Author's Note:

Wow. I really can't believe it's finally done. My first multi-chapter story - which, in fact, dates back to the very beginning of my fanfiction-writing - is finished! Congratulate me, everyone. Most of it was written before book 4 was published, so naturally I had to consider whether or not this was going to be an AU ... but in the end I decided that so far, The Press Conference seems like a pretty plausible post-revolution story. Which means that Cinder's conversation with Kai on the balcony did happen. Which kind of changes the way I've wrapped up this fic.

Anyway, with that in mind: this chapter isn't really about the lovebirds. It's about our beloved mechanic coming full circle - hence the name. I wasn't far into writing it before my theatrical tendencies won over. It's probably longer than anyone expected (myself included), and it may be a bit over-dramatic, but it's also long overdue. So without further delay ... enjoy!

i.

For the longest time, she hardly had any time to spare for thoughts of Kai – to think of that press conference, and where the two of them had left off, and what it all meant. Cinder had her hands full stabilising her kingdom and dealing with its capricious aristocracy, not to mention washing away Levana's influence … rebuilding Luna, in short. As it turned out, the duties of a queen hardly allowed time for sleep, let alone romantic flights of fancy.

But as summer approached, she was forced to examine those fancies again by the coming of the Eastern Commonwealth's annual peace festival. This year it was to celebrate the end of two wars – and considering the bloody events of last autumn, it was a bigger occasion than ever. It would be a day for every Earthen to breathe a sigh of relief and decide that if no one had challenged Queen Selene Blackburn by now, no one ever would, and they could all sleep more soundly in their beds.

And the evening ball … well. The last one had involved political scandal, an exploding chandelier and a cyborg party crasher who lost her foot on the stairs. Who was to say nothing dramatic would happen this time around?

It wasn't the gossip that worried Cinder, though. The closer the day of the festival, the more she thought about the conversation she'd had with Kai that night on the balcony – the night before he departed for Earth, when he had posed a half-question that would echo in her ears for a long while yet.

I have to ask if you think, someday, you might consider being an empress.

She was worried because come festival day, she would be returning to the place of her arrest and ultimate humiliation; because this time, she was in the shoes of the Lunar queen, and …

And she had promised someone a dance.

ii.

The sky outside was cloudless and full of pleasant breezes. One whirled through the window of the living room where Cinder sat at a long table, sorting through her messages, and ruffled a stack of papers which lay beside her portscreen.

The aristocratic letter of complaint she was skimming was much the same as hundreds of others that she'd received since her coronation. They were concerned about the preservation of their wealth, their rights in the court, traditions which they felt defined the Lunar identity, et cetera, all of which their new queen had pretty much done away with at the first opportunity. Cinder skipped through the last paragraph, noting – not for the first time – that the only nobles' tradition she couldn't abolish was using ten words when they could use two.

Heaving a sigh of boredom, she put down the port and checked the countdown on her retina display. There were six hours, forty-seven minutes and nine seconds left until the peace festival ball.

Too soon. Not soon enough. Too soon.

The Lunar entourage had an entire wing to itself in the New Beijing palace; the guest wing, to be precise. This room, judging by the long table and corkboard walls, had once been a war room – appropriate, Cinder thought dryly, considering the people she dealt with there. She had left the Lunar nobility behind, but their comms came stubbornly through. Better to answer those in solitude than to have someone hear her constant groans of frustration.

Now she stretched, spine popping, and finally looked up from the table toward the one source of sunlight in the room – a wide, wide window that gave a brilliant view of the city. The heat had warmed her skin, the boredom mixing with her building anticipation of evenfall, and the gesture felt so familiar that for a moment – just for a moment – she was at her mechanic's booth again. Back in the sticky, stifling mess of a New Beijing market in the throes of the festival; she saw a grease-stained tablecloth in front of her, screws and nails all lined up in neat rows; her bangs clung to her forehead in the humid air. Her left foot was missing and there was a ghastly orange car in Adri's garage that would take her beyond the city limits. Tonight she would run away and finally be free.

The queer sense of déjà-vu vanished as quickly as it had set in, and Cinder blinked in confusion at the war table.

Right. One year ago today, her last hours as New Beijing's best mechanic had been spent turning away every customer that came to her booth.

iii.

