Even knowing what to expect, though, I can’t shake the bone-deep fear of what it will mean to be in the same room as the Kaiser again—to be in his presence, to hear his voice, to have him look at me.
I don’t know if I can do it.
I have to do it.
Artemisia will be our guard. It’s possible the Kalovaxian guard will underestimate her—I hope he does.
“Do you have your dagger?” Søren asks me, his voice low. We walk together across the bloodied battlefield, surrounded by a cluster of guards in case any Kalovaxians attack us en route. The soldiers are separated on either side of us. They aren’t fighting anymore because of the cease-fire, but they are far from peaceful. Taut as bowstrings, they watch us pass, eyes hateful or hopeful or empty.
I nod, feeling the place where the knife is sheathed at my hip, beneath my dress.
“They won’t let me take it in,” I realize, the thought of being defenseless in the presence of the Kaiser making it difficult to breathe.
“Not technically,” Søren says. “But they won’t expect you to be armed—they’ll only check me. Hold on to it, but don’t use it unless you need to. If you attack him unprovoked, your life is forfeit.”
I nod, swallowing down my fear.
Artemisia looks at me with a level gaze. “It’s time,” she says. “Are you ready?”
“No,” I say honestly. “But let’s go.”
* * *
—
As soon as we walk into the commandant’s barracks, the Kaiser’s presence suffocates me. His cold blue eyes settle on me, making my skin crawl beneath his gaze. It’s so disconcerting that it takes me a moment to realize that he isn’t alone. Sitting at his side with her hand swallowed by his is Crescentia, just as I saw her last, with her ashen skin and brittle white hair. A Fire Gem choker rings her charred neck, but it doesn’t hide her disfigurement, it only accentuates it. A black gold crown of ruby flames rests on top of her head.
My mother’s crown, I realize with a jolt. The sight of it is enough to make the tips of my fingers burn, and I clench them into fists at my sides to smother them.
I stop short when Cress’s eyes find mine, but Søren’s hand at my back gently urges me to keep moving, to not let them see me falter.
I sit down gingerly in the chair across from them, and Søren takes the seat next to me.
A silence stretches between all of us for a few moments. The first to speak, it seems, will be the first to lose something.
Finally, Søren clears his throat and addresses the Kaiser. “I hear congratulations are in order, Father, on your nuptials,” he says with a grim smile before turning his attention to Cress. “And you, Lady Crescentia, have my deepest condolences.”
The Kaiser’s face reddens, but it’s Cress who answers first, her roughened voice cutting through the air like a knife with teeth.
“It’s Kaiserin Crescentia,” she says coolly. “I don’t suppose similar congratulations are in order for you two?”
Søren might have been the first to speak, but Crescentia is the first to lose, because in that moment, her weakness shows. Even in the middle of a battle, with casualties crossing into the thousands, she is still a jilted girl angry that she lost the boy she wanted to marry.
I can use that.
“Not yet,” I tell her with a saccharine smile. “When we marry, it will be in the Astrean palace after I retake it.”
Cress’s jaw clenches, but I turn my gaze away from her and to the Kaiser, shoving down the fear and nausea that his presence triggers.
“I believe we’re here to discuss the terms of your surrender,” I tell him, careful to keep my voice level and strong. I won’t let him cow me.
He snorts. “My surrender,” he echoes, shaking his head.
“You did request a parlay; I assumed it was to discuss terms,” I say. “We do outnumber you, after all.”
“Battles aren’t won with numbers alone, surely you know that, Søren,” he says, addressing only his son despite the fact that I’m the one speaking.
“I’m surprised you do,” Søren replies evenly. “It’s been decades since you were last in battle, Father. A lot has changed since then.”
The Kaiser smiles tightly. “I’m willing to let your armies leave Astrea peacefully,” he says, leaning back in his chair and surveying us. “All I want in return is the two of you. It seems more than a fair trade—two lives for the thousands more that will perish if you refuse.”
