The guard pulls Elpis’s hair back until she has no choice but to open her mouth and he tilts the potion closer. I struggle against the guard holding me, but his grip is like iron.
He won’t spare her, no matter what I do—just like he didn’t spare Ampelio. He’s a liar and he doesn’t show mercy. I know that and so does Elpis. So does everyone in the room. I cannot save her. I cannot save her. I cannot—
“Stop!” The word is wrenched from my throat like a sob, against my will. The guard freezes.
“I thought we could come to an understanding,” the Kaiser says with a nauseating smile. “I’ll ask again: Where did you get the Encatrio?”
I swallow. Suddenly I don’t feel anything like a queen. A true queen could weigh the lives of many against the life of one, but I can’t. All I see is Elpis. All I hear is Blaise’s voice, telling me she’s my responsibility. I asked this of her, I brought her here, I’ve as good as killed her. I owe her this. Even if the Kaiser doesn’t spare her, he’ll give her a clean death, like Gazzi. Not the Encatrio; he’ll save that for someone else.
“My Shadows,” I say, trusting that they are long gone now. “Rebels replaced them last month. Where they got it, I don’t know.”
The Kaiser frowns and motions to the guard, who tips the vial again.
“I don’t know!” I shout, fighting against the guards who hold me, but it does no good. “I swear, I don’t know anything more!”
They don’t stop, though. Elpis’s guard tips the vial just enough to give her a drop before pinching her nose until she swallows. The sound that erupts from her is like nothing I’ve heard before, the hoarse cry of a dying animal that vibrates through my whole body, scraping over my skin like claws. I fight against my guards, my elbow flying up. Something cracks and one of the guards lets out a string of curses, but their hold never loosens.
Elpis slumps against the guard, her eyes half shut. The skin of her neck is already charring, turning gray and dry. She can barely whimper.
“Still a few more sips to go,” the Kaiser drawls. “What were you doing tonight?”
I swallow and tear my eyes away from Elpis. This, at least, will cost us nothing. “I was supposed to kill the Prinz before escaping.”
With her throat burned, Elpis can’t do more than shake her head an inch.
“Escaping where?” he presses. “With who?”
I open my mouth to answer, struggling for a lie—any lie. It won’t matter; Elpis and I will both be dead by the time the lie is discovered, and Blaise and the others will be far gone. But it isn’t so simple. The Kaiser will arrive at whatever country I name with battalions and soldiers and berserkers. He will bring war to their doors. I can’t form words.
The Kaiser seems to expect it. He seems to want it. Gleefully, he motions to the guard again, watching Elpis with a fascination that turns my stomach to lead.
Elpis is twitching against the guard now, and he struggles to hold her still as he lifts the vial to her lips again. She groans and her eyes find mine. The pain there clutches at my stomach, but there’s something else as well. I put a name to it a second too late: resolution.
The guard goes to force another drop of the potion down her throat, but Elpis drinks it all instead, sucking each drop out before the surprised guard can pull it away.
I shout a string of Astrean words my mother never taught me and struggle against the guard holding me, fighting him with everything I have as my mind spins and blurs. But the guard doesn’t loosen his grip, and all I can do is watch as Elpis falls to the ground, twitching and curling in on herself like the child she is. The charring spreads from her throat and the smell of broiling flesh fills the room. The courtiers behind me begin to gag, as if they were the ones suffering.
When she finally stills, her blackened mouth is frozen in a silent scream.
Dimly I hear the Kaiser order for the bodies to be removed. A guard drags Elpis away like she’s no more than a rag doll, her head lolling on her neck limply, eyes mercifully closed. A trail of ash is left behind in her wake.
She was my responsibility and I killed her. If I have any regrets, it’s this. Too many people have died for me, and now I’m almost grateful that no more will have to.
The Kaiser steps down from my mother’s throne, his footsteps echoing loudly in the silent room as he comes toward me. I can’t look at him, unable to take my eyes off the trail of ash Elpis’s body has left in its wake, but he grabs my chin and forces me to look up so that all I see is his face, red and sharp and cold.
“It’s a shame,” he whispers so that only I and the guards holding me can hear him. “You would have made such a pretty kaiserin.”
I swallow my tears. They’re for Elpis; the Kaiser doesn’t deserve to see them. If the guards weren’t holding me as tightly as they are, I would throw myself at him and do whatever damage I could before I was stopped—claw his eyes out, smash his head against the stones, grab the guard’s sword and stab him through the heart—there are so many ways to hurt someone in a matter of seconds, and I would invent a dozen more. But the guards must feel my desperation, because they hold me tight, like I’m a threat.
I do the only thing I can—I spit. It lands just below his eye, shiny and wet.
The back of his hand hits my face. The force of the blow should send me to the ground again, but the guards keep me standing.
“Take her away,” the Kaiser says to my guards. “Set her execution for sunrise so that everyone will witness it. I want the world to know that the Ash Princess is dead.”
THE KAISER DOESN’T MAKE MISTAKES often, but he made one when he didn’t kill me. He thinks it’s smart to wait until there’s a larger audience, a more Astrean audience that will be further broken by seeing me killed. I see his logic but there is a flaw in his plan.
I was ready to die for my cause, before. I was ready to greet my mother and Ampelio in the After and watch my country rise again without me. But now I can’t get the image of Elpis’s ashen body out of my mind. I can’t forget the way the Kaiser grinned as he watched her die. As much as I long to see my mother again, I am not ready yet.
I am not done with this world, and I am not done with him.
The guards led me down into the dungeons beneath the palace, a maze of cramped, dirty cells my mother never used during her reign. She thought them too cruel a fate even for criminals, sending them instead to work off their crimes in the Outlands.
These are the same cells Blaise and I explored as children. My feet recognized the path; I could see the layout in my mind as clear as any map. Blaise must remember them, too.
They locked me in a cold cell separate from other prisoners, with no blanket, or food, or even a set of clothes not covered in blood. It’s so cramped that I can’t lift both my arms, and it’s the sort of dark that only exists in nightmares. The heavy lock creaked as it was slid into place, and their boots echoed down the hall.
As soon as I was alone, the laughter began. I couldn’t control it and I didn’t care to. There’s no one to hear me this far below ground, and if there were, let them tell the Kaiser all about it.
Let him believe I’m mad. It won’t be the biggest mistake he’s made tonight. Somewhere out there, Blaise and Heron and Artemisia are getting word of my arrest and they’re putting together a plan to get me out. I know that as certainly as I know my name.
The Kaiser should have killed me when he had the chance.
* * *
—
I don’t know how long passes before my laughter dies down, or how much more time inches by before the footsteps break up the silence, these much softer than the guards’. Too soft to be Blaise’s. Artemisia’s, maybe? I scramble toward the bars and try to see down the hall, but it’s too dark and I don’t dare call out a name.