"Iko, could you help me with this?"

Iko bounded over, humming to herself, and expertly laced up the back of the dress. "There you are, Miss I-Don't-Need-A-Maid," she teased, turning the queen around to face the mirror. "Isn't that better?"

Cinder made a small sound of relief and stretched out her arms, which ached from the strain of trying to reach her shoulder blades. "Thanks."

The humming faded from her ears as Iko skipped out of the room, leaving Cinder to collect her thoughts. She examined her reflection. The dress was a dark wine red with golden netting on the sleeves and around the bodice, with a sweeping skirt and a modest neckline. Strangely enough, it suited her – a rare thing even on her best days. Probably because she'd succeeded in convincing her seamstresses that she did not need any of the mysterious materials that somehow made a dress full and poufy and impossible to move in.

If she was going to wear proper formal attire, she wanted to be ready to run for her life. Experience had taught her that.

Cinder exhaled through her nose, a small, displeased sound. She wasn't nervous – of course not; she'd been through too much in the past months to be afraid of a little dancing. If she wasn't arrested, humiliated and almost killed tonight, she could probably enjoy herself.

Probably.

It was odd to think that maybe, some wide-eyed sixteen-year-old girl would watch from behind a pillar as Cinder danced with the emperor, much as Cinder had watched Levana and Kai at the last ball. Except, instead of observing how graceful and beautiful the queen was, everyone would remember the war and think the words lost princess and fugitive and revolutionary.

And the wolves all howl, aaah-ooooooooh …

Cinder shook off the goosebumps and turned to pull on her boots. Though she had long ago lost her self-consciousness about open-toed shoes, and though Iko had tried to insist upon a more fashionable pair, they had finally decided on the most comfortable shoes possible: golden, low-heeled, and quite big enough for both her feet. As she did the laces, Cinder wondered wryly if she ought to double-check the wires in her cyborg foot. Wouldn't want an encore of last year's spectacle.

When she finished with the boots and straightened, in all her finery, before the mirror (the whoosh of shifting fabric), a shiver ran down her spine, and for a moment she was in a very different time –

Peony's silver dress fluttered in the corner of her eye, the silk gloves smooth against her arms. Her foot became a deadweight, barely connected to her leg, and she was flooded with a sense of panic – Kai would be announcing his engagement tonight – she couldn't let him, his life and Earth's freedom depended on it, there was hardly any time but she had to try, she had to run –

There was a startling knock on the door. "We leave in five minutes!" came Iko's voice, muffled through the wood.

Cinder stared into the mirror, trying to ground herself, until the odd sensation vanished.

iv.

"Calm down, Your Majesty."

Kai didn't stop in his pacing, didn't even look at his advisor. "What do you mean, calm down? I'm calm. I'm very calm."

Torin sighed from where he sat in his armchair – the same armchair, incidentally, in which Linh Cinder had forced him to sit while kidnapping the emperor – and rattled the ice in his glass. "At this rate I'll have to request new carpeting."

"Carpeting?" Kai said incredulously, coming to a halt by the window. "The ball starts in twenty-five minutes, and you're worried about carpeting?"

"You're going to wear holes in it soon."

Scoffing, Kai dropped into the couch across from Torin. Fiddled with his sleeves, the buttons, wrung his hands. Opened his mouth to say something, snapped it shut. Tapped his fingers. Stared out the window.

"Your Majesty."

"Mm?"

"There's nothing wrong with being nervous."

"Why would I be nervous?" said Kai, somewhat defensively.

"Oh, I don't know," Torin mused, turning the glass around in his hand. "Perhaps because the Lunar Queen has come for a visit. That's bound to make anyone jumpy. And considering the fact that this is Linh-daren, whom you haven't seen for quite a while –"

"We comm each other every day. And I showed her around the guest wing, remember?"

"Well, there's going to be dancing this time."

Kai leaned back and narrowed his eyes at his oldest friend. "Torin, are you developing a sense of humour?"

"Absolutely not," said Torin, raising his eyebrows, in a tone that said maaaaybe.

With a huff, the emperor ran a hand through his hair. "Yes, all right, maybe I'm a little agitated, but can you blame me? You remember how the last ball went."

