The time has come for little birds to fly, Ampelio said before he told me to kill him, to end his life to save my own. He can’t save us anymore, but someone has to.
“There are ten thousand in the mines,” I say when I can speak again. The words come out hoarse and desperate. “Ten thousand strong, furious Astreans who would be happy to fight, after everything they’ve endured.”
“And the Kaiser knows that, which is why the mines are even better guarded than the capital,” Blaise says, shaking his head. “It’s impossible.”
Impossible. The word ruffles me and I ignore it.
“But the thousand you mentioned,” I say. “We can get them back, can’t we? If we work together.”
He hesitates before shaking his head. “By the end of the week, every Astrean in the country will know that you were the one who killed Ampelio. They’ll have a hard time trusting you after that.”
The idea sickens me, but I’m sure the Kaiser anticipated that very response when he ordered me to kill Ampelio. Another way to cut me off from my people, by making them hate me as much as they hate him.
“We’ll explain it to them. They know the Kaiser by now, they know his games. We can change their minds,” I say, hoping it’s true.
“Even if we can, it won’t be enough. It’s still one thousand civilians against one hundred times as many trained Kalovaxian soldiers.”
I bite my bottom lip. “And Dragonsbane?” I press. “If he’s on our side, we can fight. He must have made allies in his travels, he must know people who can help.” Dragonsbane has been a burr in the Kaiser’s boot since the siege, attacking his ships, sinking several fortunes in Spiritgems he meant to sell, smuggling weapons to Astrean rebels.
But Blaise looks unconvinced. “Dragonsbane’s loyalty is to Dragonsbane.” He says it like he’s quoting words he’s heard too many times. “We’re on the same side now, but it’s best not to place too much faith there. I know it isn’t what you want to hear—it isn’t what I want to say either—but any hope of revolution died with Ampelio, and there wasn’t much hope to begin with. All we can do now is leave, Theo. I’m sorry.”
I’ve been dreaming of freedom every day since the siege, waiting and waiting and waiting for just this moment, when someone would take me as far away from this place as possible. I can have a new life on some faraway shore under an open sky, no Shadows watching, no having to worry about every word I say, every flicker of my expression. I would never have to see the Kaiser again, never feel the whip bite into my back, never have to bow at his feet. I would never again have to wonder if this would be the day he would finally break me beyond repair.
Freedom is close enough to touch. I can walk away and never look back.
But as soon as I think it, I know it isn’t true.
Ampelio spent the last decade trying to save Astrea because it was our home. Because there were people—like Blaise—who needed him. Because he swore oaths to the gods to protect Astrea and its magic at any cost. His blood is on my hands now, and though I know it was unavoidable, I still took a hero from a world with precious few of them.
Eighty thousand people. It’s an unfathomable number. Eighty thousand mothers, fathers, children. Eighty thousand warriors and artists and farmers and merchants and teachers. Eighty thousand unmarked graves. Eighty thousand of my people who died waiting for someone to save them.
“I think I’d like to stay,” I tell him quietly.
Blaise turns to me, dumbfounded. “What?”
“I appreciate all the trouble you’ve gone to, really I do—”
“I don’t know what that monster did to you, Theo, what lies he’s spun, but you aren’t safe here. I was there tonight when he had you on display like a trophy. It’s only going to get worse.”
How it could be worse I can’t begin to fathom. I won’t think about it. It’ll only weaken my already tentative resolve.
“We don’t have their numbers, Blaise. You’re right: if we come at him on an even field, we lose and the rebellion Ampelio gave his life for will have been for nothing. But if I stay, I can get information. I can find weaknesses, figure out their plans. I can give us a chance to take our country back.”
For a moment, he almost looks like the boy I knew. The boy I chased and clung to, no matter how he tried to get rid of me.
“You can’t tell me I’m wrong,” I say. “I’m your best shot.”
