“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” I say stiffly. “I overstepped and I shouldn’t have. I just thought you were…I wanted…” I shake my head and let my eyes linger on his, full of disappointment, before tearing them away and blinking hard, like I might cry at any second. “I should go.”
I turn to leave, but just as I hope, he reaches out to take hold of my arm. From there, it’s only a small twitch of a muscle, an infinitesimal drop of my shoulder that causes the already loose sleeve of my dress to fall, giving him a glimpse of the scars covering my back. He knew they were there; he was present when some of the older ones were given. Still, I hear his sharp intake of breath at the sight. I pull my arm from his grasp and hastily yank the sleeve back up to cover them, keeping my eyes lowered as if the scars shame me.
“I’m sorry,” he says as I hurry away from him.
I’m not sure what exactly he’s apologizing for, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to look at him to know that I have him where I need him: ready to leap to my rescue, even if it digs a chasm between him and his father in the process. All I have to do now is wait for the results and hope they don’t cost me too dearly.
HOA ISN’T IN MY ROOM when I return, but I’m hardly alone. The doors of my Shadows’ rooms scrape open and closed, followed by sounds of them settling in: sheathed swords unclasping, helmets clattering to the floor. I ignore them, as I always do, and stand by the window, looking out at the empty garden so that they can’t see my face.
How long will I have to wait for S?ren’s next move? If it comes at all.
I think of the look in his eyes when I turned away. This is only just starting. He’ll go to his father with some pressing reason to end my engagement before it starts. He won’t come out and say it’s to protect me—S?ren’s too clever for that—but there are other ways, other reasons for a betrothal to fall through. Crescentia’s had three marriage proposals too good to outright reject, but the betrothals never quite become official due to Cress’s meddling.
I can only hope that the Kaiser doesn’t suspect I had anything to do with S?ren’s sudden interest in my betrothal. At best, it’ll mean another whipping. At worst, he’ll marry me to Lord Dalgaard immediately. And then how long would it take before my mind truly broke? There would be no coming back from that. I would die Thora.
“When you turned down his lunch invitation, I thought you truly were mad,” a voice says. Terror turns my blood to ice. I spin, but the room is empty.
“But he seems more interested than ever,” the voice goes on. “Well done.”
Blaise. His voice is muffled, but it’s unmistakably him. He’s the mad one, coming here knowing full well that my Shadows watch my every move.
“Here, Theo,” he says. There’s laughter there that reminds me of when we were children together, before laughter became such a rarity.
I follow the sound, walking to the eastern wall, to where one of my Shadows sits on the other side, watching. A Shadow.
“I seem to have underestimated you as well,” I say. I peer through the hole in the wall to find Blaise’s green eye staring back. “Though I’m sure you remember I have three Shadows?”
“Say hello to Artemisia and Heron,” he says, sounding pleased with himself. “Art, Heron—Queen Theodosia Eirene Houzzara. It’s a bit of a mouthful. Would you have them beheaded if we shortened it to Theo for the time being?”
Hearing that word again—queen—is still strange, especially hearing it in Astrean. It’s my mother’s title, or it was. Every time I hear it, I can’t help wanting to look around for my mother, sure it’s her they’re referring to.
“So long as you don’t call me Thora,” I say, straightening up and glancing at the other walls, now occupied by other Astreans. “Artemisia, Heron, pleasure to meet you.”
“The pleasure is ours,” a low, soft voice says from behind the northern wall. Heron, I assume.
“You don’t look batty,” the third voice says from behind the southern wall, gritty and lilting. Artemisia.
“Art,” Heron warns.
“I didn’t say she was batty,” Blaise interjects quickly. “I said…sensitive.”
“You said unbalanced.”
I open my mouth to snap out a retort but quickly shut it again. I’m not sure which of those terms bothers me more, but I can’t deny the truth in any of them. Blaise saw me fall apart in the cellar. He must wonder how strong I really am.
“What happened to my real Shadows?” I ask instead of responding.
Blaise clears his throat, but it’s Heron who answers.
“They’ve been…relieved of their duties,” he says carefully.
Artemisia snickers. “Among other things.”
I wait for their deaths to hit me, to feel something, whether it’s relief or happiness or some unexplainable grief, but I feel nothing. I never saw their faces or spoke to them. I won’t mourn them, but I don’t hate them enough to celebrate their deaths either.
“And if they’re found?” I ask.
“They won’t be,” Artemisia says. “We tied rocks to their corpses and dropped them in the ocean. They must be a hundred feet deep, at least. Give it a few days and there won’t be anything left but bones.”
She says it so distantly, as if she weren’t speaking of people at all. Then again, I’ve heard Kalovaxians refer to Astreans as things instead of people; I can’t exactly fault her for holding the same view of them.
“Any progress, Theo?” Blaise asks. “We saw that lovely meeting with the Prinz, but we couldn’t hear a damn thing. What are you planning?”
“You did tell me that he’s interested in me because he can’t have me, didn’t you?” I say. “So I’m becoming more interesting. And sowing tension between him and the Kaiser, which I imagine can only be good for us.”
“Why?” Artemisia asks.
I shrug, but my smile is feral. “The Kalovaxians have every advantage. There are more of them; they’re better armed and better trained; they have the advantage of already holding the land. Blaise was right when he told me we don’t stand a chance against them on an even field. But if we could turn S?ren against his father, the court will take sides, and they’ll be distracted enough fighting each other that we might have a better chance. We’ll still need to amass more numbers and more weapons, of course. It’s not much of a plan,” I admit. “But it seemed like a good place to start.”
“If it works,” Blaise says warily. His skepticism prickles at the back of my neck.
“It’ll work,” I say, though my own doubts pool in the pit of my stomach. “S?ren is easy to twist; all I need to do is convince him that I’m in need of saving, and that his father and his people are the ones I need saving from. If I can turn S?ren against them, at least half the court will eagerly follow in hopes of putting S?ren on the throne without waiting for the Kaiser to die.” No one has a reply to that, so I continue. “You saw his face in the garden. Do you think it worked?”
“Yes,” Artemisia admits. “He had battle in his eyes, that one. The falling sleeve was a nice touch. I suppose that was intentional?”
I shrug. “He wants a damsel and I’m giving him one. How long have you been watching me, anyway?” I ask.
“Only today,” Blaise says. “Your friend found us a couple of days ago. Elpis. We were already trying to find a way to replace your Shadows, but she’d seen their movements up close and knew how they operated, how often they reported to the Kaiser, when it would be easiest to overtake them. Their monthly report to the Kaiser is tomorrow night, so we knew we had to do it before then or they’d tell him about your conversation with her. They sleep in shifts; it was simple to replace them one by one.”