Ash Princess (Ash Princess Trilogy #1)(4)
“You requested my presence, Your Highness?” I ask, dropping into a curtsy so deep I am almost flat against the ground. Even after a decade, my bones still protest the posture. My body remembers—even when the rest of me forgets—that I am not made for curtsying.
Before the Kaiser can answer, a guttural cry shatters the still air. When I rise, I notice a man standing to the left of the throne, held in place between two guards. Rusted chains are wrapped around his gaunt legs, arms, and neck so tightly they cut through his skin. His clothes are tattered and blood-drenched and his face is a mottled mess of broken bones and torn skin. Beneath the blood, he’s clearly Astrean, with tawny skin, black hair, and deep-set eyes. He looks much older than me, though it’s impossible to say exactly how old he is with all the damage that’s been done to him.
He is a stranger. But his dark eyes search mine as if he knows me, imploring, begging, and I rake through my memories—who could this be and what does he want from me? I have nothing for him. Nothing left for anyone. Then the world shifts beneath my feet.
I remember those eyes from another lifetime, set in a gentle face a decade younger and unbloodied. Memories surge forward, even as I try to press them down.
I remember him standing at my mother’s side, whispering something in her ear to make her laugh. I remember his arms coming around me as he lifted me up in the air so I could pick an orange from a tree; I remember how he smiled at me like we shared a secret.
I push back those thoughts and focus instead on the broken man standing before me.
There is one man always mentioned in connection with the rebellions. One man who has a hand in every move made against the Kaiser. One man whose name alone is enough to send the Kaiser into a wild-eyed rage that leaves me whipped so hard I have to stay in bed for days. One man whose acts of defiance have caused me so much pain, but who has been my one spark of hope when I dare let myself imagine there is an after to these infernal years.
No wonder the Kaiser is so happy. He’s finally caught the last of Astrea’s Guardians, and my mother’s closest guard. Ampelio.
“My Queen,” he says. His voice carries so that everyone gathered in the silent throne room hears his treason.
I shrink back from his words. No, no, no, I want to tell him. I am no one’s queen. I am Lady Thora, Princess of Ashes. I am no one.
It takes me a moment to realize he’s speaking Astrean, speaking forbidden words once used to address my mother. My mother. In another life, I was another girl. Another kind of princess. That girl was told that one day she would be queen, but she never wanted that to be true. After all, being queen meant living in a world where her mother no longer existed, and that had been unfathomable.
But that girl died a decade ago; there is no help for her now.
The man lurches, weighed down by his chains. He’s too weak to make it to the door, but he doesn’t even try for it. Instead, he topples to the ground at my feet, fingers grasping the hem of my dress and staining the pale yellow silk red.
No. Please. Part of me wants to drag him up and tell him he’s mistaken. Another part wants to shrink away from him because this is such a lovely dress and he’s getting blood on it. And yet another wants to scream at him that his words are going to ruin us both, but at least he will have the mercy of death.
“He refused to speak to anyone but you,” Kaiser Corbinian says in an acid voice.
“Me?” My heart is beating so hard in my chest that I’m surprised the whole court can’t hear it. Every eye in the room is on me; everyone is waiting for me to slip, desperate for the slightest hint of rebellion so that they can watch the Kaiser beat it out of me again. I will not give it to them.
I will not anger the Kaiser and he will keep me alive. I repeat the mantra to myself again and again, but the words have grown limp.
The Kaiser leans forward on his throne, eyes bright. I’ve seen that look too often before; it haunts my nightmares. He is a shark that has caught the scent of blood in the water. “Don’t you know him?”
This is the Kaiser’s favorite kind of question to ask. The kind without a right answer.
I look back at the man, as if struggling to place him, even as his name screams through my mind. More memories come and I force them back. The Kaiser is watching me carefully, waiting for any sign that I am not under his thumb. But I can’t look away from this man’s eyes.
In that other life, I loved him.
He was my mother’s most trusted Guardian and, according to just about everyone, my blood father—though even my mother couldn’t say that for certain.
I remember searching his face for similarities to my own after I heard the rumor for the first time, but I found nothing conclusive. His nose had the same slope, and his hair curled around his ears in the same way mine did, but I looked far too much like my mother to be sure of anything. That was before, though, when my eyes were childishly wide and shapeless, impossible to place on my mother’s face or anyone else’s. Now the resemblance is so clear it hits me like a knife to my gut.
As a Guardian, he would travel often to keep the country safe with his fire magic, but he always returned with sweets and toys and new stories for me. I often fell asleep on his lap, my hand clutching the Fire Gem that always hung around his neck. Its magic would buzz through me like a lullaby, singing me to sleep.
When my mother died and the world I knew turned to dust, I waited for him to save me. That hope waned with every Guardian’s head the Kaiser had piked in the square, but it never disappeared. I still heard whispers about Ampelio’s rebellions, and those kept my hope alive, even after all the other Guardians fell. Few and far between as they were, I clung to them. As long as he was out there, as long as he was fighting, I knew he would save me. I never let myself imagine, even in my worst nightmares, that I would see him like this.