He shakes his head. “It’s too dangerous. You think we haven’t had spies before? We’ve had dozens, and he always finds them. And don’t take this the wrong way, but they were a lot more stable than you are.”
“I’m fine,” I protest, though we both know it’s a lie.
He watches me for a moment, searching my face for any sign of hesitation he can use against me. I don’t give it to him.
“Who are you?” he asks.
It’s such a simple question, but I falter. We both know it’s a test, and one I cannot fail. I swallow, forcing myself to meet his eyes.
“My name is Theo—”
The name catches in my throat and I am a child again, cowering on the cold stone floor while the Kaiser and the Theyn stand over me.
“Who are you?” the Kaiser asks calmly.
But every time I tell him, the whip cracks against my skin and I scream. It goes on for hours. I don’t know what they want from me, I keep telling them the truth. I keep telling them my name is Theodosia Eirene Houzzara. My name is Theodosia. My name is Theo.
Until I don’t. I tell them I am no one.
That is when they stop. That is when the Kaiser crouches next to me with a kind smile and places a finger under my chin, forcing me to look at him. That is when he tells me I am a good girl and gives me a new name like it’s a present. And I am grateful to him for it.
Warm hands grip my shoulders, jerking me back and forth. When I open my eyes, Blaise’s face is inches from mine, eyes dark and harder than I remember them.
“Your name is Theodosia,” he tells me. “Say it.”
I lift my hand to touch his cheek, tracing his scar. He flinches.
“You used to have such a lovely smile,” I tell him. My voice breaks. “Your mother said it would get you into trouble one day.”
He drops his hands as if my skin burned him, but he still watches me like I’m a savage animal. Like I could attack him at any moment. I wrap my arms around my stomach and lean back against the wall.
“What happened to her?” I ask, quietly.
I don’t think he hears me at first. He turns his face away, swallows hard.
“Killed in the siege,” he says after a moment. “She tried to stand between the Kalovaxians and your mother.”
Of course she did. Our mothers were friends from the cradle, “closer than blood,” they used to say. I called her Auntie. Gruesome as it is, it would have been quick at least. For that, I’m thankful.
My legs give out and I sink to the dirty ground.
“And your father?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “The Kalovaxians have experience conquering countries. They knew to kill the Guardians and warriors first,” he tells me. “Ampelio was the last one.”
“I tried to make it painless,” I murmur. “It was the least I could do. He was already in so much pain, though….I don’t know if it helped.”
Blaise nods, but doesn’t say any more. Instead, he sinks to the ground next to me, crosses his legs, and suddenly it almost feels like we’re children again at our lessons, waiting for our teachers to make sense of the world around us. But none of our world makes sense.
“Theodosia,” he says again. “You need to say it.”
I swallow as the shadows close in again. But I can’t let them overtake me. Not now.
“I am Th…Theodosia Eirene Houzzara,” I tell him. “And I am my people’s only hope.”
For a moment, he stares at me. He’s going to say no and I’m not even sure he’s wrong to.
Instead, he lets out a long, pained exhale and tears his gaze away. He suddenly looks much older than seventeen. He looks like a man who has seen too much of the world. “What kind of information?” he asks finally.
My smile feels brittle. “They aren’t infallible, no matter what the Kaiser likes to believe. The riot last month, in the Air Mine?”
He looks away from me. “The one that killed a hundred Astreans and injured more than twice that?” he asks.
“Instigated by an earthquake, of all things. The Astreans saw their opportunity to revolt and they took it. The Kaiser said Ampelio caused it, but he was a Fire Guardian, not Earth. Of course, the Kaiser doesn’t rely on logic or facts. He said Ampelio caused it, and that’s good enough for the Kalovaxians,” I say. “Besides, it killed nearly as many Kalovaxians,” I add.
His thick eyebrows dart up. “I didn’t hear that.”
“The Kaiser must have kept it quiet. He wouldn’t want anyone to know how much damage a group of Astrean rebels could do. You know the Theyn?”
