlet realized it was a glamour. Which
meant this was another trick.
Her expression changed from awestruck and blushing—she despised
that she was actually blushing—to resentful.
The girl blinked again, drawing attention to her impossibly long, impossibly
thick eyelashes.
"Ryu and I are confused," she said. "Was it a very bad ream? Or a very
good one?"
Scarlet scowled. The dream had already begun to wisp away, as
dreams do, but the question reignited the memory of Wolf and her
grandmother before her. Alive and safe.
Which as a cruel joke. Her grandmother was dead, and last she'd
seen Wolf, he'd been under the control of a thaumaturge.
"Who are you? And who's Ryu?"
The girl smiled. It was both warm and conspiratorial and it made
Scarlet shiver.
Stupid Lunars and their stupid glamours.
"Ryu is the wolf, silly. You've been neighbors for four days now, you
know. I'm surprised he hasn't officially introduced himself." Then she
leaned forward, dropping her voice to a whisper as if she were about to
share a closely guarded secret. "As for me, I am your new best friend. But
don't tell anyone, because they all think that I'm your master now, and
that you are my pet. They don't know that my pets are really my dearest
friends. We shall fool them all, you and I."
Scarlet squinted at her. She recognized the girl's voice now, the way
she danced through her sentences like each word had to be coaxed off
her tongue. This was the girl who had spoken during Scarlet's interrogation.
The girl reached for a strand of filthy hair that had fallen across Scarlet's cheek.
Scarlet tensed.
"Your hair is like burning. Does it smell like smoke?" Bending over,
the girl pressed the hair against her nose and inhaled. "Not at all. That's
good. I wouldn't want you to catch fire."
The girl sat up just as suddenly, pulling a basket toward her that
Scarlet hadn't noticed before. It looked like a picnic basket, lined with the
same silvery material as her dress.
"I thought today could play doctor and patient. You'll be the patient."
She removed a device from the basket and pressed it against. Scarlet's
forehead. It beeped and she checked the small screen. "You're not
running a fever. Here, let me check your tonsils." She held a thin piece of
plastic toward Scarlet's mouth.
Scarlet knocked her away with her uninjured hand and forced herself
to sit up. "You're not a doctor."
"No. that's why it's pretend. Aren't you having fun?"
"Fun? I've been mentally and physically tortured for days. I'm starving.
I'm thirsty. I'm being kept in a cage in a zoo—"
"Menagerie."
"—and I hurt in places that I didn't know my body even had. And now
some crazy person comes in here and is trying to act like we're good pals
playing a raucous game of make-believe. Well, no, sorry, I'm not having
any fun, and I'm not buying whatever chummy truck you're trying to
play on me."
The girl's big eyes were blank—neither surprised nor offended by
Scarlet's outburst. But then she glanced out toward the pathway that
wound between the cages, evergreen with exotic flowers and trees to
suggest some semblance of being in a lush jungle.
A guard was standing at the pathway's bend, scowling. Scarlet recognized
him. He was one of the guards that regularly brought her bread
and water. He was the one who had grabbed her rear and the first time
she'd been thrown into this cage. At the time she'd been too exhausted to
do anything more than stumble away from him, but if she ever had the
chance, she would break every one of his fingers in retaliation.
"We're all right," the girl said, smiling brightly. "We're pretending that
I cut off her hair and glued it to my head because I wanted to be a candlestick,
and she didn't like that."
While she spoke, the guard's glare never left Scarlet, only narrowed in
warning. After a long moment, he meandered away.
When his footsteps had faded, the girl pulled the basket onto her lap
and riffled through it. "You shouldn't call me crazy. They don't like that."
Scarlet faced her again, her gaze dragging down the raised scar tissue
on her cheek.
"But you are crazy."
"I know." She lifted a small box from the basket. "Do you know how I
know?"
Scarlet didn't answer.
"Because the palace walls have been bleeding for years, and no one
else sees it." She shrugged, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to say.
"No one believes me, but in some corridors, the blood has gotten so thick
there's nowhere safe to step. When I have to pass through those places, I
leave a trail of bloody footprints for the rest of the day, and then I worry
that the queen's soldiers will follow the scent and eat me up while I'm
sleeping. Some nights I don't sleep very well." Her voice dropped to a
haunted whisper, her eyes taking on a brittle luminescence. "But if the
blood was real, the servants would clean it up. Don't you think?"
Scarlet shivered. This girl really was crazy.
"This is for you," she said, astoundingly bright once again. "Doctor's
orders are to take one pill twice a day." She tilted toward Scarlet. "They
wouldn't let me bring you real medication, of course, so it's just candy."
Then she winked, and Scarlet couldn't tell if the wink was to indicate
that the box contained candy or not.
"I'm not going to eat it."
The girl listed her head. "Why not? It's a gift, to cement our forever
friendship." She pulled the lid off the box, revealing four small candies
nestled in a bed of spun sugar. They were round as marbles and bright,
glossy red. 'Sour apple petters. My personal favorites. Please, take one."
"What do you want from me?"
Her lashes fluttered. "I want us to be friends."
"And all your friendships are based on lies? Wait, of course they are.
You're Lunar."
For the first time, the girl deflated a little. "I've only ever had two
friends," she said, then glanced quickly at the wolf. Ryu had lain down,
resting his head on his paws as he watched them. "Other than the animals,
of course. But one of my friends turned into ashes when we were
very little. A pile of girl-shaped ashes. The other has gone missing ...
and I don't know if he'll ever come back." A shudder ripped through her,
not strong she nearly dropped the box. With goose bumps all down her
arms, she told the box on the floor between them and picked mindlessly
at her dress. "But I asked the stars to send a sign that he was all right,
and they sent me a shooting star across the sky. The next day was a trial,
like any trail, except the Earthen girl standing before me had hair like a
shooting star. And you'd seen him."
