Lady Smoke (Ash Princess Trilogy #2)(60)

She must hear me come in but she doesn’t look up, her eyes fixed on the empty fireplace as if she expects a fire to spark to life at any moment.

“Hoa,” I say carefully. Though I know she’s actually here before me, she feels ephemeral and I half expect her to disappear if I spook her.

She doesn’t. Instead, she turns to look at me. Though she’s not yet forty, she looks so much older, as if a dozen lives have been sucked out of her. The Kaiserin had the same look about her before she died. I suppose the Kaiser has a way of doing that to women, draining them.

It’s Hoa’s smile that breaks me, because I’ve never seen it. I don’t think she was capable of it when her mouth was stitched shut, and even if she had been, there wasn’t much for her to smile about. It’s a shame, because her smile is bright enough to clear the sky during a storm.

“My Phiren,” she murmurs, getting to her feet.

The word is strange, but I barely hear it. My body is frozen, even when she crosses to me and puts her hands on either side of my face. She kisses one of my cheeks, then the other.

It occurs to me that I never expected to see her again. In my mind, she is a ghost, already dead and buried. Only she isn’t—she’s here, flesh and bone, and I don’t know what to say to her.

“I hate this language,” she tells me in Kalovaxian. “It tastes like funeral dirt in my mouth, but it is the only one we share, isn’t it?”

“You shouldn’t have come here,” I say. “You should have gone far away, somewhere the Kaiser won’t find you.”

She raises her thread-thin eyebrows. “If it is safe enough for you, it is safe enough for me.”

“And if it isn’t safe for me?” I ask. “The Kaiser has offered an enticing reward for my death or return to him. King Etristo has promised me safety, but I’m not foolish enough to believe that such a promise is a guarantee. You can go somewhere else, somewhere the Kaiser will never look.”

Hoa is quiet for a moment. “Fear gives monsters power,” she says finally. “I am not afraid of him; he does not get that power over me. Not anymore, my Phiren.”

I frown. It’s the second time she’s used this word that I do not know. Erik said that she was difficult to understand at times. Maybe I’m not hearing her correctly.

“Phiren,” I repeat, trying to make sense of it.

She laughs, a full throaty sound that is somehow prettier for its roughness.

“It is what I’ve always called you in my mind,” she explains. “I forget that you never heard me. I had so many conversations with you over those years, but you never heard any of them.”

She leads me back to the seating area and sits down on the sofa, pulling me down next to her.

“In Goraki, there is a legend of a bird made of fire,” she says. “It never dies, the Phiren. First, it is made of embers, glowing bright and new before they burst into flames. The Phiren burns brightly for many years, but no fire burns forever—it is smothered into a bird of smoke, wispy and dark. It stays like that for a stretch of time—sometimes centuries even—but the day always comes when an ember within it sparks and its life begins anew.”

“Is it a real bird?” I ask.

She laughs. “That I cannot say,” she admits. “It’s a story we tell children to keep them occupied. ‘Look for the Phiren while the adults talk about adult things—if you spy it you get a wish!’ Or a way to explain away bad weather or a poor showing of crops. We would say that the Phiren had molted into smoke but it would turn to flame again soon and Goraki’s luck would turn with it. Sometimes people would claim they’d seen it, but I think most don’t believe it to be more than a myth.”

She pauses, regarding me thoughtfully. “Still, you reminded me of the legend. With your bright eyes and crown of ashes and Fire Queen mother. Lady Thora, everyone called you, but I thought of you as Lady Smoke. I knew it would only be a matter of time before your ember sparked again, until you once more burned bright enough to escape him.”

The lump in my throat swells and tears sting at my eyes.

“Sometimes I felt like I hated you,” I admit. “I wanted you to do something, to help me, to save me. I don’t think I realized just how much of a prisoner you were as well. Until Erik told me, I didn’t realize the Kaiser had…” I trail off, unable to say it. She understands what I mean, though.

“That I’d shared his bed,” she says before shaking her head. “No, that isn’t right. That sounds like I had a choice in it, though I suppose you understand what I mean better than most.”

“He didn’t touch me,” I tell her. “Not like that.”

She lets out a slow breath. “I will always be grateful for that,” she says. “I dreaded the day that would happen. I like to think I would have stopped it somehow, that I would have found a way to get you out before then, but I’m not sure that’s true. There was no way out for us, not until you cut the path yourself.”

She rests a hand on top of mine and squeezes. Her fingers are all bone, like the Kaiserin’s were, but Hoa’s are warm to the touch. She is alive and I am alive, and sometimes the Kaiserin is right and that is enough.

“I’m proud of you, my Phiren. You may be just brave—and just foolish—enough to triumph.”