Ash Princess (Ash Princess Trilogy #1)(16)

The hope flooding my veins sputters. It doesn’t die, but it twists into something new and unexpected. In all my fantasies of being rescued, I never saw it going like this. I thought of Ampelio coming to me with anger and armies and a plan to retake Astrea. I hate living under the Kaiser’s thumb, but this palace is my home. I was born here, and I always imagined fighting to retake my mother’s throne and sending the Kalovaxians back to the desolate wasteland of their home country.

I took my first steps here. The thought of leaving my home behind is what I’ve wanted for ten years, but the idea of never coming back? That feels like a punch to the gut.

“You want to run?” I ask quietly.

Blaise flinches at the last word. He was raised in this palace, too, after all. Leaving it behind can’t be easy for him either, but he doesn’t back down. “This has never been a fight we could win, Theo. With Ampelio, there was a chance, but now…All the Guardians are dead. The forces Ampelio managed to gather scattered after he was captured, and they weren’t many to begin with. Maybe a thousand.”

“A thousand?” I repeat, my stomach sinking. I am shocked. “There are a hundred thousand Astreans.”

His eyes fall away from mine, looking instead at the stone floors. “There were a hundred thousand,” he corrects, grimacing. “The last numbers I heard put us closer to twenty.”

Twenty thousand. How is that possible? The siege took many lives, but could it have been so many? We are a mere fraction of what we were.

“Of those twenty thousand,” Blaise continues, ignoring my shock, “half are in the mines and unable to escape.”

That I know. The mines were heavily guarded before the Air Mine riot last week; I’m sure the Kaiser doubled the number of guards there since.

“But if you escaped, there must be a way,” I point out.

“I had Ampelio. We don’t,” he says, but doesn’t elaborate. “Of the other ten thousand, Dragonsbane smuggled about four thousand to other countries, which leaves six thousand in Astrea—maybe three thousand here in the capital. None of them have ever fought a day in their lives. Many are children who have never lived in a world not run by the Kaiser. They’ve never raised a weapon. One thousand were willing to try.”

I barely hear him. While I played the Kaiser’s games, eighty thousand of my people died. Every time the whip bit into my skin and I cursed my country and the people trying to save it, my people were slaughtered. While I’ve danced and gossiped with Cress, they went mad in the mines. While I’ve feasted at the table of my enemy, they starved.

The blood of eighty thousand people is on my hands. The thought turns me numb. Soon I will mourn them, and once I start I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop, but I can’t do it now. I force myself to think instead about the twenty thousand people who are still alive, people who have been waiting for ten years for someone to save them, just like me.

The time has come for little birds to fly, Ampelio said before he told me to kill him, to end his life to save my own. He can’t save us anymore, but someone has to.

“There are ten thousand in the mines,” I say when I can speak again. The words come out hoarse and desperate. “Ten thousand strong, furious Astreans who would be happy to fight, after everything they’ve endured.”

“And the Kaiser knows that, which is why the mines are even better guarded than the capital,” Blaise says, shaking his head. “It’s impossible.”

Impossible. The word ruffles me and I ignore it.

“But the thousand you mentioned,” I say. “We can get them back, can’t we? If we work together.”

He hesitates before shaking his head. “By the end of the week, every Astrean in the country will know that you were the one who killed Ampelio. They’ll have a hard time trusting you after that.”

The idea sickens me, but I’m sure the Kaiser anticipated that very response when he ordered me to kill Ampelio. Another way to cut me off from my people, by making them hate me as much as they hate him.

“We’ll explain it to them. They know the Kaiser by now, they know his games. We can change their minds,” I say, hoping it’s true.

“Even if we can, it won’t be enough. It’s still one thousand civilians against one hundred times as many trained Kalovaxian soldiers.”

I bite my bottom lip. “And Dragonsbane?” I press. “If he’s on our side, we can fight. He must have made allies in his travels, he must know people who can help.” Dragonsbane has been a burr in the Kaiser’s boot since the siege, attacking his ships, sinking several fortunes in Spiritgems he meant to sell, smuggling weapons to Astrean rebels.

But Blaise looks unconvinced. “Dragonsbane’s loyalty is to Dragonsbane.” He says it like he’s quoting words he’s heard too many times. “We’re on the same side now, but it’s best not to place too much faith there. I know it isn’t what you want to hear—it isn’t what I want to say either—but any hope of revolution died with Ampelio, and there wasn’t much hope to begin with. All we can do now is leave, Theo. I’m sorry.”

I’ve been dreaming of freedom every day since the siege, waiting and waiting and waiting for just this moment, when someone would take me as far away from this place as possible. I can have a new life on some faraway shore under an open sky, no Shadows watching, no having to worry about every word I say, every flicker of my expression. I would never have to see the Kaiser again, never feel the whip bite into my back, never have to bow at his feet. I would never again have to wonder if this would be the day he would finally break me beyond repair.