The guard held her gaze for one throbbing moment, before he hauled himself up and ran toward his mistress.

Cinder didn’t wait to see whether he was going to kill her or protect her.

Clenching her fists, she blocked out everything around them, focusing only on Wolf and the bioelectricity that simmered around him. He was weak. This was not like trying to control him in their mock fights. She found her will slipped easily into his, and though his body protested, she urged him to stiffen his legs. Just enough to take most of his weight off her. Just enough so she could carry him, limping, into the corridor.

She dropped Wolf against the wall. Her palms were sticky with blood.

“What’s happening?” Iko wailed over the speakers.

“Keep your sensor on this corridor,” said Cinder. “When all three of us are safely out of the dock, shut the door and open the hatch.”

Sweat dripping into her eyes, she rushed back into the dock. All she needed was to get Scarlet and let Iko open the hatch. The vacuum of space would take care of the rest.

She spotted the thaumaturge first. Not ten paces in front of her.

She had a clear shot.

Nerves humming with adrenaline, she lifted her hand and prepared a projectile. She took aim.

Scarlet leaped in front of her, her arms out in a T. Her expression was blank, her mind under the thaumaturge’s control.

Cinder almost wilted with relief. Without hesitating, she grabbed Scarlet around the waist with one arm and raised the other to let off a volley of projectiles toward the thaumaturge—more to keep her at bay than in hopes of doing any real damage. The last of her welded nails struck the metal walls as Cinder stumbled and fell back into the corridor.

She noticed the orange light in her vision at the same moment she screamed, “Iko, now!”

As the corridor door zipped shut, she spotted Sybil racing toward the nearest pod, and a glimpse of feet on the other side of the podship.

The guard’s feet.

But—

But—

Blue jeans and tennis shoes?

Cinder shoved Scarlet’s body away with a scream.

The glamour vanished, along with the orange light in her vision. Scarlet’s red hoodie flickered, transforming into the Lunar uniform. The guard groaned and rolled away. He was bleeding from the wound in his side.

She’d grabbed the guard. Sybil had tricked her. Which meant—

“No—Scarlet! Iko!”

She threw herself at the control panel and punched in the code to open the door, but an error flashed at her. On the other side, the docking hatch was opening. A curdled scream echoed through the corridor, and Cinder almost didn’t realize it was hers.

“Cinder! What’s happening? What—”

“Scarlet’s in there.… She has…”

She raked her fingernails viciously along the door’s airtight seal, unable to keep away the vision of Scarlet being pulled out into space.

“Cinder, the podship!” said Iko. “She’s taking the podship. Two life-forms aboard.”

“What?”

Cinder looked up at the panel. Sure enough, the room’s scanners indicated there was only one shuttle still docked.

The thaumaturge had survived, and she’d taken Scarlet with her.

Eleven

“She has Scarlet,” said Cinder. “Quick—close the hatch! I’ll take the other pod, I’ll follow them—”

Her words faltered, her brain catching up.

She did not know how to fly a podship.

But she could figure it out. She could download some instructions and she could … she would have to …

“Your friend is dying.”

She spun around. She’d forgotten about the Lunar guard.

He was pressing a hand to his side, where Cinder’s projectile was still embedded, but his attention was on Wolf.

Wolf, who was unconscious and surrounded by blood.

“Oh, no. Oh, no.” She ejected the knife in her finger and started cutting the bloodstained fabric away from Wolf’s wounds. “Thorne. We need to get Thorne. Then we can go after Scarlet and I … I’ll bandage Wolf and—”

She glanced at the guard. “Shirt,” she said firmly, although the order was more to focus her own thoughts. In seconds, the guard’s hands were working at her command, removing the empty gun holster and pulling his own bloodied shirt over his head. She was glad to see a second undershirt as well—she had a feeling they were going to need every bit of “bandaging” she could find to stanch Wolf’s bleeding. Eventually they would have to get him to the medbay, but there was no way she could move him in this condition, especially not up that ladder.

She tried to ignore the niggling thought in her head that this was not enough. That not even the bandages in the medbay would be enough.

She grabbed the guard’s shirt and bunched it against Wolf’s chest. At least this bullet had missed his heart. She hoped the other one hadn’t hit anything vital either.

Her thoughts were hazy, repeating over and over in her head. They had to get Thorne. They had to go after Scarlet. They had to save Wolf.

She couldn’t do it all.

She couldn’t do any of it.

“Thorne—” Her voice broke. “Where’s Thorne?” Keeping one hand pressed onto Wolf’s wound, she reached for the guard with the other, grabbing his collar and pulling him toward her. “What did you do to Thorne?”

“Your friend who boarded the satellite,” he said, as much a statement as a question. There was regret in his face, but not enough. “He’s dead.”

She shrieked and slammed him into the wall. “You’re lying!”

He flinched, but didn’t try to protect himself, even though she’d already lost her focus. She could not keep him under her control so long as her thoughts were so divided, so long as this chaos and devastation reigned in her head.

“Mistress Sybil changed the satellite’s trajectory, removing it from orbit. It will burn up during entry. It probably already has. There’s nothing you can do.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. Every part of her was trembling. “She wouldn’t have sacrificed her own programmer too.”

But there was no telltale orange light in her vision. He wasn’t lying.

The guard leaned his head back as his gaze skimmed Cinder from head to toe, as if examining an unusual specimen. “She would sacrifice anyone to get to you. The queen seems to believe you’re a threat.”

Cinder ground her teeth so hard she felt that her jaw would snap from the pressure. There it was—stated with such blatant simplicity.

This was her fault. This was all her fault.

They’d been after her.

“Your other shirt,” she whispered. She didn’t bother to control him this time, and he removed the undershirt without argument. Cinder grabbed it from him, spotting the end of her own projectile jutting from his skin, just below his ribs.

Looking away, she pressed the second shirt against the wound in Wolf’s back.

“Roll him onto his side.”

“What?”

“Get him on his side. It’ll open the airway, help him breathe.”

Cinder glowered at him, but a four-second net search confirmed the validity of his suggestion, and she eased Wolf onto his side as gently as she could, positioning his legs like the medical diagram in her brain told her to. The guard didn’t help, but he nodded approvingly when Cinder was done.

“Cinder?”

It was Iko, her voice small and restrained. The ship had become dark, running only on emergency lighting and default systems. Iko’s anxiety was clouding her ability to function as much as Cinder’s was.

“What are we going to do?”

Cinder struggled to breathe. A headache had burst open in her skull. The weight of everything pressed against her until it was almost too tempting to curl up over Wolf’s body and simply give up.

She couldn’t help them. She couldn’t save the world. She couldn’t save anyone.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”