Page 40 (1/2)

BOOK One

When she was just a child, the witch locked her away in a tower that had neither doors nor stairs

One

Her satellite made one full orbit around planet Earth every sixteen hours It was a prison that ca view—vast blue oceans and swirling clouds and sunrises that set half the world on fire

When she was first i more than to stack her pillows on top of the desk that was built into the walls and drape her bed linens over the screens,a small alcove for herself She would pretend that she was not on a satellite at all, but in a podship en route to the blue planet Soon she would land and step out onto real dirt, feel real sunshine, sen

She would stare at the continents for hours and hours, i what that must be like

Her view of Luna, however, was always to be avoided Some days her satellite passed so close that the moon took up the entire view and she coulddo cities where the Lunars lived Where she, too, had lived Years ago Before she’d been banished

As a child, Cress had hidden fro hours Sometimes she would escape to the s elaborate braids into her hair Or she would scra lullabies until she fell asleep Or she would dreaine how they would play make-believe with her and read her adventure stories and brush her hair lovingly off her brow, until finally—finally—the ain behind the protective Earth, and she was safe

Even now, Cress used those hours to crawl beneath her bed and nap or read or write songs in her head or work out co She still did not like to look at the cities of Luna; she harbored a secret paranoia that if she could see the Lunars, surely they could look up beyond their artificial skies and see her

For htmare

But now the silver horizon of Luna was creeping into the corner of her , and Cress paid no attention This tihtmare Brutal words were splattered across the newsfeeds, photos and videos blurring in her vision as she scrolled froh

14 CITIES ATTACKED WORLDWIDE

2-HOUR MURDER SPREE RESULTS IN 16,000 EARTHEN DEATHS

LARGEST MASSACRE IN THIRD ERA

The net was littered with horrors Victims dead in the streets with shredded abdoutters Feral ernails and staining the fronts of their shirts She scrolled through the becaly difficult as the truth of it all sank in

This was her fault

Forthose Lunar ships fro without question, like the well-trained lackey she was

Now she knew just what kind of monsters had been aboard those ships Only now did she understand what Her Majesty had been planning all along, and it was far too late

16,000 EARTHEN DEATHS

Earth had been taken unaware, and all because she hadn’t been brave enough to say no to Mistress’s demands She had done her job and then turned a blind eye to it all

She averted her gaze fro on another news story that suggested more horrors to come

Emperor Kaito of the Eastern Co to marry Lunar Queen Levana

Queen Levana was to become the Commonwealth’s new empress

The shocked journalists of Earth were scra to detere that the Commonwealth and the rest of the Earthen Union should be preparing for war, not a wedding But others were hastily trying to justify the alliance With a swirl of her fingers on the thin, transparent screen, Cress raised the audio of aon about the potential benefits No ht come Earth would come to understand the Lunar culture better They would share technological advances They would be allies

And besides, Queen Levana only wanted to rule the Eastern Commonwealth Surely she would leave the rest of the Earthen Union alone

But Cress knew they would be fools to believe it Queen Levana was going to become empress, then she would have Emperor Kaito murdered, clai pad to asse the rest of the Union She would not stop until the entire planet was under her control This small attack, these sixteen thousand deaths … they were only the beginning

Silencing the broadcast, Cress set her elbows on her desk and dug both hands into her hive of blonde hair She was suddenly cold, despite the consistently maintained temperature inside the satellite One of the screens behind her was reading aloud in a child’s voice that had been progra boredom when she was ten years old The voice was too chipper for thefro the results of an autopsy performed on one of the Lunar soldiers

The bones had been reinforced with calciue in major joints was infused with a saline solution for added flexibility and pliability Orthodontic implants replaced the canine and incisor teeth with thosethe teeth of a wolf, and we see the sath to crushof the central nervous syste were responsible for the subject’s unyielding aggression and wolf-like tendencies Dr Edelstein has theorized that an advanced manipulation technique of the brain’s bioelectric waves may also have played a role in—

“Mute feed”

The sweet ten-year-old’s voice was silenced, leaving the satellite huated to the back of Cress’s consciousness The whirring of fans The thru of the water recycling tank

Cress gathered the thick locks of hair at the nape of her neck and pulled the tail over her shoulder—it had a tendency to get caught up in the wheels of her chair when she wasn’t careful The screens before her flickered and scrolled as more and more infor out froht victory”—crown-sanctioned drivel, naturally Cress had stopped paying attention to Lunar nehen she elve

Sheit fro in her lap

“Oh, Cress,” sheto do?”

Her ten-year-old self piped back, “Please clarify your instructions, Big Sister”

Cress shut her eyes against the screen’s glare “I understand that E to stop a war, but heto kill hih with this, and then where will Earth be?” A headache pounded at her teht for certain Linh Cinder had told hi? What if he still has no idea of the danger he’s in?”

Spinning in her chair, she swiped her fingers across a muted newsfeed, punched in a code, and called up the hiddenthat she checked a hundred times a day The D-COMMopened like a black hole, abandoned and silent, on top of her desk Linh Cinder still had not tried to contact her Perhaps her chip had been confiscated or destroyed Perhaps Linh Cinder didn’t even have it anymore

Huffing, Cress disertips, cascaded a dozen different s in its place They were linked to a spider alert service that was constantly patrolling the net for any infor who had been taken into custody a week earlier Linh Cinder The girl who had escaped froirl who had been Cress’s only chance of telling Emperor Kaito the truth about Queen Levana’s intentions should he agree to the e alliance

The major feed hadn’t been updated in eleven hours In the hysteria of the Lunar invasion, Earth seeitive