Alone. She was being left here, alone.
“You have your first orders,” said Sybil. “Is there anything else you require?”
Cress couldn’t remember what her first orders had been. She’d been so focused on going to Earth. So excited about trees and oceans and cities …
And now she didn’t have any of that. She didn’t even have the dormitory or the other shells anymore.
“How long?” she asked, her voice wavering. “How long do I have to stay here?”
When Sybil was silent, Cress forced herself to look up and meet her gaze. She hoped for sympathy, kindness, anything.
She shouldn’t have hoped. If anything, Sybil looked only irritated at Cress’s weakness.
“You will stay here until your work is done.” Then, after a moment, her features softened. “Of course, if your work is satisfactory, then perhaps when you are finished we can discuss your return to Artemisia … as a true citizen of Luna.”
Cress sniffed loudly and tilted her head back as much as she dared to hold in the tears.
A true citizen of Luna. Not just a shell. Not a prisoner. Not a secret.
She looked around the room again. She was still horrified, but also more determined than she had ever been.
“All right, Mistress. I will do my best to please Her Majesty.”
A glimmer of approval shone in Sybil’s eyes. She nodded and gestured at the guard, who turned without ceremony and marched back toward the podship.
“I know you will, Crescent.” She turned to follow him out the door. There were no parting words, no reassuring smile, no comforting embrace.
The door slammed and Mistress Sybil was gone and that was that.
Cress was alone.
She gasped and exhaled and moved toward one of the small windows, intending to watch them debark from the satellite and return to Luna.
A glow in the opposite window caught her eye. She turned and drifted to the other side of the tiny room instead.
Earth was so big it nearly filled up the entire frame.
Her whole body was trembling as she crawled up onto the desk and curled against the cabinet, staring at the blue planet. Blue and green and gold. She would sing for a while before she began her work. It would calm her. Singing always made her feel better.
Sweet Crescent Moon, up in the sky …
That was all she could get through before the tears came in earnest, drowning out everything else.
The Princess and the Guard
“Help me, Sir Clay! Save me!” Winter cowered behind the fort of pillows. Though their fortress was strong, she knew it would not keep out the villains forever.
Luckily, at the most opportune of moments, Sir Jacin Clay leaped to her defense, brandishing the legendary Earthlight Saber—in reality, a wooden training sword he’d gotten from his father for his seventh birthday.
“You’ll never have the princess!” Jacin yelled. “I’ll protect her with my life, you Earthen fiend!” He swung and jabbed at the air, while Winter abandoned the wall of pillows and scurried beneath the bed.
“Sir Clay! Behind you!”
Jacin pivoted to face her at the same time that Winter sprang upward.
“Princess?” he asked, his eyes twitching with uncertainty.
Winter grinned a wicked grin and tackled him around the middle, sending them both crashing onto the mattress. “A-ha!” she bellowed. “I have lured you into my trap! You believed I was your beloved princess, but it was only my glamour tricking you. I am none other than Vile Velamina, the infamous space pirate!”
“Not Vile Velamina,” said Jacin, with a feigned gasp of horror. “What have you done with my princess?”
“She is being held prisoner aboard my spaceship. You will never see her again. Bwa-ha-ha!”
“No! I will rescue her!”
Jacin—who was starting to leave Winter behind in the height department—tossed her easily off the bed. She screeched and landed on the floor with a thump. It wasn’t a hard throw, but her knee burned where it hit the rug.
Jacin climbed to his feet, steadying himself on the plush mattress, and thrust the point of the sword at her. “Actually, it is I who have lured you into a trap, you stinking pirate. You are now precisely where I want you.” Reaching up, he grabbed onto one of the tassels that hung from the canopy on Winter’s bed. “With a yank on this rope, a trapdoor will open beneath you, and you will plummet straight into…” He hesitated.
“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!”