Lady Smoke (Ash Princess Trilogy #2)(19)

For an instant I think he might protest, but instead he nods.

I start to stand up, but before I can, he reaches out and grabs my wrist. His bloody fingers encircle it completely and hold firm in a way that makes my breath catch, despite the atmosphere of the brig and the chains and the blood. I’d forgotten the effect his touch has on me. I want to pull away but I also don’t.

“Yana Crebesti, Theodosia,” he says.

The words catch in my throat. I trust you. After everything I’ve done to him—everything we’ve done to each other—trust shouldn’t exist between us. But here he is, putting his faith in me.

I look down at his hand around my wrist and then back at him. “Theo,” I tell him. “You can call me Theo.”

“Theo,” he repeats before letting go of my wrist.

I leave the brig quickly, hearing his voice echo in my mind even as I bid farewell to the guards and try to wipe the blood from my wrist before they can see.

I hear him say my name over and over and over again, and I wish Artemisia were here to tell me to snap out of it. I always thought that my feelings for S?ren were not really mine but Thora’s, the broken, twisted girl that the Kaiser had created out of the ruins of me. I thought that they were kept separate enough that they didn’t overlap. I thought that when I left the palace, I left her as well.

But here I am, hundreds of miles away, and my feelings for S?ren are as complicated and knotted as they were the night I left.





I DON’T GO STRAIGHT BACK to S?ren. I know he’s still hungry and needs some more company from someone who doesn’t want to beat him, but the thought of being alone with him again paralyzes me. It isn’t that I don’t trust myself around him. It’s that the way he looks at me highlights my vulnerabilities and brings back little pieces of who I was in the palace. Being around him makes me forget that I’m a queen and that there are tens of thousands of other people depending on me. It takes all I have not to order the guards to give me their keys and break him out of there regardless of the consequences.

Changing course, I walk toward the aft of the boat, tray balanced in my arms as I look for a shock of blue hair.

Artemisia is easy to find in the chaos, her hair bright amid the various shades of brown and black hair that most Astreans have. She’s standing in the middle of an open space on the aft deck of the ship with a sword in each hand. They’re smaller than the swords the Kalovaxians favor, though they aren’t quite small enough to be called daggers. They’re about the length from her elbow to her outstretched middle finger, with filigreed gold hilts that gleam in the sunlight.

I don’t recognize her opponent, but he looks a couple of years older than she is and is much taller, with broad shoulders and a face with angles sharper than broken glass. His dark eyes are intent on Artemisia as they circle one another, his mouth set in a firm line. For her part, Artemisia dances instead of walks, each move graceful as a cat’s. She even smiles at the boy, if it can truly be called a smile.

All at once they lunge at each other, metal clanging against metal as their swords clash.

It’s immediately clear that they are unevenly matched, though not in the way they first appear to be. Though the boy is twice Artemisia’s size and strong, his movements are slow and clumsy, and Artemisia is quick enough that he misses more often than not, wasting energy he needs to keep up with her.

She is showing off, throwing in a twirl here, an unnecessary but dramatic arc to her swing there. It’s more performance than fight for her, until it’s not. She sees the moment his breathing becomes too labored, his steps dragging, and in that moment she doubles her own efforts. Her strikes rain down one after another, though he blocks them all. She seems to want him to and uses his distraction to back him up farther and farther until he stumbles over an uneven plank in the deck and falls backward. Before he can register what is happening, Artemisia is on top of him, her swords crossed over his neck and her grin triumphant.

I’m not the only one watching. Dozens of others have stopped their work to gape at the spectacle, and now they cheer for her.

“I’d say I missed sparring with you,” the boy says, more amused than annoyed at his loss. “But I’d be half lying. I’ll be sore tomorrow, you know.”

Artemisia clicks her tongue. “You let yourself slip while I’ve been gone,” she volleys back, sheathing her swords at her hips and extending a hand to help him up.

He’s prideful enough to ignore it, pushing himself back up to his feet with a groan. He retrieves his swords and sheaths them. “I didn’t expect you to come back this good,” he says. “When did you have time to practice in the mines?”

She shrugs her shoulders, though a dark cloud passes over her face. “I didn’t, but I managed to stow a lot of anger, and that makes up for rusty muscles, at least somewhat.”

The boy looks like he wants to say something, but then his eyes find me and widen.

“Y-Your Majesty,” he stammers, dipping into a hasty bow before I can tell him not to.

Artemisia whirls around to face me, cheeks pink with exertion.

“That was impressive,” I tell her.

“It would be more fun with an opponent who’d lifted a sword in the last year,” she says, shooting a halfhearted glare at her partner.

He rolls his eyes. “I’ll practice more,” he says. “And you’ll wish I hadn’t when I beat you.”