The water heated fast and soon a cloud of steam was wafting up around her. She found a bar of soap, packaged in waxy paper. With a moan of ecstasy, Cress sat down in the water and lathered up her hair, amazed at how short and light and easy to clean it was.

As she soaked, she started to hum, imagining her favorite opera music blaring through the satellite speakers. Surrounding and uplifting her. Her quiet humming turned into singing, the words whimsical and foreign. She sang one of her slow Italian favorites, humming the melody when she forgot the words. By the time she reached the end of the song, she was beaming beneath the fall of water.

Cress opened her eyes. Thorne was leaning against the washroom’s doorway.

She pushed herself to the back of the tub and wrapped her arms over her chest. A cascade of water splashed onto the floor. “Captain!”

His grin widened. “Where did you learn to sing like that?”

Her face flamed. “I—I don’t—I’m not wearing any clothes!”

He raised an eyebrow. “Yes. I’m aware of that.” He pointed to his eyes. “No need to rub it in.”

Cress curled her toes against the bottom of the tub. “You shouldn’t have been … you shouldn’t…”

He held up his hands. “All right, fine, I’m sorry. But that was beautiful, Cress. Really. What language was it?”

She shivered, despite the steam. “Old Italian. I don’t know what all the words mean.”

“Huh.” He turned toward the sink. “Well … I liked it.”

Her mortification began slipping away as she watched him fumble around for the faucet.

“Do you see any washcloths?”

She told him where to find them and after knocking a second bar of soap onto the floor, he had found a clean cloth and was soaking it in the sink.

“I think I might go down to the lobby for a bit,” he said, swiping the cloth over his face and leaving streaks of clean amid the dirt.

“Why?”

“See if I can get more information on this place. If we can find one of those abandoned neighborhoods, that would be the best place for Cinder and the others to come get us … after we contact them.”

“If you give me a minute, I can…” She trailed off, gaping at Thorne as he peeled off his shirt. Her heart stuck in her throat as she watched him wring out the cloth, before washing off his arms and neck, chest and underarms. Setting the cloth aside, he cupped his hands beneath the faucet and slicked water through his hair.

Her fingers twitched with the sudden irrepressible desire to touch him.

“That’s all right,” he said, as if she hadn’t just lost the ability to form coherent sentences. “I’ll bring us back some food.”

Cress splashed herself with the water, willing her brain to focus. “But—you said there are things to trip over and that I shouldn’t leave you and … don’t you want me to come?”

His hand searched around the walls until it stumbled across one of the hanging towels. He pulled it off the rack and briskly rubbed it over his face and through his hair, making it stand on end. “No need. I won’t be long.”

“But how will you—”

“Really, Cress. I’ll be fine. Maybe you can take a look at that netscreen, see if you can figure out some way to contact the crew.” He grabbed his shirt from the counter and shook it out, sending dust and sand flying, before pulling it over his head. He retied the bandanna over his eyes. “Be honest. Do I look like a famous wanted criminal right now?”

He struck a pose, complete with dazzling smile. With the messy hair, filthy clothes, and bandanna, she had to admit that he was almost unrecognizable from his prison photo. Yet somehow still heart-throbbingly gorgeous.

She sighed. “No. You don’t.”

“Good. I’ll see about getting us some clean clothes while I’m down there too.”

“Are you sure you don’t need me?”

“I was overreacting before. We’re in civilization now. I’ve got this.”

He was all charisma as he blew her a kiss and left.

Twenty-Nine

Stepping back from the Rampion’s hulking side, Cinder shaded her eyes with one arm and peered up at their slipshod work. Jacin was still up on one of the squeaky metal ladders the townspeople had brought them, painting over all that remained of the ship’s signature decoration—the lounging naked lady, the mascot that Thorne had painted himself before Cinder had ever met him. Cinder had hated the painting from the moment she laid eyes on it, but now she was sad to see it covered up. Like she was erasing a part of Thorne, a part of his memory.

But word had gotten out through the media that the wanted ship had this very specific marking, and that was unacceptable.

Swiping a bead of sweat from her brow, Cinder surveyed the rest of their work. They didn’t have enough paint to cover the entire ship, so they’d opted to focus on the main ramp’s enormous side panel, so that it would at least look like that exterior piece had been fully replaced, which wasn’t uncommon, rather than looking like they had tried to cover something up, which would defeat the purpose.

Unfortunately, it seemed that as much black paint had ended up on the dusty ground and the townspeople, who had come out in droves to help them, than had actually ended up on the ship. Cinder herself had paint dried on her collarbone, her temple, clumped in her hair, and stuck in the joints of her metal hand, but she was relatively unscathed compared with some of their assistants. The children in particular, eager to be helpful at first, had soon made a game of seeing who could paint up their bodies to look the most cyborg.

It was a strange sort of honor. Since Cinder had arrived, she’d been seeing this mimicry more and more. The backs of T-shirts illustrated with bionic spines. Shoes decorated with bits of assorted metal. Necklaces hung with washers and vintage lug nuts.

One girl had even been proud to show Cinder her new, real tattoo—wires and robotic joints overtaking the skin of her left foot. Cinder had smiled awkwardly and resisted the urge to tell her that the tattoo wasn’t cybernetically accurate.

The attention made Cinder uncomfortable. Not because she wasn’t flattered, but because she wasn’t used to it. She wasn’t used to being accepted by strangers, even appreciated. She wasn’t used to being admired.

“Hey, mongrels, try to stay in the lines!”

Cinder looked up, just as Jacin flicked his paintbrush, sending a splatter of black paint at the three children beneath him. They all shrieked with laughter and ran for cover beneath the ship’s underside.

Wiping her hands on her cargo pants, Cinder went to look at the finger painting the kids had been doodling on the other side of the ramp’s plating. Simple stick figures depicted a family holding hands. Two adults. Three children of various heights. And at the end—Cinder. She knew it was her by the ponytail jutting out from the side of her head and how one of the stick figure’s legs was twice as wide as the other.

She shook her head, baffled.

The ladder shook beside her as Jacin clambered down. “You should wipe it off,” he said, unhooking a damp rag from his belt.

“It’s not hurting anything.”

Scoffing, Jacin draped the rag over her shoulder. “The whole point of this is to get rid of obvious markings.”

“But it’s so small.…”

“Since when are you so sentimental?”

She blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Fine.” Pulling the rag off her shoulder, she set to scrubbing the paint off before it could dry. “I thought I was the one giving the orders around here.”

“I hope you don’t really think I’m here just to be bossed around some more.” Jacin dropped his paintbrush into a bucket at the ladder’s base. “I’ve taken enough orders in my life.”

Cinder refolded the rag, searching for a spot that wasn’t already soaked through with paint. “You have a funny way of showing loyalty.”