I thank her and take a small sip. In the Astrean tradition, the coffee has been mixed with honey, cinnamon, and milk. It’s too sweet for most Kalovaxians, but it’s the way Crescentia always orders it. Not for the first time, I wonder whether it’s because she has a sweet tooth or because she understands how much the small gesture means to me.
The coffee tastes like my mother’s breath when she kissed me good morning, and the memory soothes me and breaks me all over again.
Crescentia links her arm with mine and steers me not through the crowded entrance hall, but through a smaller one that shoots off to the side. Having her so close and knowing what I’m expected to do feels like a splinter in my heart, sharp and nagging, no matter how I try to ignore it.
“I should go to bed, Cress,” I tell her. “I’m exhausted.”
“That’s what the coffee’s for,” she says cheerfully, squeezing my arm. “We hardly had a chance to talk the entire night, Thora.”
“I know. You were such a wonderful hostess and I didn’t want to steal you away. But we’ll talk tomorrow, I promise.”
Crescentia glances sideways at me as we walk, though she doesn’t let go of my arm.
“Are you angry with me?” she asks after a long moment of quiet. She sounds wounded and, despite myself, my heart lurches.
“No,” I say with a laugh. “Of course I’m not.”
“You’ve been avoiding me,” she insists. “This week. Tonight. Now, even.”
“I told you, I was sick.” The words sound hollow even to me.
“Just one hour, Thora. Please.”
She sounds so hurt that my soul cracks and I’m tempted to say yes. And why shouldn’t I say yes? What’s waiting for me back in my room? Another argument with Blaise and Artemisia, with Heron trying to play the mediator? And Blaise will want to talk about the Kaiser, what he saw, and I can’t do that. I shudder thinking of the Kaiser’s hand on me, his breath against my skin.
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 S?ren’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.