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. S?ren, 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 S?ren 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.