Stars Above: A Lunar Chronicles Collection (The Lunar Chronicles) (2 page)

“Good,” said Logan. “We want people to believe she’s dead, especially the queen. It’s the only way she’ll be safe.”

“Princess Selene,” Michelle whispered. It didn’t seem real. None of this seemed real.

Logan was on Earth. Princess Selene was alive. He’d brought her
here.

“A fire did this?”

“Yes. It happened in the nursery. Levana claims it was an accident, but … I believe it was planned. I believe Levana wanted her dead so she could have the throne for herself.”

Michelle shook her head in disgust. “Are you sure?”

His dark eyes stared at the form of the princess encapsulated beneath the glass. “Matches and candles are rare on Luna. Under the domes, any sort of air pollution is a concern we take seriously. I don’t see how or why a nanny would have had one, or why she would have had it lit in the middle of the day, in a child’s playhouse.” He sighed and met Michelle’s eyes. “Also, there was a peer of mine. Dr. Eliot. She was the first doctor to examine the princess, and the one to proclaim her as dead and have her body removed from the palace. Her quick thinking saved the princess’s life.” His gaze slipped. “Two weeks ago, she was accused of being a traitor to the crown, though details of her crime were never released. I believe she was tortured for information and then killed. That’s when I knew I had to run. That Selene and I had to run.”

“Who else knows?”

“I … I’m not sure. There’s one other man, Sage Darnel, who worked in bioengineering. He was beginning to act suspicious of me before I left. Asking questions that hinged too close to the truth, but … I don’t know if he figured anything out, or was only guessing. Or maybe I’m being paranoid.”

“If he does know, would he … is he an ally, or…”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. We’re all so caught up in the mind games of Artemisia, I can never tell who’s happy under the regime and who hates Levana as much as I do.” He released a frustrated breath. “There’s nothing I can do about it now. They’ll no doubt be suspicious that I disappeared, but I couldn’t stay there.
She
couldn’t stay there.” The tank made a low gurgling noise, as if in agreement.

“What if they come looking for you?” Michelle’s heart was starting to pound. The burden of it was settling over her shoulders. Queen Levana was the most powerful woman in the galaxy. If Logan’s theories were true, then she wouldn’t stop looking for the princess. And anyone who helped the princess was in danger.

“I don’t think they can trace me here,” Logan said, though his expression was unconvincing. “I’ve changed spaceships and hover cars six times since arriving on Earth and manipulated everyone I’ve seen so that they wouldn’t be able to recognize me.”

“But what about our…” She stumbled over the word
relationship.
“… connection? We weren’t discreet before.”

“It was a long time ago, and affairs happen so frequently on Luna, I doubt anyone was paying attention to us.”

Affairs.
He said the word too casually, and Michelle was surprised at the sting of hurt it caused.

Logan’s expression softened. He looked exhausted and too gaunt, but he was still handsome to her. Maybe even more handsome now than when they were young. “You’re the only person I trust, Michelle. I don’t know where else to take her.”

It was the right thing to say. Her pain diffused. She inhaled deeply and looked down at the child again. “My house is small,” she said. “I couldn’t hide her if I—”

She hesitated. The house had been built in the second era. It had survived the Fourth World War. She swallowed.

“The bomb shelter,” she said. “There’s a bomb shelter under the hangar, wired for a generator and everything.”

Logan pressed his lips together until they turned white. There was regret etched into his face, but also hope. It took him a while, but eventually he nodded. “You understand the danger you’ll be in if you keep her here? She is the most valuable person on this planet.”

For some reason, this comment made Michelle think of Scarlet, her granddaughter. Only a couple of years older than the princess before her.

Scarlet—
Logan’s
granddaughter.

She opened her mouth, but shut it again.

“I’m sorry,” said Logan, misinterpreting her hesitation. “I’m sorry to ask this of you.”

“What are you going to do?” she said.

“I will help you until I know the princess is stable and you’re confident in caring for her. Then I’ll go into hiding until … until she’s old enough to be removed from stasis.”

