Her eyes lock onto mine and I realize what the Kaiser has planned. I’ve confessed, yes, but I haven’t told him everything. He’s smart enough to know that.
“Just enough poisoned wine left for one,” the Kaiser says. “You have a choice, Ash Princess. Tell me the truth and I’ll send her to the mines instead. Otherwise…”
The guard pulls Elpis’s hair back until she has no choice but to open her mouth and he tilts the potion closer. I struggle against the guard holding me, but his grip is like iron.
He won’t spare her, no matter what I do—just like he didn’t spare Ampelio. He’s a liar and he doesn’t show mercy. I know that and so does Elpis. So does everyone in the room. I cannot save her. I cannot save her. I cannot—
“Stop!” The word is wrenched from my throat like a sob, against my will. The guard freezes.
“I thought we could come to an understanding,” the Kaiser says with a nauseating smile. “I’ll ask again: Where did you get the Encatrio?”
I swallow. Suddenly I don’t feel anything like a queen. A true queen could weigh the lives of many against the life of one, but I can’t. All I see is Elpis. All I hear is Blaise’s voice, telling me she’s my responsibility. I asked this of her, I brought her here, I’ve as good as killed her. I owe her this. Even if the Kaiser doesn’t spare her, he’ll give her a clean death, like Gazzi. Not the Encatrio; he’ll save that for someone else.
“My Shadows,” I say, trusting that they are long gone now. “Rebels replaced them last month. Where they got it, I don’t know.”
The Kaiser frowns and motions to the guard, who tips the vial again.
“I don’t know!” I shout, fighting against the guards who hold me, but it does no good. “I swear, I don’t know anything more!”
They don’t stop, though. Elpis’s guard tips the vial just enough to give her a drop before pinching her nose until she swallows. The sound that erupts from her is like nothing I’ve heard before, the hoarse cry of a dying animal that vibrates through my whole body, scraping over my skin like claws. I fight against my guards, my elbow flying up. Something cracks and one of the guards lets out a string of curses, but their hold never loosens.
Elpis slumps against the guard, her eyes half shut. The skin of her neck is already charring, turning gray and dry. She can barely whimper.
“Still a few more sips to go,” the Kaiser drawls. “What were you doing tonight?”
I swallow and tear my eyes away from Elpis. This, at least, will cost us nothing. “I was supposed to kill the Prinz before escaping.”
With her throat burned, Elpis can’t do more than shake her head an inch.
“Escaping where?” he presses. “With who?”
I open my mouth to answer, struggling for a lie—any lie. It won’t matter; Elpis and I will both be dead by the time the lie is discovered, and Blaise and the others will be far gone. But it isn’t so simple. The Kaiser will arrive at whatever country I name with battalions and soldiers and berserkers. He will bring war to their doors. I can’t form words.
The Kaiser seems to expect it. He seems to want it. Gleefully, he motions to the guard again, watching Elpis with a fascination that turns my stomach to lead.
Elpis is twitching against the guard now, and he struggles to hold her still as he lifts the vial to her lips again. She groans and her eyes find mine. The pain there clutches at my stomach, but there’s something else as well. I put a name to it a second too late: resolution.
The guard goes to force another drop of the potion down her throat, but Elpis drinks it all instead, sucking each drop out before the surprised guard can pull it away.
I shout a string of Astrean words my mother never taught me and struggle against the guard holding me, fighting him with everything I have as my mind spins and blurs. But the guard doesn’t loosen his grip, and all I can do is watch as Elpis falls to the ground, twitching and curling in on herself like the child she is. The charring spreads from her throat and the smell of broiling flesh fills the room. The courtiers behind me begin to gag, as if they were the ones suffering.
When she finally stills, her blackened mouth is frozen in a silent scream.
Dimly I hear the Kaiser order for the bodies to be removed. A guard drags Elpis away like she’s no more than a rag doll, her head lolling on her neck limply, eyes mercifully closed. A trail of ash is left behind in her wake.