"All the more reason to enjoy yourself tonight. Hopefully we won't have to arrest anyone."

v.

The hover ride was, thankfully, a bicker-fest. That was what happened when Iko was stuck in close quarters with Jacin and Kinney – they disagreed on everything, the latter two being of ice-cool, unflappable stock, completely at odds with the android's hyperactive enthusiasm. Winter was a good mediator but loved everyone too much to really interfere … and Cinder suspected that she, too, enjoyed a good-natured argument.

"You were the one who held her at gunpoint? You?!"

The topic had come up when Jacin muttered something about hoping this ball wouldn't go like the last one – uncannily similar to what Cinder had been thinking earlier – and Iko, who apparently hadn't heard the whole story yet, demanded a blow-by-blow description of the whole fiasco. Between Jacin and Cinder, they managed to put the scene back together, but when he got to the bit about Levana holding Cinder hostage, he was cut short by an indignant shriek.

Whatever begrudging trust the android had begun to put in the guard turned diplomat, it was being given a serious once-over.

"I didn't exactly do it of my own free will," Jacin said rather stiffly, meeting Iko's accusing glare. "Sybil was controlling me."

"This is important information," the android insisted, leaning forward across the hover. "When you're friends, holding a gun to someone's head is kind of a big deal –" She gave Cinder an incredulous look. "And neither of you thought to tell me!"

"Well …" Cinder exchanged a look with Jacin, surprised to feel a kind of wry camaraderie between them. The hostage thing had become an old story to laugh at. "I guess it just never came up."

Iko sat back with a huff, slouching into the seat. "You see where I'm coming from, right?" she demanded Winter.

"Oh, yes," Winter said blithely. "If Jacin had threatened to shoot Selene, I would want to know. But it was not Jacin holding the gun. It was Thaumaturge Mira."

Iko groaned, as if to say you are all hopeless.

Because they had called a regular black, inconspicuous city hover (by Cinder's especial request), the Lunar entourage arrived at the palace gates unnoticed and unmolested, which was just how the queen wanted it. Iko had contrived to have them come a little later than everyone else, so that they could "make an entrance" and turned a deaf ear to every protest; Cinder had to admit that it was a relief to emerge cautiously from the hover and find that no one waited for them at the gates but a few surprised-looking guards and officiants.

Now that they had passed into the main hall, booted and slippered feet echoing off the marble, the strains of an orchestral quartet reached their ears. And Cinder was brought up short, as if she'd been struck, by how everything looked the same. There were a few things missing – the pounding rain in the background, her deadweight of a foot, the D-COMM chip rattling around inside her calf, the mounting fear – but otherwise … she might be reliving that night all over again.

"Your Majesty?"

Kinney was standing by her side, looking concerned; her friends had paused just ahead of her. She'd lagged behind.

"You go on," she murmured. "I'll catch up."

"We can't come in without you –"

"Oh, don't be daft," Iko interrupted, grabbing his arm. She gave Cinder an understanding look. "Just take a moment."

Kinney grumbled but allowed himself to be dragged away. "And if someone attacks her from behind one of those statues –"

"Honestly, Liam, can't you stop being a guard long enough to let someone have a bit of peace? Don't tell me you plan on being a wallflower all night, you have to dance …"

Cinder was deaf to their arguing. She let them walk ahead, as her own feet carried her slowly through the hall. She saw the drop ahead of her where the staircase swooped into the ballroom – heard, muffled as if through water, the laughter and music (so familiar) and then, with trumpet fanfare, each of her friends be announced. Lunar diplomat Winter Hayle-Blackburn. Lunar diplomat Jacin Clay. Secretary to the Lunar Crown … A hesitation. Iko.

She approached the stairs, feeling wooden. Feeling nothing. The crowd below hadn't spotted her yet, the announcer having paused for a word with Iko. She seemed to be upbraiding him for something, maybe the way he'd said her title. Beside her, Winter and Jacin had been swallowed up by a group of Commonwealth diplomats, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries.

