Lady Smoke (Ash Princess Trilogy #2)(125)

My stomach lurches at the sight of it. Encatrio, the same poison I used on her and her father.

“Where did you get that?” I ask, my voice barely louder than a whisper.

She shrugs. “After what it did to me, it wasn’t difficult to figure out that it must have come from the Fire Mine. From there, it was a matter of asking the right questions and making people more inclined to talk.”

“You tortured them,” I say, my voice cracking. Monstrous indeed, but I started her down that path, didn’t I? I shaped her into this.

Cress rolls her eyes. “I wouldn’t have had to if they’d just told me what I needed to know.” Uncorking the poison, she pours a few drops into the goblet. “That should do,” she says, though I think she’s mostly speaking to herself. She pours the wine next, filling the goblet up halfway and swirling the drink around. Picking the goblet up, she comes toward me and I have to force myself to hold my ground.

S?ren steps in front of me. “What are you doing with that?” he asks, alarmed.

Cress only smiles at him. “I promise I won’t pour it down her throat. I’m only offering it to her—she’ll drink it herself, every drop.”

“And why would I do that?” I ask, my voice shaking.

“Because if you do, I’ll order my armies to retreat. You can keep the mine, you can keep the slaves you liberated—well, you can’t, because you’ll be dead, but your people will live.”

“We’re already living,” S?ren says. “The battle isn’t over.”

“Not yet,” Cress says, eyes darting to him only briefly. “But it will be soon enough. It doesn’t matter that you have more men. They’re untrained, they’re weak. They don’t have Spiritgems. Even if you do somehow manage to win this one battle, your army would be decimated and you would only hold the mine long enough for me to fetch more troops. We would return in a week and crush what was left of your army like a bug beneath a shoe.” She pauses, smiling at me. Unlike in my nightmares, her teeth aren’t pointed, but her expression is every bit as feral anyway. “It’s a simple exchange, Thora. Your death, or your people’s.”

I stare at her, paralyzed. It feels like a sick joke, but there is nothing funny about it. She’s serious. She’s offering me death and calling it a mercy, and she isn’t even wrong in that. If the Kaiser hadn’t shown up with reinforcements, we would have kept enough of our army to travel to another mine and wage another battle there, but Cress is right—even if we win this battle, the number of casualties would be too high. It would be our first and last stand.

But if I drink the poison, there would be hope. I’m not foolish enough to believe that Cress would let my army keep the Fire Mine for long, but it would be long enough to make another plan, to find another way to fight. I trust that in my absence, Artemisia, Heron, Erik, and Blaise would keep fighting. They don’t need me—Artemisia said so herself back at the Astrean palace. If I fall, the rebellion will keep going.

I have to believe that.

I hold Cress’s gaze and step around S?ren, taking the goblet from her. For an instant, our fingers touch. I expect hers to be hot, but they feel like mine.

“Theo, no,” S?ren says, pleading. “There are other ways.”

“No,” I say, not taking my eyes off Cress. “There aren’t.”

It may not kill me, I think, a feverishly desperate thought. It didn’t kill Cress, after all. Houzzah’s blood burns through my veins, I’ve seen the proof of that. But it seems even more likely that what fire I do already have will be amplified by the Encatrio, that, as Mina put it, my pot will overflow.

I should trust my gods, I should believe that they wouldn’t let that happen, that they would protect me. But they didn’t protect Blaise. They didn’t protect my mother or Ampelio or Elpis or Astrea as a whole. I can’t bring myself to believe they will protect me now.

I lift the goblet to my lips, but I pause before drinking. “Cress,” I say. Just one word. Just her name.

Something flickers in her expression, and for a brief, fleeting moment I think I’ve reached through to some part of her I thought was lost. She smiles at me the same way she did once, when we were just two silly girls sharing gossip. But that smile turns hungry.

“Drink,” she says.

I take S?ren’s hand in mine because I don’t want to die alone, and then I tilt the goblet back and drink.

The first gulp is hot, but bearably so. The ones that follow scald. I drink so quickly that wine trickles down from the corners of my mouth, singeing the skin there, but I don’t stop. I drink until it is all gone.

The burning starts in my throat, a pain so sharp that it brings me to my knees, banishing all other thoughts from my mind. I don’t care where I am anymore, or whose hand I’m holding, or anything that exists outside of my own body. The pain spreads, racking through me until I am shaking, the ground like ice beneath me. Arms come around me, holding me tight, but all too quickly those arms are gone and the only comfort I have left is yanked away.

A scream pierces the air, but it isn’t mine. It can’t be mine because I can’t even open my mouth.

A door opens, figures rush in, too blurry to recognize.

More yelling. Panic. The comfort is dragged away, kicking and shouting the whole time. Even after I can’t see him, I still hear him. Calling my name. Calling for Theodosia.