I shake my head, passing Artemisia her sword back before laying a hand on Heron’s shoulder. “I hope I serve you well,” I tell him.

Heron pulls me into an embrace, wrapping his arms around me. I bury my face in his chest and hold him tight, listening to his heart beat. Without any warning, he lifts me up, spinning me around until we are both laughing. When he sits down next to Erik again, he takes the bottle from Blaise and holds it up high.

“To Queen Theodosia,” he says, his voice clear.

“To Queen Theodosia,” the others echo, and the bottle makes another round before coming to S?ren last. I watch as he lifts the bottle to his lips and drinks deeply, finishing the last of the wine.

“What will you do when this is all over?” I ask him.

He lowers the bottle and meets my gaze. He considers the question for a moment before shrugging.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I think it depends on a lot of things. But I still have a debt to repay you and your people, Theo. I still have a lot to make up for.”

“When Astrea is ours again, I think you can consider your debt more than repaid,” I say.

“Hell, I considered it repaid after you managed to survive the Kaiserin’s torture,” Blaise says.

“Before that even,” Heron adds. “The Fire Mine. We couldn’t have taken that back without you.”

“Honestly, I considered our slate clean after we left Sta’Crivero,” Artemisia says. “I figured you had been punished enough by then.”

S?ren looks down at his lap, a smile tugging at his lips that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Thank you,” he says. “But I don’t think I’ll ever truly feel like I’ve made up for the hurt I’ve caused. I intend to keep trying until I do.”

CRESS WEARS A BLACK SILK gown with swirls of onyx beads that move over her body like plumes of smoke. Though it covers her from throat to wrists to ankles, her bone-white skin shows through in more places than not. It is the kind of thing she once would have mocked Dagm?r for wearing, but now she wears it as comfortably as if she were born in it.

She surveys me over the rim of a golden wine goblet, sitting in my mother’s throne with one leg crossed over the other, jewels ringing each of her fingers—each one set with Fire Gems of different shapes and sizes. There is a Fire Gem at her throat as well, set into a gold choker that doesn’t hide the charred skin of her neck but rather highlights it.

Slowly she lifts the wine goblet to her black lips and takes a sip.

“Oh,” she says, her voice almost bored. “There you are.”

Disinterested as she tries to sound, there is a hunger in her eyes so ferocious that I want to take a step back, though I force myself to hold my ground. I’m here for a reason, I remind myself. Cress has had her mother and a disguised Laius in her clutches for a few days now. I need to know where she’s gotten with them.

She doesn’t know I’m alive, I remind myself.

“Here I am,” I tell her, matching her tone. “What would you like to show me today? Your prisoners, perhaps? The mother who abandoned you, like I did?”

She flinches at that but she doesn’t rise to the bait. Still, there is nothing triumphant in her eyes, nothing gleeful. Instead her eyes are cold even as her mouth spreads into a wide smile. She gets to her feet.

“No. Tonight, we’re going to a party,” she says, lifting the skirt of her gown primly as she steps down from the dais and onto the marble floor.

I look down to see that I’m in a gown of my own—no longer the worn nightgown I wore to bed. This gown is an incandescent white, crafted from light chiffon, with tiny pearls sewn into the bodice in ornate floral designs. My shoulders are bare, but for the first time in my memory, I’m not aware of the scars on my back, though I know I should be. They aren’t there, I realize. There is no tightness, no twinge of pain. It just feels like skin.

Cress loops her arm through mine and tugs me out of the throne room, her skin hot.

“You’re late, of course, but only fashionably so,” she says as we wind through the palace hallways.

She’s leading me toward the ballroom, I realize. To the party being thrown there. But when she shoves open the door, the cavernous room is very nearly empty. Every other time I have been here, it has been overflowing with people in glittering gowns of every shade, twirling under the light of the chandelier. Now, though, I count only half a dozen other girls, all under the age of twenty, with a couple as young as eight, all dressed in black silk. All with the same charred throats, black lips, and white hair as Cress.

The sound of harp music floods the room, though I don’t see its source before Cress pulls me into a dance, taking both of my hands in hers and spinning me across the floor. As soon as we’re dancing, the other girls join in, an unending whirl of black silk unfurling across the dance floor. Except me—I am the only one dressed in white.

“It’s meant to be a somber occasion,” Cress tells me conversationally, her voice carrying over the music. “But Rigga did love dancing, so it seems appropriate, don’t you think?”

The name digs under my skin, but I force myself to keep my expression neutral as I search for something to say. The smell of fire and smoke is heavy in the air, making me cough.

“I can’t say I knew her very well,” I say when I recover, looking around the room for the source of the smoke, but there is no sign of fire. Something is wrong, something is off, yet I cannot put my finger on what it is. “But I remember how much she cared for you.”

She tilts her head, eyeing me thoughtfully, a small smile tugging at her lips. “Is that what you remember?” she asks. “I would have thought that watching her die after you poisoned her would have left far more of an impression.”

She says the words casually enough, but ice slides down my spine. I try to pull away from her, but she holds my hands fast, so tightly that I feel my bones strain beneath her grip. The other girls have stopped dancing. They form a circle around us, watching with hungry eyes and black-lipped snarls. Gone are the pretty, giggling court ladies I remember from the palace—now they are feral beasts, watching and waiting to pounce. The smell of smoke grows stronger, making my eyes water.

I look back at Cress, who is still calm and smiling like nothing is wrong.

“Cress—” I start, but she doesn’t let me finish.

“I know that I will never forget feeling the life leave her body, even miles and miles away. I felt it as soon as she slipped into unconsciousness, saw your face in her mind’s eye, watching her die. You looked so satisfied, so relieved, so alive. Is that how you looked when you thought you’d killed me?” she asks.

“No,” I manage to get out. “I don’t know what you think you saw—”

“Shh,” she says, releasing one of my hands to bring a finger to my lips. Her smile grows broader, showing her teeth. I half expect them to have grown into fangs, but they haven’t. “No more lying, Thora. It’s unbecoming.”

I see only the brief flash of silver slide from the sleeve of her gown before she sinks the blade into my stomach, up to the hilt. I look down to see it protruding from me, the white silk gown blossoming with dark crimson, which spreads farther with each passing second.

A scream pierces the air, and I know, distantly, that it’s my own, but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything but the pain flooding through every inch of my body, yet the sound only makes her smile wider. She pulls me close, pushing the dagger even deeper into my stomach as she leans in to my ear. The smell is coming from her, I realize. She smells like fire, like smoke, like burning wood and burning flesh.

“I’ll see you again soon, Thora,” she whispers, her voice soft and delicate. She twists the knife. “In the meantime, I hope you enjoy my little surprise.”

Then she kisses my cheek and releases me altogether, pulling the dagger from my stomach and letting me fall to the cold marble floor in a heap of bloodstained white silk.

* * *

—

I wake up with a gasp, the sharp pain of Cress’s dagger still as excruciating as it was in my dream, the smell of smoke still thick in my lungs. I cough, sitting up and grabbing my stomach, only to feel a new wave of pain. My fingers come away sticky and wet, stained a bright red that is visible even in the pitch-dark.

It takes my brain a few seconds to drag itself from the tendrils of my dream enough to realize that I am awake, I am miles and miles away from Cress, but the wound she created is very real.

The scream that rips its way out of my throat is not entirely human, not entirely mine. I fall back onto my bedroll, clutching my stomach.

In seconds, the others are awake and alert and gathered around me, all panicked words and hands touching the wound, but I barely hear them. The agony is unbearable, made worse with every breath, every touch.

“It’s deep,” one voice says. Heron. “But not fatal. I can fix it.”