Lady Smoke (Ash Princess Trilogy #2)(97)

The doors finally open on the Gorakians’ floor and I don’t even thank the riser operator before bolting down the already bustling hallway. Sta’Criveran courtiers in their bright clothes are milling about, speculating about what might have happened. As I run past, I hear only snippets.

Such a tragedy.

After all they’ve been through, they really are cursed.

The boy was too close to Queen Theodosia.

Maybe she’s cursed, too.

No, no, no, my mind screams, ignoring those voices as I hurry toward Erik’s room. Just when the door is in sight, a hand comes down on my arm.

“Theo,” Dragonsbane says, her voice low in my ear. “Come, you don’t want to make a scene.”

Though the words are sharp, there is an undercurrent of something else in her voice that I can’t put a name to, though distantly I think it might be something akin to kindness.

There are a thousand things I want to say to her about our last conversation, but none of that matters now. No words matter now. I yank my arm out of her grip and pick up my pace until I’m running, weaving around Sta’Criveran courtiers and ignoring her calling my name.

I don’t stop until I’m at the entrance of Erik’s room, where two guards are standing at attention, keeping the gawkers from getting too close. When I finally stop in front of them, they exchange uncertain looks.

“Let me in,” I tell them.

“Queen Theodosia, the King gave specific instructions that you aren’t—” one of the guards starts, but I don’t wait for him to finish. I take them by surprise and push in between them, forcing my way into the room, only to find no sign of Erik at all.

Instead, it is Hoa, lying on the ground next to a table holding a bowl of grapes. Her body is twisted at an awkward angle, with a cluster of grapes lying discarded next to her open right hand. Her face is twisted the other way, staring at me with glassy eyes that see nothing and a trickle of black blood dripping from the corner of her open mouth.

I stumble back a step, bringing my hand up to my own mouth. I’m going to be sick. I’m going to fall to pieces. I don’t know how I’ll put myself together again. Not this time.

Suddenly, I’m seven and she holds me while the Kaiser has my mother’s garden burned. I’m eight, waking up from another nightmare in which I watch the Theyn kill my mother. I wake up crying, but Hoa is there with a glass of water and a handkerchief—the only comfort she could provide with my Shadows watching. I’m nine, ten, eleven, onward, and she’s tenderly applying ointment and bandages to welts from my punishments. For a decade, Hoa lingered in the periphery of my life, but there is no doubt that she kept me alive in the only way she was able to.

And I couldn’t do the same for her.

I don’t realize I’m on the ground sobbing until strong arms lift me up and I find myself crying into a cotton shirt. I’m carried out of the room, away from Hoa, and I want to scream, to make this person put me down so I can go back to her, so I can stay with her just as she always stayed with me, but the words die in my throat, drowned out by more tears than I knew I had left in me.

Blaise carries me back to my room. Some part of me knows that he shouldn’t be here, that it’s dangerous, but he is and that is all I care about right now. Nothing exists outside my tears and the image of Hoa burned into my mind’s eye. I don’t care why he’s here, or how hot his skin is, as long as he keeps holding me. I can’t make myself stop crying, no matter how I try to force my breathing to slow.

He sets me down onto unsteady legs, but he keeps an arm around my shoulders.

“Someone should slap her,” I hear Artemisia say, not unkindly. “She’s going to pass out if she keeps breathing like that.”

There’s a sigh that sounds an awful lot like Heron’s, and sure enough, he steps in front of me, filling my entire frame of vision. He looks torn and for a second I worry he’s actually going to follow Artemisia’s advice.

“No,” Blaise says, looking toward him in alarm. “Heron, don’t you dare—”

“She’s going to hurt herself worse if you don’t,” Artemisia says. “Do it now.”

Heron looks between them, eyes wide, before finally looking to me. He steels himself before taking a step toward me. Blaise moves to stand between us, but Artemisia takes him by surprise, tackling him to the ground.

Then Heron gently touches my hand and everything goes black.



* * *



—

I wake up in my bed, swaddled underneath the covers, and for a blissful moment I forget what happened before. For a moment, Hoa is still alive. But then that moment ends and I want to burrow farther under the covers and sink into a deep, forgetting sleep once more.

“Are you all right?” Blaise’s voice interrupts my thoughts, quiet and wary. I look around the moonlit room to find him watching me from the sofa. Heron is fast asleep on the floor and Artemisia is on the other side of the bed, her back to me.

I force myself to sit up. It feels like someone knocked me over the head with a boulder, and my whole body is throbbing. My mouth feels like I swallowed cotton.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I say, ignoring his question. It’s a stupid one anyway—how can I possibly be all right?

He shakes his head, getting up from the sofa and coming to my side of the bed, crouching down beside me and speaking low. “I gave Art my gems for safekeeping. Just until I leave again tomorrow,” he says. “I was getting food in town when I heard the news. I thought…I don’t know what I thought.”