Blaise’s face darkens and he gives a grunt of acknowledgment.
“His daughter thinks of me as a friend, and she has loose lips,” I say, though guilt ties my stomach into knots as I say it. Cress is my friend, but she’s also the Theyn’s daughter. It’s easiest to think of them as two separate people.
“I’m surprised they allow her around you, then,” he remarks.
I shake my head. “I’m just a broken girl to them, a bleeding trophy from another land they’ve conquered,” I say. “They don’t see me as a threat.”
He frowns. “And the Kaiser? Do you have anything on him?”
“It’s difficult,” I admit. “He’s careful to appear more god than human. Even the Kalovaxians are too frightened of his wrath to risk gossiping, at least not where they can be overheard.”
“And the Prinz?” he presses.
The Prinz. Søren, he asked me to call him. I hear him tell me the names of the Astreans he killed on his tenth birthday again, though I’m sure there have been many more killings since then. He can hardly remember all their names, can he?
I push the thought aside and shrug. “I don’t know him well; he’s been training at sea for the last five years. He’s a warrior, and a good one from what I’ve heard,” I say, thinking more about our conversation at the banquet, how he followed me after Ampelio’s execution to make sure I was all right when no one else thought twice about me. “But he has a weakness for heroism. I suppose it traces back to wanting to protect his mother. The Kaiser doesn’t seem particularly attached to him, even as an heir. I think he’s intimidated by him. As I said, the Kalovaxians don’t love the Kaiser, they fear him. I’m sure many of them are waiting for the day the Prinz replaces him.”
Blaise’s expression is guarded, but I can see his mind working. “Have you heard anything about berserkers?”
The word is strange, though it’s certainly Kalovaxian. “Berserkers?” I repeat. “I don’t think so, no.”
“It’s a kind of weapon,” he explains. “There have been…whispers about them, but no one’s been able to discover what they do firsthand. Or at least survive to report on it.”
“The Theyn’s daughter might know something,” I say, desperation leaking into my voice. I need to stay here, I need to be useful, I need to do something. “I can try to find out more.”
He gives a loud exhale, leaning his head back against the wall. He’s pretending to consider it, but I know I have him. I’m not offering much, but he has no other options.
“I’ll have to find a way to stay in contact,” he says finally.
Relief floods through me, and I can’t help but laugh. “You certainly can’t drug my Shadows again.”
He looks surprised that I figured it out, but shrugs. “They’ll think they got carried away at the banquet, and they definitely won’t want the Kaiser to find out about it.”
“The Kaiser finds out about everything,” I tell him. “This time, the Shadows might take the fall, but if there’s a pattern—even a hint of a pattern—he’ll find a way to blame me for it.”
He thinks for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek.
“I might have an idea, but I’ll need some help first,” he says. “It might be a few days. I’ll find you—don’t risk coming looking for me. In the meantime, see what you can do about the Prinz.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
He looks me over, sizing me up again, but this time in a different way, one I can’t quite put my finger on. “You said he likes the idea of being a hero,” he says, a grim smile pulling at his mouth. “Aren’t you a maiden in need of rescuing?”
I can’t help but laugh. “I’m hardly of any interest to him. The Kaiser would never allow it.”
“And spoiled prinzes always want things they can’t have,” he says. “You notice a lot, but did you notice the way he looked at you?”
I think of the way he watched me at the banquet, how he asked if I was all right, but the idea still seems ridiculous.
“The same way he looked at anyone, I’d imagine. With an expression carved from stone and frost behind his eyes.”
“That wasn’t how it appeared tonight,” he says. “The Prinz could be a priceless source of information.”
The idea of Prinz Søren having feelings for anyone is laughable. I doubt there’s a heart in his chest at all. Still, I can’t help but think of how he asked me to call him by his name.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I say.