Cinder stood atop the staircase and couldn't breathe. Wondered how she had ended up in that spot again – how she had come full circle, after all this time. She stood looking down at the dancing and festivity, at the whirling skirts and flushed, smiling faces, and felt the floor tilt beneath her, felt herself shift to the past, to the present, to the past again. One moment she was Selene Blackburn, a visiting monarch come back to the country she'd grown up in, and the next –

And in the next, she was sixteen-year-old Linh Cinder, wearing a stolen gown and grease-stained gloves, peering out from behind a pillar and frantically looking for Kai amongst the crowd. Peony had only just died and the emperor newly crowned; the Lunar revolution was far off in the distant future …

She was Linh Cinder once again, dripping rainwater all over the priceless marble floor; she was Linh Cinder, resident mechanic, a girl crazy enough to race to the ball with one foot and no plan, all for the sake of some boy she barely knew.

She just stood there … and remembered.

"Why, Linh-mei, what a pleasure. We are so glad you could join us tonight."

"You are?"

"Please forgive my ignorance. I'm sure His Imperial Majesty will be glad you're arrived. Please, step this way, and I will have you announced."

"Have me what?" Her own voice came floating back to her, full of horror at what was about to transpire. "Wait. Personal guests of … oh. Oh! No, no, you don't have to –"

She almost didn't notice the ball attendant run up to her and bow, almost didn't hear his profuse apologies, but there was no way she could ignore the trumpet fanfare that blasted through the ballroom (the same thing she'd heard on this very spot, one year ago) and the magnified voice that announced,

"Please welcome to the 127th Annual Ball of the Eastern Commonwealth, Her Majesty the Lunar Queen, Selene Blackburn!"

vi.

As one, every guest in the room turned to look up at her. As one, their expressions changed from recognition to wary respect, and together – men and women, young and old, market vendors and businesspeople and government officials – the citizens of New Beijing bowed to the queen.

Kai and Torin had prepared her for this; apparently Levana had been welcomed to last year's ball in the same way. But it didn't stave off the feeling of alarm at being bowed to by people she'd once passed on the street every day. The people whose malfunctioning androids she had fixed, the people who'd either known her to be cyborg or hadn't – because that was how she'd categorised New Beijing, once upon a time. Cinder might have stood there forever, wondering if anyone would notice if she backed away and disappeared, if it weren't for the awkward scramble of the musical quartet as they put down their instruments so that they could stand up and bow with everyone else.

It was so silly and so natural that her lips ticked up – she felt herself relax just a bit. And it turned into a full smile when her eyes fell on a commanding figure in red, the only one who hadn't stopped to bow, coming closer through the crowd.

"Welcome, Your Majesty," he called up to her, grinning like the nineteen-year-old emperor that he was. "Welcome back."

vii.

The best part about that ball was, to Cinder's surprise, not the tasting of the delicious confections being carried around by waiters (which was usually what she looked forward to). Neither was it the two waltzes she got with Kai before he started asking other ladies for the sake of propriety. It was not the sight of Winter and Jacin walking around the ballroom in their own little happy world– for once, without political masks – and it was not the fact that both the emperor and his advisor made a point of asking Iko, the first android to ever attend the Commonwealth ball, to dance.

No … the best part, the thing that did so much to put her heart at ease …

"Your Majesty?"

In a rare moment where she had not been cornered by some government officiant or another, Cinder had opted to slip outside through the garden doors; the patio was dark except for a hanging lantern, and the sounds of music were muffled. When the young voice broke into her contented wallflower bubble, she looked left to see that she had been approached by a young boy, maybe ten or eleven years old. He looked nervous to be speaking to her but determined to do it – and he seemed vaguely familiar.

She smiled at him, trying to put as much warmth into it as possible. "Hello."

His cheeks reddened and he hurried into an awkward bow.

"No, no –" She held up her hands, palms flat out. "There's no need for that."

"I don't know if you remember me," the boy broke in, as if he needed to get something out before he lost his nerve. He sucked in a breath and looked up at her – without the mingled awe and intimidation that she had learned to expect from strangers. Almost as if he knew her.

Cinder gave an apologetic shake of the head. "No, I'm sorry."

"My name is Chang Sunto," he blurted out. "You saved my life."

The name was a slap in the face, spinning her back to that night. Her mouth fell open.

Chang Sunto?

"Dr. Erland showed me the footage," he mumbled, looking away awkwardly when she didn't respond. "When His Majesty figured out that it was you, he sent someone to tell me. You brought the cure to the quarantine and gave it to me, didn't you … when you used to be Linh Cinder?"

