Her head spun.

“Let her go,” said the doctor, speaking gently. “We are not your enemies. That girl is not your enemy. Please, allow me to explain.”

Wolf pulled an arm away from her, dragging a hand down his face. He swayed for a moment before recovering his balance. “I’ve been here before,” he muttered. “Cinder … Africa?”

Loud thumping on the distant staircase intruded on his confusion. Then there was yelling and Cress thought she heard her name, and the voice—

“Cress!”

She cried out, forgetting about the vise-like grip around her, except that it kept her from launching herself toward him. “Captain!”

“CRESS!”

The doctor and the guard both spun around as the footsteps barreled down the hall and they all watched as Captain Thorne, blindfolded, ran right past the door.

“Captain! I’m in here!”

The footsteps stopped and reversed and he ran back until his cane smacked the door frame. He froze, panting, one hand braced on the jamb. He had a furious bruise across one side of his face, though it was largely hidden by the bandanna. “Cress? Are you all right?”

Her relief didn’t last. “Captain! To your left there’s a Lunar guard and on your right is a doctor who’s running tests on Lunars and I’m being held by one of Levana’s wolf hybrids and please be careful!”

Thorne took a step back into the hallway and pulled a gun from his waistband. He spent a moment swiveling the barrel of the gun in each direction, but nobody moved to attack him.

With some surprise, Cress realized that the operative’s grip had weakened.

“Er…” Thorne furrowed his brow, aiming the gun somewhere near the window. “Could you describe all those threats again because I feel like I missed something.”

“Thorne?”

He pointed the gun toward Wolf, and Cress between them. “Who said that? Who are you? Have you hurt her? Because I swear if you hurt her—”

The Lunar guard reached forward and plucked the gun out of his hand.

“Hey!” Furious, Thorne raised his cane, but the guard easily blocked the blow with his forearm, then took the cane away too. Thorne raised his fists.

“That’s enough!” yelled the doctor. “No one is hurt and no one is going to get hurt!”

Snarling, Thorne turned to face him. “That’s what you think, wolf man … doctor … wait, Cress, which one is this?”

“I am Dr. Dmitri Erland and I am a friend of Linh Cinder’s. You might know me as the man who helped her escape from New Beijing Prison.”

Thorne snorted. “Nice story, except I’m pretty sure I’m the one who helped Cinder escape from prison.”

“Hardly. The man you just hit is also an ally of Cinder’s, as is the lupine soldier who is still on heavy painkillers and probably delirious and who will no doubt pull out some stitches if he doesn’t lie down right away.”

“Thorne,” the operative said again, ignoring the doctor’s warnings. “What’s going on? Where are we? What happened to your eyes?”

Thorne cocked his head. “Wait … Wolf?”

“Yes.”

There was a long, long pause, before understanding filled Thorne’s expression and he laughed. “Aces, Cress, you nearly gave me a heart attack with that wolf hybrid comment. Why didn’t you tell me it was just him?”

“I … um…”

“Where’s Cinder?” asked Thorne.

“I don’t know,” said Wolf. “And where—I thought Cinder said something about Scarlet? Before?” With one arm still loosely tied around Cress’s neck, he dragged his free hand down his face, moaning. “Just a nightmare…?”

“Cinder is here. She’s safe,” said the doctor.

Thorne grinned, the biggest, most enigmatic grin Cress had seen since the satellite.

Cress gaped around the room, nearly hyperventilating as her worldview flip-flopped before her.

Sybil’s guard, who she had last seen on his way to board the Rampion. Could he have betrayed Sybil and joined them?

The doctor who had helped Cinder escape from prison.

The wolf operative. Only now, with Thorne’s recognition, did she realize this was the man she’d seen on the video feed when they’d first contacted her.

And somewhere … Cinder.

Safe. They were safe.

Thorne held out his hand, and the guard put the cane back into it. “Cress, are you all right?” He crossed the room and bent down as if he could inspect her—or kiss her, though he didn’t. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m … I’m all right.” The words were so foreign, so impossible. So liberating. “How did you find me?”

“One of Jina’s men told me the name of this place, and all I had to do was mention ‘crazy doctor’ to the folks outside and they all knew just who I was talking about.”

Knees suddenly weak, she reached for his forearms to stabilize herself. “You came for me.”

He beamed, looking for all the world like a selfless, daring hero.

“Don’t sound so surprised.” Dropping the cane, he pulled her into a crushing embrace that tore her away from Wolf and lifted her clean off the floor. “It turns out you are worth a lot of money on the black market.”

Forty

Cinder stood with her hair pinched back in both hands and the palace blueprint blurring on the netscreen before her. She’d been staring at it all day, but her brain kept running in circles.

“All right. What if—if the doctor and I could get some invitations and sneak in as guests … and then Jacin could create a diversion … or, no, if you created a diversion and Jacin came as one of the staff … but, the doctor is so well-known. Maybe Jacin and I could enter as guests and the doctor … but then how would we … ugh.” She threw her head back and glowered at the ship’s metal ceiling with its crossed wires and air ducts. “Maybe I’m overcomplicating this. Maybe I should go in alone.”

“Yes, because you aren’t recognizable at all,” said Iko, punctuating her statement by pulling up Cinder’s prison photo in the blueprint’s corner.

Cinder groaned. This was never going to work.

“Oh! Cinder!”

She jolted. “What?”

“This just came across the local newsfeed.” Iko wiped away the blueprint and replaced it with a map of the Sahara Desert. A journalist was speaking in the background, and as they watched, a circle was drawn around some nearby cities, with lines and arrows connecting them. A ticker read: WANTED-CRIMINAL CARSWELL THORNE SPOTTED IN SAHARA TRADING CITY. EVADES CAPTURE. As the journalist jabbered on, Thorne’s prison photo flashed on the screen, followed by the words, bright and bold. ARMED AND DANGEROUS. COMM AUTHORITIES IMMEDIATELY WITH ANY INFORMATION.

Cinder’s stomach twisted, first with remorse, then with panic.

It was a false alarm. Thorne … Thorne was dead. Someone must have seen a look-alike and jumped to conclusions. It wasn’t the first time. According to the media, Cinder had been spotted multiple times in every Earthen country, sometimes in multiple locations at once.

But that didn’t matter. If people believed they’d seen the real thing, then they would come. Law enforcement. The military. Bounty hunters.

The desert was about to be flooded with people searching for them, and the Rampion was still sitting, obvious and enormous, in the middle of a tiny oasis town.

“We can’t stay here,” she said, pulling on her boots. “I’ll go get the others. Iko, run the system diagnostics. Make sure we’re set for space travel again.”

She was down the ramp before Iko could respond, jogging toward the hotel. She hoped it wouldn’t take long for the doctor to pack up his things, and Wolf—

She hoped his wounds had healed enough that it would be all right to move him. The doctor had started reducing his dosages. Would it be safe to wake him?

As she rounded the corner to the hotel, she spotted a girl leaning against an electric vehicle—the car was just old enough to be beat-up and grungy, but not old enough to have gained any vintage appeal. On the other hand, the girl was perhaps in her late teens and gorgeous, with light brown skin and braids dyed in shades of blue.