Scarlet

release her. Didn’t even look at her.
    “You traitor! You bastard! Let go of me!”
    She’d lifted her knee for another backward kick when he obeyed, releasing her. She collapsed forward with a yelp.
    Scarlet scurried away, clenching her jaw. Her knees throbbed and she had to use the wall to pull herself back to standing. She swung around to face him. Her stomach roiled and she was sure she would be sick with loathing and disgust and fury.
    “What?” she yelled. “What do you want?”
    Wolf scrubbed the spit from his chin with his wrist. “I had to see you.”
    “Why? So you could gloat over what a fool you made me out to be? How easy it was to convince me that you—” A shudder ripped through her. “I can’t believe I let you touch me. ” She squirmed, wiping her hands down her arms to dispel the memory. “Go away! Just leave me alone!”
    Wolf didn’t move, and didn’t speak again for a long time. Spinning away, Scarlet crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the wall, shaking.
    “I lied to you about a lot of things,” he finally said.
    She snorted.
    “But I meant every apology.”
    She scowled, seeing bright spots on the wall.
    “I never wanted to lie to you, or frighten you, or … and I tried, in the train…”
    “Don’t you dare.” She faced him again, digging her nails into her arms to keep from lashing out and making an idiot of herself again. “Don’t you even think about bringing that up, or trying to justify what you did to me. What your people have done to my grandmother!”
    “Scarlet—” He took a step toward her but she threw her hands up and backed away until her calves collided with the mattress.
    “Don’t come near me. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to listen to you. I would rather die than ever be touched by you again.”
    She saw a gulp straining against his throat. Hurt flashed across his face but it only served to make her angrier.
    Wolf cast a glance toward the door and Scarlet followed the look, noting that her usual guard was waiting outside, watching them as if they were a popular drama on the netscreens. Her stomach twisted.
    “I’m sorry to hear that, Scarlet,” Wolf said, turning back to her. His voice had lost the edge of regret and was all business and cruelty again. “Because I didn’t come to apologize. I came for something else.”
    She straightened. “I don’t care what you—”
    He was at her in a single stride, his hands buried in her hair, pressing her against the wall. His mouth stifled her surprised cry, and then an angry scream. She tried to shove him off her but she’d have had no more luck against the iron bars on the door.
    Her eyes went wide as she felt his tongue and in a flash of rebellion she thought to bite him, but then there was something else. Something small and flat and hard being pressed into her mouth. Every muscle went taut.
    Wolf pulled away. His grip softened, cradling her head. His scars were a blur in her vision. She couldn’t find her breath.
    And then he murmured, so quiet she could barely catch the words even as they steamed against her lips. “Wait until morning,” he said. “The world won’t be safe tonight.”
    Wolf focused on his own fingers as they took a red curl between them. He flinched, as if touching her pained him.
    Indignation returning, Scarlet swiped him away and darted beneath his arm. She fled to the corner of the room and crouched down on the bed. Covering her mouth with one hand, she smashed the other against the wall for balance.
    She waited, her entire body aflame, until Wolf slinked out of the room. The bars opened and shut.
    Outside, the guard snickered. “I suppose we all have our thing,” he said, and then their footsteps padded down the corridor.
    Slumping against the wall, Scarlet spit the foreign object into her palm.
    A small ID chip winked up at her.

 
    BOOK
    Four
    “The better to eat you with, my dear.”

 
    Thirty-Five
    “She’s going to be fine, you know.”
    Cinder jumped, startled from a reverie. Thorne was piloting the small podship into Rieux, France, and Cinder was somewhat amazed they hadn’t crashed and died yet.
    “Who’s going to be fine?”
    “That Émilie girl. You shouldn’t feel bad about knocking her out with your Lunar mind-trick thing. She’ll probably be extra refreshed when she wakes up.”
    Cinder screwed up her mouth. Her thoughts had been so preoccupied with finding a power cell and making it back to Iko before anyone else