He’s trying to play to our honor, a smart move I know him well enough to have seen coming.
“No,” I say flatly. “We will let you and your armies go peacefully if you and all of your people abandon Astrea now.”
It’s as much a bluff as his offer was—the Kaiser would never let my armies leave alive even if I do surrender, and I certainly will not accept a surrender that doesn’t include the Kaiser’s death. We both know this, but we pretend anyway.
The Kaiser laughs. “We are at an impasse, then,” he says before looking at Crescentia. “You see, dear? I told you meeting with them would accomplish nothing.”
Cress requested this meeting?
I glance at Søren, but he looks just as baffled. What would Cress have to gain by meeting with us? It’s possible it was mere curiosity, but knowing Cress as well as I do, I can’t imagine that’s the case. Her father didn’t raise her to be someone ruled by something as trifling as her curiosity. No, there’s something else at play here, but it feels like I am looking into a fogged-up window, unable to see more than vague shapes.
My spine stiffens when Cress gets to her feet.
“I suppose I wanted to see them one last time,” Cress says with a mournful sigh, taking a step toward us.
Next to me, Søren tenses as well, as if expecting an attack. She sees this and smiles, like a cat circling a mouse.
“Are you afraid of me, Prinz Søren?” she asks, tilting her head to one side thoughtfully. “I am quite a frightful creature now, thanks to her.” She nods toward me. “I offered her friendship and in exchange she poisoned me. Did she tell you that?” she asks him.
“You offered me a collar,” I tell her, struggling to keep my voice even. “I wasn’t your friend, Cress. I was your pet.”
She rolls her eyes. “So dramatic,” she chides, walking around the room with languid steps, trailing her fingers over the desk, leaving a path of burnt wood where she touches. I can feel my heartbeat speed up, and the urge to flee the room is difficult to ignore. When she sees my reaction, she smiles, pleased with herself.
It’s the way she used to smile at me from across a crowded room, as though we shared a secret just between the two of us. The memory feels like a kick in the gut, but I push it aside and focus on the present.
“I suppose I should thank you,” she says to me quietly. “It’s really something, isn’t it?” She examines her fingers thoughtfully. “I could burn you both with just a touch, you know. By the time your little guard came in, you would be nothing but ash.” She laughs, her eyes sparking with a malicious kind of joy. “An appropriate enough end for you, Ash Princess, don’t you think?”
I touch the dagger hidden beneath my skirt, though I know it wouldn’t do any good if it came to it. By the time I drew it, it would be too late. My own fingers are still itching and I wonder what would happen if I didn’t hold back my fury, if I let it burn through me until there was nothing left of me but flame and smoke and ash. It would anger the gods, I remind myself; it would risk bringing their wrath down on Astrea. It would mean never seeing my mother again.
But when I watch Cress control the fire at her fingertips with a frigid distance, I know she wouldn’t hesitate to use it against me. I know that if she tried, I would do whatever it took to stop her. I know that it wouldn’t be enough in the end—after all, she knows her power, she understands how to control it. I�
�ve been too afraid of mine to do the same.
The Kaiser beams at Cress like she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, like he wants to possess her. Cress smiles back at him, but there is something sickening in that smile, something dark and sticky. She paces the room and comes to stand behind him, placing her hands on his shoulders.
“You’re awfully quiet now, aren’t you?” she asks me. “No smart retorts to that? Because you know I could do it, don’t you?”
I find my voice and hold her gaze even though I want nothing more than to flinch from her. “You could. But I know you, Cress,” I say, hoping against hope that it’s the truth. “You aren’t a killer.”
Her eyes narrow and a shudder racks through her. Without breaking our gaze, she moves her hands along the Kaiser’s shoulders until they’re around his neck, her elegant, bone-white fingers closing tight over the Kaiser’s ruddy throat. She gently tilts his head back, forcing him to look at her before bringing her lips down to his in what can barely be called a kiss.