She wanted to ask him where he would hide, and how, and when he would return. But she didn’t say any of those things. Instinct told her that it was better not to know.
Safer
not to know.

“And once she’s awoken from stasis?”

His gaze became distant, like he was trying to peer into the future. Trying to imagine the woman this child might become.

“Then I will tell her the truth,” he said, “and help her reclaim her throne.”

*   *   *

Though Scarlet had taken the maglev train between Paris and Toulouse a dozen times before, she’d underestimated how different it would be traveling by herself. Her body had been wound tight from the moment she’d boarded the train. She hadn’t had much money for her ticket, so she was in the cheapest car and the seats were uncomfortable, especially for such a long trip. She dreaded the idea that someone would sit next to her and ask where she was going and where were her parents and did she need help. She already had a speech rehearsed in case it happened. She was going to visit her grandmother, who would be picking her up from the station. Of course her parents knew where she was. Of course she was expected.

But of course she wasn’t.

The train entered a new station and she squeezed her backpack against her side and tried to look grouchy as new passengers boarded. She exuded her best “leave me alone” vibes.

It worked. No one sat next to her, and she exhaled in relief as the train rose on its magnets again.

Unzipping the top pocket of her pack, she pulled out her portscreen and stuck a pair of wireless headphones into her ears. Maybe some music would help her forget about what she was doing.

She had left Paris. She was never going back again. She was going to live with her grand-mère and no one could stop her.

She wondered if her father had even realized she was gone yet. Probably not. He was probably still drunk and unconscious.

She shut her eyes and tried to relax as the music blasted into her ears, but it was no use. She was hyperaware of the movements of the train, the chatting of passengers, the announcements of upcoming stops. She was waiting for the chime of her portscreen—a comm from her father demanding to know where she was. Or a nervous, worried comm, begging her to come home. Or even a missing child alert from the police.

She listened to the entire album and no alerts came.

She watched the cities come and go, the fields and vineyards disappear over the hills, the sun sink toward the horizon, and no alerts came.

The car became more crowded as time passed. A man in a suit eventually sat next to her and her whole body tensed, but he didn’t try to talk or ask any questions. He busied himself reading a newsfeed on his port and eventually dozed off, but Scarlet had heard enough stories about bag snatchers and child-nappings that she dared not let down her guard.

The album started over. The notice board at the front of the car announced that the next stop was Toulouse, and an entirely new bout of nerves writhed in her stomach. She had to wake the man up to get past him, and he startled and said something about almost missing his stop again. He laughed. Scarlet ducked past him without meeting his gaze, clutching the straps of her backpack.

“Hey, kid.”

She clomped down the steps to the platform.

“Kid!”

She quickened her pace, panic and adrenaline rushing through her veins. She looked around for someone who would help her if she needed it. Someone in uniform or an android or—

“Kid, wait!” A hand landed on Scarlet’s shoulder and she spun around, ready to scream.

It was the man in the suit. “You left this on the bench,” he said, holding out her water bottle.

Her pulse immediately subsided and she grabbed the bottle away without a thank-you. Turning, she jogged across the platform and up the escalators. She felt embarrassed for her overreaction, but still unnerved. She was alone and no one knew where she was or that she was even missing. She doubted she would feel safe until she reached her grandmother’s house, and even then she’d have to persuade Grand-mère to let her stay.

She found an empty taxi hover and climbed inside, giving her grandmother’s address. The screen asked her to approve the cost of travel, and the price blinking at her made her stomach drop. It would almost deplete her savings.

Swallowing hard, she scanned her wrist and approved the payment.

*   *   *

Michelle had been caring for the princess for almost two years, and the regular ministrations had become second nature. Just another chore to check off her daily list. Feed the animals. Gather the eggs. Milk the cow. Check the princess’s diagnostics and adjust the tank’s fluid levels as needed.

The child was growing. She would have been five years old now—
was
five years old, Michelle reminded herself. Even after all these months it was hard not to think of the girl as a corpse she kept locked up beneath her hangar.

