Ash Princess

by Laura Sebastian

  If Blaise asks me about it, I will fall apart and I will lose what little respect they have for me.

  Crescentia is easier because being around her means becoming Thora, and Thora doesn’t think about things too much. Right now, Thora feels like a blessing.

  “All right. I’ll stay up a little longer.” I hesitate for a breath. “I’ve missed you, Cress.”

  She beams at me, almost glowing with her own light in the dim hallway. “I’ve missed you, too,” she says before pushing a door open with her shoulder.

  I realize her intended destination just as the brisk early-morning air hits me. The gray garden. It could never be as beautiful as it was under my mother’s care, but in this light there’s something eerily lovely about it. It’s a ghost of a place, filled with ghosts of its own. Skeleton fingers of the bald tree branches stretch out high overhead, casting smoky shadows against the stone in the dawn light.

  Next to me, Cress wrinkles her nose in distaste as she looks around at the garden. It isn’t her sort of place. She prefers color and music and crowds and life, but still, when her eyes find mine, she smiles. Another thing she does for me, because she knows what this place means to me. Because she also knows what it is to lose a mother.

  The realization causes another stone of guilt to fall into my already heavy gut.

  “It’s because of the luncheon, isn’t it?” she asks me. “I made you wear that hideous dress and then I acted so jealous when you spoke with the Prinz. I shouldn’t have acted that way. It was…unbecoming. I’m sorry.”

  The apology takes me by surprise. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard Cress apologize to anyone before, at least not genuinely. Not when it wasn’t simply a way to get what she wants. But there’s no mistaking the regret in her voice now. I smile and shake my head.

  “Nothing you do could ever be unbecoming, Cress. I promise, I’m not angry with you.” She doesn’t look convinced, so I give her arm a squeeze and look her straight in the eye when I lie, hoping that will make it seem true. “I’m not interested in the Prinz. I promise you that.”

  She bites her lip and looks down at her coffee. “Maybe not. But he likes you.”

  I force a laugh, as if the idea were ridiculous. “As a friend,” I tell her, surprised by how smoothly the lie rolls off my tongue. I nearly believe it myself, even with the fresh memory of Søren’s mouth against mine. “Of course a boy considering marriage with a girl will seek out the friendship of her closest friend. When we talk, it’s always about you.”

  She smiles slightly, her shoulders relaxing. “I do want to be a prinzessin,” she admits.

  “You would make a good one,” I tell her, and I mean it. The Kaiserin’s words come back to me: all a prinzessin has to be is beautiful.

  She’s quiet for a moment, crossing to sit down on the stone bench beneath the largest tree, motioning for me to join her. When I do, she takes a deep, wavering breath before she speaks. “When I am Kaiserin, Thora, you’ll never have to wear that horrible crown again,” she says quietly, staring straight ahead at the garden, now awash in pastel light from the rising sun.

  Her words take me by surprise. Ever since the incident with the war paint, she’s never mentioned the ash crown, or even looked at it. I thought she’d grown used to it, stopped seeing it altogether. Again, I’ve underestimated her.

  “Cress,” I start, but she interrupts me, turning to face me fully and taking my hands in hers and smiling.

  “When I’m Kaiserin, I’ll change everything, Thora,” she says, voice growing stronger. “It isn’t fair, the way he treats you. I’m sure the Prinz thinks so, too. It breaks my heart, you know.” She gives me a smile so sad that for a moment I forget that I’m the one she’s pitying and not the other way around. “I’ll marry the Prinz and then I’ll take care of you. I’ll find a handsome husband for you and we’ll raise our children together, like we always wanted. They’ll be the best of friends, I know it. Just like us. Heart’s sisters.”

  A lump hardens in my throat. I know that if I put my life in Crescentia’s hands, she would shape it into something pretty for me, something simple and easy. But I also know that’s a childish hope for sheltered girls with the world at their feet. Even before the siege, my mother impressed upon me the difficulties of ruling, how a queen’s life was never hers—it was her people’s. And my people are hungry and beaten and waiting for someone to save them.

