But Cress doesn’t care about natural springs. I can tell in the way her eyes glaze over. She reaches for the gilded carafe, and pours red wine into both of our goblets. I stare at her hands as she does, remembering the last time she poured a glass of wine for me, laced with Encatrio that nearly killed me.
She catches me staring and sets the carafe down again, then tucks her cracked gray-tinged hands under the table. She thinks I was staring at that, I realize. She thinks I was noting her charred skin. She’s self-conscious about it still, at least with someone like Amiza. She might wield her fearsomeness like a weapon in front of her warriors because they need her to be fearsome, but Amiza…Amiza is her peer, living the kind of life that Cress always thought she would live, a life of handsome royal husbands and elegant ball gowns and beauty.
She’s intimidated by Amiza—by me. The idea is ludicrous, but there it is.
“May I ask what happened?” I ask her carefully. “There have been rumors, but I’m not sure I believe them.”
Cress’s eyes flash. “Did she tell you any of those rumors?” she asks, each word biting. “While she stayed in your palace as your guest?”
I don’t have to ask to know that she’s talking about me—Theo, that is. I flinch away from her and drop my gaze.
“Yes,” I say, choosing my words carefully. I need to tell her what she wants to hear, nothing more. “Queen Theodosia said that she poisoned you but you survived it, that it gave you certain gifts in return.”
Cress relaxes slightly. She reaches for her goblet, takes a long sip of wine before speaking.
“Encatrio is a gruesome poison,” she says, her voice low. “Do you know exactly how it kills?”
I do, but Amiza doesn’t. I shake my head, and Cress smiles grimly.
“It’s a fire potion, brought from the deepest parts of the Fire Mine. Scentless. Tasteless. As soon as it touches your lips, though, it begins to burn its way through you, down your throat, into your belly. It burns you alive from the inside out. I saw it happen to my father—it killed him in a matter of minutes, but those minutes were agony. I never thought I would see my father cry, but he sobbed like an infant, voicelessly begging for mercy. I couldn’t cry at all. I felt the pain of it, the burning, but unlike with my father, my agony didn’t end after a few minutes. It stretched on for hours, and I kept hoping—begging—for death to save me from it. Yet death had other plans for me, and when the pain finally did subside, the poison had left me quite changed.”
“That does sound gruesome,” I say, barely trusting myself to speak. “I’m very sorry that you had to endure such misery.”
For a long moment, Cress doesn’t say anything. She takes another sip of her wine before replacing the goblet on the table with a thud that echoes throughout the room.
“I’m not,” she says finally. “You see, I used to be like you, Amiza—may I call you Amiza?” I nod, and she continues. “I thought power was something that could be attained through marrying the right man, through impressing the right people. Through being liked. No one likes me now.”
“I’m sure that’s not true—”
“Oh, it doesn’t bother me,” she says with a hard laugh. “I suppose it did, once, but not anymore. Because I realized that power—real power—isn’t attained through winning the approval of others. The only kind of power that matters is when you’re the one doing the approving, making the decisions. The kind of power that comes from being feared, not liked. You understand, though, don’t you?”
I nod because there is nothing else to do or say.
“It’s a shame about your father-in-law’s health,” Cress says, leaning back in her chair and surveying me. “But it’s a shame, too, that when he is gone your husband will be the one who will rule in his place and you will only be queen consort—a role without any power at all.”
There is something dangerous hiding under her words that I cannot quite place. Something Amiza would not hear at all because she doesn’t know Cress as I do. She does not know the focused look Cress gets when a thought takes root in her mind.
“I don’t mind,” I say, forcing a smile.
“Of course you do,” Cress says, reaching across the table to take hold of my hand, her skin still warm but lifeless. “You can’t tell me that you don’t want to rule in your own name, as a true queen instead of a mere vessel for future princes and princesses.”
I bite my lip, aware of my heart beating rapidly in my chest. Tell her what she wants to hear, I think.
“And if I did want that?”
Cress’s smile broadens. “Then I think you and I could help one another. I think that we could be true allies—beyond this farce of a truce. Let’s not pretend, between you and me, Amiza. King Etristo has no plans of keeping this alliance for more than a few months. As soon as the rebels have been subdued, he will try to take advantage of the fact that the Kalovaxians have—to his way of thinking—a weak ruler. He will try to take my throne from me, and with it Astrea’s magic.”
I don’t know how much of her rambling is founded on facts and how much is sheer paranoia. It sounds ludicrous. King Etristo is greedy, it’s true, and he underestimates women in all of their forms, but he doesn’t know the first thing about waging war, and he is too lazy to try.
It doesn’t matter, though, what is true and what is Cress’s imagining. All that matters is that Amiza tells Cress what she wants to hear.
“I believe that we could arrange that,” I say slowly. “What would you need from me?”
Cress draws a vial from the pocket of her gown. Encatrio. My breath catches as the pieces of her plan come into focus.
“I need for you to take the power you so desperately want,” she says. “Even if it costs you dearly.”
“What is it?” I say aloud because Amiza has never seen the poison before.
Cress slides the vial across the table toward me.
“Encatrio,” she says, as easily as she might say honey or water.
“You want me to kill Etristo?” I ask, hoping that playing dumb will buy me time.
“I want you to drink it,” she says.
“But—but that will kill me,” I stutter.
Cress shrugs. “Perhaps. It isn’t pure Encatrio—that has become elusive these days, so it’s diluted a bit. Less lethal. Most of the time, at least.”
Diluted with her own blood, I think, with a nauseous lurch of my stomach.
She continues, oblivious to my discomfort. “It’s a risk, yes, but isn’t the risk worth it? For that kind of power?”