Scarlet

?”
    Torin cleared his throat, as he did whenever Kai mentioned some off-the-wall theory—although it seemed like a perfectly legitimate question to Kai. “We’re in the process of investigating all possibilities,” said Torin. “At least now we know how she escaped.”
    “We have other video that shows the prisoner glamouring the guard on the next shift,” said Huy, “and being shown to a new cell. In that footage she has two feet, and a different left hand from the one she entered the prison with.”
    Kai shoved himself out of his chair. “The bag,” he said, pacing toward the windows.
    “Yes. Dr. Erland was bringing her these tools, we must assume with the intention of assisting her escape.”
    “That’s why he left.” Kai shook his head, wondering how Cinder really knew Dr. Erland—what they’d really been doing all those times she’d come to see him at the hospital. Plotting, conniving, conspiring? “I thought she was just fixing a med-droid,” he murmured to himself. “I didn’t even question—stars, I’ve been so stupid.”
    “Your Majesty,” said Huy, “our few resources not searching for Linh Cinder have been dedicated to finding Dmitri Erland. He will be arrested as a traitor to the crown.”
    “Please excuse the interruption,” said Nainsi, the android who had once tutored Kai as a child, but had now taken on the more significant role of personal assistant. The android who had malfunctioned—was it not even four weeks ago?—and led him to his first meeting with Linh Cinder, back when she was nothing more to him than a renowned mechanic. “Her Majesty, Lunar Queen Levana, has requested an immediate appoint—”
    “I will not be announced by an android!”
    Huy and Torin spun around as Queen Levana swooped in and backhanded Nainsi across her single blue sensor, eyes flaming. The android no doubt would have toppled onto her back if her stabilizing hydraulics hadn’t kicked in just in time to catch her.
    The queen’s usual entourage followed—Sybil Mira, head thaumaturge, whose role in the Lunar court seemed to be a cross between a doting lapdog and a gleeful servant who delighted in seeing to Levana’s cruelest requests. Kai had once seen her attack and nearly blind an innocent servant at the queen’s bidding, without a hint of hesitation.
    She was followed by another thaumaturge, one rank beneath Sybil, who had dark skin and piercing eyes and no purpose, it seemed to Kai, other than to stand behind his queen and look smug.
    Sybil’s personal guard followed, the blond man who had held Cinder during the ball when Levana first threatened her life. Even after a month of their being guests in his palace, Kai didn’t know his name. A second guard, his hair flaming red, had been the one to jump in between a bullet and Levana at the ball, taking it squarely in the shoulder. It seemed that bullet wounds weren’t enough to let one off royal guard duty, though, and the only indication of the wound was the lump of a bandage beneath his uniform.
    “Your Majesty,” Kai said, addressing the queen with, he thought, an admirable lack of contempt. “What a pleasant surprise.”
    “One more patronizing comment and I will have you slice off and nail your own tongue to the palace gate.”
    Kai blanched. Levana’s voice, usually so melodious and sweet, was rigid as steel, and though he’d seen her angry many times before, it had never been enough for her to drop the thin veneer of diplomacy. “Your Majesty—”
    “You let her escape! My prisoner!”
    “I assure you, we’re doing everything we can—”
    “Aimery, silence him.”
    Kai’s tongue fell limp. Eyes widening, he reached a hand to his lips, realizing it wasn’t only his tongue, but his throat, his jaw. The muscles had gone useless. Which perhaps was better than having his tongue nailed to the palace gate, but still …
    His gaze darted to the male thaumaturge in his pristine red coat, who grinned charmingly back. Rage flared inside him.
    “You’re doing everything you can?” Levana flattened her palms on Kai’s desk. Their glares battled over the netscreen that still showed the empty prison hallway, frozen in time. “You’re telling me, young emperor, that you didn’t assist her escape? That your intention from the start hasn’t been to humiliate me on your soil?”
    Kai sensed that she wanted him to fall to his knees and silently plead for forgiveness, to promise to move the Earth and heavens to satisfy