Cinders [Completed]

Chapter 39: What Happened to Cordelia Dixon?

After I transformed, for the first and last time, I avoided Elia for two weeks. It was too raw. I couldn't carry her disappointment with my own - and I was almost drowning in disappointment. How was I supposed to tell her about my own weakness - and, more than that, tell her that Jonah was going to be her beta?

She wasn't allowed to come over to my house anymore, but she had tried, anyway.

"Lee," she yelled angrily at the front door, "I don't know what happened but you're not leaving me in the dark like this! You can't just disappear on me! I'm not going to let you!"

I gripped my arms so tightly that they bruised. I was only a few feet away, listening to her from the living room, but it felt like a mountain range had widened between us. She was still her. She'd already transformed over a year ago. But I was not me any more. I was defunct, a defect, damaged goods, and she would be happier if she forgot I ever breathed.

"Lee, I don't care," she continued, still angry and insistent, but more desperate, "Whatever it is, I don't care. I'm still here, stupid, and you're not gonna get rid of me."

She left, after that, and the next day I went over to her house. I told her about my first, messed up shift: the way my bones broke, and I bled, and cried, and how the half-transformation made me throw up for hours. I told her about how my canines pushed forward, but my skull wouldn't extend, so the teeth overfilled my mouth in a gory mess of  pain and blood and vomit. I told her that the transformation itself wasn't as bad as what came after. Knowing that I'm stunted, and having to face dad, and having to tell her.

She said, "Oh, goddess, Lee."

She hugged me tightly, cradling my head in the crook of her neck. And even though I knew it was weak and wrong, I cried, again.

"You will always be my beta, Lee," Elia said, "it doesn't matter. It's you and I. We don't disappear on each other."

And then she died.

—

Elia is dead. She has been, for almost a month now.

And yet here Luna Dixon is, crying, and it feels like only hours since I heard the news.

"Who," I ask, urgency burning in my chest, "are you talking about? What is the Order of the Third Star?"

Luna Dixon shakes her head violently. "They - my mate, my Andrew, Alpha Dixon, he - " she dissolves in a fit of gasping breaths.

I look around nervously. Does she need water, or something?

"Luna Dixon, please, you're safe."

She nods, swallows, grips wildly at her clothes with shaking hands.

"The Order of the Third Star?" I encourage, kind of wanting to shake the answers out of her.

"Yes. It was the Order. They killed. Killed her. Andrew said - he said - "

Her eyes gleam. She looks like a wild animal, cornered by a predator.

"He said," Luna Dixon continues hysterically, "he said Cordelia did something wrong. He said he - he had to tell the Order, or else our entire family would get in trouble."

"What did she do wrong?"

"He wouldn't tell me. He said - he said it was wrong. So he told the Order, and they, they."

She looks like she's going to start crying again. I stand up quickly and move to the door.

"Will you go find Prince Orion for me, please?" I ask the guard as calmly as possible. "Tell him I asked if he could come to my office."