"Sunto?" she whispered.

The familiarity with which he spoke to her - not to the Lunar queen, but to the mechanic; the freshly pressed suit that didn't quite fit his frame, like he'd gotten it second-hand. A hundred little clues now added up to one name, but it was the deep sadness in his eyes that spoke the loudest. Of course, of course it was him.

The plague survivor. The orphan who had looked at her in bleary confusion as she thrust a tiny phial into his blue-spotted hands and told him to drink.

The little boy who'd danced around her mechanic's booth, singing a song about ashes and death.

"I just wanted to say thank you," he told his shoes. "For giving it to me."

That cure was meant for my sister. I panicked, I was about to be arrested, it was a split-second decision. Don't thank me, because it was never meant for you.

But all that came out of her mouth was a stilted "Oh."

Do you know that I saw your mother die?

Sunto swallowed, looking increasingly nervous. His eyes darted from the ground to her face to the patio wall, uncomfortable.

She didn't know what she was going to say until it was out of her mouth, but when she did, it seemed like the only thing she could have done. "I'm sorry."

He blinked in surprise. "What?"

"I'm sorry you fell sick. I'm sorry that the plague ever came to Earth. I'm sorry about the war and death and the mess my people made of everything." The words rushed out as if she'd been holding them there, with her breath, for a very long time. Cinder closed her eyes. "I'm sorry about your mother, Sacha."

"H-how do you know about that?"

"Because I was there," she said. "My sister, Peony … she was sick too. I came to visit her at the quarantine and your mother was there. She, she wanted me to bring you."

Sunto looked as though he'd been struck with a hammer. "Really?" he whispered.

The baker's last words had been bottled up inside her for months and months: a mother's final request. Cinder had long wondered whether Chang Sacha's son would ever know that his mother had been thinking of him in her last moments. Now, at last, she could give them both some closure. "She said, 'Bring Sunto. I need to see him.'"

He stared at her, wide-eyed and stricken, a look that nearly stopped the electrical pulses in her metal fingers.

Maybe she shouldn't have told him. It would be a heavy burden to bear, even heavier for Sunto than it had been for her. But ... those words belonged with him. She couldn't help thinking that too many people had died in plague quarantines - surrounded by other sufferers, and yet utterly alone - with no one to hear what they had to say.

They stood quietly together under the lantern.

Finally she asked, "How did Dr. Erland treat you?"

"He was all right," said Sunto, after a moment. He sniffled a bit and turned his face away. "Ran some tests, took a couple of blood samples. I don't think he really thought he could replicate the cure, though. I wasn't any help."

She sighed. "I didn't help, either."

"You were tested, too?"

"Yeah. I was taken in for the cyborg draft. When the plague didn't kill me, Dr. Erland looked at my DNA and figured out that I was Lunar." Cinder shifted uncomfortably, her skirts shuffling on the patio floor, and clasped her hands in front of her. "I didn't know it then. Lunars are immune to letumosis … apparently. So he made me an official volunteer and I came back a few times to give blood samples."

"Oh."

Sunto clearly didn't know what to do with this information. But that was okay. Cinder had at least let him know that she knew how it felt, being forced to play the guinea pig of research scientists. Maybe it would be enough for both of them.

"I, um –" He glanced back at the pavilion. "My grandma will be getting worried."

"All right." She gave him a slight smile. "I wish you all the best, Chang Sunto."

"Thank you. Your Majesty."

viii.

Kai found her there, leaning against stone wall of the patio.

"You okay?" he asked, stepping outside.

"What? Oh, yeah, fine." Cinder straightened and brushed imaginary dust off her skirt. "I, uh, I talked to Sunto."

His eyebrows rose with curiosity. "Chang Sunto? The boy you gave the antidote?"

"Yep."

"How's he doing?"

She made a face, as if to say, ehhhh. "About as well as you could expect."

A shadow passed over Kai's expression. "Kid's been through a lot."

Studying him, Cinder realised that he was thinking of his own parents – both lost to letumosis. He, too, knew a little about what Sunto had suffered.

"Do you want to walk?" she suggested, gesturing down the stairs at the garden path.

He gave her a quick smile. "Sure."