Blaise rests a hand on my shoulder. His skin is warm, despite the chilly cellar. This close, I can see his father in him, in the fullness of his mouth and the square shape of his jaw. But there is so much anger in him, more anger than our parents ever had to know. It should frighten me, but it doesn’t. I understand it.
“One month,” he tells me after a moment. “In one month, we leave, no matter what.”
One month more under the Kaiser’s thumb seems like an eternity. But I also know that it isn’t nearly enough time to turn the tide; it isn’t enough time to do much of anything. But it’ll have to be.
“One month,” I agree.
Blaise hesitates for a moment, looking like he wants to say more. “These people destroyed our lives, Theo,” he says finally, his voice breaking over my name.
I step toward him. “That is a debt we will repay,” I promise.
The words themselves don’t shock me as much as the vehemence behind them. I don’t sound like myself, even to my own ears. Or at least, I don’t sound like Thora. But when Blaise’s eyes soften and he pulls me into an embrace, I wonder if I’m starting to sound like Theodosia.
It’s been so long since anyone besides Cress has touched me like this, with genuine love and comfort. I almost want to pull away, but he smells like Astrea. He feels like home.
EVERY MUSCLE IN MY BODY screams when Hoa enters my room and draws the curtains to let the sun in. I want to roll over and beg to go back to sleep, but I can’t risk anything that could seem suspicious after Blaise’s stunt with the guards. I was up until nearly dawn scrubbing the grime from my skin and stuffing the unsalvageable nightgown into a hole in the underside of my mattress, terrified that at any moment those three sets of snores would stop and I would be caught, but mercifully they were still sleeping when I finally drifted off.
Hoa will notice the nightgown missing soon, but there are much simpler explanations for that than treason.
Yesterday feels like a dream—or more like a nightmare—but it wasn’t. It might be the only real day I’ve lived in the last decade. The thought gives me energy enough to sit up and blink away my bleariness. I drag through the motions of getting ready, and if Hoa notices my daze or the difference between the nightgown I wear
and the one she dressed me in last night, she gives no sign.
As she wraps vivid orange silk around me and pins it at my shoulder with a lapis lazuli pin, my mind is far from idle. If Blaise is right and the Prinz is interested in me, I’m not sure where to start. I’ve seen Kalovaxian courtship rituals play out many times, ending in marriage or death and nothing in between, but whatever the Prinz wants from me, it won’t be marriage. His father would never allow it. The Kaiser may have given me a title and other luxuries, but he will never grant me any more rights than any other Astrean slave.
“Lower,” I tell Hoa.
Her forehead creases in confusion, so I move the pin down myself. It’s only a couple of inches, but it causes the neckline to dip low and expose more of my chest. I’ve seen courtesans show far more skin—even Dagmær routinely wears much more scandalous things. Still, Hoa’s eyes are disapproving. If she knew what I was doing, she would applaud me, wouldn’t she? Or maybe she would tattle to the Kaiser before I could so much as draw a breath.
As soon as Hoa finishes arranging my hair and painting my face, there’s a knock at the door, and without waiting for an answer, Crescentia glides in wearing a dress of sky-blue silk. A small leather-bound book is clasped in her hand. Like my dress, hers is draped in the Astrean style. Though I’d missed the loose flowing chitons for years while I was forced to sweat in fitted Kalovaxian velvets, it always turns my stomach to see anyone, even Cress, wear Astrean dresses. It feels like another thing that’s been taken from me. I wonder if she knows that it’s loose to facilitate movement, that it’s made for dancing and riding and running. Now it’s merely ornamental, just as we’re supposed to be.
“Hello, darling,” she chirps, eyes darting briefly to my lowered neckline. I wait for a pointed comment, a barb like she throws when Dagmær wears something outrageous, but she only smiles. “I thought we could take a walk outside today, maybe down to the beach? I know how you love the sea, and I could use some help with these poems. Lyrian is more challenging than I anticipated.”
Ash Princess Page 6