Stories

The clock in the corner of her eyes read 3am. Cinder wished she could turn it off, but it stayed there, a blue overlay that didn't leave her sight even when she closed her eyes. Instead of being helpful as it usually was, it instead accented the fact that, instead of sleeping, she was lying awake on her back, staring up at a ceiling filled with nothing but darkness.

Kai shifted next to her, asleep. Maybe without cyborg wiring in his brain, he didn't remember the exact date. But she did. Even when she wanted nothing more but to put it behind her, she remembered.

Slipping from bed, she stepped out onto the smooth, wooden floor of their room. If the light were on, the room would look like the embodiment of summer mornings, polished surfaces and mirror faces and delicately patterned cloths over tabletops. Iko insisted that one was only royal once they could see it, and Cinder wasn't complaining.

But at night, it looked more like the dark side of the moon, cool floorboards and ambiguous shapes leering out of the shadows.

She couldn't turn on the light, anyway, because she wasn't going to steal Kai's sleep when they both needed it so much. Being the Empress of the Eastern Commonwealth wasn't like being Queen of Luna, but the position definitely took a toll on her—and it was even worse for Kai, who'd been Emperor longer than she'd been anything more than a broken girl fixing everything but herself.

Grabbing Kai's jacket from the back of a chair, she pulled it over her night clothes and stepped over to the balcony. She threw the doors open, letting the night air hit her like a cold splash of water from the sink. She shut the doors behind her, then stepped forward. The wind toyed with her hair, trying to pry Kai's jacket from her shoulders, making her pajama bottoms balloon out and shiver.

Looking up, she could see the stars. The light pollution from the city often made them hard to see, and clouds covered the sky more than not, but this night was strangely clear. The pinpricks beckoned her, called her name.

But it was not the stars she watched. Above her, Luna looked down, glimmering in the reflection of the sun's light. In the past, the gaze of the moon seemed more of a glare, a dare, a fear. But these days, with Levana gone, with the Republic of Luna running itself, and millions of people who still respected her for a title she shedded, it was a bittersweet look, almost of longing.

Her childhood was there, before everything went up in flames—literally. Though she couldn't remember it, she'd played with Winter on Luna. And however sadistic her mother had been, Channary had loved her. Cinder didn't remember very many things about her mother, but that was something she was sure of.

Cinder closed her eyes against the pushing, pulling breeze, leaning against the railing.

Three years. On this day. This very day.

Maybe she should go back inside, curl up next to Kai and try to fall asleep again. But she could already tell it wouldn't work, because she was not at peace with this, with anything.

Her story was a tragic one, she knew, with a happy ending. A riches to rags to riches story, really. She loved Kai, and her people—on both planets—respected her, and she had eight friends to contact for anything from moral support to the newest stupid joke, and she was happy.

But her past was part of it too. How long did it take for the present to become the past?

She'd lost many things since her childhood: happiness, the one person she had loved, freedom, an arm, identity, a leg, parts of her own brain, hope. Some things she'd found again, but they weren't the same as the originals. She could feel hope, sure, but not the first hope. She had a sense of identity now, but it would never be how it was. She loved more people now, too, but it wouldn't be same as the first, because no one could fill the gap where her stepsister had once been.