(COMPLETED) The Lunar Chronicles - Winter's Summer

Part 35

Cinder's head drooped forward, her chin resting against her collarbone. Her eyelids drooped shut for two seconds before they snapped open, remembering where she was, what she was doing, why she was there.

She couldn't fall asleep. She had to be there for Kai when he woke up.

Even though it would be so much better to be asleep right now. Her pain would numb, her heart would stop racing, her mind could forget, even if it was just for a little while.

Thirty minutes ago, Thorne had told her about Iko.

She had been in the exact same position she was in now, feeling too weak to move.

Winter and Cress were with her. At hearing the news, Winter held her hands together in front of her and stared at the floor with a quivering lip.

Cress burst into sobs, Thorne immediately coming to her side, wrapping her in his arms, and carrying her away from the medbay the same way he had with Cinder.

She would never be able to live that down. Thorne would never let her forget the way she had wrapped herself around him, and the teasing would start as soon as Kai and Scarlet got better, and Cinder could hear Iko's name without feeling like she was punched in the stomach.

When she heard the news that her best friend was gone for good, she hadn't known how to react. She was dealing with the conflicting feelings of indescribable happiness at hearing Kai would be okay and immeasurable pain.

The feelings canceled each other out, leaving Cinder just feeling empty.

She wiped away her eye gunk lazily, glancing over at Kai, wishing he would just wake up for completely selfish reasons.

She was just really tired.

She played through the events of the past night, her mind working overtime to try to understand everything that had happened.

Wynn shot Kai. After everything that he had done, all of the arguments about her staying on the ship because it wouldn't be safe, he ended up being hurt.

The irony was killing her.

But that wasn't all. Iko had stopped functioning, robbing Cinder of her last childhood friend.

Wolf told the crew about what happened to Scarlet and how she thought he was Ran. So they had to make sure that she was in a good place in her mind, which she didn't appear to be in.

She muttered in her sleep, talking about her grandmother or the night in the opera house. That was one thing Cinder had registered from when she was falling apart in Wolf's room. Cinder hadn't known what had happened before she and Thorne found Scarlet and Wolf outside the opera house, just that she had been saved by Wolf from a pack member.

But that it was Ran?

Cinder couldn't imagine what Wolf was going through.

But the bad news didn't end there.

The reason that there had been no wolves in the house, was because they were out assassinating Queen Camilla of the United Kingdom.

Apparently, the plan to kill her had been in the works for nearly three years, ever since the fall of Queen Levana. The hybrids had been left for dead on Earth, and wanted revenge for the death of their queen. There was a whole intricate plan in place, which started with Queen Camilla's murder, and ended with Cinder's.

They heard about it on the news just moments after Iko's death, their ports all chiming in unison. Cress had been the first to figure out it was the soldiers, who had taken underground passages from the house, and commed the Manitoba police chief, sending detailed instructions to the house Scarlet had been taken to.