  “Heart’s sisters,” I repeat, feeling the weight of that vow. It isn’t something made lightly; it’s a promise to not just love another person but trust them. I thought I didn’t trust anyone, that I wasn’t capable of it anymore, but I do trust Cress and I always have and in almost ten years of friendship she has never once made me regret that. She is my heart’s sister.

  My Shadows are watching, I know. I can make out the outlines of their figures in the second-story windows, peering down at us. But they won’t be able to hear anything.

  “Cress,” I say, tentatively.

  She must hear the hitch in my voice, because she stiffens, turning toward me, fair eyebrows arched over a bemused smile. My heart hammers in my chest. Words surge forward, and part of me knows I should hold them back, but Cress has never been anything but honest with me. We are heart’s sisters, she said it herself. She has to love me enough to put me first.

  “We could change things. Not just for me, but for the rest of them as well.”

  Her brow furrows. “The rest of who?” she asks. An uncertain smile tugs at her lips, like she thinks I’m telling a joke she doesn’t understand yet.

  I want to turn back, to pull the words from the air between us and pretend they were never said, but it’s too late for that. And yes, Cress is the daughter of the Theyn and that makes her a perfect target, but it could make her an even more invaluable asset. Could I bring her in? I think of how I changed my Shadows’ minds about Vecturia. I can sell this to them as well. I can save her.

  “The Astreans,” I tell her slowly, watching her expression. “The slaves.”

  Her smile lingers for a moment, a ghost of its former self, before fading to nothing.

  “There is no changing that,” she says, her voice low.

  It’s a warning. I ignore it. I reach out with my free hand to take hers. She doesn’t pull away, but her hand stays limp in mine.

  “But we could,” I say, desperation creeping in. “The Kaiser is a cruel man. You know this.”

  “He is the Kaiser, he can be as cruel as he likes,” she replies. She glances around, as if there’s someone listening nearby. When her eyes find mine again, she looks at me like I’m a stranger, someone to be wary of. In all our years of friendship, she’s never looked at me that way.

  I’m dimly aware of how tightly I’m clutching her hand, but she doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t try to pull away. “If you could be Kaiserin. If…if you could marry Søren. You could change things. The people would love you, they would rally to you over the Kaiser, you could take the country from him easily.”

  “That’s treason,” she hisses. “Stop it, Thora.”

  I open my mouth to argue, to tell her my name is not Thora, but before I can speak, something over Cress’s shoulder catches my gaze in one of the high windows that borders the garden to the west. I see a pale figure in a gray dress. I see yellow hair trailing behind her like the tail of a comet as she falls. I hear a scream that echoes in my bones and ends with a sickening thud on the other side of the garden, a hundred feet away.

  Both of our mugs fall from our hands and break on the stones before Crescentia and I run toward it, but I know when we get there it will be too late. There is no surviving a fall like that.

  The blood is the first thing I see. It pools out around her body—so much, so quickly. It’s the only color I can see against the gray of her dress, the gray of the stones, the colorless pallor of her skin. Her body is broken, limbs tw
isted at unnatural angles, like a marionette whose strings have been cut.

  In my gut, I know who it is, but when her face comes into focus, shock still shakes me to my core. I’m so lost in it that I almost don’t hear Crescentia’s panicked cries next to me. I almost don’t feel her clutching my arm in shock and fear, our previous discussion forgotten, as if I can protect her from the Kaiserin’s corpse.

  I untangle myself from Cress and inch closer to the body, stepping around the blood. I crouch down and press my hand to the Kaiserin’s cheek. Even in life her skin was cold, but it seems different now that she’s truly dead. Her eyes stare off at nothing and I close them, even though I’m sure they’ll follow me into my nightmares.

  In the end, though, it’s her mouth that unravels me. Her dry lips are still caked in ash from when she kissed my forehead with something resembling love, and she’s smiling more broadly than I ever saw her when she was alive. She has the same smile as Søren.