She wasn’t a corpse, but she wasn’t exactly alive, either. The machines did everything for her. Breathed. Pumped blood. Sent electrical signals to her brain. Logan had told her it was important to keep her brain stimulated so that when she awoke she wouldn’t still have the mind of a three-year-old. Supposedly she was being fed knowledge and even life experiences as she lay there, unmoving. Michelle didn’t understand how it worked. She couldn’t imagine how this child could sleep for her entire life and then be expected to become a queen upon her return to society.

But that would be Logan’s job, whenever he returned. There were years still before anyone would know who this child was going to become.

Michelle finished recording Selene’s vital statistics and flipped off the generator-powered lights. The bomb shelter, which had been converted into a makeshift hospital room and scientific laboratory, remained lit by the pale blue light from the suspension tank. Michelle clipped her portscreen to her belt and climbed the ladder to the hangar above. She grabbed one of the storage crates that she shuffled between the hangar and the barn—a useful excuse in case anyone ever saw her coming and going. The bomb shelter and its occupant were a secret, a dangerous one, and she could never allow herself to lose caution.

This was the direction of her thoughts when she stepped onto the gravel drive and saw the taxi hover waiting there. She wasn’t expecting visitors. She never had visitors to expect.

She squared her shoulders and settled the crate on one hip. The pebbles crunched beneath her feet. She glanced into the hover’s windows as she passed, but it was empty, and no one was waiting on the porch, either.

Setting down the crate, Michelle grabbed the only weapon she passed—a pair of rusted gardening shears—and shoved open her front door.

She froze.

Scarlet was sitting on the bottom step of the foyer’s staircase, a backpack tucked under her legs. She was bundled up in the same wool coat that Michelle remembered from the Louvre photos, but now it was fraying at the shoulder seams and looked two sizes too small for a growing girl.

“Scarlet?” she breathed, setting the shears on the entry table. “What are you doing here?”

Scarlet’s cheeks reddened, making her freckles even more pronounced. She looked like she was on the verge of crying, but the tears didn’t come. “I came to live with you.”

*   *   *

“This is just another one of her cries for attention!” Luc spat. His nose and cheeks were tinged red, his words slurred. He was outside and on the screen Michelle could see the puffs of his breaths in the night air. “Just put her back on the train and let her figure it out.”

“She is seven years old,” Michelle said, aware of how thin the walls around her were. No doubt Scarlet could hear her father’s raised voice, even from downstairs. “It’s a wonder she made it here safely at all, being all by herself like that.”

“And what do you expect me to do? Fly down there to pick her up? I have work in the morning. I
just
got this new job and—”

“She is your
daughter
,” Michelle said. “I expect you to be a father, to show that you care about her.”

Luc snorted. “You’re lecturing me on how to be a good parent? That’s rich, Maman.”

The comment struck her straight between the ribs. Michelle stiffened. The knot of tension in her stomach wound so tight it threatened to cripple her.

It was her biggest regret, not being there for her son when he was little. She’d been a single mother trying to balance a newborn son with a military career—a career that had been full of potential. She had long ago realized how badly she’d failed in balancing anything. If she could do it all over again …

But she couldn’t. And while Luc’s flaws were partially her doing, she wasn’t about to see the same neglect happen to her darling Scarlet.

She looked away from the portscreen. “She can stay the night, of course. I’m not sending her back on a train by herself.”

Luc grunted. “Fine. I’ll figure out what to do with her tomorrow.”

Michelle shut her eyes and squeezed them tight. She pictured the secret door to the bomb shelter. The half-alive girl in that glowing blue tank. She pictured a faceless woman—
Dr. Eliot
—being tortured for information on what had happened to Princess Selene.

She gulped.

“Maybe she should stay here,” she said, and pried her eyes open again. Her mind was already made up by the time she looked back at the screen. “Maybe I should take care of her, at least until … until you’re on your feet again.” Even as she said it, she wasn’t confident it would ever be a reality.

Scarlet deserved more. More than a nonexistent mother and a careless father. Scarlet deserved more than Luc had been given.