As the flashes in her vision began to recede, Cinder swiped the water from her eyes. The palace towered above her, ominous and oppressive despite its beauty, stretching along either side of the lake. Without artificial daylight brightening the dome, she could see the spread of the Milky Way beyond the glass, mesmerizing.
On the balcony far above her, Cinder caught shadows moving. Then a wave crashed into her and she was underwater again, her body battered against the current. She lost her sense of direction, up or down. Panic burst again in her head, her arms flailing for control against the buffeting waves. Her shoulder throbbed. Only when she felt herself sinking did she reorient herself and flounder back to the surface.
She tried to swim away from the palace, toward the center of the lake, though there was no end in sight. She hadn’t gone far before her muscles started to burn, and every joint on the left side of her body was screaming at the useless weights of her prosthetic limbs. Her lungs felt scratched raw, but she had to survive. She couldn’t stop fighting—couldn’t stop trying. Kai was still up there. All her friends were on Luna somewhere, needing her, and the people of the outer sectors were counting on her, and she had to keep pushing, pushing …
Holding her breath, Cinder ducked beneath the surface and tugged off her boots, letting them sink. It wasn’t much, but she felt lightened enough to scramble against her body’s lopsided weight, propelling herself through the waves.
The lake seemed never-ending, but every time she glanced back and saw how far the Lunar palace had receded into the distance, Cinder felt a new surge of strength. The shore was lit now by mansions and tiny boat docks. The far side of the lake had disappeared over the horizon.
She rolled onto her back, panting. Her leg was on fire, her arms made of rubber, the wound in her shoulder like an ice pick jammed into her flesh. She couldn’t go any farther.
It occurred to her, as a wave crashed over her body and she almost didn’t bother to reach for the surface, that she didn’t know if she’d reserved enough energy to make it to the shore. What if they were waiting for her there? She couldn’t fight. Couldn’t manipulate. She was done. A half-dead, beaten girl.
Cinder’s head collided with something solid.
She gasped, her loss of propulsion sending her beneath the surface again.
She lashed out with her foot, forcing herself back up, and spat the water from her mouth. Her hands slapped against the hard, slick surface she’d run into. The dome.
She’d reached the edge of Artemisia.
The enormous curved wall acted like a dam, holding the lake back, while on the other side of the glass the crater continued for miles in each direction—dry and pocked and disturbingly, horrifyingly deep.
Bobbing against the glass, Cinder stared at the bottom of the crater hundreds of feet below. She felt like a fish in a fishbowl. Trapped.
She turned toward the shore, but couldn’t make herself move. She was shivering. Her stomach was hollow. Her weighted leg pulled her down again and it took the strength of a thousand wolf soldiers for her to climb back to the surface. Water flooded her mouth and she spat as soon as her head broke through the waves, but it was useless.
She couldn’t.
Dizziness rocked over her. Her arms flopped against the water. Her right leg gave out first, too tired for one more kick. Cinder gasped and she was dragged down, one hand sliding down the slimy glass wall.
There was a strange release as blackness engulfed her. A pride in knowing that when they combed the lake they would find her body way out here and they would know how hard she had fought.
Her body went limp. A wave pushed her back and she struck the wall, but hardly felt it. Then something was gripping her, dragging her upward.
Too weak to fight, Cinder let herself be carried. Her head broke into the air and her lungs expanded. She coughed. Arms wrapped around her. A body pressed her against the wall.
Cinder drooped forward, settling her head against a shoulder.
“Cinder.” A man’s voice, strained and vibrating through her chest. “Stop slacking off, would you?” He adjusted her in his arms, shifting her weight to cradle her in one elbow. “Cinder!”
She turned her bleary eyes up. Catching glimpses of his chin and profile and the wet hair plastered to his brow. She must have been delirious.
“Thorne?” The word stuck in her throat.
“That’s Captain … to you.” He gritted his teeth, straining to pull them toward the shore. “Aces, you’re heavy. Oh, there you are! How nice of you … to help out…”
“Your mouth uses up a lot of energy,” someone growled. Jacin? “Roll her onto her back so her body’s not fighting against—”
His words turned into a sharp yell as Cinder’s body slipped out of Thorne’s hold, sinking into the comforting lull of the waves.
Fifty-Four
Cress and Iko stood gripping each other on the lakeshore, watching Thorne and Jacin dive beneath the surface. Cress was shivering—more from fear than cold—and while Iko’s body didn’t give off natural heat like a human being, there was a comfort that came from her solidarity. They waited, but there was no sign of Thorne or Jacin or Cinder. They’d been underwater for a long time.
Too long.
Cress didn’t realize she was holding her breath until her lungs screamed. She gasped, the sensation more painful because she knew her companions would have been holding their breath for that long too.
Iko squeezed her hand. “Why haven’t they—” She took a step forward, but paused.
Iko’s body wasn’t made for swimming and Cress had never been in a body of water larger than a bathtub.
They were useless.
Cress pressed a shaky hand over her mouth, ignoring the hot tears on her face. It had been far too long.
“There!” Iko cried, pointing. Two—no, three heads appeared over the dark, chopping waves.
Iko took another step. “She is alive, isn’t she? She … she doesn’t seem to be moving. Do you see her moving?”
“I’m sure she’s alive. I’m sure they’re all fine.”
She glanced at Iko, but couldn’t bring herself to ask the question she knew they’d all been thinking. The live broadcast of the wedding feast had shown them everything. The trial. The massacre. Cinder jumping from the ledge and plunging toward the lake below.
Could Cinder swim?
Everyone had thought it, but no one had asked.
Together, the four of them had sneaked through the city, grateful that the few Lunars they saw were too busy celebrating the queen’s marriage to pay them any attention. Jacin had led the way, familiar with the city and the patterns of the lake, knowing where the bodies that fell into it from the throne room occasionally surfaced. There had been no hesitation between them—they all knew they had to find Cinder while Levana was reeling from the attack.
When they had caught sight of Cinder’s dark form among the waves, there was a resounding gasp of joy and relief from the whole group, but they still had no idea what state Cinder would be in.
Was she alive? Was she injured? Could she swim?
When the trio in the water was close enough, Cress let go of Iko and waded out to join them. Together they pulled Cinder’s body ashore, laying her down on the white sand.
“Is she alive?” Iko asked, half-hysterical. “Is she breathing?”
“Let’s get her to that boathouse,” Jacin said. “We can’t stay out here.”
Thorne, Jacin, and Iko shared the job of carrying Cinder’s limp body while Cress ran ahead to hold the doors. Three rowboats were stacked on brackets against the two sidewalls, with a fourth laid out in the middle and covered with a tarp. She cleared a mess of oars and fishing equipment from the tarp, making a space for them to lay out Cinder’s body, but Jacin laid her on the hard floor instead. Iko closed the doors, shrouding the room in darkness. Cress scrambled to switch on her portscreen for its ghostly blue light.