Ash Princess(Ash Princess Trilogy #1)(42)
Elpis is the perfect asset—a girl no one would look twice at stationed in the house of the Theyn. My mind spins with the sort of things she could overhear, the things she could do. But the Theyn did not get to be the Theyn by being a fool.
Blaise’s voice echoes in my mind. “She’s your responsibility, Theo.”
“Nothing just now,” I tell her.
Disappointment flickers in her eyes, but she nods her head and knocks timidly on the door.
“Lady Thora here to see you, my lady,” she says, her voice barely loud enough to be heard on the other side of the thick wooden door.
“Thora?” I can hear the excitement in Crescentia’s voice from here. “Come in!” she calls.
I give Elpis a smile of thanks before pushing the door open and slipping inside.
Crescentia’s room is large enough to house an entire family, and the space is dominated by a canopy bed hung in diaphanous white silk. The coverlet, I know, is embroidered with golden thread, but just now it’s littered with so many pastel dresses that it’s impossible to tell. She’s sitting at her vanity, pots of cosmetics open and brushes scattered haphazardly. Her painted jewelry box—another artifact from some fallen land, I’m sure—is open and its contents are in disarray.
Cress herself is wild-eyed and flushed, though as far as I can tell she hasn’t left her room yet today. There’s a tray of half-eaten breakfast abandoned on her bed, and she’s still wearing her nightgown. Her blond hair is down in a mess of frizzy waves that haven’t yet been tamed and braided by her maids.
“Busy morning?” I ask, moving a discarded dress from a chaise lounge by her window and sitting down.
A grin breaks over her face. “I finally heard from the Prinz! He sent a letter this morning inviting me…well, inviting us to have lunch with him. He’s smart to avoid the impropriety of us being seen alone together, I suppose. Isn’t it exciting?”
“It is,” I say, trying to match her enthusiasm. S?ren, it seems, isn’t to be dissuaded, and I have to admit, this is a smart move on his part. Having Crescentia there as a buffer might not stop other courtiers from gossiping, but most of them won’t be gossiping about me at least. Still, it seems cruel to use Cress as a shield, especially when she’s imagining herself half in love with S?ren already. But with my new plan buzzing loudly through my mind, I can’t spare Cress’s feelings more than a cursory thought. After all, she’s more enamored with the idea of him than anything else, and if the plan goes right, he’ll be dead before she realizes that. Cress will get to feel like one of the tragic heroines she likes to read about, and I think she’ll enjoy that almost as much as a crown.
“I suppose you’re trying to decide what you should wear?” I ask.
“I have nothing,” she tells me with a dramatic sigh, gesturing widely to the rest of her room, where dozens of dresses lie in an array of colors and styles. Some of them are loosely draped Astrean gowns with delicate embroidery and jewel-encrusted fibulae. Others are traditionally Kalovaxian, with tailored waists and bell-shaped skirts that require steel cages and layers of petticoats, done in a heavier fabric like velvet or wool. There are so many dresses that counting them feels like trying to count all the stars in the sky, though I’m sure I’ve only ever seen her wear a fraction of them.
I pick up the dress I pushed aside and hold it up. It’s a lavender gown I’ve never seen her wear before, cut simply with a swath of sheer fabric that sweeps across the velvet bodice and drapes over one shoulder. The neckline and hem are covered with hundreds of tiny sapphires arranged to look like flowers.
“What about this?” I ask.
“Hideous,” she proclaims without really looking at it.
“I think the color would look lovely on you,” I insist. “At least try it.”
“There’s no point. It’s all hideous,” she says. “What does the Prinz like? Do you know? What’s his favorite color?”
“I don’t know anything more about him than you do,” I tell her with a laugh, hoping the lie isn’t obvious. I might not know S?ren’s favorite color or what kind of women’s fashions he likes, but I know he’s kind and that he must be closer to his mother than his father or he wouldn’t have gone to the Kaiserin to break off my engagement. I know that even though he’s a great warrior, he doesn’t enjoy the act of killing, the way most Kalovaxians do. He remembered the Astreans’ names, after all, nine years after his father forced him to kill them.
I push those thoughts aside. I told Art and the others that I would be able to kill him when the time came, and I can’t do that if I see him as a nice person.
“You sat with him at the banquet, though,” Cress points out, a delicately sharpened edge coming into her voice. “And you seemed close at the harbor—you even called him by his given name.”
She’s jealous, I realize, and the idea seems almost funny to me. It isn’t funny, of course. I’m supposed to be making S?ren fall for me, and it seems like he’s certainly taking more of an interest in me than Cress, but the jealousy still feels strange coming from her. This is the girl who gave me her hand-me-down dresses, who snuck me pieces of bread when the Kaiser withheld my dinner, who leveraged her own status to make sure other court girls didn’t insult me to my face. I’ve been sheltered in her pity for most of my life; the idea of her being jealous of me feels absurd.