Lady Smoke (Ash Princess Trilogy #2)(89)

“Your gift,” I repeat slowly. “The gift that almost killed all of us this morning?”

He has the decency to flush at that. “Ampelio said that I was stronger than any other Earth Guardian he ever knew. He said that if I could control it, I could help change the course of this war. I could help save Astrea.”

“But you can’t control it,” I say, harsher than I mean to. He flinches like I slapped him. I soften my voice and try again. “Your control over it is getting weaker, not stronger, and who is left to help you?”

His jaw hardens and he turns back to the horse, looking away from me. “The gods have their reasons for doing what they do. They had their reasons for doing this to me. You believed that, too, once, before S?ren convinced you there was something wrong with me.”

I take a step away from him. “That isn’t what this is about and you know it. You caused an earthquake today, Blaise. You’re dangerous—to yourself, to me, to everyone around you. That isn’t a gift.”

“It might not be a gift to you, Theo, but it will be to the Kalovaxians when we finally meet on the battlefield and I unleash every last ounce of whatever kind of power this is—gift or curse, I will use it against them just the same.”

The proclamation knocks the air from my lungs. I imagine a pot boiling over. “That would be suicide,” I tell him. “Is that what you want? To die at seventeen by turning yourself into a weapon?”

He’s quiet for a moment, taking a shuddering breath. “I want to save Astrea,” he says finally. “Whatever it is that happened to me in that mine, it made me stronger. Stronger than other Guardians. Stronger than I ever could be without it. If you take that away from me…I have nothing.”

I try to bite back the words, but they slip out anyway.

“You have me,” I tell him. The words are a whisper, almost lost altogether in the harsh desert wind.

He shakes his head. “I love you, Theo. I said that and I meant it. But I would rather have you safe on your throne without me than be with you for the rest of a long life spent running and cowering and hiding from the Kaiser.”

“It doesn’t have to be one or the other,” I tell him, stepping around the horse so that there is nothing between us. “I want to take that throne with you at my side, like Ampelio was at my mother’s.”

His smile is bitter. “I don’t think you learned anything from those stories of the gods we loved as children,” he says. “Didn’t you ever notice what they all had in common?”

I shake my head. “Monsters and heroes and acts of stupid bravery?” I ask. “Happily-ever-afters?”

“Sacrifice,” he says. “The hero never wins if they don’t sacrifice what they love to do it. You want everything, and you aren’t willing to give anything up to get it—not your freedom or me or the Prinkiti. But I think I can sacrifice enough for the both of us, when the time comes.”

Blaise finally turns to look at me, though his thoughts are sealed so well behind his eyes that it feels like I’m looking at a stranger instead of the person I know best in this world.

“If you won’t give up your gems, you’re a danger to all of us,” I tell him, struggling to keep my voice steady even as I force myself to say the hardest words I’ve ever said. “You have to leave.”

His shock and hurt last only an instant before they are sealed away again behind his placid expression. He nods. “I’ll take Hoa back to the capital, but after that, I’ll go. It won’t be far—I’ll make camp a mile outside the wall. If you need me, you can send word through Heron or Art.”

I always need you, I want to say. I wouldn’t have escaped the Kaiser without your plans. I wouldn’t be any kind of queen. I would still be just a scared girl, cowering before the Kaiser. I don’t know who I am without you.

The words die in my throat, smothered by my pride and my anger. This is his choice, I remind myself.

He doesn’t wait for my response anyway, instead turning and walking back to the others with his empty bucket, leaving me alone in the hot sun with a shattered heart.





I HEARD SOME KALOVAXIAN SOLDIERS WHO lost appendages in battle talk about how they could still feel their limbs even though they were no longer there. For me, it’s the same way with Blaise. Even when we return to the palace without him, I still feel his presence. It’s a shock every time I look for him, only to find Heron and Artemisia. They seem to feel his absence as well, and when we all retire to my room that night, a blanket of silence drapes over us.

As I lie in bed, I try not to imagine Blaise, alone outside the capital wall with the Sta’Criveran heat bearing down on him even in the dark, amplified by the heat burning through him. But of course I fail and I know sleep will not come anytime soon.

Sleep, however, is not what I was planning on doing tonight.

This time, when I leave Heron and Artemisia asleep to visit S?ren, I write them a note so they won’t worry. I take my dagger with me. Little good it might do, but it’s sharp, and that will count for something if it comes down to it. I hope.

Erik is already waiting when I slip out the door and close it quietly behind me. He leans against the far wall with his arms crossed over his chest. He still doesn’t seem comfortable in his Gorakian clothes, but I can’t help but think that he looks better in them than he did in his ill-fitting Kalovaxian suit.