"I mean, because – you know – we were interrupted last time."

For a moment he looked confused. Then his expression cleared and he laughed – a warm laugh. "Yes, I remember now. You were going to give me the D-COMM chip."

"I think the ball went better this time, don't you?"

"Much better," he agreed, setting off down the staircase.

But she didn't follow. The moment her heel struck the first step, vertigo pulled at her stomach and she saw herself racing down the stairs, silver skirts billowing around her; heard the screams and sounds of panic from the guests still trapped in the ballroom; felt the snap of wires in her foot and her own cries of pain as she tumbled head-over-heels down the stairs of the palace. She remembered the way she'd crumpled to the ground and how the misty rain felt against her skin.

Levana's voice echoed back to her. Disgusting. Death would be merciful.

She wasn't a shell after all. How did she hide it?

It matters not. She'll be dead soon enough.

And then – Kai, stooping to pick up the rusted cyborg foot still on the fifth step. Looking down at her with the eyes of someone who didn't know what was real and what was a lie.

You're even more painful to look at than she is.

"Cinder?"

She blinked and the past fell away around her. Kai had already gone down, turning back at the bottom of the stairs when he realised that she hadn't followed him.

She had stopped on the fifth step.

"Are you okay?" he asked, concern knitting his brow.

Cinder smiled shakily. "I'm okay."

And descended the rest of the stairs with both feet firmly attached.

ix.

The gardens were dark and lovely at this hour. Vines, crab-apple trees, manicured shrubbery and flowering bushes all lined the stone-tiled path, which was lit by solar lanterns at strategic intervals. It was probable that a few guards had discreetly followed them, but they were good at their job and remained invisible.

The two of them wandered into a grove of cherry blossom trees whose petals looked ghostly in the moonlight. This quiet serenity, she thought, was nothing like the ostentatious Lunar menagerie.

Something occurred to her. "You know, I haven't seen Adri around." She glanced back toward the pavilion, though their view was blocked by a hanging curtain of blooms. "Is she here?"

His tone was conversational. "No, I don't think so."

"Huh. I would have thought she'd be too proud to avoid me. She's never missed the opportunity to attend a royal function before."

Kai cleared his throat. "She wasn't exactly invited."

"But all citizens of New Beijing are invited to the –" Cinder looked up at him and saw the studious way he was looking ahead. Keeping a straight face. "Okay. What did you do?"

He shrugged. "I may have struck her off the guest list. And a few other palace events."

"You blacklisted her?"

"Well, she didn't behave very well last year, did she?"

Cinder shook her head. She was amazed – incredulous – she hadn't thought that he could be so petty. "Kai, our feud is over. She has an entire business to herself with my stepfather's patents – we don't have reason to resent each other anymore. I haven't even spoken to her since the revolution."

"What about my feud with her?" He sounded almost indignant. "She was a terrible stepmother to you. She took away your foot, dismantled Iko –"

"Oh, honestly!"

"Did you want her here tonight?"

Cinder glanced sidelong at him. The next lamp was far ahead on the garden path, and she couldn't see his face very well, but she knew him. He wasn't going to apologise for uninviting Adri, however silly of a revenge plan it was.

"No," she said, with a half-laugh. "No, not really …"

Kai grinned down at her. "Well, there, you see?"

They walked in silence for some minutes, enjoying the peace and quiet. Cinder clasped her hands together, knowing that she should broach the subject – that subject – but not knowing how. How, without sounding as awkward as she felt?

Screw it, she thought. If they didn't talk about it now, someone else would – the only question was whether it be a gossip column or a full-page news editorial.

"So," she began, pausing to clear her throat. "… Kai."

"Cinder," he mimicked, a smile in his voice.

"We need to –" talk. Decide on our future. Figure out where this is going. "We need a game plan."

It was clearly not what he had been expecting her to say. "A game plan?"

"Yes, a strategy. We need to be able to coordinate our responses to the media when they start prying and asking questions. So that we don't contradict each other and give them cause to try to trip us up. Because they did trip me up once, that first time, and ever since I've just clammed up whenever the subject came up –"

"Cinder, Cinder. Wait." Kai stopped walking and faced her, giving her no choice but to face him too. He looked genuinely confused. "What are you talking about?"

