Ash Princess

by Laura Sebastian

  So when he kisses me, I let myself kiss him back because I want to. I want to feel his mouth on mine and taste his breath. I want to feel his callused hands against my skin. I want to bury myself in his embrace until I forget Blaise and Ampelio and my mother and the tens of thousands of people who need me. Until we are two nameless people with no pasts, only a future.

  But I can’t forget, not even for a moment.

  “Aminet,” Søren murmurs again against my lips before rolling over onto his back. “I didn’t bring you out here for that, you know.”

  “I know,” I say, trying to get ahold of my wits. “If your goal was seduction, you wouldn’t have led with the cat story.”

  He laughs and gives my shoulder a light shove. “I just…I realized I wasn’t going to see you for a few weeks, at least. And I didn’t like thinking about that.” He pauses. “I hate being at court. Everyone there wears so many faces. They’re all full of flattery and lies and manipulations, grabbing at whatever favor they can reach. It’s exhausting. I think you’re the only honest person in that godsforsaken palace. I’m going to miss you.”

  Guilt lumps in my throat, impossible to ignore. Despite what he thinks, I know I wear as many faces as most courtiers—more, probably. I’ve manipulated him as much as anyone. I’m doing it right now. But it’s different, I suppose. I’m not grasping for favor or trying to get myself ahead. What I’m doing is necessary, but that knowledge doesn’t make me feel any better.

  I roll over onto my side to face him, propping myself up on my elbow. In the flickering lantern light, his features are softer, innocent.

  “I’m going to miss you, too, Søren,” I tell him quietly. That much, at least, isn’t a lie.

  He frowns. “Are you?” He reaches out to take my hand, tracing the lines on my palm idly with his pointer finger. Slight a gesture as it is, it still makes me shiver. “How?”

  “How what?”

  “How can you look at me and not see him?” His mouth twists as he says the words. I don’t have to ask who he means, but the blunt acknowledgment of his father makes me feel like I’ve been dunked in cold water. Søren seems to feel that way himself, his grip on my hand loosening.

  He hates him, I realize. It isn’t as simple as a son rebelling against his father or an egomaniacal father’s resentment of his young, strong heir who will one day take his place. It’s hate. Maybe not enough to match the hate I feel for the Kaiser, but it’s something similar.

  The realization twists my gut because it’s one more thing that makes me understand Søren more—like him more. I can’t afford to like him more.

  “Well, now you have to walk the plank,” I tell him, fully pulling my hand from his grasp. “You might be captain, but you can’t go breaking your own rules—”

  “Seriously, Thora,” he says. Though the name is a stab in my gut, I’m grateful for it. I need the reminder that this bubble we’ve created isn’t real, that the person he sees when he looks at me isn’t real.

  After a moment of thought, I decide to tell him the truth because I don’t think he’ll believe anything else right now.

  “I used to,” I admit. “All of you were indistinguishable—you, the Kaiser, the Theyn.” I shake my head and take a deep breath. “Can you imagine what it was like to wake up in a world where you’re safe and loved and happy and go to sleep in one where everyone you love is dead and you’re surrounded by strangers who only let you live because it’s convenient?”

  “No.”

  “No,” I repeat. “Because you were only a year older than I was when it happened. It wasn’t your fault, and I know that.” I pause for a breath. “You aren’t your father.”

  “But—”

  “You aren’t your father,” I say again, more firmly. It’s the truth, but I can tell he doesn’t believe it.

  Still, his expression softens and I realize just how much he needed to hear those words, even if he doesn’t believe them. Maybe his interest in me isn’t just about saving the damsel. Part of him also wants to be saved. If he’s stained by his father’s sins, then maybe I’m the only person who can absolve them.

  I inch closer to him and lift my hand, resting it against his cheek. His eyes are as dark as the water around us.

  “Yana Crebesti,” I say.

  He swallows. “What does that mean?” he asks.

