I try praying now as I lie in bed and wait for midnight. I pray desperately and hopelessly, to all the gods I remember from either religion. Mine feel more like ghosts now, echoes of ancestors I met once but remember more from stories than memories.
I never let a word pass my lips. In the silence, my Shadows’ presence is even heavier. Heresy is a death offense, and I’m sure they would fight one another for the chance to tell the Kaiser, if only so that they could finally be rid of what must be a truly terrible job. They aren’t even supposed to talk to one another, though they break that rule often. I usually fall asleep to them whispering.
Now the room is silent for the first time in my memory. They’re supposed to sleep in shifts, and that is one rule I know they always follow, because all three of them snore horribly and I only ever hear one at a time.
One snore erupts from the northern wall, so deep it almost feels like the floor shakes.
If it’s North’s turn to sleep, East and South usually snicker at his snore, but they don’t now. I close my eyes and listen, trying to strip away North’s snore to hear anything underneath.
And there it is—a whimper of a snore from East, like a mewling puppy.
The Kaiser will be furious if he finds out both of them are sleeping. He doesn’t like to take chances, and my Shadows, like most Kalovaxians, are too terrified of him to risk his wrath.
If only South is watching me tonight, there must be something I can do. One Shadow is easier to mislead than two, though not by much. It’s still one dedicated and deadly man whose entire job revolves around watching every move I make.
But then I hear it: a third snore, this one raspy and light, easy to mistake for a particularly riotous wind pouring through the cracked window.
The realization floods me with joy that’s all too quickly replaced by dread. What are the chances that on the same night Blaise appears and arranges a meeting, my Shadows are all asleep for the first time in ten years? Much lower than the chances that I’m walking into a trap. Felicie comes to mind again and I can see the Kaiser’s angry, red face and the whip in his hand.
This time, the punishment will be worse.
But if it isn’t a trap, if Blaise is really waiting in the kitchen cellar and he was in league with Ampelio, how can I not go?
When the moon is high in the sky and I’m sure most everyone is asleep, I throw my quilt off and slip from the safety of my bed. There is still no sound from beyond the walls, so I inch closer to one of the holes, my heart pounding in my chest.
The snores are unmistakable now from each of the holes. The Shadows are all well and truly asleep. It’s possible, of course, that they all ate and drank too much at the banquet and fell into a deep sleep, but I don’t believe in coincidences. The thought that I’m walking into another one of the Kaiser’s traps paralyzes me for a moment, but I push on. I cannot be a coward anymore.
The icy stone floor feels like needles on the soles of my feet as I tiptoe across it, but my steps are quieter without shoes. Barefoot, I make my way to the door and pause with my hand on the doorknob. It would be so easy, I think, to crawl back into my bed, to banish thoughts of Blaise and Ampelio and my mother to the back of my mind for good. I could bury it all deep inside. I could refrain from angering the Kaiser and he would continue to keep me alive.
But I think of the blood staining my dress, my hands. Of Ampelio.
I suck in a deep breath and force myself to turn the doorknob and push the door open just wide enough to slip through out into the hall. The doors to the Shadows’ rooms are all closed, but there are wine goblets left on the floor outside them. Some kind soul must have brought them drinks from the banquet. Or maybe not so kind, depending on what else was in the wine.
Clever, Blaise. I stifle a smile before realizing that for the first time in ages, no one is watching me. I let myself really smile. For a moment, I think of them asleep in their tiny rooms, and the temptation to spy on them for once passes over me, but I can’t risk waking them.
The smile stays fixed on my face as I continue down the hall. The cellar is in the west wing of the palace, beneath the main kitchens, so I need to turn left. Or is it to the right? In the dim light from torches lining the walls, I can’t be sure of anything. All it will take is one wrong turn, one wrong corridor, one person where they aren’t supposed to be. The thought almost sends me running back for my bed, but I know it’s only a slower death that awaits me there.
I have to make a choice. I have to trust myself. I go left.
The sounds of late-night revelers travel up the grand staircase and down the halls to me—music and drunken laughter, shouts of glee at Astrea’s expense. A toast is raised to the Ash Princess, and they make lewd jokes I’ve heard so often they roll off my back like water. The easiest path to the kitchens leads right past them, down the stairs and just around a corner—a terrifying prospect, considering their current state—but there is a reason Blaise designated the kitchen cellar, and it isn’t only because it’s dark and deserted at this time of night. It’s because of the tunnels.
When we were children, before the siege, Blaise was determined to explore all the passages hidden within the castle, drawing up dozens of scrawled maps that only he could read. And since his mother and mine were close friends and always together, he was often forced to let me tag along. I discovered them as well. We didn’t come close to finding all of them, but in the year or so we spent looking, we found dozens. Including one that leads from the east wing of the palace to the kitchen cellar.
It’s the kind of memory I thought long lost, like most of my memories before the siege, but seeing Ampelio today and then Blaise has them all coming back to me.
Still, it would be only too easy to miss the entrance after so many years. The darkness doesn’t help and I didn’t dare bring a candle. The voices of the revelers are moving now, getting closer, but they head down another passageway, away from me, and I let out a sigh of relief.