She was my responsibility and I killed her. If I have any regrets, it’s this. Too many people have died for me, and now I’m almost grateful that no more will have to.
The Kaiser steps down from my mother’s throne, his footsteps echoing loudly in the silent room as he comes toward me. I can’t look at him, unable to take my eyes off the trail of ash Elpis’s body has left in its wake, but he grabs my chin and forces me to look up so that all I see is his face, red and sharp and cold.
“It’s a shame,” he whispers so that only I and the guards holding me can hear him. “You would have made such a pretty kaiserin.”
I swallow my tears. They’re for Elpis; the Kaiser doesn’t deserve to see them. If the guards weren’t holding me as tightly as they are, I would throw myself at him and do whatever damage I could before I was stopped—claw his eyes out, smash his head against the stones, grab the guard’s sword and stab him through the heart—there are so many ways to hurt someone in a matter of seconds, and I would invent a dozen more. But the guards must feel my desperation, because they hold me tight, like I’m a threat.
I do the only thing I can—I spit. It lands just below his eye, shiny and wet.
The back of his hand hits my face. The force of the blow should send me to the ground again, but the guards keep me standing.
“Take her away,” the Kaiser says to my guards. “Set her execution for sunrise so that everyone will witness it. I want the world to know that the Ash Princess is dead.”
THE KAISER DOESN’T MAKE MISTAKES often, but he made one when he didn’t kill me. He thinks it’s smart to wait until there’s a larger audience, a more Astrean audience that will be further broken by seeing me killed. I see his logic but there is a flaw in his plan.
I was ready to die for my cause, before. I was ready to greet my mother and Ampelio in the After and watch my country rise again without me. But now I can’t get the image of Elpis’s ashen body out of my mind. I can’t forget the way the Kaiser grinned as he watched her die. As much as I long to see my mother again, I am not ready yet.
I am not done with this world, and I am not done with him.
The guards led me down into the dungeons beneath the palace, a maze of cramped, dirty cells my mother never used during her reign. She thought them too cruel a fate even for criminals, sending them instead to work off their crimes in the Outlands.
These are the same cells Blaise and I explored as children. My feet recognized the path; I could see the layout in my mind as clear as any map. Blaise must remember them, too.
They locked me in a cold cell separate from other prisoners, with no blanket, or food, or even a set of clothes not covered in blood. It’s so cramped that I can’t lift both my arms, and it’s the sort of dark that only exists in nightmares. The heavy lock creaked as it was slid into place, and their boots echoed down the hall.
As soon as I was alone, the laughter began. I couldn’t control it and I didn’t care to. There’s no one to hear me this far below ground, and if there were, let them tell the Kaiser all about it.
Let him believe I’m mad. It won’t be the biggest mistake he’s made tonight. Somewhere out there, Blaise and Heron and Artemisia are getting word of my arrest and they’re putting together a plan to get me out. I know that as certainly as I know my name.
The Kaiser should have killed me when he had the chance.
* * *
—
I don’t know how long passes before my laughter dies down, or h
ow much more time inches by before the footsteps break up the silence, these much softer than the guards’. Too soft to be Blaise’s. Artemisia’s, maybe? I scramble toward the bars and try to see down the hall, but it’s too dark and I don’t dare call out a name.
A candle’s dim light turns a corner, coming toward me and growing brighter, illuminating the girl holding it. I have to stifle a cry of surprise when she stops in front of my cell door, face inches from mine.
Crescentia might have survived the Encatrio, but it didn’t leave her unchanged. Her once soft, rosy skin has turned chalky, and even in the candlelight, it has a gray sheen, except for her neck, which is coal black from jawline to clavicle and rough as unpolished stone. Her hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes have all turned from pale gold to a blinding, brittle white. Before, her hair fell past her waist in waves, but now it ends bluntly at her shoulders, frayed and broken at the edges. Singed.
