Lady Smoke (Ash Princess Trilogy #2)(110)

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That night, my cabin feels too quiet. I’ve taken the captain’s quarters on the lead ship, and it’s sizable, as far as cabins go—it has room for a desk and a dining table and a cot—but after my grand room in Sta’Crivero, it feels cramped. The styling is simple and minimalistic, without the grand Sta’Criveran flourishes and embellishments, though those, at least, I don’t miss. Instead, I find comfort in the weathered wood and worn blanket, the roughly hewn desk and the hard chair with its uneven legs. It is a space that feels homey and comfortable, and I find that is what I crave now more than luxury.

The quiet leaves space for too many thoughts, though, too many nightmares to play out behind my eyes even before I have a chance to fall asleep. I could be leading these people into a slaughter. Thousands of people could end up dead and it would be because of a choice I made. I might as well plunge a dagger between their ribs myself.

Once, I thought that the blood on S?ren’s hands was so thick that they would never be clean again, but now my own don’t feel much cleaner. I killed Ampelio and Coltania myself, but how many others lost their lives because of me? Elpis, Hoa, the Archduke, the Guardians in the Astrean prison, the servant girl Coltania enlisted whose name I don’t even know. All those dead guards outside the refugee camp, even.

I know that these deaths were unavoidable, but guilt eats at me all the same. And here I am leading more people—thousands of people—into a battle I don’t know if we can win.

It’s foolish and irresponsible and—and it’s the only way forward. It’s the only way home.

A knock sounds at my door, light and questioning.

Grateful for the interruption, I drag myself from my narrow cot and pull my dressing robe over my nightgown, tying the sash around my waist. When I open the door, I’m surprised to find S?ren on the other side. I don’t know who I expected it to be. Blaise? He’s bunking with Artemisia, who’s promised to kill him if he starts to lose control. He wouldn’t risk leaving her side for even a moment.

I search my feelings. Am I relieved it’s S?ren? Was there a part of me that wished it was Blaise instead? I don’t know. All I’m sure of is that S?ren’s presence feels like lightning striking in my belly, filling me with a dangerous warmth.

I open the door farther and gesture for him to come in. The door closes behind him with a firm click.

“Are you all right?” he asks me, his voice low. “With Hoa and Coltania and everything?”

I bite my lip and turn back to him. Images of Hoa’s lifeless body and Coltania’s eyes locked on mine as she took her final breath fill my thoughts. Coltania is easier to think about, so I bury Hoa in my mind and focus on her.

“Do you remember what you told me after I killed Ampelio?” I ask him, sitting down on the edge of my cot.

S?ren stays standing before me, frowning. Whatever he was expecting me to say, it wasn’t that. “I believe I tried to comfort you and I made an ass out of myself in the process,” he says slowly.

I smile tightly. “You did,” I agree. “But later, when you mentioned it again, you were right. Killing is never easy, even when it isn’t your first time doing it. Even when you have no choice—when it’s a matter of self-defense. It leaves its mark on you.”

S?ren holds my gaze. “You did what you had to,” he says.

“I know,” I tell him, looking down at my hands. I debate my next words, whether it’s wiser to say them out loud or keep them locked inside. I can’t find the answer to that, yet in the end I force myself to give them voice. “But in that moment, when I forced the dagger into her stomach, I wasn’t thinking about defending myself. I wasn’t thinking about what would happen to me if I failed. I was thinking about Hoa, about what Coltania had done to her—how she’d taken another person away from me. When I killed her, I wasn’t only fueled by self-defense. I was fueled by rage. I was fueled by vengeance.”

It’s an ugly confession, made here in a quiet cabin in the middle of the ocean, but S?ren doesn’t flinch away from it. He holds my gaze, steady and sure like he can see straight through to the deepest parts of me, the parts I’m ashamed of. The parts I try to hide from everyone else, even Blaise. S?ren sees the ugliest parts of me, the cowardice and the conniving and the manipulating. He sees it all and he understands it. He looks at me like I’m his favorite book, one he’s read every page of too many times. One whose secrets he’s uncovered but he keeps coming back for more anyway.

I’m still not sure if I’m Thora in his eyes, or Theo, or some bleeding watercolor of both together, but in this moment, we are the only two people in the world and we are not Thora and the Prinz. We are Theo and S?ren and it feels like he knows me as well as I know myself.

I stand and close the few steps of distance between us until we are only inches apart. He doesn’t step back, but he doesn’t move closer either, though his breath hitches. He makes no move to touch me, his hands hanging limp at his sides. He won’t, I realize, because I asked him to keep his feelings to himself.

It’s easier that way, smarter to leave things as they are. He is my advisor and my friend, and that is all he can ever be. But standing this close to him, it’s difficult to remember why that is. It’s difficult to remember Blaise, only a few cabins away, telling me he loved me. It’s difficult to remember the Kaiser, sitting on my mother’s throne with my once closest friend at his side. It’s difficult to remember the thousands of people who have agreed to follow me into battle, people who see S?ren as their enemy.