The Kaiser realizes what’s happening an instant too late—by the time he struggles, her touch is already fire, burning his mouth and throat before he can even utter a scream. The smell of burning flesh permeates the room, pungent enough to make me dizzy. I watch in horror as his body turns to ash beneath her embrace, his expression frozen in silent agony.
A scream dies in my throat. I can’t bring myself to look away from him as the life leaves his eyes. I have waited years for this. I have dreamt of watching the Kaiser die before my eyes. I never thought it would happen like this. I never thought that when it did, I would be more afraid than ever.
The smell of burning flesh gets stronger, making bile rise in my throat. Søren covers his nose with the sleeve of his shirt, his face pale enough to match it, but Cress doesn’t seem bothered. Not by the smell or by what she just did. It can’t be the first life she’s taken, I realize distantly, and I wonder just how monstrous she has grown since I saw her last.
“There,” she says to me when she finally drops her hands away from the Kaiser’s corpse. “Now, why don’t we revisit those terms.”
She crosses behind the commandant’s desk, digging through its drawers until she produces a half-full bottle of wine. She sets it on the desk, reaching into the pockets of her dress and drawing out from one a small goblet covered in Fire Stones and from the other a vial of opalescent liquid.
My stomach lurches at the sight of it. Encatrio, the same poison I used on her and her father.
“Where did you get that?” I ask, my voice barely louder than a whisper.
She shrugs. “After what it did to me, it wasn’t difficult to figure out that it must have come from the Fire Mine. From there, it was a matter of asking the right questions and making people more inclined to talk.”
“You tortured them,” I say, my voice cracking. Monstrous indeed, but I started her down that path, didn’t I? I shaped her into this.
Cress rolls her eyes. “I wouldn’t have had to if they’d just told me what I needed to know.” Uncorking the poison, she pours a few drops into the goblet. “That should do,” she says, though I think she’s mostly speaking to herself. She pours the wine next, filling the goblet up halfway and swirling the drink around. Picking the goblet up, she comes toward me and I have to force myself to hold my ground.
Søren steps in front of me. “What are you doing with that?” he asks, alarmed.
Cress only smiles at him. “I promise I won’t pour it down her throat. I’m only offering it to her—she’ll drink it herself, every drop.”
“And why would I do that?” I ask, my voice shaking.
“Because if you do, I’ll order my armies to retreat. You can keep the mine, you can keep the slaves you liberated—well, you can’t, because you’ll be dead, but your people will live.”
“We’re already living,” Søren says. “The battle isn’t over.”
“Not yet,” Cress says, eyes darting to him only briefly. “But it will be soon enough. It doesn’t matter that you have more men. They’re untrained, they’re weak. They don’t have Spiritgems. Even if you do somehow manage to win this one battle, your army would be decimated and you would only hold the mine long enough for me to fetch more troops. We would return in a week and crush what was left of your army like a bug beneath a shoe.” She pauses, smiling at me. Unlike in my nightmares, her teeth aren’t pointed, but her expression is every bit as feral anyway. “It’s a simple exchange, Thora. Your death, or your people’s.”
I stare at her, paralyzed. It feels like a sick joke, but there is nothing funny about it. She’s serious. She’s offering me death and calling it a mercy, and she isn’t even wrong in that. If the Kaiser hadn’t shown up with reinforcements, we would have kept enough of our army to travel to another mine and wage another battle there, but Cress is right—even if we win this battle, the number of casualties would be too high. It would be our first and last stand.
But if I drink the poison, there would be hope. I’m not foolish enough to believe that Cress would let my army keep the Fire Mine for long, but it would be long enough to make another plan, to find another way to fight. I trust that in my absence, Artemisia, Heron, Erik, and Blaise would keep fighting. They don’t need me—Artemisia said so herself back at the Astrean palace. If I fall, the rebellion will keep going.
I have to believe that.
I hold Cress’s gaze and step around Søren, taking the goblet from her. For an instant, our fingers touch. I expect hers to be hot, but they feel like mine.