But it isn’t only the poison. The girl standing on the other side of the cell bars isn’t the one I’ve known for the past ten years, the one I pretended to be a siren with, the one I laughed and gossiped with. That Crescentia was pretty and sweet and always smiling, but this girl has red-rimmed eyes and an expression like ice. No one could call her pretty now—fierce, striking, beautiful maybe, but never pretty. When we met, I thought she looked like a goddess, and she still does. But it’s no longer Evavia I see; it’s her sister Nemia, the goddess of vengeance. Before, Crescentia looked at me with love, like we were sisters, but now hate rolls off her in palpable waves.
And I don’t even blame her for it, though I can’t regret murdering the Theyn.
“Do you want to know why I did it?” I ask her when several moments pass in silence.
Her flinch is nearly imperceptible, but it’s there. “I know why you did it.” Her throat is raw and burnt and every word seems to pain her, though I can see how badly she tries not to show it.
She doesn’t know, not really, and I want her to understand. “For the last ten years I’ve lain awake at night with my mother’s dying scream in my ear, with your father’s cruel eyes haunting my nightmares. I thought he would kill me, too, sooner or later. The only way I could sleep was if I imagined killing him first. Poison wasn’t ideal, I’ll admit. A dagger would have been symmetrical; his own sword would have been poetic. But I worked with what I had.”
I watch her face carefully for a reaction as I speak, trying to shock her, but she barely even blinks. She reads me like one of her more challenging poems, and I know she sees through my apathy. It’s not surprising. We’ve always been able to read each other well. The difference is that for the first time, her mind is closed to me. I am looking at a stranger.
“Not killing you was the only time my father defied orders,” she tells me after a moment of quiet, her voice cold. “The Kaiser wanted you dead. My father passed it off as strategy, and he wasn’t wrong, but that’s not the real reason he spared you. He told me once that he looked at you and saw me. That turned out to be the biggest mistake he made.”
I remember the Theyn pulling me away from my mother’s body, even as I clutched her dress as tightly as I could. I remember him taking me to another room, speaking with his soldiers in a halting, violent language I didn’t understand at the time. I remember him asking me in terrible Astrean if I wanted something to eat or drink. I remember crying too hard to answer him.
I push the memories to the back of my mind and focus on Cress standing in front of me, expecting…what? Sympathy? An apology?
“After a life filled with senseless murders and brutalities, that’s truly saying something,” I tell her instead. “I won’t lose any sleep over him, even if I had another night of sleep left.”
Her jaw tenses. After a moment, she speaks again. “And why me?”
A laugh forces its way out of me. “Why you?” I repeat, surprised that she has to ask, after everything.
“I was your heart’s sister.”
The term that was once an endearment now sounds vile.
“You would have turned me over to the Kaiser if I didn’t stay complacent and docile. I wasn’t your heart’s sister, Cress. I wasn’t any different to you than a slave who forgot my place and stepped out of line. You cracked the whip and reminded me who was in charge.”
There it is, a tremble so slight I would miss it if I hadn’t known her as long as I have. She’s wearing the mask of a stranger now, but it slipped for just a second. Just enough to remind me what we were once, how far we’ve fallen in such a short time. But as soon as it appears, it’s gone. Sealed away behind cold gray eyes and stone skin.
I push forward, desperate to break through again, even if it only brings rage and hate. Anything is better than her cold, vacant eyes.
“Thora was your heart’s sister, maybe,” I say. “Sweet, obliging Thora, who never wanted anything. The broken little Ash Princess who depended on you because she had no one else. But that’s not what I am.”
A spark in her eyes, a clench of her jaw. “What you are is a monster,” she tells me, biting out the words with more ferocity than I thought she possessed.
Despite myself, I flinch. “I’m a queen,” I correct her softly, even as I wonder if I’m both. Maybe all rulers have to be at least part monster in order to survive.
