Ash Princess(Ash Princess Trilogy #1)(2)
No, I don’t think of that. I’ll go mad if I do.
“Well, we’ll solve them quickly, between the two of us,” I tell her with a smile, hoping she believes it.
Not for the first time, I wonder what would happen if I didn’t suppress a shudder when she mentioned her father. If I didn’t smile and pretend he wasn’t the same man who killed my mother. I like to believe Cress and I have been friends long enough that she would understand, but that kind of trust is a luxury I don’t have.
“Maybe Dagm?r will be there,” Crescentia says, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You missed her…bold fashion choice at the countess’s luncheon yesterday.” Her eyes glint with a smile.
I don’t care. The thought comes sudden and sharp as a bee-sting. I don’t care if Dagm?r attended the luncheon in the nude. I don’t care about any of it. I push the thought down deep and bury it, as I always do. Thoughts like that don’t belong to Thora; they belong to the voice. Usually it’s only a whisper, easy enough to ignore, but sometimes it grows louder and spills into my own voice. That is when I get into trouble.
I anchor myself to Cress, her easy mind, her simple pleasures.
“I doubt anything can top the ostrich feathers she was covered in last month,” I whisper back, making her giggle.
“Oh, it was far worse this time. Her gown was black lace. You could practically make out her intimate attire—or lack thereof!”
“No!” I shriek, pretending to be scandalized.
“Yes! They say she’s hoping to entice Duke Clarence,” Cress says. “Though why, I can’t imagine. He’s old enough to be her father and he smells like rotten meat.” She wrinkles her nose.
“I suppose when you consider her actual father’s debts…” I trail off, arching an eyebrow.
Crescentia’s eyes widen. “Really? Where did you hear that?” she gasps. When I only smile in response, she sighs and elbows me lightly in the side. “You always know the best gossip, Thora.”
“That’s because I listen,” I say with a wink.
I don’t tell her what I’m really listening for, that I sift through each vapid rumor for whispers of Astrean resistance, for any hope that someone is still out there, that someday they might rescue me.
In the years after the siege, there were always stories about rebel Astreans striking out against the Kaiser. Once a week, I would be dragged out to the capital square to be whipped by one of the Kaiser’s men and made an example of while the heads of fallen rebels stood rotting on pikes behind me. I knew those faces most of the time: Guardians who had served my mother, men and women who had given me candy and told me stories when I was young. I hated those days, and most of the time I hated the rebels because it felt like they were the ones hurting me by incurring the Kaiser’s wrath.
Now, though, most of the rebels are dead and there are only whispers of rebellion, fleeting afterthoughts of gossip when the courtiers run out of other things to talk about. It’s been years since the last rebel was caught. I don’t miss those punishments, always more brutal and public than any others, but I do miss the hope that clung to me, the feeling that I was not alone in the world, that one day—maybe—my people would succeed and end my misery.
Footsteps grow louder behind us, too heavy to belong to Cress’s slaves.
“Lady Crescentia, Lady Thora,” a male voice calls. Cress’s hold on my arm tightens and her breath catches.
“Your Highness,” Cress says, turning and dropping into a curtsy, pulling me with her. The title sends my heart racing, even though I know it’s not the Kaiser. I would know his voice anywhere. Still, I don’t fully relax until I rise from my curtsy and confirm that I’m right.
The stranger shares the same long wheat-blond hair and cold blue eyes, the same square jawline, as the Kaiser, but the man in front of me is much younger, maybe a year older than I am.
Prinz S?ren, I realize, surprised. No one has spoken of his return to court, which is surprising because the Kalovaxians are infatuated with their Prinz far more than they are with the Kaiser.
The last time I saw him was almost five years ago, when he was a scrawny twelve-year-old with round cheeks and a wooden sword always in hand. The man in front of me is no longer scrawny, and his cheeks have lost that childish roundness. A sword still hangs in the scabbard on his hip, but it isn’t wooden anymore. It’s a pockmarked wrought-iron blade, its hilt glittering with Spiritgems, for strength this time.
As a child, I saw Earth Guardians strong enough to haul boulders three times their weight as if they were nothing but air, but I doubt the Prinz’s Spiritgems do much more than add an extra few pounds of force to his blows. Not that it really matters. Over the five years of S?ren’s training with the Theyn, that sword has drawn more than its fair share of blood. The court is always abuzz with whispers of the Prinz’s prowess in battle. They say he’s a prodigy, even by Kalovaxian standards. The Kaiser likes to treat the Prinz as an extension of himself, but Prinz S?ren’s achievements only serve to highlight the Kaiser’s own shortcomings. Since taking the throne, the Kaiser has grown lazy and content, more interested in feasting and drinking than taking part in battles.
I wonder what the Prinz is doing back after so many years, though I suppose his apprenticeship with the Theyn is over. He’s officially an adult now, and I can only assume he’ll be leading his own armies soon.