Stars Above: A Lunar Chronicles Collection (The Lunar Chronicles)(44)

“Oh—the menagerie!” Winter suggested, eyes brightening. “Ryu’s cage. And the wolf is very, very hungry and will no doubt gobble the pirate up!”

Jacin scowled at her. “Are you plotting your own demise?”

“That was the princess speaking. I was implanting the thought directly into your brain. Velamina has me tied up, but not unconscious.”

Jacin started to laugh. “What she said, then.” He made a great show of pulling on the tassel. The curtains didn’t budge, but Winter played along, screaming in anguish and rolling around on the carpet as if she’d just been thrown into a den with the most dangerous feral wolf of all time.

Jacin held the sword toward the ceiling. “Now I must find my princess and return her safely to the palace, where I will be rewarded with great honor.”

“Honor?” Winter sneered. “Aren’t you going to ask for riches, or something? Like a mansion in AR-4?”

Shaking his head, Jacin stared dreamily toward outer space. “Seeing my princess’s smile when she is returned safely home is all the reward that I need.”

“Ew, gross.” Winter threw a pillow at his head, but Jacin dodged it and hopped down from the bed.

“Now then—with the pirate vanquished I have only to find her spaceship.”

Winter pointed at the glass doors that opened out onto her balcony. “It’s out there.”

Chest puffed like a proud hero, Jacin strutted to the doors.

“Hold on!” Winter jumped to her feet and grabbed a belt from her wardrobe. She fluffed her thick curls around her face, trying to leave Vile Velamina behind and return to her sweet, demure princess role instead.

On the balcony, she made a great show of tying herself to the rail.

“You do realize,” Jacin said, watching apprehensively, “that if anyone looked up here right now, they’d think you really were in trouble.”

“Pffft. No one would believe that you could manipulate me so easily.”

His jaw twitched, just a little, and Winter felt a sting of guilt. Though he pretended otherwise, she knew Jacin was sensitive about how poorly his Lunar gift was developing. At almost eight years old he should have been starting glamour practice and emotional manipulation, but it was becoming apparent that Jacin had inherited his father’s lack of skill. He was almost as ungifted as a shell.

Winter knew it was bad—shameful, even—to have so little talent, especially here in the capital city of Artemisia.

On the other hand, her gift had started developing when she was only four, and was becoming stronger every day. She was already meeting once a week with a tutor, Master Gertman, who said she was growing up to be one of the most talented pupils he’d ever had.

“All right, I’m ready,” she said, cinching the belt around her wrists.

Jacin shook his head. “You’re crazy, is what you are.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, then tossed her hair off one shoulder and screwed up her face in distress. “Won’t some strong, brave hero come save me from these awful pirates? Help! Help!”

But Jacin’s frown remained, his attention caught on something over her shoulder. “Who’s that, in the throne room?”

Winter glanced back. Her chambers were in the private wing of Artemisia Palace, where the royal family slept, just down the hall from her father and stepmother’s rooms. They were on the third floor, with a marvelous view of Lake Artemisia below, and she could see most of the opposite wing of the palace, which wrapped around the lake’s far side.

At the very center of the palace was the throne room. It was the only room that had a balcony jutting far out over the lake’s waters—with no rail or barrier to provide protection if anyone stepped too close to the edge.

And there was a woman standing there, peering into the waters below.

Winter didn’t recognize her, but the uniform of a palace servant was clear even from far away.

“What’s she doing?” she asked.

She had barely finished speaking before Jacin turned and started to run.

Heart thumping, Winter scrambled to undo the belt around her wrists. “Wait—Jacin! Wait for me!”

He did not wait, and it didn’t occur to Winter to use her gift to force him to wait until he was already out her bedroom door. Finally she managed to get the belt undone. With one hurried look back toward the throne room, relieved to see that the woman hadn’t moved, she bolted after Jacin.

Her guard—her real guard—startled when she burst out into the corridor and followed at a fast clip as she flew down the hallway, around the familiar white-stone curves of the palace. No one tried to stop her, though guards and nobility and thaumaturges alike stepped out of her way as she barreled past.

From a distance she watched Jacin’s white-blond hair disappear through the enormous black doors of the throne room. The doors had almost shut again when she wedged her arm between them and shoved her way inside.

Jacin stood only a few steps into the room and Winter nearly crashed into him, catching herself on his outstretched arm instead.

“No!” the woman gasped. “Take her out of here. Her Highness needn’t see this.” Her voice was wobbly and cracked, her eyes bloodshot. She was young, maybe in her early twenties, and she was pretty in a natural way. No glamour was creating her rosy skin or thick brown hair, but neither was a glamour hiding the hollowness of her cheeks or the wild panic in her eyes. Everything in her expression suggested a brokenness, a desperation, and a heartbreak later Winter understood.