Page 41 of Cinder's Adventure: Get Me To the Wedding!

Eleven.

Then two, nine, seventeen.

She curled her lip, exasperated that the magical die didn’t seem to work for her, then begrudgingly handed it back to her brother.

“I don’t know,” said Jude, shrugging. “I’m just lucky tonight, I guess.”

“It does seem like a mathematical marvel,” said Ari. “Nothing but twenties? Doesn’t seem statistically possible.”

“It’s fine,” said Quint, who had been ready to call it quits on this role-playing adventure long before Sadashiv had wrapped up his crooning rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “Luck Be a Lady.” “Let’s just fight this cyborg and move on.”

Jude grimaced. “That’s the thing. If we’re following the guidebook and, uh, honoring all those twenties I just rolled”—he looked around the table apologetically—“then the cyborg just went a little berserk and… sort of slaughtered you all.”

Pru lifted an eyebrow. “Slaughteredus?”

“I mean, you were still kind of beat up from fighting those goblins, and… yeah. You didn’t really stand a chance. I wouldn’t have put in such a strong NPC if I’d known.” He half-heartedly tossed the die one last time.

It tumbled and clacked across the table.

Twenty.

“All right, then,” said Pru, gathering up her papers. “Thanks for introducing us to your weekly obsession, Jude. I can see why you enjoy this game so much.”

“It’s usually a lot more fun than this, I swear,” said Jude. “I think I might go get myself some new dice.”

“If I were you,” said Ari, getting up to change the record, “I’d go out and buy yourself a lottery ticket. See if your luck holds for something other than Dungeons and Dragons.”

Jude laughed, but then the laugh faltered, and a curious look glinted in his eye. “You know? Maybe I will.”

The end.

Chapter 50

She was taken to a large courthouse in the middle of the city, a building that was all brick with imposing statues of lions guarding the entry doors. The inside had marble floors and way too much oak paneling on the walls, but Cinder hardly had time to criticize before she was led down two flights of stairs to the basement and locked up in a small jail cell.

It was empty but for a small cot, a small toilet, and…

“Is that a spinning wheel?” said Cinder, eyeing the ancient wooden contraption.

“Yeah,” said the boy that Magpie had called Adrian. “There’s this one superhero that can spin straw into gold, so he comes and uses this cell sometimes when no one is in here. Says it relaxes him.” He tapped his marker against the metal lock. “The council will want to know who you are, and what you were doing to those people. I don’t expect you’ll have long to wait.”

“Good,” said Cinder, facing him through the bars. “Because I sort of have plans today.”

He smiled, like he thought she was joking. “I’ll let them know.”

“You do that,” she snapped, not trying to hide her irritation.

As soon as he had walked away, she scanned her small prison with annoyance. “Superheroes? Please. Even Thorne is more heroic than this.”

Proceed to Chapter 24.

Chapter 51

Cinder jumped, and landed on the monster’s back with a shock that reverberated through her body. She grunted and was barely able to lock her knees around the Jabberwock’s scaly back before it bucked her off.

There was little to hold on to, so as its great leathery wings beat at the air, Cinder gripped one of the protruding spines that ran the ridge of its back and flattened herself out, holding on as tight as she could.

The creature let out a shriek and Cinder didn’t know if it was angry to have an uninvited rider, or if something else had infuriated it.

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