“She was in the military before she was a farmer. She traveled then.”

“That was over twenty years ago. How long has the princess been missing? Ten, fifteen years? That doesn’t even make sense.”

“You can’t discount it.”

“Sure I can!”

“What if she does know something?”

She frowned, but her disbelief faded upon seeing Wolf’s growing desperation.

“Scarlet,” he said, “Ran said that the assignment had been called off—he could only have meant the search for the princess. I can’t imagine why, after so many years … but if it’s true, then it may mean they have no more use of your grandmother.”

A pang in her stomach. “So they would let her go?”

Wrinkles formed around Wolf’s lips, and a weight dropped onto Scarlet’s chest. He didn’t need to speak for her to see his answer.

No. No, they would not let her go.

She sucked in a dizzying breath, dropping her attention to the streaks of moonlight on the tracks below.

“If I’d known … if I’d met you before … I want to help you, Scarlet. I want to try and make this better, but they want information that I don’t have. The best thing for your grandmother is to be useful. Even if they have stopped looking for Selene, there may still be something she knows, or something in her past, anything that would make her valuable to them. That’s why, if there’s anything you know, any information you have … It’s the best chance you have of saving her. You can barter for her. Give them the information they want.”

Her frustration nearly enveloped her. “I don’t know what they want.”

“Think. Has there ever been anything suspicious? Anything your grandma has said or done that struck you as peculiar?”

“She does peculiar things all the time.”

“That’s related to Lunars? Or the princess?”

“No, she’s…” She paused. “I mean, she’s always been more sympathetic to them than most people. She’s not quick to judge.”

“What else?”

“Nothing. Nothing else. She has nothing to do with the Lunars.”

“There’s evidence that that’s not true.”

“What evidence? What are you talking about?”

Wolf scratched at his hair. “She must have told you that she’s been to Luna.”

Scarlet pressed her palms against her eyelids, sucking in a shaky breath. “You’re insane. Why would my grandmother have ever gone to Luna?”

“She was part of the only diplomatic mission to be sent from Earth to Luna in the last fifty years. She was the pilot that brought the Earthen officials. The visit lasted almost two weeks, so she must have had some interaction with Lunars.…” He frowned. “She never told you any of this?”

“No! No, she never told me any of this! When was this?”

Wolf looked away, and she could see his hesitation.

“Wolf. When was this?”

He gulped. “Forty years ago,” he said, his tone going quiet again. “Nine months before your father was born.”

Twenty-Three

The world spun. Scarlet searched Wolf’s face for a joke that never came. “My father.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I thought she must have told you … something about this.”

“But … how do you know all this?”

“It all ties back to the princess. Evidence suggests she was taken off Luna by a man named Logan Tanner, a doctor.” He searched her for some recognition, but the name meant nothing to Scarlet. Wolf continued, “The only Earthens Dr. Tanner would have had contact with prior to taking the princess were those who had been on the same mission as your grandmother. People who knew him suspected that Dr. Tanner had had a liaison with Michelle Benoit during her stay. Those theories became more plausible when we learned that Michelle had given birth to a son, with no record of the father, nine months later.”

Unable to stay standing, Scarlet sank to the ground. If Wolf was telling the truth … if these theories were correct … then her grandfather was Lunar.

A flurry of thoughts passed before her. Clues she’d never known she was collecting settled into place. Why her grandma was so sympathetic to Lunars. Why she never talked about Scarlet’s grandfather. Why she had insisted that neither Scarlet nor her father be born in a hospital—the mandatory blood tests would have shown their ancestry.

How could she have kept it secret for so long?

It occurred to her with a jolt that it was always her grandmother’s intention to keep it a secret. She had never meant to tell Scarlet the truth to begin with.

Something so big. Something so important. And her grandma had kept it from her.

“We don’t keep secrets,” she whispered to herself, head sinking as tears started to well in her eyes again. “We don’t keep secrets from each other.”

“I’m sorry,” said Wolf, kneeling before her. “I thought for sure you would have known about this.”

“I didn’t.” She rubbed the tears away. Why wouldn’t her grandmother have told her about this Logan Tanner? Was it to protect her from the distrust and prejudice that could come from being part Lunar, or was there something else? An even more unlikely secret she’d been protecting …

Her chest ached as she wondered how many secrets had been kept from her.

Wolf’s attention darted to the south, one ear cocked to the sky.

Instantly, Scarlet’s thoughts settled. She listened, but there was only a breeze in the forest, a charming chorus of crickets.

Though she heard nothing, Wolf whispered, “A train is coming.” He fixated on her again, concern etched across his brow. She could see that he believed he’d said too much, but she thirsted for more.

With a nod, she planted a hand on the ground and pushed herself to standing. “And these people think my grandmother knows something about the princess because…?”

Wolf skirted to the edge of the short cliff, peering off down the rails. “They believe Dr. Tanner asked your grandmother for assistance when he brought the princess to Earth.”

“They believe, but they can’t know that for sure.”

“Perhaps not, but that’s why they took her,” he said, testing the fallen log with his foot again. “To find out what she knew.”

“And did they ever consider that maybe she doesn’t know anything?”

“They’re convinced that she does. Or at least, they were when I left them, though I don’t know what they’ve learned since—”

“Well, why don’t they find this Dr. Tanner and ask him?”

Wolf clenched his jaw. “Because he’s dead.” Stooping, he grabbed their forgotten pack and draped it over his elbow. “He killed himself, earlier this year. In an insane asylum in the Eastern Commonwealth.”

Some of Scarlet’s anger fizzled out, replaced with pity for a man who had not existed to her minutes before. “An asylum?”

“He was a patient there. Self-admitted.”

“How? He was Lunar. Why wasn’t he captured and sent back to Luna?”

“He must have figured out how to blend in with Earthen society.”

Wolf held out his hand and Scarlet took it instinctively, starting when his hot fingers enclosed hers. After a heartbeat, his hold relaxed as he stepped out onto the tree trunk.

Scarlet angled her portscreen toward their treacherous footings and struggled to find her train of thought over the pounding in her ears. “There must be someone else he had contact with on Earth. The trail can’t end with my grandma. According to my dad, she hadn’t told them anything, after weeks of … of who knows what they’ve been doing to her. They must realize they’ve got the wrong person!”

There was a peculiar restraint when Wolf responded. “Are you sure they have?”

She glared. The Lunar heir was a myth, a conspiracy, a legend … how could her diligent, proud grandmother, living in small-town Rieux, possibly be involved?

But she couldn’t be entirely sure of anything anymore. Not if her grandmother had kept something so big from her already.

A faint hum cut through the forest’s whispers. The magnets waking up.