"The press conference," she said, as if it should be obvious.

Kai's eyebrows rose. "You mean, your press conference?"

"Yeah. That one."

There was a pause.

"Ah," he said, and turned back down the path.

Cinder fell into step beside him. Now that she'd stepped over the painfully awkward moment of introduction, the words spilled faster. "You realise that they're going to keep rooting around, right? Nothing I say can convince them that we're not a couple. I mean, not that they're wrong" – a nervous laugh tripped out of her – "but it would be nice if they could leave us in peace. But do you see where I'm coming from? I need to know how to react the next time they ask me about our friendship or point out that we're both young and beautiful and eligible for marriage, or something –"

She cut herself off abruptly. Wonderful, Cinder. She was not a rambler, as a general rule – she was hardly ever awkward about anything anymore – but this topic was an uncomfortable one at best. Eligible for marriage ... that was just it, wasn't it? She'd given a lot of thought to what Kai had asked her on that balcony, almost a year ago, but she was nowhere near certain of what she wanted. And this was neither the time nor the place to make that decision.

Kai had been silent during the whole of her speech, apparently thinking about it himself. When it was clear that she'd gotten it all off her chest, he cleared his throat and spoke up.

"You know that they can't pressure us into saying anything, right?"

"I know. I'm just saying that we should pick a story and stick to it."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "I think that was our strategy up till this point."

"True," she sighed. "It hasn't been very effective, has it?"

"No. Though I think you've done the best you could on that front. As you say, you've turned them off, or at least tried to. I've been doing the same." He sighed as well. "I'm not sure that there's anything more we can do. Being questioned by the media kind of comes with the ... crown ... package."

"So I've noticed."

"I'll be perfectly honest - I was wondering the same thing after seeing your conference. And the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that we should go on as we are." Kai tilted from one side to the other as they meandered along, a sort of relaxed penguin walk that she'd come to associate with him. "We can't announce ourselves –"

"Oh no," she said with a chuckle.

"– and all of Earth and Luna know that we are friends – you, me, Scarlet and Winter and everyone. Politically speaking, it would be best to have our friendships out in the open; it might go a long way to begin healing the Earthen-Lunar rift."

Cinder nodded. That's what they had started to call the mutual contempt between the planet and its satellite.

"So, really, best to stick to the teammate-friendship story until we're engaged."

She whipped her head around, eyes wide. Maybe she'd heard him incorrectly. "Sorry?"

Kai seemed to realise what he'd said. "Oh, stars –" He faltered, and Cinder stopped beside him. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean – I meant if, if we get engaged. Because, you know, that would make us … official." He dragged his hands down his face. "I didn't mean to presume … I'm sorry. I'm not, I wasn't asking for an answer."

Maybe it was a trick of the light, but he looked like he blushing. Cinder's lips quirked with amusement. "I know," she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss him. "It's all right. I forgive you."

The little garden path had led them to a weeping willow tree. Kai pushed aside the curtain of trailing branches, motioning for Cinder to go through. She stepped inside, he followed, and a smile broke over her face at what she saw – a little carved bench standing against the gnarled tree trunk. The hanging willow branches created a cozy little alcove around it.

Kai grinned at her and reached under the bench to produce a handheld solar lantern.

"You've come prepared," she remarked, sitting down with a rustle of red skirts.

"It's a favourite hideaway of mine," he told her, lighting the lantern. Soft yellow light sprang through the alcove. "Torin knows all the others. This is where I go when I could use a minute or two of peace."

Cinder gave the arm of the bench an approving pat.

Kai sat down beside her, their arms and shoulders pressed together. She let herself slouch, a blessing after months of keeping up posture, and her head fall to his shoulder. Her eyes drifted shut. They sat like that for a few minutes, in a silence that felt like a breath of relief. There was something wonderful about simply being in each other's company.

After a while, he spoke up again. "I don't think that we have to decide on anything. If we give the press the same neutral answers again and again, eventually they'll stop caring."

"Are you sure?"

He shrugged against her. "What else can we do?"

He was probably right – it was their best option – but she wasn't really convinced. "I don't think there's any such thing as a neutral answer."

"I wouldn't say that."

"No?"

