Scarlet

In a dream that night, Scarlet relives a strange moment from when she was a young teenager. She remembers eavesdropping on a conversation that her grandmother had with a strange man and how her grandmother will be “glad when she’s gone” (259). As her grandmother and the man make plans to move a girl from the farm to the Eastern Commonwealth, Scarlet thinks they are talking about her, and she is hurt by her grandmother’s apparent willingness to give her away to strangers. However, years passed, and Scarlet never left the farm.

When she wakes up, she tells Wolf about her dream and realizes that “it must have been the princess that they were talking about” (261). She becomes excited and thinks she might be able to give this information to the Wolves in exchange for her grandmother’s freedom. Wolf becomes agitated and urges Scarlet not to go looking for her grandmother but to run away with him instead. Scarlet refuses and announces that she will “trade [herself] for [her] grandmother” (263). She asks Wolf to take her to the Wolves, let her make the trade, and then take care of her grandmother when she’s gone. Wolf reluctantly agrees although he says that he will do what he has to do.

Scarlet and Wolf arrive in Paris, and he begins to lead her through the city streets. Scarlet feels “an abyss opening up” between her and Wolf, “cutting through whatever they’d shared on the train” (269), and Scarlet wonders if Wolf is leading her to his death. Wolf begins to point out pack members hiding in plain sight as regular civilians, and he warns her that the gang already knows they are here in the city. She urges Wolf to let her go alone and not put himself in danger, but he “said [he] would protect [her]” (271) and refuses to leave her side. Wolf brings her to an abandoned opera house, and as they approach the entrance, Wolf apologizes. Scarlet is overwhelmed by a sense of foreboding, and “warnings [clutter] her head” (274) as Wolf leads her inside.

As Wolf leads Scarlet deep into the opera house, she gets an alert on her portscreen from the hospital in Toulouse. Her father has been “pronounced dead” from apparent “alcohol poisoning” (277). Suddenly, a man appears from the shadows, and Scarlet recognizes him as “a Lunar thaumaturge” (279)—one of Levana’s cronies. Scarlet is shocked to discover that Wolf is still working for the pack and has brought her straight into a trap. Wolf reports that he “questioned [Scarlet] to the best of [his] ability” (280). He insists that Scarlet doesn’t know anything of value about the Lunar princess because “her trust [in him] was complete” (281). She would have told him anything she knew. The thaumaturge reports that Scarlet’s father was killed by a pack member because they “have little tolerance for useless Earthens” (281). As Scarlet is taken away by pack members, she asks Wolf what LSOP really means. He admits that it stands for “Lunar Special Operative” (282), and Scarlet realizes that Wolf is a Lunar who has been working for Queen Levana the whole time.

Emperor Kai sits in his office, exhausted and discouraged, as the search for Cinder continues with no results. Kai’s android, Nainsi, announces the arrival of Linh Adri and Linh Pearl, Cinder’s stepmother and stepsister, who “[have] important information on the Lunar fugitive” (285). Reluctantly, Kai lets them in, and Cinder’s stepmother tells Kai that she has footage of Cinder at the letumosis quarantine weeks ago when “a girl attacked two med-droids” (288). She believes that Cinder “stole [Peony’s] ID chip, not minutes after her death” (291), and Kai wonders if Cinder really would be capable of doing something so unthinkable. He thanks Adri for the information and promises to “have a tracker set up for the ID immediately” (292). Adri declares that she is only interested in helping Kai capture a violent criminal and doing her part to serve her country, but on her way out, she also asks if she might “expect any sort of reward for [her] assistance” (293).