“I’m sure you can surmise that he climbed from there until he became the Theyn. I’m sure you can surmise what it means to climb to that position. My mother hated it. I heard her scream that she didn’t want him to touch her, not with the blood of so many on his hands. She didn’t realize, or maybe didn’t care, that he did it all for her, to give her the life he thought she deserved.”
She pauses and swallows. There are no tears in her eyes, but she looks like she’s in physical pain. She’s never spoken about this, I realize, not to any of her other friends or even to her father. This must have sat between them, heavy and unacknowledged, for the better part of her life.
“She didn’t die when I was a baby. She didn’t die at all, as far as I know, but it’s easier to pretend, I suppose. She left us before we came here; she said she couldn’t do it anymore. She wanted to take me with her, but my father wouldn’t allow it, so she left me behind.”
There, her voice cracks, and she hastily wipes away tears that have only just begun to form at the corners of her eyes. Normally, Cress’s tears are weapons, employed against her father or a courtier who won’t invite me to a party or a dressmaker who claims not to have time to make her something new that week. These tears are not weapons, though, they are a weakness and so she cannot show them. She is the Theyn’s daughter, after all.
“Did you want to go with her?” I ask carefully.
She shrugs. “I was a child. My father was away most of the time, and he scared me a bit. My mother was the one I loved best, but I didn’t have a choice. Don’t misunderstand me, Thora,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m glad my father kept me with him. I know you think he’s awful, and I can’t blame you for that, but he’s my father. Still, sometimes I miss her.”
Her voice breaks again and I reach out to take her hand. “You’re a good friend, Cress,” I tell her, because it’s what she needs to hear. In a simpler world, her friendship would be enough. But in this one, it isn’t.
She smiles and gives my hand a squeeze before releasing it.
“You should get some rest,” she says, standing up. “I’ll see you at the banquet tonight.”
She pauses, eyes lingering on me warily for a moment.
“You didn’t…you didn’t have true feelings for him, did you? S?ren, I mean.” She says it like she doesn’t really want to know the answer.
“No,” I tell her, and the lie slides easily off my tongue. It isn’t even a lie anymore, I realize.
She smiles, relieved. “I’ll see you tonight,” she repeats, turning to go.
“Cress?” I say when she’s at the door.
She looks back to me, pale eyebrows raised, smile tentative. A confession bubbles to my lips. I don’t know that I can let her walk to her death.
I see a scale in my mind, Cress on one side, the twenty thousand of my people still living on the other. It shouldn’t be a difficult decision to make; it should be simple. It shouldn’t feel like it’s tearing my heart out.
I swallow. “I’ll see you tonight,” I say, knowing that my last words to her are just another lie.
ANOTHER BANQUET MEANS ANOTHER ASH crown, though I swear to myself this will be the last time I wear one. The guard who delivers it along with the gown I’m to wear looks perplexed to see me instead of Hoa, but I tell him she stepped out for a moment to deliver my dirty clothes to the laundresses and he accepts that easily enough, pressing the boxes into my arms and leaving without another word.
I set the smaller box on my vanity, then lay the larger one on my bed and open it. The gown always goes on first in Hoa’s routine so that the crown is saved for the last possible second.
This one is a deep blood-red, and I can already tell it won’t cover much more than what’s necessary. This is the last time I’ll be his trophy, I promise myself.
Heron and Artemisia haven’t returned yet, so it’s only Blaise here. I tell him to turn around before slipping out of the dress I’m wearing and stepping into the gown. Tiny buttons run down what little back there is, and it takes me a moment to manage them myself. Unlike other gowns the Kaiser has sent, this one doesn’t just leave my back bare but exposes more cleavage than most courtesans show and has a slit cut up to my hip. I’m practically naked. The idea of anyone seeing me like this turns my stomach, but I reluctantly call for Blaise to turn back around.
For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry, Theo,” he manages finally, his voice quiet.
“I know,” I tell him before squaring my shoulders and walking toward the box on my vanity.
The lid lifts with ease, and inside, the crown is a perfect circlet of ash resting on a red silk pillow. It could almost be pretty under different circumstances, but seeing it fills me only with hatred.
“Blaise?” I say, glancing up to his wall. “I’ve never put it on myself. Hoa always does it and I don’t want to give the Kaiser any reason to suspect anything is different tonight.”
For a moment, Blaise doesn’t say anything. “All right,” he manages finally.
I hear him shifting behind the wall before his door opens out into the hallway. Seconds later, he’s slipping through my door as quietly as he can. His eyes are heavy with worry and I almost regret asking for his help. I’m already worried enough myself; seeing it reflected on his face just reinforces how many ways this can go wrong.
I try to smile at him, but it’s harder than it should be.
“Are you going to be all right tonight?” he asks as he looks into the box. “With the Kaiser?”
I’ve been struggling not to think of exactly that. I can still feel him touching my hip at the maskentanz, still feel his breath in my ear, his hand on my cheek when he promised me we would talk again soon. I try to suppress the shudder that runs through me, but I know Blaise sees it.
“I’ve survived ten years,” I tell him, knowing better than to lie to him. “I can survive one more night.”
Even as I say it, though, I wonder just how true that is. The Kaiserin is dead, so the Kaiser will grow bolder. If Blaise hadn’t broken his chair on the pavilion and our conversation had continued, I don’t know where it would have ended. I don’t want to know what would have happened next.
“I’ll be there the whole time,” Blaise says. He means it as a comfort and I smile at him and pretend to be comforted, but we both know there will be nothing he can do.
“I can survive one more night,” I tell him again. “But promise me something?”
He delicately lifts the crown from the box, eyes focused on it instead of me. “Anything,” he says.
“When the Kaiser is dead, whenever that may be, I want to burn his body. I want to put the torch to him myself and I want to stay and watch until there is nothing left of him but ash. Will you promise me that?”
His eyes flicker to me and I realize that I’m shaking. I take a deep breath to calm myself.
“I swear it to Houzzah himself. And to you,” he says quietly.
Neither of us so much as breathes while he gently sets the crown on top of my head, a few flakes falling on my nose and cheeks as he does. His eyes stay locked on mine as he reaches a hand up toward my cheek before hesitating and letting it fall away. Worry still creases his forehead.
“You will survive.” He says it like he’s trying to convince himself of the fact. He hesitates a second longer, as if he wants to say something else, before giving a brief nod and leaving the room just as quietly as he came in.
I take one last look at my reflection in the mirror. Ashes already flake down over my cheeks and nose, marking me. The red stain I used on my lips looks like fresh blood. Underneath, I see bits and pieces of my mother staring back at me, but twisted with hate and fury my mother never needed to know. I’m not sorry for it.
I am angry.
I am hungry.
And I promise myself that one day I will watch them all burn.
* * *
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