"Do you ever make sense?"
The girl pressed her hands onto the ground and leaned forward until
her nose was almost touching Scarlet's. Scarlet refused to pull away,
though her breath hitched.
"Was he all right? When you saw him last. Sybil said he was still alive,
that he may have been used to pilot that ship, but she didn't say if he'd
been injured. Do you think he's safe?"
"I don't know what you're—"
The girl pressed her fingertips against Scarlet's mouth.
"Jacin Clay," she whispered. "Sybil's guard, with the blond hair and
beautiful eyes and the rising sun in his smile. Please, tell me he's all
right."
Scarlet blinked. The girl's fingers were still on her mouth, but it didn't
matter. She was too baffled to speak. The battle aboard the Rampion was
mostly a blur of screaming and gunshots in her memory and her focus
had been on the thaumaturge then. But she did vaguely recall another
person there. A blond-haired guard.
But the rising sun in his smile? Please.
She sneered. "I remember two people trying to kill me and my
friends."
"Yes, and Jacin was one of them," she said, evidently unconcerned
with the whole killing part of Scarlet's statement.
"I guess so. There was a blade guard."
Glee spread over the girl's face. The look had the power to stop hearts
and brighten rooms.
But not too Scarlet.
"And how did he look?"
"He looked like he was trying to kill me. But I'm sure my friends killed
him first. That's usually what we do to people who work for your queen."
The smile vanished and the girl shriveled away, tying her arms
around her waist. "You don't mean that."
"I do. And believe me, he deserved it."
The girl was beginning to shake no, like she was on the verge of
hyperventilating.
Scarlet decided without much guilt that if that happened, she
wouldn't do a thing about it. She wouldn't try to help her. She wouldn't
call for the guard.
This stranger was no friend.
Across the aisle, the wolf had climbed onto all fours and was pawing
at the base of his enclosure. He began to whimper.
After a few moments, the girl managed to get herself under control
Sliding the lid back onto the candies, so he settled them into her basket
and stood, hunching in the small cage.
"I see," she said. "That will conclude this visit. I prescribe adequate
rest and—" She sobbed and turned away, but paused before she could call
for the guard. Slowly, stiffly, she urned back. "I wasn't lying about the
walls that bleed. Someday soon, I fear the palace will be soaked through
with blood and all of Artemisia Lake will be so red, even the Earthens
Will be able to see it."
"I'm not interested in your delusions." A sharp, unexpected pain shot
up through the arm that Scarlet was using to support herself and she
crumpled to the ground, waiting for the pinpricks of pain to fade. She
glared up at her. "And I don't care for your mock sympathy, either. Your
glamour. Your mind control. You people have built your entire culture on
lies, and I want nothing to do with it."
The girl stared at her so long, Scarlet began to wish she hadn't said
anything. But keeping her mouth shut had never been a great talent of
hers.
Then, finally, the girl tapped her knuckles against the Bars. As the
guard's footsteps patted down the pathway, she reached into the basket
and retrieved the box. She set it down at Scarlet's side, tucking it
beside her so the guard wouldn't see.
"I haven't used my glamour since I was twelve years old," she whispered,
gaze piercing as if it were very important to her that Scarlet understand this.
"Not since I was old enough to control it. That's why the
visions come to me. That's why I'm going mad."
Behind her, the bolts of the cage door clunked open.
"Your Highness."
She wine led on her toes and ducked out of the cage, her head lowered
so that her thick hair hid both her beauty and her scars.
Your Highness.
Stunned, Scarlet lay on the grounds until her tongue began to turn to
chalk from n thirst. As far as she knew, there as only one Lunar princess.
Other than Cinder, of course.
Princess Winter, the queen's stepdaughter.
The unspeakable beauty. The scars that, according to rumor, had been
inflicting by the queen herself.
When she glanced back toward the wolf's cage, Ryu had wandered
away, toward the back of his enclosure. He had been given much more
space to prowl than Scarlet, perhaps a quarter of an acre of dirt and
grass, trees, and a fake fallen log that formed a quaint little den.
Sighing, Scarlet looked back up at the glass ceiling, where she could
See black sky and countless stars between the tree branches. her stomach
panted, a reminder that her one small meal had been devoured
hours ago, and unlike Ryu and the white stag that lived in an enclosure
farther down the aisle and the albino peacock that sometimes wandered
freely between them, Scarlet wouldn't get another meal until tomorrow.
It took a long time of battling with her weakened willpower, feeling
the weight of the candies beside her. She had no reason to trust that girl.
She didn't trust that girl. But after her stomach had begun to ache from
hollowing and her head to spin with hunger, she gave up and pulled the
lid of the box.
She pulled out one of the candies. It was glass smooth beneath her
teeth. The outer shell cracked easily, giving way to warm, meaty center
that burst sweet and sour on her tongue.
She moaned and let her head fall onto the hard floor. Nothing, not
even her grandmother's prized tomatoes, had ever tasted so good.
But then, as she was working. Her tongue around her gums, searching
out any missed bits its of the candy, a tingling began to warm her throat. It
expenaded outward, into her chest and through her abdomen and along
Her limbs, all the way to her missing finger, leaving a trail of comfort in
its wake.
When it was gone, Scarlet realized that it had taken her pain with it.
YOU ARE READING
Cress
Teen FictionTheir 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...
