A Month Of Kaider

Thirty: Win Some, Lose Some

A/N: Warning: knives, blood, character death.

Cinder can feel her anger.

She can feel it burning in her bones, spurring her on as she marches through the stone building.

She's by herself, having all but ordered Thorne and Cress to go and find out about the others.

She's not sure exactly why she'd done that. She'd like to think it was because she'd wanted to protect her friends, but she knows that there's been this desire to face Simone by herself, to win with her own strength rather than the strength of her friends.

With every step she takes, with each solid thud of her boots on the stone floor, she can feel her anger spiralling louder and angrier until it's all that she can see, all that she can hear, all that she can feel.

And it only gets worse.

It gets worse because, instead of finding Kai or facing Simone, she's met with Levana's cold gaze.

"Selene?" Levana sounds outraged.

"I'm still alive," Cinder says plainly, a smirk playing on her lips.

Levana stiffens. "So I've noticed."

"Where's Kai?" Cinder asks briskly.

Levana raises a perfect eyebrow into a perfect arch. "Why would I tell you?"

Cinder grits her teeth, looking past Levana's sneer and scanning the room for any piece of information that might be remotely useful for finding the one she seeks.

"Look at me." Levana's usually sickeningly sweet voice is dark, laced with frustration and a hint of desperation.

Cinder only ignores her, knowing that Levana is fake.

She's not fake in the sense that she might vanish if you blink, but she's a different kind of fake where she puts on so many different faces and facades that nobody can tell who she truly is and so her daily routine poses the question: if you're never the same person twice, are you really real at all?

Cinder doesn't think so.

So she pays little attention to her Aunt, instead looking for a way to get to Kai.

Success.

On the back wall, a door, hidden by camouflage, as if waiting to be spotted.

Levana steps in front of it, filling Cinder's line of vision and blocking her path to Kai.

"I wouldn't disturb the newly wedded couple, it's bad luck."

"Bad luck doesn't work on those who don't believe it exists," Cinder hisses.

Levana only smiles.

But that smile, the smile that's constantly mirrored on Simone's face, sparks a reminder inside Cinder's brain.

It's funny how memory works, coming and going as it pleases, taking cherished moments and handing back old ones that you'd long since left behind.

And, in that second, Cinder's memory decides to rope back a recent event: a boy, from the back of a classroom, suggesting that she ask about Simone's father.

Cinder smirks. "Who's Simone's father?"

Levana's breath hitches halfway into its exhale and she narrows her eyes. "What?"

"Who is her other parent?" Cinder asks slowly, folding her arms as silence rings in the air.

Levana doesn't reply for a few seconds, then shakes her head. "Why does it matter?"