When I come to what I am almost positive is the right hallway, I reach out and trail my fingers along the wall. Ten years ago, the stone was at eye level, so now it should be about waist height. How can it be possible that I’ve grown so much, when it feels like yesterday that I watched my mother die?
But then, it was also another lifetime.
I’ve nearly given up finding it when I run my hand over a stone that juts out slightly from the rest.
Like Guardian Alexis’s nose, Blaise had said with a snicker when we’d first found it. Guardian Alexis was an Air Guardian who had a nose that arched like a bow ready to snap and who liked to tell jokes I didn’t understand. He must be dead now.
I twist the stone once clockwise, twice counterclockwise, before giving the wall a firm shove with my shoulder. It takes a few more shoves before a hidden door hinges open, but that’s a good thing. It means no one has used this tunnel in quite some time. With one last look back to make sure I’m not being followed, I step inside and push the door closed behind me.
The tunnel is narrow and dark but I press forward, feeling along the dust-draped walls to find my way. I should have brought a candle. And shoes. No one has been in this tunnel for a decade, and the stones that make up the walls and ground are coated in dirt and dust that cling to my hands and the soles of my feet.
I walk and walk and the path twists on longer than I remember, curling in ways that make me certain I’m going in circles. Every so often, muffled voices leak through the stones, and though I know their owners can’t know I’m here, I hold my breath as I pass. One way or another, I’m sure now that this will end in my death, but it doesn’t matter. Even if all this is for nothing and I am killed for it, even if it is a trap, I’m doing the only thing I can.
Finally my foot touches wood and I stop. I drop to a crouch and sweep away the dust and dirt on the door I know is beneath me as best I can, feeling around for the cold
metal handle. It appears under my hand and I turn it only to find it rusted shut. I have to throw all my body weight against it to turn it a quarter of the way. I turn it again and again, until my arms burn, and the door inches open wide enough for me to slip through.
“Hello?” I whisper into the darkness below.
If I remember correctly, it’s a ten-foot drop to the stone floor of the cellar, and with my bare feet I can’t possibly make it without help.
The sound of shuffling footsteps moving closer.
“Are you alone?” he whispers up to me in Astrean. It takes a few seconds for the words to register.
I have to translate my response in my mind before I say it, hating myself as I do. Even my thoughts are Kalovaxian now.
“Are you?” I ask.
“No, I thought I’d bring a few guards and the Kaiser along.”
I freeze, though I’m fairly sure he’s joking. He must hear my hesitance, because he sighs impatiently.
“I’m alone. Jump and I’ll catch you.”
“I’m not six years old anymore, Blaise. I’m a good deal heavier,” I warn.
“And I’m a good deal stronger,” he answers. “Five years in the Earth Mine will do that.”
I can’t manage a reply. Five years enslaved in a mine, five years that close to the raw power of the earth goddess, Glaidi. No wonder he looked so haunted. My decade in the palace has been a nightmare, but it doesn’t compare to even half that time in a place like that. Once, those mines were holy places, but I can’t help but feel the gods abandoned us during the siege.
“You were in the mines?” I whisper, though I don’t know why I’m surprised. Most Astreans were sent to the mines. But if Blaise was there for five years and didn’t go mad, he’s stronger than the boy I remember him being. I doubt he can say the same of me.
“Yes,” he says. “Now hurry up and jump, Theo. We don’t have much time.”
Theo.
Theodosia.
I ignore the nagging urge to turn back, and I slide through the hole legs first. For less than a second, I fall freely before Blaise’s arms come under me, one beneath my knees and the other at my back. He sets me down immediately.
It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the dark, but as they do, his face comes into focus. Unlike in the banquet hall, I can truly look at him now without any consequences. His face is long, the way his father’s was, but with dark green eyes he inherited from his mother. There is nothing on his bones but hard muscle and ashen olive skin. A long, pale scar cuts from his left temple to the corner of his mouth, and I shudder to imagine what could have caused it. He always dwarfed me by a few inches, but now I have to look up to catch his eyes—there’s nearly a foot of difference between us, never mind the broadness of his shoulders.
“Ampelio is dead,” I tell him when I finally form words.
The muscle in his jaw jumps and his eyes dart away from me. “I know,” he says. “I heard you killed him.”
The bite in his voice makes my breath hitch.
“He asked me to,” I say quietly. “He knew if I didn’t, the Kaiser would have had someone else do it and then my own life would have been forfeit as well. Now the Kaiser believes I am loyal to him above my own people.”
“Are you?” he asks. His eyes are locked on mine, searching them for the truth.
“Of course not,” I say, but my voice wavers. It’s the truth, I know it is, but just saying it is enough for me to remember the Theyn’s whip biting into my skin, the Kaiser’s cruel eyes on me, reveling in my pain every time he so much as suspected my loyalty to him wasn’t bound in iron.
Blaise stares at me for a long moment, sizing me up. Even before he speaks, I know I’ve been found wanting.
“Who are you?” he asks me.
The question is a wasp sting.
“You’re the one who wanted to meet me here, who risked both of our lives in the process. Who are you?” I reply.