  It could have meant anything, really, and he wouldn’t have known any better. I could have told him that I was planning to kill him, that I hated every Kalovaxian in Astrea—including him—that I wouldn’t stop until I saw them all dead. He wouldn’t have known the difference.

  “It means I trust you.”

  “Yana Crebesti,” he repeats.

  I close the slight distance between us and brush my lips against his, softly at first, but when his hand reaches up and knots in my loose hair, anchoring me against him, there is nothing soft about it. We kiss like we’re trying to prove a point, though I can’t quite say what it is. I can’t quite remember who I am anymore. My edges blur. ThoraTheoTheodosia. Everything slips away until all that matters are mouths and tongues and hands and breath that is never quite enough. My hair falls around us like a curtain, shutting out the rest of the world. It’s easier than ever to pretend that nothing else exists but this, but us.

  He must feel it, too, because when we can’t kiss anymore and he’s just holding me against him with my face tucked in the crook of his neck, he murmurs in my ear: “We can keep sailing. In a day, we’ll be near Esstena. A week we’ll be past Timmoree. A month, Brakka. And then, who knows. We can sail until we get somewhere where no one knows us.”

  As traitorous as it makes me, I can imagine it. A life where a crown—gold or ash—doesn’t weigh heavy on my head. A life where I’m not responsible for thousands of people who are hungry and weak and beaten every day. A life where I can just be a girl, kissing a boy because she wants to, instead of a queen kissing a prinz because he’s the key to reclaiming her country. It would be an easier life in so many ways. But it wouldn’t be mine, and though he might hate his father and his world, it wouldn’t be his either.

  Still, it’s nice to pretend.

  “I’ve heard that Brakka has a delicacy called intu nakara,” I say.

  He laughs. “Raw sea serpent. It’s only a delicacy because it’s so rare, not because it’s any good, believe me. It tastes exactly how you would imagine.”

  I wrinkle my nose and kiss the small patch of exposed skin on his shoulder, just above his shirt collar. “And if I wanted to try it anyway?” I ask.

  “Then you’ll have all the intu nakara you want,” he says. His fingers are tangled in my hair, combing through it idly. “Though I’m sorry to say there will be no aminets.”

  “Amineti,” I correct him. “The plural is amineti.” As in, I woke up this morning never having had a single aminet but now my count is up to three amineti. With two different boys. I push thoughts of Blaise and his confusing kiss out of my mind and focus on Søren. “But why is that?”

  “Because intu nakara is notorious for causing terrible breath.”

  “Is that so?” I ask, propping myself up on my arm again to look down at him. “I don’t think you’ll be able to help yourself.”

  His hand leaves my hair and trails down to my waist. “I think you’re underestimating the stench. They say you can smell it a quarter mile away.”

  “Disgusting,” I tell him, wrinkling my nose.

  He laughs and rolls us over so that he’s looming over me, shoulder-length gold hair tickling my cheeks as he presses another lazy, lingering kiss to my mouth. When he pulls back, I follow him a couple of inches before breaking the kiss.

  “Another day, I’ll take you to Brakka and you can eat as much intu nakara as you like, but it’s almost time to get you home.”

  I sit up and watch him walk back over to the helm, take th
e wheel, and turn the ship around, aiming us toward the shore. In the light of the full moon above, the hard lines of his face are softer, younger than they look in the day. He is not the same person to me that he was when we stepped onto this boat tonight, and I don’t think there’s any going back to how things were before.

  I told my Shadows that I could kill him and start a civil war, and now I’m even more sure that the plan would work. There are already such high tensions between him and the Kaiser that I wouldn’t have to do much to stoke them. But I also doubt that I’m going to be able to kill Søren when the time comes. I meant what I said to him: he isn’t his father. And I don’t think I can go back to pretending he is.

  The season is turning and the night has gotten surprisingly cold, so I pull the blanket with me as I stand up, draping it around my shoulders and walking around behind him. Goose bumps rise along his bare forearms, so I wrap the blanket around him, too. If I stand on the tips of my toes, I’m tall enough to rest my chin on his shoulder.

