Lady Smoke (Ash Princess Trilogy #2)(10)

He crushes one corner of the hardtack into crumbs beneath his thumb, eyes unfocused and narrow.

“The symptoms started slowly, but we both knew what they meant. His skin was hot to the touch, like he was always running a fever, and he slept less and less until he finally stopped altogether. We never talked about it, not in so many words, but we hid it as best we could from the guards. We managed for a while, but there’s no hiding mine madness forever.”

So the weight on his shoulders isn’t about Elpis, then. I lean toward him.

“Did they kill him on the spot?” I ask, hoping they did. At least then it would have been a quick death, a less painful one. A mercy killing, though I know the Kalovaxians aren’t capable of mercy.

But Heron shakes his head, swallowing. “They took him away. For his execution, they said. But now we know that might not have been true.”

My stomach sours. It’s possible they sent him into battle as a berserker, but there are even worse fates than that. There were experiments—I’d seen them myself, performed on the last three of my mother’s Guardians, kept in the palace dungeons for a decade. Blood had been drawn, fingers amputated, skin sliced open. It’s possible that happened to Leonidas, but I will never tell Heron that.

He continues. “I fought the guards when they took him away. I knocked one unconscious, even. So they threw me in the submine,” he says, shuddering. “I hope you never see such a place, but it haunts my nightmares. There was crusted blood on the walls, and I knew some of it must have belonged to my sister, Imogen. And the smell—sulfur and rot so pungent you never get used to it. When they brought others down there, their screams would pierce the walls of the cave, but I never screamed. I curled up and waited to die.

“I had nothing left,” he tells me, leaning across the table to take my hands in his much larger ones. His expression is strange, not horrified or sad, the way I’d expect him to look. Instead, he is alight with hope for the first time since I met him. “That was when the gods blessed me, when Ozam gave me his gift. I’d thought it was a gift so that I could get revenge, but what if it’s so I can save him?”

“You think Leonidas might be alive,” I realize.

“It’s possible.” His grip on my hands tightens. “I never felt like he was really dead. It never felt real. I know I would have felt it if he were dead.”

Part of me wants to tell him that isn’t necessarily true. Part of me wants to tell him that sometimes I still don’t feel like my mother’s really dead, even though I saw her die with my own eyes. A feeling isn’t proof. But I can’t bear to kill the scrap of hope he’s found, though I don’t want that scrap of hope to destroy him when it leads to nothing either.

“Most people with mine madness don’t live longer than a few weeks,” I point out carefully.

“I know,” he says quickly before giving me a heavy look. “But we both know it’s possible to survive much longer.”

I shake my head. It isn’t that I’m surprised Heron has seen Blaise’s symptoms—he’s suspected mine madness, I’d assume—but it still has the weight of a secret, and one I’m not keen on talking about with anyone. Not even Heron.

“It’s possible, that’s all I’m saying,” Heron says. His grip on my hands has gotten so tight I can’t feel my fingers anymore.

“It’s possible,” I agree gently. “But I’m not sure what we can do about it, Heron.”

He’s quiet for a moment, and I can tell he’s trying to figure out the right words. “S?ren might know something. About mine madness and bersekers. About what might have happened.”

I shake my head. “He used berserkers, but I don’t think he knew much about them. He was following orders.”

“It’s possible, though,” he says, his voice turning more desperate.

I shake my head. “It isn’t a good idea for me to talk to him, Heron,” I say. “But if you ask—”

“I tried. He won’t talk to me,” he says. It feels like someone dropped cold water down my back. Heron has visited S?ren? Ignoring my surprise, he continues. “One of his guards told me that he hasn’t said a word since we brought him aboard.”

“He’s being held hostage,” I say. “That doesn’t usually make people like S?ren very chatty. I doubt he’ll talk to me either.”

Heron looks at me like he can see through straight to my deepest thoughts.

“He’ll talk to you,” he says. “Please. I know it might be a dead end, I know that chances are Leo is already in the After, calling me a fool right now, but if he isn’t—if there’s even the slightest chance that he’s still out there—I need to know. If anyone can understand that, you can.”

My mother is never far from my thoughts, but now she overwhelms them and I can’t help thinking about what might have happened if I hadn’t seen her killed with my own eyes, if I hadn’t felt her hand around mine go limp as the life left her. If there was a sliver of a chance that she was still alive, what would I do to find her?

The answer is simple: there is nothing I wouldn’t do.

“We’ll visit him tonight,” I tell Heron.



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