But my mother wasn’t, a small voice whispers in my head. I silence it. My mother wasn’t a monster, it’s true, but the Kaiser was right: she ended up with a slit throat and a lost country. Blaise was right, too. My mother was a soft queen because she lived in a soft world. I don’t have that luxury.
“Why did you come here, Cress?” I ask quietly. Her eyes narrow at the causal use of her old nickname, and I wish I could take it back. We are not friends; I need to remember that. It’s not something she will forget so easily.
“I wanted to see your face one last time before you died, Ash Princess,” she says, taking a step closer, until her face is pressed into the space between two iron bars, gray hands clenching the bar below her chin. “And I wanted you to know that I’ll be there tomorrow, watching. When your blood spills and you hear the crowd cheer, I wanted you to know that my voice will be the one cheering the loudest. And one day, when I am the Kaiserin, I will have your country and all the people in it burned to the ground.”
The viciousness in her voice scares me more than I’d like to admit. I don’t doubt she means every word of it. So I say the only thing I can to fight back.
“Even if Søren does marry you, you’ll always know,” I tell her.
She freezes.
“Know what?” she asks.
“That he’s wishing you were me,” I say, twisting my mouth into a cruel smile. “You’ll end up like the Kaiserin, a lonely, mad old woman surrounded by ghosts.”
Her mouth tightens and she mirrors my mockery of a smile. “I think I’ll ask the Kaiser if I can keep your head,” she says, before turning and leaving me alone again in the dark.
When she’s gone, I bring a hand to the metal bar she’d been touching and jump back. The bar is scalding hot.
IT TAKES BLAISE LONGER THAN I expect to find his way to me, though my sense of time is heavily skewed. I can’t honestly say whether moments are passing or hours. For all I know, he isn’t coming at all. I have to believe that Heron escaped after he couldn’t get Elpis out of the palace; otherwise, the Kaiser would have killed him in front of me as well. It’s a small comfort, but it’s a comfort all the same.
He and Artemisia might be far away by now. I hope they are. But I know Blaise well enough to know that he would have come back, and it wouldn’t have taken long for him to have gotten word of the Kaiser’s announcement.
Still, it feels like half an eternity before I hear footsteps again, heavier this time. He doesn’t risk carrying a candle with him, so I don’t see his face until it’s mere inches from mine, separated only by the bars of the cell.
; He looks more haggard than usual. There are dark circles beneath his eyes, his jaw is covered in stubble, and his clothes are dirty and damp.
“You took your time,” I say, getting to my feet.
“I had to wait for a change in the guard.” He rakes a hand through his messy hair, eyes roving anxiously. “There are two of them posted at the entrance to the cells. We have twenty minutes before they’ll do rounds.”
“You used the entrance to the cells when there’s a perfectly good tunnel hidden down here?”
He shakes his head. “That’s the escape route—no need to risk exposing it before then. I was going to come earlier, but your friend messed up that plan.”
I don’t have to ask who he’s talking about. “She’s not my friend,” I tell him. It isn’t the first time I’ve said that to him, but it’s the first time the words have been true.
“What happened?” he asks. His attention is on my dress, which is now more red than violet.
“I’m fine,” I tell him, but he doesn’t believe me. I can’t meet his eyes when I tell him about Elpis.
I wait for the blame to come. He didn’t want me to give her that responsibility and I insisted. Her blood is on my hands and he has every right to remind me of that. I deserve to hear it, though it might break me.
He’s quiet for a moment, and though I still can’t meet his gaze, I feel him looking at me. He reaches a hand between the bars to take mine. It’s a comfort I don’t deserve.
“You are not allowed to fall apart, Theo,” he tells me. “Not now. Or else she died for nothing.”
I press my lips together to keep my protest down. I know he’s right, but I don’t want him to be. I want to wrap my guilt around me like a cloak, but that doesn’t help anyone but me. It certainly doesn’t help Elpis.
Ash Princess Page 32
