“Your Highness, are you all right?” I ask.
He pushes his guards away and brushes off his clothes before taking a step toward me. His blue eyes—the same color as S?ren’s—dart around the pavilion. No one dares laugh out loud, and many avert their gaze, pretending not to have seen the blunder at all. But he must know it’s a lie. He must know that they are all mocking him. He pushes his guards away from him, setting his jaw in a firm line and coming toward me. The smell of sweat and metal is overwhelming.
“We’ll speak again soon, Ash Princess,” he says, reaching his hand up to touch my cheek. S?ren did the same thing when we were on his boat, but this is so much different. It is not a touch of affection, it is a claim staked in front of dozens of courtiers, and in an hour’s time, the whole city will know about it.
When he turns to go and finally takes those cold eyes off me, my knees all but buckle and I have to grip the edge of the table for support, though I try to hide it. Now more than ever, everyone is watching me, praying for me to fall so that one of their girls can take my place.
I am a lamb in the lion’s den, and I don’t know that I can survive.
WHEN I GET BACK TO my room, I’m relieved that Hoa isn’t there. It’s all I can do to keep the storm of fear and doubt buried deep in me. Screams and tears and fire scratch at my throat, but I swallow them all down, down, down. I cannot appear weak, not with my Shadows watching me. But someone is always watching me, aren’t they? Always expecting something of me, always waiting for me to slip.
With calm, measured steps, I cross to the water basin sitting on my vanity and dip my hands into it. The hands he touched. I scrub them until they are red and raw, but it doesn’t do any good. I still feel the Kaiser’s touch. I still feel the threat of him wrapped around my neck like a noose.
There is a pumice stone next to the basin, so I use that, digging it into every part of my hands, the palms, the backs, my fingers, even the spaces in between. It doesn’t matter, it’s never enough. Even when my knuckles bleed and turn the water pink. Even when my skin turns numb.
Good girl. You’ve grown awfully pretty, for a heathen. Perhaps you could show me just how grateful you are.
A strangled cry breaks the silence and I look around for the source before realizing that it’s coming from me, that I’m the one crying, and now that it’s finally started, I can’t make it stop. My legs give out and I fall to the floor, bringing the basin down with me and drenching the skirt of my dress with bloodied water.
I don’t care. I don’t even care when the door opens, even if it’s Hoa, ready to run to the Kaiser. Let her. It’s too much. I can’t do this. I am not enough.
Footsteps come toward me and I look up to see Artemisia in her black cloak, indigo hair spilling over her shoulders and something that might be pity in her hard eyes.
“Stand up,” she says, her voice soft.
I should listen to her, I shouldn’t let her see me like this. She thinks I’m useless already, and I don’t want to prove her right. Still, I can’t move. I can’t do anything but cry.
With a sigh, she drops to her knees in front of me and reaches for my bloodied hands, but I pull them back and cradle them against my stomach.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she snaps. “Let me see how bad it is.”
Hesitantly I hold them out to her, flinching when she none too gently turns them over.
“Heron?” she says over her shoulder to where a tall boy with overgrown black hair and thick eyebrows lingers in the doorway, looking like he might be sick. “A little help?”
Her words send a bolt of energy through him, and he shakes himself out of his stupor, coming to sit on my other side. He towers over me by at least a head, and though he looks stricken, I can see signs of the mysterious boy who’s been behind my wall for the last couple of months, the voice of reason. It’s there in the softness of his hazel eyes, in the lopsided quirk of his mouth.
He takes one of my hands from her, inspecting the damage himself. His hand dwarfs mine, but it’s comforting. “It’s not too bad,” he says after a moment. “I can fix it.”
My throat is so raw from crying, but I still can’t stop. “Where’s Blaise? Is he all right?” I manage to ask between sobs.
“He’s fine. We thought it best he take a walk and calm down after that outburst,” Artemisia says.
The chair. The Kaiser falling. It was Blaise’s power, and not an intentional use of it, apparently. I nod and try to take deep breaths, but they come out ragged.
“I can’t…I can’t do this anymore.” I don’t mean to say the words, but the dam inside me has broken, and there is no controlling what comes out with the tears.
“Then don’t.” Artemisia’s voice is all hard edges.
“Art,” Heron warns, but she ignores him.
“Give up. Go as mad as their Kaiserin. What’s stopping you?”
Her words burn through me, but at least they’ve dried up my tears.
“There are twenty thousand people counting on me,” I whisper, more to myself than them. “If I give up…”
“Most of them won’t know the difference,” she says. The words are cruel, but the fight has gone out of her voice. She sounds as tired as I feel. “You might be the queen, but you’re just one girl. The revolution won’t stop because you do. It didn’t stop when Ampelio died, and he’d done far more than you have. If you died, or I died, or Heron, or Blaise…We’re all just pieces. We do what we can, but at the end of the day, we’re all expendable. Even you.”
“Then why do it at all?” I ask her. The words come out bitter, but I don’t mean them that way. I really do want to know.
She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. It’s only when I’ve given up hope of getting an answer that she speaks, her voice low and steady and so unlike the brash, loud Artemisia I’ve gotten to know.
“Because that’s how water works. The river flows, pushing against a stone, even as it knows it won’t move it. It doesn’t have to. Enough currents go by, over enough time, and even the strongest stone gives in. It might take a lifetime or more, but water doesn’t give up.”
“Nothing will stop him. I can’t win against him,” I say.
“No,” she says. “You likely can’t.”
“Art,” Heron warns again. The hand he’s holding has turned to pins and needles, like it’s fallen asleep. It doesn’t feel the way it does when Ion heals me after the Kaiser’s punishments. His touch always leaves my skin feeling tacky and slick and grimy, but Heron’s touch is comforting, warming, as his power travels over my skin.
“I won’t lie to her,” Artemisia scoffs.
Her words are harsh, but there’s something refreshing about her honesty. I think I prefer it to Heron’s kind fibs.
“We won’t let anything happen to you,” Heron says. “As soon as the Prinz is back, we’ll get you out.”
“After I kill him, you mean. And the Theyn, and Cress.”
If Blaise were here, he would probably tell me that my safety was the priority. He would begin making plans for all of us to leave immediately, and I don’t know that I would have the courage to turn him down. But he isn’t here.
Heron and Artemisia exchange a look that I can’t read.
“Yes,” Artemisia says.
Heron releases my hand and the skin of my palm is smooth and clear, as if I never fell apart. He takes the other and begins again.
“In the mines,” Artemisia says, drawing my attention back to her. She isn’t looking at me, instead staring at the patterned tile floor, tracing the lines with her little finger. “I learned quickly how to use the only leverage I had with one of the guards. It…was its own kind of torture, but he gave me extra rations in return, and the easiest shifts. He looked the other way when my little brother didn’t pull his weight. I told myself…I told myself he cared for me, that I cared for him even. It’s easier to lie to yourself, isn’t it?”