  “Do you promise?” I ask him.

  “Do I promise what?” he asks, turning his head slightly so that his breath touches my lips.

  “To take me away from here?” As I say it, I’m not sure which part of me is asking.

  Something hard flickers across the sharp angles of his face and I worry suddenly that I’ve misread him, that I don’t actually understand him at all. Speaking Astrean and this whole midnight sail might count as treasons, but they’re little ones. Forgivable ones, though not without their own costs. Yet running away—not just halfhearted plans but an actual promise—that is something else entirely. Søren’s smart enough to know that. He’s smart enough to know that I’m really asking if he would put me above his duty as Prinz.

  He sighs and presses a kiss to my forehead. “One day,” he says.

  It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

  WE TRADE QUICK, DESPERATE KISSES the whole way back, barely making it within the two-hour time frame Blaise had set. Søren and I take the curfew seriously for different reasons—Søren’s worried my Shadow guard will tattle to the Kaiser, but I’m worried Blaise will think I’m in trouble and do something reckless. Even when Søren kisses me outside the doorway that leads to my wardrobe, I can’t help but think about Blaise’s kiss earlier. They blur together in my mind until I can’t quite keep straight who is who.

  “I’ll see you when I come back,” Søren promises me. “I’ll bring you a token.”

  A token from Vecturia, I remind myself. A token from a country not unlike mine that Søren and his men are going to conquer. Because that’s who they are. That’s who he is. I cannot let myself forget that.

  I give him one last kiss before opening the passage door and crawling through, back into the wardrobe. My dress is still uncomfortably damp, but wearing it is preferable to what would happen if my dress was found on Søren’s boat, or his clothes in my room.

  My room is silent when I emerge, apart from loud snores coming from Heron’s wall.

  “I’ve got him,” I say to whoever is listening. “Or nearly. He’s half in love with me, and when he’s back from Vecturia, I can finish it.”

  I don’t add that I think I’m falling for him, too.

  “Is everything else moving along?” I ask instead.

  Blaise clears his throat. “Art’s mother left tonight, and her ship is fast. She should get there a couple of days before they do. It won’t be a lot of time to prepare anything, but the Vecturians will at least be warned. They can gather their combined troops on the nearest island and head them off there. The Kalovaxians will still likely outnumber them, but the Vecturians have the defensive advantage and they should be able to keep them at bay. The Kalovaxians think it’ll be an easy siege; if it’s more trouble than it’s worth, they should turn around.”

  I nod. “The others are asleep?”

  “Yes, it’s nearly sunrise,” he points out.

  My body is exhausted, but my mind is buzzing, full of thoughts of Dragonsbane and freedom and the sound of Søren’s rare laugh. I try not to think about Blaise and his kiss and the way he wouldn’t look at me.

  A yawn overtakes me and I realize just how tired I am.

  “I think I’ll join them,” I tell him, crawling into bed without bothering to change my dress. “You ought to do the same.”

  “I’m not tired,” he says. “Besides, someone ought to keep watch.”

  I’m about to protest, when I feel something hard beneath my pillow. I reach under and feel not one but two items, and pull them out. The first is a thin, sheathed blade of polished silver. I hold it up to the weak moonlight pouring through the window next to my bed to admire it. I’d forgotten how elegant Astrean swords were, with filigreed hilts and narrow blades, so different from the cragged iron swords the Kalovaxians favor.

  The second item is a small glass vial filled with no more than a spoonful of opalescent liquid.

  “I’m assuming this isn’t for my consumption?” I ask. Warmth seeps through the glass as I turn the vial over in my hands.

  “Not unless you want to be turned to ash from the inside out,” Blaise replies.

  I nearly drop the vial, which would have been catastrophic. Encatrio. Liquid Fire. I’d heard rumors about it, but the recipe is a closely guarded secret that only a few know. Even the Kaiser hasn’t managed to get his hands on it, though not for lack of trying.