"I once told them, 'I don't see that her being cyborg is relevant'." He gave her a sidelong glance. "Don't know if you – were you watching, by the way?"

"Thorne and I had just escaped from prison," Cinder remembered, the corner of her mouth ticking with amusement even as she sparked from the memory. How many times had she replayed it in her head, the words and his expression and tone of voice?

"What's funny?"

"It was a highly incriminating conference, you know. He teased me about it afterward. I remember him saying something about perfectly tousled hair and chocolatey eyes –" She broke off, knowing that she should be turning red.

Kai nudged her playfully. "Go on."

"That's all there is. I interrupted him."

"What a shame," he said, in a tone of mock curiosity. "I wonder what else he might have said."

She smirked a little, feeling uncharacteristically smug. "I don't have to."

Instead of coming up with a snappy comeback, as she expected him to, there was a pause. Then he said, "Well then," in a surprised sort of way, as if he'd never expected her to say something like that. Cinder smiled, knowing that he was secretly pleased.

Strains of cello music drifted back to them on the wind. They both sat quietly for a moment, listening to the sounds of festivity, trying to pick out flashes of light from the ballroom windows. They hadn't gone all that far from the pavilion.

She heard Kai inhale deeply.

"Do you remember …"

Cinder didn't have to ask what he was talking about. The night of the peace festival – the ball – the brief hours during which she managed to get herself arrested, almost killed, and oh, yeah, to lose her foot on the stairs. All before escaping prison and Levana declaring war.

Good times.

"It's kind of hard to forget any of it," she sighed. That evening was burned into her mind for all eternity. "You know, I was feeling a bit strange this afternoon. Déjà-vu. I almost expected something to go wrong again."

"I know what you mean," he said.

"I remember how hot it was and how much I missed Iko. I fixed a little girl's portscreen and then – and then you came to my booth." The old pang of regret shot through her at the thought of how Kai had tried to talk to her, and how she'd done her level best to turn him away. "You gave me those gloves …"

"And then your stepsister showed up," he sighed.

She smiled a little at the residual annoyance in his voice, as if Pearl was a horrible in-law that he was now allowed to openly dislike. "I remember watching your coronation," she went on, fingering the dark red fabric of her dress. "From home … on my retina scanner. I wanted to be there with you."

Kai glanced down at her. "Really?"

She smiled to herself, head still on his shoulder. "Really, really."

"I wish you had been."

"Me, too. But I was footless at the time. It might have freaked out your hairdresser."

A laugh burst from his chest, jostling her. After a moment, he murmured, "Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we'd run away to Europe, like you suggested." He paused. "Never mind, don't answer that. You were only joking."

Ah. Right. She'd never told him.

"No," Cinder said slowly. "I wasn't."

There was a silence.

Then he shifted, trying to see her face. "Really? You were serious?"

"Not about inviting you. I mean, I knew you couldn't. It was just ... to pretend." Cinder straightened so she could look him in the eye. "But I was planning to go to Europe. It was supposed to be the night of the ball, when no one would be around. I fixed up the old car and bought gas and everything – Adri would never have let me go, it was my one chance."

His eyes widened with understanding. "That's why you didn't want to talk to me. Because you were leaving. So why didn't you?" But he shook his head and answered himself before she could. "Of course - you came to tell me that I was in danger." Something like amazement, or guilt, came over his face. "You stayed because of me."

"Because of Levana," she corrected him. "And Nainsi, and what Cress told me … but yeah, more or less because of you."

They were both silent for a moment. Cinder could guess at what he was thinking – that she had turned away from freedom, from the only future she had ever wanted, in order to give him a warning. She had put Earth before herself and set off a long chain of events that would culminate in the war.

"Do you regret it?" he asked hesitantly.

She didn't have to think about it. "No. I would do it all over again."

"I would, too," he admitted, sounding almost apologetic. "Even the part where I arrested you. If things worked out as well as they did, well, I wouldn't want to change anything."

"All's well that ends well," she agreed.

And even as she spoke, the tightness in her chest eased a little. The war was won and the Lunar throne secured - everything had turned out okay. She might have a kingdom to worry about, but she didn't have to question how she stood with Kai.

Someday, she had told him, and really that was all the answer either of them needed. A maybe, a promise.

They had all the time in the world.