“Theo, no,” Søren says, pleading. “There are other ways.”
“No,” I say, not taking my eyes off Cress. “There aren’t.”
It may not kill me, I think, a feverishly desperate thought. It didn’t kill Cress, after all. Houzzah’s blood burns through my veins, I’ve seen the proof of that. But it seems even more likely that what fire I do already have will be amplified by the Encatrio, that, as Mina put it, my pot will overflow.
I should trust my gods, I should believe that they wouldn’t let that happen, that they would protect me. But they didn’t protect Blaise. They didn’t protect my mother or Ampelio or Elpis or Astrea as a whole. I can’t bring myself to believe they will protect me now.
I lift the goblet to my lips, but I pause before drinking. “Cress,” I say. Just one word. Just her name.
Something flickers in her expression, and for a brief, fleeting moment I think I’ve reached through to some part of her I thought was lost. She smiles at me the same way she did once, when we were just two silly girls sharing gossip. But that smile turns hungry.
“Drink,” she says.
I take Søren’s hand in mine because I don’t want to die alone, and then I tilt the goblet back and drink.
The first gulp is hot, but bearably so. The ones that follow scald. I drink so quickly that wine trickles down from the corners of my mouth, singeing the skin there, but I don’t stop. I drink until it is all gone.
The burning starts in my throat, a pain so sharp that it brings me to my knees, banishing all other thoughts from my mind. I don’t care where I am anymore, or whose hand I’m holding, or anything that exists outside of my own body. The pain spreads, racking through me until I am shaking, the ground like ice beneath me. Arms come around me, holding me tight, but all too quickly those arms are gone and the only comfort I have left is yanked away.
A scream pierces the air, but it isn’t mine. It can’t be mine because I can’t even open my mouth.
A door opens, figures rush in, too blurry to recognize.
More yelling. Panic. The comfort is dragged away, kicking and shouting the whole time. Even after I can’t see him, I still hear him. Calling my name. Calling for Theodosia.
Blue hair. She crouches down beside me, her touch cold. Two hands on my skin like water, but it hurts so much more than the fire ever could.
If the poison turned me to fire, this dissolves me into nothing but steam.
Everything goes black.
I WAKE UP IN A TENT, the bright sunlight filtering through the stitches that hold the roof together. My skin feels like it’s been rubbed raw, every nerve on fire, but the pain doesn’t overwhelm me anymore. I can think through it. I remember drinking the poison and Cress screaming for her guard. I remember the guard dragging Søren away and Artemisia coming to help me instead of saving him.
Rolling over on the threadbare mattress chafes my skin and I let out a groan, closing my eyes tight.
“Theo?” a voice says, small and afraid.
I force my eyes open again to find Artemisia sitting on the ground next to my cot, looking at me with solemn, worried eyes. Judging by the dark circles under them, I don’t think she’s slept in a while. I try to sit up, but it sends another wave of pain through me and I lie back down, bringing my hands to cover my face.
Beneath my fingertips, the skin is smooth but slick with sweat. Not like Cress’s charred, dry skin. I check my hair, too, expecting to find singed ends, but it is the same as it’s ever been, except for a single piece. When I bring it in front of my eyes, I see that it’s stark white. I shudder.
I’m alive, though, I realize, and that thought both stuns and buoys me. I’m alive even though I shouldn’t be. I’m alive, but I am not the same. The potion may not have marred me like it did Cress, but it changed me. Where before, heat gathered in my fingertips and spread slowly, now I feel it everywhere, a constant dull heat coursing through my veins. It doesn’t scare me anymore, though. After drinking Encatrio, I can’t imagine anything will truly frighten me again.
“How long have I been asleep?” I ask, though it comes out rough, my throat aching around every word.
“Two days,” Art says. “The Kalovaxians retreated. Their Kaiserin gave us a piece of paper saying we own the mine now, though I don’t think it’s worth much.”
Lady Smoke Page 38