  “Thora.” Crescentia shakes my shoulder. “Look up.”

  In the window the Kaiserin fell from, a figure watches us. It’s too dark to make out his face, but his golden crown glints in the early-morning sunlight.

  CRESCENTIA AND I DON’T SPEAK about what we saw in the week that follows the Kaiserin’s death. We also don’t talk about the conversation that preceded it, and I can’t help but wonder if it was all some kind of twisted nightmare. But that can’t be, because every morning I wake up and the Kaiserin is truly dead.

  Only seconds after we found her, the guards came and questioned us, but we both knew better than to point fingers at the Kaiser.

  We saw nothing, we told them, and they believed us without hesitation.

  The court whispers that the Kaiserin finally succumbed to her madness and jumped, something most had been speculating about for years and a few had even been crass enough to place wagers on.

  I heard that the Kaiser made the winning bet, but that’s only a rumor, albeit one that’s easy for me to believe.

  The funeral was a quiet affair, one I wasn’t even invited to, though Cress was. She came to visit after and told me about how the Kaiserin’s body was displayed—clean, but just as broken as we’d found it. She told me that the Kaiser sat in the back of the chapel but left after only a few moments without giving the customary speech. Kalovaxian tradition says that those in mourning should shave their head, but he still wears his hair long, in the tradition of warriors, though it’s been decades since he was last in battle.

  I try to hear any bitterness in Cress’s voice, any hint that the things we spoke of before have taken hold, but it’s as if she’s forgotten them completely. It may be a good thing. It may be that I was a fool to trust Cress, not because of who she is but because of how she was raised. This is the only world she knows, and though it’s a nightmare to me, it’s a world she is at home in. I suppose it’s easy to be at home in a world where you are on top. It’s easy not to notice those whose backs you stand on to stay there. One doesn’t even see them.

  Blaise tries to ask me about what happened in the garden, but even though I can’t manage to be angry about our conversation at the maskentanz anymore, I’m not ready to talk to him again either. If I do, it will all come flooding out—the Kaiserin’s warning, the Kaiser’s leers, my feelings for Søren, my almost-confession to Cress. It’s better if he doesn’t know any of those things. Blaise protects me in his way, and I protect him in mine.

  There is no word from the Kaiser, though I expect something is coming, some new game that I will have to learn the rules to before he begins to cheat. If the Kaiserin was right about the Kaiser wanting to marry me to cement his hold over Astrea, I can only think the proposal will be coming soon. The idea creeps into my nightmares and many of my waking thoughts. No matter how many times I bathe, how hard I scrub my skin with sponges and oils, I can’t erase the feel of his hands on me. Sometimes just before I drift off to sleep, I’m suddenly jerked awake, certain that I smell his sour breath again.

  One day, when I wake up, my fingers close around something hard and hot under my pillow. The bottle of Encatrio, I realize, pulling it out. I left it in its usual place in my mattress, but someone must have moved it to remind me—as if I could have forgotten. I feel my Shadows watching but no one says anything. No one is surprised it’s there.

  I should say something, I know I should, but I can’t muster a defense again. I know as well as they must that I’m running out of excuses.

  Instead, I get out of bed, Encatrio in hand, and kneel down to push it back into the hole in the mattress, not saying a word about it.

  It would be imprudent to poison Cress and the Theyn too hastily, I tell myself, just as I’ve told my Shadows countless times. If we slip up, the Kaiser will blame me and I’ll likely lose my head before Søren returns. Our plan will fall to pieces and it isn’t worth that. But I know that’s only a fraction of the truth. There is a much larger part of me that keeps playing my conversation with Cress in the garden over and over in my head, trying to imagine what might have happened if the Kaiserin hadn’t fallen at that moment, what Cress might have said.

  I’m too afraid to bring it up again with her. I keep seeing the wary look on her face; I still hear her telling me that there is no changing the enslavement of the other Astreans. Still, there is a part of me that hasn’t yet given up hope that I’m wrong.

