Scarlet

boyfriend!”
    “It’s about Michelle Benoit.”
    Cinder sucked down a slow breath, and turned back around. “What?”
    Thorne hesitated, as if afraid to move in case he set her off again, before inclining his head toward the cockpit’s dash behind him. “Come take a look at this.”
    Heaving a sigh, Cinder trudged back toward him. She settled her elbows on the back of Thorne’s chair.
    Thorne dismissed the news channel. “Did you know that Michelle Benoit has a teenage granddaughter?”
    “No,” said Cinder, bored.
    “Well, she does. Miss Scarlet Benoit. Supposedly she just turned eighteen, but—brace yourself—she doesn’t have any hospital records. Get it? Holy spades, I’m a genius.”
    Cinder scowled. “I don’t get it.”
    Tilting back, Thorne peered at her upside down. “She doesn’t have any hospital records. ”
    “So?”
    He spun the chair to face her. “Do you know a single person who wasn’t born in a hospital?”
    Cinder considered. “Are you suggesting that she could be the princess?”
    “That’s precisely what I’m suggesting.”
    The netscreen turned to a profile and picture of Scarlet Benoit. She was pretty, with pronounced curves and fiery red curls.
    Cinder squinted at the image. A teenage girl without a birth record. A ward of Michelle Benoit.
    How convenient.
    “Well, then. Excellent detective work, Captain.”

 
    Twenty-Five
    Scarlet dreamt that a blizzard had covered all of Europe in neck-deep snow. A child again, she came downstairs to find her grandmother kneeling in front of the wood stove. “I thought I’d found someone who would take you in,” her grandma said. “But they’ll never come for you in all this snow. I guess I’ll have to wait until spring now to be rid of you.”
    She stoked the fire. The sparks flew into Scarlet’s eyes, stinging, and she woke up with wetness on her cheeks, her fingers like ice. For a long time she couldn’t sort out what was a dream and what was a memory. Snow, but not so much snow. Her grandmother wanting to send her away, but not when she was a child. A teenager. Thirteen.
    Had it been January, or later still in the winter? She struggled to piece together thawing memories. She’d been sent out to milk the cow, a chore she’d despised, and her hands were so numb she was afraid she would squeeze the udders too tight.
    Why hadn’t she been in school that day? Was it a weekend? A vacation?
    Oh—right. She’d been visiting her father, just come back the day before. She was supposed to stay with him for a full month, but she couldn’t stand it. The drinking, the coming back to the apartment in the middle of the night. Scarlet had taken the train home without telling anyone, surprising her grandmother with her arrival. Rather than happy to see her, her grandmother had been angry that Scarlet hadn’t commed to tell her what was happening. They’d had a fight. Scarlet was still mad at her, milking the cow, fingers freezing.
    It was the last time she’d ridden the maglev. The last time she’d seen her father.
    She remembered hurrying through her chores, desperate to be finished with them so she could go inside and get warm. It wasn’t until she was rushing back to the house that she saw the hover out front. She’d seen plenty hovers when she lived in the city, but they were rare out in the country, where the farmers preferred larger, faster ships.
    She’d sneaked in through the back door and heard her grandmother in the kitchen, and a man, their voices muffled. She inched her way around the staircase, her feet silent on the terra-cotta tiles.
    “I can’t imagine what a burden she’s been for you all these years,” said the man in an eastern accent.
    Scarlet frowned, sensing the kitchen’s warmth upon her cheeks as she peered through the cracked door. He was at the table, a mug in his hands. He had silk-black hair and a long face. Scarlet had never seen him before.
    “She hasn’t been as much trouble as I expected her to be,” said her grandmother, who she couldn’t see. “I’ve almost grown attached to her after all these years. But I must say, I’ll be glad when she’s gone. No more panicking each time an unfamiliar ship flies by.”
    Scarlet’s throat constricted.
    “You said she’d be ready to go in a week’s time? Can that be so?”
    “Logan seems to think so. This device of yours is all we were waiting for. If the procedure goes smoothly it could even be sooner. But you’ll have to be patient