“Very good, Scarlet, dear.”

“Why don’t you just tell them his name? You must remember what it was, and then they could go to him. Won’t he know where the princess is?”

“They no longer want to know about the princess.”

She bit down on her lip. Frustration welled up inside her. She was shaking. “Then why don’t they let us go?”

Her grandma squeezed Scarlet’s fingers. Years of pulling weeds and chopping vegetables had made them strong, despite their age. “They can’t control me, Scarlet.”

She scrutinized her grandma’s lined face. “What do you mean?”

“They’re Lunar. The thaumaturge—he has the Lunar gift. But it doesn’t work on me. That’s why they’re keeping me here. They want to know why.”

Scarlet grasped for figments in her mind. All those bits and pieces she’d learned about Lunars—impossible ever to tell which were true and which were exaggerated tales. It was believed that their queen ruled through mind control, and that her thaumaturges were almost as strong as she was. That they could manipulate people’s thoughts and emotions. That they could even control people’s bodies if they chose, like puppets on strings.

Scarlet gulped. “Are there a lot of people who can’t be … controlled?”

“Very few. Some Lunars are born that way. They call them shells. But they’ve never known of an Earthen who could resist before. I’m the first.”

“How? Is it genetic?” She hesitated. “Can I be controlled?”

“Oh yes, dear. Whatever makes me like this, you do not have it. They’ll use that against us, mark my words. I imagine they’ll want to experiment on us both as they attempt to find out where this abnormality comes from. Whether or not they should be worried about other Earthens being able to resist them as well.” In the darkness, her grandmother’s jaw hardened. “It must not be hereditary. Your father was weak also.”

Scarlet was lost in warm brown eyes that had always been soothing, and yet struck her as harsh now in the darkness of the theater. Something gnawed at the back of her thoughts. The faintest suspicion.

Her father was weak. Weak for women. Weak for booze. A weak father, a weak man.

But her grandmother had never suggested she could think the same of Scarlet. You’ll be fine, she always said, after a skinned knee, after a broken arm, after her first youthful heartbreak. You’ll be fine because you’re strong, like me.

Heart thumping, Scarlet lowered her gaze to their intertwined fingers. Her grandmother’s very wrinkled, very frail, very soft hands.

Her chest constricted.

Lunars could manipulate people’s thoughts and emotions. Manipulate the way they experienced the very world around them.

Gulping, Scarlet pulled away. Her grandma’s fingers clenched in a brief effort to restrict her, but then let go.

Scarlet staggered out of her seat and backed against the rail, staring at her grandmother. The familiar unkempt hair in its always crooked braid. The familiar eyes, growing colder as they peered up at her. Growing wider.

She blinked rapidly against the hallucination, and her grandmother’s hands grew larger.

Repulsion ripped through Scarlet. She gripped the railing to hold herself steady.

“Who are you?”

The door at the back of the balcony opened, but instead of her guard, Scarlet saw the thaumaturge’s silhouette in the hallway. “Very well, Omega. We have learned as much as we can from her.”

Scarlet faced her grandmother again. A startled cry was wrenched out of her.

Her grandmother was gone, replaced by Wolf’s brother. Omega Ran Kesley sat staring up at her, perfectly at ease. He wore the same shirt she’d seen him in last, wrinkled and flecked with dried mud. “Hello, dear. How nice to see you again.”

Scarlet glared up at the thaumaturge. She could make out the whites of his eyes, the draping of his fancy tunic. “Where is she?”

“She is alive, for now, and unfortunately remains a mystery.” He squinted at Scarlet. “Her mind remains impenetrable, but whatever her secret is, she has not passed it on to her son or her grandchild. I would think if it was a mental trick she were using, she would have at least tried to teach it to you, if not to that pathetic drunkard. And yet, if it is genetic, could it be a random trait? Or is there a shell in your ancestry?” He touched a finger to his lips, analyzing Scarlet like a frog he was about to dissect. “Perhaps you won’t be entirely useless, though. I wonder how lubricated the old lady’s tongue would become if she were to watch as you hammered needles into your own flesh.”

Fury clawed up her throat and Scarlet hurled herself at him with a ragged cry, nails scratching at his face.

She froze with her fingertips millimeters from his eye sockets. The fury drained away all at once and she collapsed, sobbing uncontrollably on the floor. Wondering what was wrong with her. She reached for her hatred again but it slipped continuously from her mind, like trying to hold on to an eel. The harder she tried, the faster and harder the tears came. Choking her. Blinding her. All her anger dissolving into hopelessness and misery.

Her head filled with self-loathing. She was useless. Weak and stupid and insignificant.

She folded in on herself, her cries nearly drowning out the thaumaturge’s unimpressed chuckle above her.

“How unfortunate your grandmother hasn’t been so easy to manipulate. It would make this all so much simpler.”

Her mind hushed, the destructive words slipping back to a far, quiet corner of her thoughts, and the tears faded away with them. Like turning a faucet on and off.

Like toying with a puppet.

Scarlet lay crumpled on the floor, gasping. She swiped the mucus from her face.

Digging her hands into the carpet, she forced her body to stop trembling and pushed herself up, using the doorjamb for support. The thaumaturge’s face twisted in that sickeningly charming way he had.

“I’ll have you escorted back to your quarters,” he said, his tone all syrupy kindness. “Thank you most humbly for your cooperation.”

Thirty

Alpha Ze’ev Kesley’s hard-soled boots clipped harsh against the marble floor as he marched through the lobby, ignoring a handful of soldiers that nodded to him in respect, or perhaps fear. Perhaps even curiosity at the officer who had spent weeks out in the midst of humans, pretending to be one of them.

He tried not to think of it. Being back at the headquarters felt like he’d awoken from a dream. A dream that had once sounded like a nightmare, but not quite so anymore. He had woken up to a reality much darker. He had remembered who he really was. What he really was.

He reached the Lunar Rotunda—an ironic name that had pleased Master Jael greatly. He passed a mirror, pocked and darkened with age, almost not recognizing his reflection with its clean uniform and hair combed neatly back. He snatched his gaze away.

He smelled his brother as soon as he stepped into the library and the hairs on his neck prickled. His pace faltered briefly as he made his way through the wood-paneled gallery and into the thaumaturge’s private office. It had once been suited for royalty—a room for important, high-society Earthens to muse over the philosophical works of their ancestors. Display cases had once held priceless art and bookshelves climbed two stories over his head. But the books were all gone now, rescued when the opera house had been taken over by the military, and a musty, mildew scent had settled into the pores of the surrounding wood.

Jael was seated at a wide desk. Made of plastic and metal, it stood stark and dull against the extravagant décor. Ran was there too, leaning against the wall of empty shelves.

His brother smiled. Almost.

Jael stood. “Alpha Kesley, thank you for coming at such short notice. I wanted you to be the first to know your brother had made it back safely.”