  * * *

  —

  Every morning before Hoa comes in, I check the doorway for another note from Søren, but there is never one to find. He was due back a couple of days ago now, and while I figure this must mean Vecturia is still fighting, I can’t help but worry that he might not come back at all.

  And what will he come back to if he does? A world suddenly bereft of his mother, the only person in this palace he loved. He never even got to say goodbye to her. I understand that more than I care to, which is why I decide to write him another letter.

  I don’t tell my Shadows what I’m doing when I sit down at my desk—I can’t stand to have Artemisia breathe down my neck again. Not this time, when there is no hidden strategy to my words, no deceptions or subterfuge, just honesty.

  Dear Søren,

  I’m sure, by now, that word of your mother has reached you. I wish I could be there with you to provide whatever comfort I could. Your mother was a good woman and much stronger than I think most gave her credit for. We spoke for a few minutes that night, and she told me how proud she was of you and the man you had become. I know it isn’t much, but I hope that you take some measure of comfort in that. She loved you dearly, Søren.

  If this letter is found, I’m sure the Kaiser will punish me severely for what I am about to say, but I think you need to hear it.

  My mother was killed ten years ago, and I wish that I could tell you that it becomes easier over time, but that wouldn’t be the truth. I don’t think I will ever grow used to breathing in a world where my mother no longer does. I don’t think I will ever close my eyes at night without seeing her death all over again. I don’t think I will ever stop wanting to turn to her when I need advice or have questions. I don’t think I will ever stop feeling like there is a part of me missing.

  First, you will not believe it. You’ll have to remind yourself often that she’s gone. And though you know better, part of you will still expect to see her greet your ship when you come home. She won’t, and I’m so sorry for that.

  Next, you’ll grieve. It will take everything you have to get out of bed in the morning and continue with your life, but you’ll do it because that’s the kind of man you are. There are thousands depending on you right now, and you’re too good a leader to let this ruin you.

  After that—or maybe even during it—you’ll become angry. You’ll be angry at the gods for taking her, you’ll be angry at your father and the court for driving her to madness in the first place, you may even be angry at me for witnessing
it and being unable to stop it. It’s all right if you are, I understand.

  If there is a step after anger, I haven’t yet found it.

  Yours,

  Thora

  I start to roll the letter up, but as I do an idea strikes me and I freeze.

  “If I tell Søren that the Kaiser killed his mother, it would be enough to make the divide between them permanent,” I say aloud, partially so my Shadows can hear me and partially so I can hear the words out loud myself. “He would be furious, enough so to act out against the Kaiser publicly.”

  For a moment, no one says anything.

  “How can you be sure?” Blaise asks finally.

  “Because I’ll make him feel that he has no choice.”

  I unfold the letter and dip my quill into the inkpot once more, the pieces of the plan falling into place. It feels inevitable, in a way, as easy as toppling a pyramid of fruit by removing just one piece.

  As easy as driving a dagger through his heart? A voice whispers through my mind, but I try to ignore it. I knew it would come to this; it was my idea, even. It’s the only way I can see to retake Astrea, and I am not going to change my mind now because I care for Søren more than I thought I would.

  * * *

  —

  The next day, I answer the door to find Elpis, sent to bring me to meet Crescentia for coffee. For a moment, I think about saying no, because every time I’m around her the guilt in my gut becomes too much to bear, but there is a part of me that always hopes and dreads that this will be the time we acknowledge what was said the night of the maskentanz.

  “Just a moment,” I tell Elpis, my heart thudding in my chest. I leave her in the doorway before going back into my room, to my hiding place in the mattress to retrieve the vial of Encatrio. I’m not going to use it, but taking it should buy me some time with my Shadows, should show them that I’m willing to use it. I feel their eyes on me as I tuck it into the pocket of my gray brocade mourning gown. They give no sign of warning or encouragement—even Artemisia stays mercifully silent. Maybe they know as well as I do that it’s an empty gesture.