  “Something we thought you could pass on to your friend, and her charming father,” he continues, drawing out the word friend sarcastically. “Another way to weaken the Kalovaxians, to make them fear us. If we can kill their strongest warrior, they’ll think we can get to anyone and it’ll make the Kaiser look weak.”

  My grip on the potion tightens with yearning and dread. He’s right: if we could kill the Theyn, it would be almost as strong of a blow to the Kaiser as killing Søren. And besides, the Theyn haunts my nightmares as often as the Kaiser does. He’s the man who killed my mother, who beat me and terrorized me and felt no guilt over any of it. I won’t feel any guilt over him.

  Cress, though…Despite what Blaise thinks, she’s been a genuine friend to me, even when she shouldn’t have been. She has shielded me time and time again, lifted me up when I couldn’t stand on my own. She gave me a reason to get out of bed in the morning when I wanted so badly to die. Without Cress, there would have been nothing left of me by the time Blaise appeared. How can I possibly kill her?

  I knew it would come to this, to betraying her for my country. But I never imagined it would go this far. I think of the way the light left my mother’s eyes, the way her grip on my hand went slack. I think of the sword slicing through Ampelio’s back, the way he shuddered out one last breath before going still. Cress replaces them in my mind. I see her eyes, feel her hand, watch her soul get wrenched from her body.

  More than once, she’s called me her heart’s sister, a Kalovaxian expression for a friendship that goes deeper than family, so deep that two people share one heart. I used to think it silly, considering Cress’s father was the reason I didn’t have a family anymore, but now it feels painfully accurate. Losing Cress, killing her, would carve a rotting hole in my heart that would never heal.

  It’s Thora’s weakness, I tell myself, but it isn’t. Not completely.

  “Theo,” Blaise says, his voice a warning I don’t need. Don’t want. My grip on the poison tightens and I’m tempted to hurl it at the wall Blaise sits behind.

  He gave me hope when I had none and he is my lifeline in this storm, but right now I wish he had never come back. I wish I were alone in this room, surrounded by my real Shadows and blissfully ignorant of everything outside the palace. I wish I were Thora again, because Thora never had choices to make.

  But I don’t have a choice now either. Not really. That’s what hurts the worst.

  “I’m tired, I’m going to sleep,” I say, shov
ing the poison and the blade back under my pillow.

  “Theo.” His voice snaps like a sail in the wind.

  “I heard you,” I say, matching his tone. “I can hardly do it tonight, can I? Striking out at the Theyn is risky and we need a plan if we’re going to do it.”

  His silence hangs heavy for a long moment. “But you will do it,” he says. I hate the doubt there, how clear it is that he still doesn’t fully trust me. But then, I can’t really blame him. I’m not sure I trust myself either.

  I don’t answer and he doesn’t press me, but I know his patience won’t last. He’ll want an answer soon, and I don’t know if I can give him one.

  THE THEYN RETURNS FROM THE mines the day after Søren leaves, but the poison stays stuffed in my mattress, along with the ruined nightgown from when I first met Blaise. Even so, I feel its weight constantly, pressing in on all sides.

  Killing the Theyn is right; it is necessary, I have no doubts about that. Even from a distance, I can almost smell fresh blood on him. Astrean blood. If it were only him, I wouldn’t hesitate. I could pour the poison down his throat without a scrap of guilt. I could watch the light leave his eyes and smile. Maybe it would even bring me a measure of peace to kill him.

  But the longer I think about it, the more certain I am: I can’t kill Cress any more than I could cut out my own heart.

  A week passes and my Shadows must notice my hesitation to strike. They make no comment, but I hear their judgments all the same, lingering in every conversation, hiding in each beat of silence. They are waiting, and each day I hesitate costs me a bit more of their respect.

  She’s not your friend, I tell myself again and again, but I know it isn’t true. I remember the girl who saved me from bullies, who turned the shame of the ash crown into war paint when she knew she would be punished for it, who distracted me from the pain of my welts by reading to me from her favorite books. The girl who has been my friend even when she’s had a thousand reasons to shun me.