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her.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    But she did know. Cinder may not know much about inter-galactic politics, but she knew Prince Kai would be a fool to marry Queen Levana.
    The lingering moon caught Cinder’s attention, and a shock of goose bumps covered her arms. The moon had always given her a sense of paranoia, like the people who lived up there could be watching her, and if she stared for too long, she might draw their attention. Superstitious nonsense, but then everything about Lunars was eerie and superstitious.
    Lunars were a society that had evolved from an Earthen moon colony centuries ago, but they weren’t human anymore. People said Lunars could alter a person’s brain—make you see things you shouldn’t see, feel things you shouldn’t feel, do things you didn’t want to do. Their unnatural power had made them a greedy and violent race, and Queen Levana was the worst of all of them.
    They said she knew when people were talking about her even thousands of miles away. Even down on Earth.
    They said she’d murdered her older sister, Queen Channary, so she could take the throne from her. They said she’d had her own husband killed too so she would be free to make a more advantageous match. They said she had forced her stepdaughter to mutilate her own face because, at the sweet age of thirteen, she had become more beautiful than the jealous queen could stand.
    They said she’d killed her niece, her only threat to the throne. Princess Selene had only been three years old when a fire caught in her nursery, killing her and her nanny.
    Some conspiracy theorists thought the princess had survived and was still alive somewhere, waiting for the right time to reclaim her crown and end Levana’s rule of tyranny, but Cinder knew it was only desperation that fueled these rumors. After all, they’d found traces of the child’s flesh in the ashes.
    “Here.” Iko raised her hand and knocked on a slab of metal jutting from a huge mound of junk, startling Cinder.
    She shoved the thoughts aside. Prince Kai would never marry that witch. He could never marry a Lunar.
    Cinder pushed a few rusted aerosol cans and an old mattress aside before she was able to clearly make out the hover’s nose. “Good eye.”
    Together they shuffled enough junk out of the way so that the full front of the vehicle could be seen. “I’ve never seen one like this,” Cinder said, running a hand over the pitted chrome insignia.
    “It’s hideous,” said Peony with a sneer. “What an awful color.”
    “It must be really old.” Cinder found the latch and pulled open the hood. She drew back, blinking at the mess of metal and plastic that greeted her. “ Really old.” She squinted into the front corner of the engine, but the undercarriage hid the magbelt clamps from view. “Huh. Point the light over there, would you?”
    Cinder lowered herself to the dirt. She tightened her ponytail before squirming under the hover, shoving aside the jumble of old parts that had been left to rust in the weeds beneath it.
    “Stars,” she muttered when she was able to look up into its belly. Iko’s light filtered down from above, through cables and wires, ducts and manifolds, nuts and bolts. “This thing is ancient.”
    “It is in a junkyard,” said Peony.
    “I’m serious. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Cinder ran a hand along a rubber cable.
    The light flashed back and forth as Iko’s sensor scanned the engine from above. “Any useful parts?”
    “Good question.” Cinder’s vision tinted blue as she connected to her netlink. “Could you read me the VIN by the windshield?” She searched the number as Peony read it to her and had the hover’s blueprint downloaded in minutes, the display creating an overlaid image on top of the engine above her. “Seems to be fairly intact,” she murmured, running her fingertips along a cluster of wires over her head. She followed them with her eyes, tilting her head to trace the path from hoses to