Blaise gives a labored sigh and I’m almost positive he’s rolling his eyes. “Vecturia made it clear that they aren’t our ally, and we need to save what little power we have for ourselves.”
Part of me knows he’s right. He gave me the numbers. One thousand of us against the tens of thousands of Kalovaxians in Astrea.
“If we help Vecturia, we could forge a new alliance. You said it yourself, our numbers don’t stand a chance against theirs, but if we add another few hundred from Vecturia…”
“It still won’t be near enough,” Heron says. Even though I know he’s trying to be kind, I can hear the impatience coming through in his voice. “And that’s an if. It’s far more likely we’d be sending warriors we need to die in a fight that isn’t ours. Vecturia will still fall, and we won’t be far behind.”
What would my mother do? I wonder. But even as I ask myself the question, I know the answer. “It isn’t fair. There are people on those islands and we’re dooming them to carnage and slavery. If anyone should understand the stakes here, we should.”
Artemisia scoffs. “Blaise was right. You’ve been locked in your cushioned cage too long, and it’s turned your mind soft,” she says. “We’ve seen more carnage than you ever will, felt more loss. We’ve starved and bled and lingered at the door of death so often we lost count. We know exactly what we’re dooming Vecturia to, but they aren’t Astrea, and therefore they aren’t our concern.”
“It’s what my mother would have done,” I say.
Again Artemisia scoffs, and if I could reach through the hole in the wall, I would slap her. But before she can say anything about my mother, Blaise cuts in.
“May the gods bless Queen Eirene forever in the After, but until the end, she was the queen of a peaceful country. Her reign was largely untested and easy; she never had to know war until the Kalovaxians came and slit her throat. She had the luxury of being a sympathetic queen. You don’t.”
There is no barb in his voice. It is a calmly stated fact, and as much as I would like to argue it, I can’t right now. From her place in the After, I hope my mother understands. One day, I will be a magnanimous ruler. I will be everything the Kaiser isn’t; I will be as gracious as my mother was. But first, I need to make sure my country survives.
“All right,” I say after a moment. “We do nothing.”
“Good choice,” Artemisia says.
Though I don’t know what she looks like, I’m sure she’s quite smug behind that wall. I’m grateful to have them here, truly I am, but I can’t help but feel I’m carrying far more weight than I was this morning, and that even more people are now waiting for me to fail. They’re my allies—the only ones I have—but that doesn’t mean we’ll always be on the same side.
“You need to be prepared,” I tell them. “Cushioned as my cage might seem, my life here isn’t all flirtations and pretty dresses and parties. If something happens to me…you’re going to let it happen. I don’t care what it is or what sense of duty makes you want to try to defend me. Your attempt will fail, and then you’ll be compromised as well—and that won’t do anyone any good.”
“Theo—” Blaise starts heavily.
“He won’t kill me. I’m too valuable to him for that. Whatever he does to me, I will recover from it. The same can’t be said for you. Swear it.”
There’s a stubborn silence for a long moment and I worry that they’ll protest. I realize I’m asking them to go against Ampelio’s dying wishes. He wanted me safe, but my country needs me to stand.
“I swear it,” Artemisia says, echoed by Heron a breath later.
“Blaise?” I prompt.
He gives a grunt that I interpret as acceptance, but it isn’t a promise.
* * *
—
Hoa returns a few minutes later with a basket of laundry in her arms, and my Shadows go silent. They aren’t quite as practiced at it as my old Shadows were. I can hear them fidgeting more, breathing louder. If Hoa senses anything off, though, she gives no sign, and I wonder if I only notice because I know the truth. I didn’t know anything was different about my Shadows this morning, after all.
Part of me wants to confess everything to Hoa, but as much as I want to believe I can trust her, I can’t. And after everything Hoa has suffered at the hands of the Kaiser, asking her to stand up against him would be its own kind of cruelty.
I eat a quick dinner alone while Hoa folds the laundry, but the silence feels unbearably loud. I should be used to it. Most meals pass like this and I’ve more or less stopped noticing, but tonight is different. Everything is different. Blaise is so close, Artemisia and Heron too, and they’re watching me as a queen. I’m painfully aware of how lacking I must seem.
After Hoa clears away my plate and turns to my armoire to pick out a nightgown, panic seizes me. She’s going to change me into it. Which means my Shadows are going to see everything.
I’ve never had the luxury of being modest. For the last ten years, the old Shadows watched me change twice a day, and I never gave it a second thought. It was all I’d ever known. And my dress had been ripped to bare my back to hundreds—sometimes thousands—of people. It was a part of the punishment, a way of humiliating and dehumanizing me further. After all, how can anyone look at a bleeding girl in a ripped dress and see her as a leader? But Blaise and Heron and Art seeing me naked is different.
Hoa riffles through my armoire and I take the opportunity to shoot my most commanding look in each Shadow’s direction and twirl a finger in the air, motioning for them to turn around. Not that I have any way of knowing they’re obeying, but I trust them. I have no choice.
Still, I keep my back to them as best I can and face the curtained window instead as Hoa unclasps the shoulders of my chiton and lets it fall to the ground. Her warm fingers reach up to touch one of the healing wounds, causing me to flinch. She makes a muffled, disapproving noise in the back of her throat and leaves my side, returning seconds later with a pot of ointment that stinks of rot and dirt, given to her by Ion to help the healing along. After she applies it gingerly, she slips my nightgown over my head. The thin cotton sticks to the ointment, making it itch, but I know better by now than to scratch.
“Thank you,” I say.
Her hand brushes my shoulder briefly before falling away. Without a sound, she slips from the room, leaving me alone.
But for the first time in a decade, I’m surrounded by allies. I’m not alone, I tell myself. And hopefully, I never will be again.
IT’S BARELY NOON WHEN THE sharp, official knock sounds at the door and sends my heart pounding. My immediate thought is that the Kaiser is summoning me. If all went as I hoped, Søren found a way to question his father’s decision without the Kaiser tracing it back to me—if he so much as suspects I had anything to do with it, he’ll punish me for it and marry me off to Lord Dalgaard anyway.