Moonflower- A Lunar Chronicles Fanfiction

Chapter 16

The next morning when Cynthia woke up she was lying again in her own bed the covers tucked carefully up to her shoulders. Leo was gone. Light broke through the widows of her parted curtains, but her maid was no where to be found and had not woken her up. Cynthia rolled lazily over in bed to check her portscreen. 11:30 a.m. flashed back up at her. The princess sat bolt upright in her bed and whipped her sheets to the side. As soon as her bare feet hit the ground she rushed for her closet and threw something on. Why had no one woken her up?
    She flung the doors of her room open wide, almost hitting a guard standing right outside her door. He barely budged, and his expression didn't change. It was as if nothing was wrong when her mom hadn't returned home so everything was supposed to be wrong.
    She flew down the hall. Her father's office was not far. Just a right, then a left, then she was there. The door was shut, but Cynthia couldn't just sit outside where everything was quiet when she was raging inside and her heart was beating out of her chest. So she knocked, loudly.
    No one answered at first, then she heard the loud screech of her father's chair against the floor of his office. Then footsteps. The door creaked open, and Cynthia found her father behind it.
    His eyes were bloodshot and lined with dark circles. His hair was askew. He looked awful. Cynthia's heart sank. Nothing had changed. So why was the rest of the palace acting like everything was normal?
    Her father said nothing. She went in and sat down.
    "I haven't done a press release or even talked to the council yet." He said when he finally flung his exhausted body back down at his desk.
    Ah, so no one really knows anything.
    Kai ran his fingers through his hair, something he had appeared to be doing a lot lately. "The country knows nothing about your mother, and the feeds are going crazy over the crashed rampion that's still on our front lawn. I've been swarmed with work, and with your mom gone I don't even know my left from my right..." He ran his fingers through his hair again.
    "On top of it all I have no idea how to save her. We don't know where they are or what they're doing to her, and with our best offensive friends in the hospital wing barely conscious. I feel like I'm suffocating Thia, but I can't possibly stop, not for a moment. Every minute I spend resting is a minute I could have put toward finding her."
    The princess shook her head and sighed. She couldn't think of anything to say except, "Dad you need to sleep. You're no good to mom or the country half asleep."
    She held her father's hand and squeezed. She wanted to tell him what she and Leo were planning, that they would save her mom and stop the rogue soldiers, but she couldn't. She didn't know if it would work. Stars, she didn't even know if this Raini Dianem actually existed, but it was their only hope.
    When she finished this thought she looked back up at her father. His head was tilted back and his eyes were closed. Then he snored loudly, and she knew he finally asleep. She couldn't bear to see him like this. Cynthia gave his hand one last squeeze. She shut the door to his office as quietly as she could and prayed he would at least sleep a couple hours.
    When she was back in the quiet halls she started toward her room her shoes echoing as she took each step. The whole palace she normally found beautiful felt hollow and sterile. The walls closed in like they might crush her. She had to get out. She picked up the pace of her steps weaving through hall after hall of the endless palace until she finally found the door to the gardens.
    When she stepped outside she breathed in, then out. The cherry blossoms fluttered in the soft breeze. A fountain gurgled and spilled over rocks lining the tiny creek. A little of the tension released from her chest. She was about to go sit at her favorite bench when she found it was already occupied.
    Tousled black hair peeked out at her from the back of the bench. When she approached him she saw the grease stains on his face and on his dirty white work shirt. While her brother had always resembled their father, anyone could see he took after his mother. When Cynthia had sat through long council meetings with Kai Rikan had been in the shop with Cinder fixing broken palace appliances and even hammering out a few ideas of his own. At his last birthday Captain Thorne had even let him work on the Rampions engine. Their mom had been so proud. Though he tried to hide it, Cynthia could see the despair etched into his face.
    When she sat down next to him on the bench he didn't stir. He continued turning something over and over in his hands. It shone in the mid-morning sun in the gaps between his fingers. It was too big to fit inside of his hands, but it really wasn't that much bigger. One edge was pointed, the other side was straight. The top was torn wires and flimsy metal, and the bottom the wide, smooth and flat.
    "Is that a foot?" She asked him. She had seen her mom's metallic foot before. It was much larger, and still attached of course. This one appeared to be much smaller, maybe a child's foot.
    Rikan nodded. "Dad gave it to me to work on. He said it was important to him and that he wanted to surprise mom with it. He wanted me to add something to it, so I did this." Cynthia's brother wound up a nod on the side. A tiny melody began to play and the small hologram was projected into the air from the tip of the pointed, toe, side. It was a younger picture of their parents. The hologram was dark, but Cynthia could see her mother sitting behind a counter inside a booth at the main market. Her father wore a hoodie over his trademark tousled hair and stuck his hands in this pockets as if he was hiding. No, disguised. On the counter in front of Cinder sat this very shoe. As the video went on she watched her eighteen year old father flirt with her sixteen year old mom. It was sweet, and Cynthia shed a few tears for her parents. On the feeds their romance was always an epic love in the midst of a horrific war, but it was so simple here. She could see why her father would want to give this to her mother. It represented something precious.
    "It took a while to fix." Rikan continued in a faraway voice. "Lots of water damage. It needed a new paint job, and I had to gut it to put in the music box and projector, but I was really excited to give it back to dad. I think mom would have loved it."
    Cynthia put an arm around her little brother. "Me too Rikan. Me too."
    "Thia?" Rikan asked. "Do you think she'll ever get to see it?"
    She sucked in a sharp breath. "Rikan, I..."
    The doors to the garden banged open and Leo came rushing out panting. "There you are Thia. I've been running the entire palace looking for you. It's time to go. Now."

A/N: Hey everyone! Sorry for my long absence. School really is the worst. Between three AP classes and four regular ones I am slammed with homework almost every night. I hope you like this chapter despite its tardiness and I'll try to get chapters in more consistently in the future.

Thanks for reading as always,
Theresa