He doesn’t flinch, instead keeping his gaze trained on me in a way that feels like he’s reading me down to my bones.
“I’m the one who’s going to get you out of here.”
He says it so gravely, but it sends a wave of relief through me. I’ve been waiting for a decade to hear those words, for a glimpse of freedom. I never thought it would come like this. But shiny as this new hope is, I can’t bring myself to trust it.
“Why now?” I ask him.
His eyes finally drop from mine. “I promised Ampelio that if anything happened to him, I would do whatever it took to save you.”
My chest feels hollow. “You were working with him,” I say. I had already figured as much, but hearing him say his name still hurts.
Blaise nods. “Ever since he rescued me from the Earth Mine three years ago,” he says.
That hurts worse. I know that Blaise’s life in the mine was much more painful than my life here is. Still, while I was waiting for Ampelio to save me, he saved Blaise instead, and I can’t deny the way that digs under my skin.
“What happened to the serving girl at the banquet?” I ask, ignoring the feeling and focusing on something else. “Is she…”
I can’t say the words, but I don’t need to. He shakes his head, though his eyes are still far away. “Marina is…a favorite of the guards. They won’t kill her. It’s why she volunteered. She’ll meet us on the ship.”
“The ship?” I ask.
“Dragonsbane’s ship,” he says, naming the best known of the Astrean pirates. His actions are responsible for more than a few of the scars on my back. Blaise must see my confusion, because he sighs. “It’s hidden about a mile up the coast from here, in a cove just past the forest of cypress trees.”
I have a vague idea of the area he’s talking about, though I haven’t left the capital since the siege. I can see the tops of the tall cypresses from Cress’s window. Still, I don’t want to let myself believe what he’s saying until he says the words.
“We’re getting you out. Tonight,” he says, and everything in me uncoils.
Out. Tonight. I didn’t allow myself to think about that possibility when I came down here; didn’t allow myself even a glimmer of hope that tonight would end with me being free from the Kaiser’s hold. But now I do. Freedom is close enough to touch, but the thought terrifies me as much as it excites me. I’ve been close to freedom before, after all, and it hurts so much when it’s yanked away again.
“Then what?” I ask him, unable to keep giddiness from leaking into my voice. I can’t help it. The idea of freedom is working its way through me, and even though I feel like it can be yanked away as quickly as it was offered, it’s hope, and it’s more real than anything I’ve felt in a decade.
“There are countries that have taken in Astrean refugees,” he tells me, counting them off on his fingers. “Etralia, Sta’crivero, Timmoree. We’ll go to one of those, make a new life there. The Kaiser will never find you.”
The hope flooding my veins sputters. It doesn’t die, but it twists into something new and unexpected. In all my fantasies of being rescued, I never saw it going like this. I thought of Ampelio coming to me with anger and armies and a plan to retake Astrea. I hate living under the Kaiser’s thumb, but this palace is my home. I was born here, and I always imagined fighting to retake my mother’s throne and sending the Kalovaxians back to the desolate wasteland of their home country.
I took my first steps here. The thought of leaving my home behind is what I’ve wanted for ten years, but the idea of never coming back? That feels like a punch to the gut.
“You want to run?” I ask quietly.
Blaise flinches at the last word. He was raised in this palace, too, after all. Leaving it behind can’t be easy for him either, but he doesn’t back down. “This has never been a fight we could win, Theo. With Ampelio, there was a chance, but now…All the Guardians are dead. Th
e forces Ampelio managed to gather scattered after he was captured, and they weren’t many to begin with. Maybe a thousand.”
“A thousand?” I repeat, my stomach sinking. I am shocked. “There are a hundred thousand Astreans.”
His eyes fall away from mine, looking instead at the stone floors. “There were a hundred thousand,” he corrects, grimacing. “The last numbers I heard put us closer to twenty.”
Twenty thousand. How is that possible? The siege took many lives, but could it have been so many? We are a mere fraction of what we were.
“Of those twenty thousand,” Blaise continues, ignoring my shock, “half are in the mines and unable to escape.”
That I know. The mines were heavily guarded before the Air Mine riot last week; I’m sure the Kaiser doubled the number of guards there since.
“But if you escaped, there must be a way,” I point out.
“I had Ampelio. We don’t,” he says, but doesn’t elaborate. “Of the other ten thousand, Dragonsbane smuggled about four thousand to other countries, which leaves six thousand in Astrea—maybe three thousand here in the capital. None of them have ever fought a day in their lives. Many are children who have never lived in a world not run by the Kaiser. They’ve never raised a weapon. One thousand were willing to try.”
I barely hear him. While I played the Kaiser’s games, eighty thousand of my people died. Every time the whip bit into my skin and I cursed my country and the people trying to save it, my people were slaughtered. While I’ve danced and gossiped with Cress, they went mad in the mines. While I’ve feasted at the table of my enemy, they starved.
The blood of eighty thousand people is on my hands. The thought turns me numb. Soon I will mourn them, and once I start I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop, but I can’t do it now. I force myself to think instead about the twenty thousand people who are still alive, people who have been waiting for ten years for someone to save them, just like me.
Ash Princess Page 5