She had a trained killer at her side and two skilled shooters at her back. It would have to be enough.
She reached the front row of the gathered civilians. “You came here for me, and here I am. Leave these people alone.”
Aimery cocked his head. His gaze swooped over Cinder, from head to toe and back up, making her feel like easy prey. She knew how she looked in her drab clothing, with her metal hand and clunky boots, her messy ponytail, and most likely, a hearty amount of dust smudged across her face. She knew that she did not look like a queen.
“Imagine how differently this could have gone,” he said, stepping down from the fountain’s ledge, “if you had chosen to claim the minds of these people before our arrival. Instead, you left them adrift on the ocean of their own weaknesses. You turned them into targets and then did nothing to protect them. You are not suited to be a ruler of Luna.”
“Because I would rather my people know freedom than constant manipulation?”
“Because you are not capable of making the decisions a queen must make for the good of all her people.”
She gritted her teeth. “The only people who have benefited from Levana’s regime are the greedy aristocrats in Artemisia. Levana’s not a queen. She’s a tyrant.”
Aimery bowed his head, almost like he was agreeing with her. “And you,” he whispered, “are nobody at all.”
“I am the true ruler of Luna.” Though she put as much conviction behind the words as she could, they fell flat. Within moments, the arrival of the queen’s head thaumaturge had undone all the progress she’d made in this sector. With a flick of his fingers Aimery had taken away all her power and prostrated the people before him.
“You are a child playing at war games,” said Aimery, “and you’re too naïve to see you’ve already lost.”
“I’m surrendering to you,” she said. “And if that means I have to lose so these people can go free, so be it. What you don’t seem to realize is that this isn’t about me. It’s about the people who have lived in oppression for far too long. Levana’s rule is coming to an end.”
Aimery’s smile grew. Behind him, the fountain gushed and spat.
Wolf’s energy surged behind her, hackles raised.
Aimery opened his arms to the crowd. “Let it be known that on this day, the impostor princess surrendered to Her Majesty the Queen. Her crimes will be dealt with swiftly and justly.” His eyes glimmered. “However, I promised that your lives would be spared if any one of you were to give up the cyborg’s location.” He clicked his tongue. “It is a great shame no one came forward sooner. I do not like to be kept waiting.”
A shot fired. A shock wave pulsed through Cinder’s body.
She didn’t know where it came from. She saw blood, but didn’t know who had been hit.
Then Maha’s legs collapsed and she fell face-first onto the hard ground. Her three deformed fingers remained stretched out over her head.
Still reeling from the concussion of the gunshot, Cinder stared at Maha’s body, unable to breathe. Unable to move.
She heard Wolf’s intake of breath. His energy crystallized into something still and fragile.
The world stilled, balancing on a needle point. Silent. Incomprehensible.
Another gun fired, this shot from much farther away, and the noise shoved the world off its axis. Aimery crowed and stumbled back as a spot on his thigh soaked through with blood. His eyes blazed up toward the factory. Another shot hit the fountain behind him.
Wolf roared and leaped forward. The nearest guard blocked his path, but was too slow to shoot. Wolf batted him away like an annoying gnat and rushed for Aimery, teeth bared.
A cacophony of noise and bodies erupted. Every citizen that should have been on Cinder’s side instead surged to their feet and grappled for her and Wolf. Cinder’s body was slammed to the ground. She lost sight of Wolf. More gunshots.
Throwing a punch to someone’s jaw, she rolled once and scrambled back to her feet. She spotted a red coat, raised her hand, and fired. She waited long enough to see the thaumaturge buck back before she was searching for another target, but she didn’t get off another shot as dozens of hands grabbed her, pulled her, wrestled her to the ground.
Cinder thrashed against their hold, blowing a lock of hair from her face. She spotted Wolf. He, too, was pinned to the ground, though it had taken a dozen men to do it. Every limb was held in place, his cheek pressed into the dust. The bodies of two guards and one miner lay not far away.
Aimery loomed above him, panting, his constant smile nowhere to be seen. He had one hand pressed over the wound in his leg. “The shots are coming from that factory. Send a team to search it, and bind these two before they try anything else.”
Cinder strained against the arms holding her. If she could raise her arm, take one clean shot—
Her arms were yanked behind her, her wrists bound. She screamed as her shoulder was pulled just shy of dislocation. She was hauled back to her feet, coughing on dust, her entire body throbbing.
She glanced around, searching for an ally, but only blank faces greeted her.
She sneered, defiant, as she and Wolf were forced to kneel in front of Aimery’s livid face. She was dizzy with her own hatred, but as her thoughts settled, she was hit with the full force of Wolf’s agony beside her.
He was in anguish, his emotions splintering, and Cinder remembered that the body of the miner beside him was his mother.
Cinder shuddered and had to look away. She spotted the red-coated thaumaturge she’d shot, not moving, and another in a black uniform also lying not far away.