I’M NOT TEN STEPS DOWN the hall when a hand grips my shoulder, restraining me. I want to run, run, run until I’m alone and I can scream and cry until nothing is left in me but emptiness again. You will live. You will fight. Ampelio’s words whisper through my mind, but I’m not a fighter. I am a frightened shadow of a girl. I am a fractured mind and a trembling body. I am a prisoner.
I turn to find Prinz S?ren, a sliver of concern cracking through his stoic expression. The hand that stopped me is now light on my shoulder, the palm and fingertips surprisingly rough.
“Your Highness.” I’m careful to keep my voice level, hiding the tempest tearing through me. “Does the Kaiser need something else from me?”
The thought should terrify me, but instead, I feel nothing. I suppose I have nothing left for him to take now.
Prinz S?ren shakes his head. He lets his hand drop from my shoulder and clears his throat.
“Are…are you all right?” he asks. His voice sounds strained, and I wonder when he last talked to a girl. When he last talked to anyone but other soldiers.
“Of course,” I say, though they don’t feel like my words. Because I am not all right. I am a hurricane barely contained in skin.
My hands begin to shake, and I tuck them into the folds of my skirt so the Prinz won’t notice.
“Was that the first time you’ve killed?” he asks. He must see the panic flash in my eyes, because he hastens to continue. “You did well. It was a clean death.”
How can it possibly be clean when there was so, so much blood? I could take a thousand baths and still feel it on me.
Ampelio’s voice echoes through my mind: You are your mother’s child. The time has come for little birds to fly. You will fight. My Queen.
A memory surfaces and I don’t try to smother it this time. His hand around mine as he walked me down to the stables. Him lifting me up to sit on his horse so I towered above him, on top of the world. The horse’s name was Thalia and she liked honey drops. The feel of his hand at my back, keeping me safe; the feel of the sword, slicing through his skin.
Bile rises in my throat but I force it down.
“I’m glad you thought so,” I manage.
For an instant, he looks ready to ask another question, but he only offers me his arm. “May I escort you back to your room?”
I can’t refuse the Prinz, though I want to. I am in tatters and I don’t know how to smile and pretend I’m not. Thora is so much simpler. She is a hollow thing with no past and no future. No desires. No anger. Only fear. Only obedience.
“When I turned ten,” Prinz S?ren says, “my father brought me to the dungeon and gave me a new sword. He brought out ten criminals—Astrean rabble—and showed me how to slit their throats. He did the first, to demonstrate. I did the other nine.”
Astrean rabble.
The words rankle me, though I’ve heard them called worse. I’ve called them worse under the Kaiser’s always-watching gaze, pretending I’m not one of them. I’ve mocked them and laughed at the Kaiser’s cruel jokes. I’ve tried to distance myself from them, pretended they were not my people, even if we share the same tawny skin and dark hair. I’ve been too afraid to even look at them. All the while, they’ve been enslaved and beaten and executed like animals to teach a spoiled prinz a lesson.
Now that Ampelio is dead, no one is left to rescue them either.
Bile rises up again, but this time I can’t hold it back. I stop and retch, the contents of my stomach spilling all over the Prinz’s suit. He jerks back and for a painfully long moment we can only stare at one another. I should apologize; I should beg for forgiveness before he tells his father how weak and repulsive I am. But all I can do is clamp my hand over my mouth and hope that nothing more comes up.
The shock in his eyes fades, replaced with something that might be pity.
He doesn’t try to stop me when I turn and dash away down the hall.
* * *
—
Even when I’m back in my room, stretched out on my bed, alone, I can’t fall apart. I can hear my personal guards settling into the small rooms on the other side of the walls that the Kaiser had installed after the siege. Their boots click against stone floors and their sheathed swords clatter down. They are always here, always watching through three thumb-sized holes. Even when I sleep, even when I bathe, even when I wake up screaming from nightmares I only half remember. They follow me everywhere, but I never see their faces or even hear their voices. The Kaiser refers to them as my Shadows, a nickname that has spread so far and wide that I think of them that way myself.
They must be laughing now. The little Ash Princess lost her stomach over a bit of blood, and all over the Prinz, too! Which of them will get the honor of telling the Kaiser that story? None of them, more than likely. The Prinz will tell it himself and the Kaiser will know of my weakness in minutes. He will only try harder to beat that weakness out of me. This time, he might succeed, and then what will be left of me?
My door opens and I sit up. It’s Hoa, my maid. She doesn’t look at me, instead focusing on undoing the buttons that run down the back of my bloodstained dress. I hear her sigh with relief when she realizes that the blood isn’t mine this time. Cool air hits my flesh as the fabric falls away, and I stiffen for the sting as she peels off the bandages on my back. Her fingers are gentle as she checks on my welts, making sure they’re healing properly. When she’s satisfied, she dabs on ointment from a jar Ion gave her and replaces the bandages with fresh ones.
Because I cannot be trusted with an Astrean slave, the Kaiser gave me Hoa instead. With her light gold skin and straight black hair that falls to her waist, I assume she must be from one of the eastern lands the Kalovaxians invaded before Astrea, but she’s never told me which one. She couldn’t if she wanted to, because the Kaiser’s sewn her mouth shut. Thick black thread crosses over her lips in four X’s from corner to corner, taken out every few days to allow for a meal before being sewn again. Immediately after the siege, I had an Astrean maid named Felicie, who was fifteen. I thought of her as a sister, and when she told me she had a plan for our escape, I followed her without question, so sure that all my dreams of rescue were coming true. I even believed my mother was still alive somewhere, waiting for me.
I was a fool.
Instead of giving me freedom, Felicie delivered me straight to the Kaiser, just as he’d instructed her.
He personally gave me ten lashes, and then he slit Felicie’s throat, telling me he had no more use for her. He said it was to teach me a lesson that would last longer than my welts, and I suppose it did. I learned to trust no one. Not even Cress, really.
Hoa gathers my bloody dress in her arms and nods toward the washbasin, a silent instruction to get cleaned up, before she leaves again to launder the dress.
When she’s gone, I sit down at my vanity and rinse my mouth with water from the basin, getting rid of the taste of sickness. I dip my hands in next to clean the specks of blood from them. My father’s blood; my blood.
Again I feel like I’m going to be sick, but I force myself to take deep breaths until it passes. The eyes of my Shadows weigh heavy on me, waiting for me to fall apart so they can report it to the Kaiser.
In the vanity mirror, I look the same as I did this morning. Every hair curled and pinned in the Kalovaxian style, face powdered, eyes rimmed with kohl and lips stained red. Everything is the same, even though I am not.
I take the small white towel hanging over the edge of the bowl and dip it into the water before rubbing it over my face. I scrub until all the powders and paints come away, coloring the towel as they do. It took Hoa the better part of an hour to apply them this morning, but it takes me less than a minute to wash them all off.