She pushes the vial closer toward me.
“Now?” I ask, casting my eyes around the room desperately, searching for something—anything—that will give me a reason not to once more find myself drinking Encatrio forced upon me by Cress. This time, it will kill me. I know that with a crushing certainty.
“I need to know that I can trust you, Amiza,” Cress says, her voice level. “So now it is. We’ll tell your husband you aren’t feeling well, that your journey home will be postponed for a day. And if it does go poorly, I’ll blame the poisoned wine on the rebels. The alliance between our countries will stand.”
That hardly reassures me, and I can’t imagine Amiza would take any comfort in it, either.
“I have a child,” I say. “He needs his mother.”
Cress doesn’t even blink. “He needs a mother he can be proud of,” she says, nodding toward the vial. “Go on. From what I understand, Sta’Crivero is on the cusp of a crisis. It’s only a matter of time before its walls fall, before its people riot. You can save them. You can be the queen they deserve. Take it. What is fleeting pain compared to a lifetime of power?”
She takes my hand and wraps it around the vial, then unstoppers it, like I am a doll she is playing with, controlling my movements, making my decisions. And what’s worse, I let her. I am in a state of shock, speechless and still.
A knock on the door interrupts us, and Cress yanks her hand away from mine as if my touch burned her.
“What is it?” she snaps, glaring at the guard who enters clutching a roll of parchment in his hand, its seal unbroken.
“Apologies, Your Highness,” he says, bowing. “It’s a letter from the palace. I think you’ll want to see this for yourself. It’s urgent.”
With a huff, Cress gets to her feet, stalks toward the guard, and snatches the letter from him. She reads it with her back to me, but I see her shoulders tense. When she finishes, she crumples it into a ball in her fist.
“Ready our horses,” she says, her voice tight. “We’ll leave at once.”
The guard bows again before departing, leaving Cress and me alone once more. She turns back to me, but now she is all taut fury, any glimpse of the Cress I knew gone once more.
“Something has come up, I’m afraid,” she says, shaking her head. She takes the vial from me and stoppers it again. “We will stay in touch. When your father-in-law is on his deathbed, take the poison. In all of the chaos surrounding the shift in rulers, you’ll be able to seize the throne easily.”
I can only nod and take the poison from her, but when I do, she clasps her hands around my own. Her gray eyes search mine like she’s seeing straight into my soul. “You remind me of someone, you know,” she says. “A friend I had once. I hope that you will prove to be a better friend than she was, Amiza. Together, you and I could conquer the entire world, I think.”
* * *
—
I don’t let myself relax until the Kalovaxians disappear over the horizon. When they are finally out of sight, I sag with relief, leaning against Heron, who brings an arm around my shoulders.
“We did it,” I say, but the words taste strange. I can’t quite believe they’re true.
“We did,” he agrees, but his voice sounds distant. “The delivery took longer than we expected—we had to get the messenger around the Kalovaxian troops in order for its arrival to be believable.”
“It came at the perfect moment,” I assure him. “I’m fine. You’re fine. Our people are safe. And what’s more, we got Søren and Erik back.”
Heron nods, but his eyes are troubled. “And the Gorakians Erik brought with him to the capital? What do you think happened to them?”
I don’t know. I don’t want to know.
“Come,” I say to Heron, pushing the thought from my mind. “Let’s go see Erik and Søren.”
INFIRMARY TENTS HAVE BEEN SET up across the lake, hidden past the edge of the Perea Forest, in case the Kalovaxians decided to do any exploring during their visit. Those injured in the battle are there, as well as the former slaves who were too ill or malnourished to stay in the camp. It’s also where I had Heron bring Blaise to keep him from doing anything foolish. When Cress turned over Søren and Erik, it made sense to send them there as well.
It’s a short boat ride across for Heron, Artemisia, and me—especially when Art and Heron use their combined gifts to propel us across the lake’s surface. The trip takes less than an hour but feels like it drags on for an eternity. Søren is here. He may be hurt, but he’s alive. He’s safe. It isn’t until now that I realize there was a large part of me that believed I would never see him again.
“What happened with the Kaiserin?” Heron asks me, voice low.
I swallow, aware of the vial of Encatrio in the pocket of my dress, warm through the thin material. My first instinct is to keep it to myself, but I promised I wouldn’t keep any more secrets, so I tell them everything.
“She’s lonely,” I say when I finish. “She’s isolated. There’s no one else like her, no one who doesn’t see her as a monster. So she’s decided to create a monster of her own.”
“She’s deranged,” Artemisia corrects. “She must have known she was offering death, not power. Even diluted, that much Encatrio would kill most people.”
“I think she’s beyond caring,” I say, shaking my head. “She’s so desperate to not be alone that she’d have let Amiza die on the off chance that she could survive it. And the way she offered it…it didn’t seem to be her first time.”
Artemisia frowns. “Where’s the poison now?”
I draw it out and show them. “I’ll get rid of it once I figure out how. I don’t want to start a fire by accident.”
“Or you could keep it,” Heron says.
Art and I both stare at him, and he shrugs. “I’m just saying. Encatrio is rare, and it could come in handy.”
“It’s not real Encatrio,” I tell him. “She told me as much. It’s the kind she made herself, with her blood. I don’t like carrying it with me.”
Artemisia sighs. “Heron’s right, though,” she says. “We need all of the weapons in our arsenal that we can get. That poison is a weapon. It might be diluted, but it’s stronger than whatever you have in your own veins.”
I hesitate for only a second before tucking the vial back into the pocket of my dress.
Artemisia steers the boat onto the shore, and the three of us clamber out. Though the camp is hidden behind the tree line, this close I can make out the signs of it—the bright white cloth of the tent through the trees, the hushed voices, the smell of sickness and blood. It’s enough to make my head spin.