“Don’t talk about my mother!” I don’t realize I’ve shouted until I see the look of surprise on her face and her eyes dart warily to the door. “My mother was fifty times the person you are,” I continue, careful to keep my voice low.

She looks at me for a long moment before letting out a sharp bark of laughter and crossing to the wine cabinet. She spends a quiet moment picking out a bottle and uncorking it and pouring herself a glass, filled nearly to the brim. She takes a long swig, draining nearly a quarter of it, then looks back at me.

“You aren’t the first person to say that, you know,” she says. “Maybe not fifty times, exactly, that’s a bit dramatic, but the same sort of thing. ‘Stand straighter, like Eirene.’ ‘Smile like Eirene.’ ‘Why can’t you be more like Eirene?’ I don’t think a day went by when I didn’t hear it at least once. It got to be where the sound of her name felt like someone was hammering a nail into the base of my skull.”

She pauses to take another drink, but I’ve heard enough.

“It wasn’t her fault you were jealous,” I say.

But that only makes her laugh again. “Of course I was jealous. But no more so than she was of me. ‘Kallistrade,’ she’d say, ‘you’re so lucky you don’t have to take decorum lessons.’ And ‘I wish I didn’t have to get up at sunrise to greet the Guardians with mother.’ And ‘Why can’t I spend the afternoon riding horses like you do?’ She asked me to switch places with her often enough, but I never wanted to. I didn’t want to be crown princess any more than she did.”

“That’s a lie,” I say. “My mother loved being Queen.”

Dragonsbane shrugs. “I wouldn’t know about that,” she says. “I left before she was crowned and I never went back, but she certainly didn’t care for the training.” She takes another drink, a smaller one this time, before looking at me thoughtfully. “You’re lucky that you didn’t really know her.”

Her words feel like cold water down my back. “Did you just say that I’m lucky my mother died?”

“I didn’t say that,” Dragonsbane says, rolling her eyes. “But it’s nice, in a way, to have her preserved so purely in your memory—a perfect mother and a perfect queen, brilliant and kind and valiant. She’s practically a goddess in your mind, isn’t she? I suppose all girls must feel that way about their mothers at one point. There’s always a moment, though, when that illusion of perfection shatters and you realize that your mother is just a person, same as you, flawed, with her own vices and blind spots. You’ll never have that epiphany, and yes, I do think you’re lucky for that. In a way.”

For an instant, she looks so heartbroken that I’m not sure whether to slap her or apologize, but as quickly as that sliver of vulnerability appears, it’s gone once more, sealed away behind her hard, impenetrable eyes.

“Your mother was a fine queen, from what I heard,” she says. “She did her duties without complaint and she was well liked, but she will always be the queen who lost Astrea.”

“That wasn’t her fault,” I protest. “She couldn’t have known the Kalovaxians were coming.”

For the first time, Dragonsbane falters, hesitating just long enough that I can see a choice weighing behind her eyes, before she steels herself.

“She did,” she says slowly. “I sent her a letter months before the attack, warning her that they were coming.”

“You’re lying,” I say, but my stomach sinks. I don’t want to hear this, but I can’t bring myself to walk away either.

She ignores me and continues. “She called me a liar,” she says. “Said I was an embarrassment, sailing around and calling myself a pirate.”

I have a bevy of insults I want to throw at her, denials that I’m aching to say, but none of them makes it to my lips. I have to remind myself to breathe.

After a moment, her expression softens just a touch. “Perhaps I should have let you go the rest of your life with that pure, uncorrupted view of her in your mind.”

“I don’t believe you,” I say, even though a small part of me does. She has no reason to lie about it, after all.

Dragonsbane takes another drink. “I loved my sister fiercely, all illusions to the contrary aside. She was my complete opposite, and also the other half of me. But she was a flawed woman.”

She pauses, finishing off her wine before looking at me with clear eyes, frightening in their ferocity. I don’t let myself flinch away from her.

“Your mother was a mediocre queen,” Dragonsbane says quietly. “You could be a great one. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be here. But it isn’t something that will come easily. It will not come fairly. It will not come without sacrifices and I’m tired of being treated like your enemy for pointing that out. If you won’t give up everything for Astrea—your pride, your independence, your friends—you will never take her back.”

When I say nothing, she sets her empty glass down on the credenza and walks toward the door. Hand on the knob, she pauses.

“All humans make mistakes, and your mother was no exception. She loved you dearly and she loved Astrea, and I believe she thought she was doing the right thing. She was human, no more and no less.”

FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE leaving Astrea, my dreams aren’t haunted by Cress’s ashen face. Instead, I see my mother, but not as I remember her. I see her as she would be now, with the same creases around her eyes and mouth that Dragonsbane has. Her hair isn’t the same vibrant auburn that it used to be, though it hasn’t turned gray. It’s simply faded, pulled over her shoulder in a single long braid. On top of her head is her crown, only it isn’t really her crown at all—it’s one of the ash crowns the Kaiser used to make me wear. Though she sits still, ash flakes down onto her white chiton.

She looks at me with sad, heavy eyes, but when she speaks it’s with Dragonsbane’s voice.

“I’m sorry,” she says. I wait for her to say more, to explain to me why she ignored her sister’s warning and let the Kalovaxians take us, how—with one decision—she let Astrea fall to ruin. How she so easily handed me over to a man who made my life a terror for a decade.

But it’s only a dream and she can’t have answers that I don’t already know, so all she does is apologize and apologize and apologize until I finally wake up, my mouth tasting of ash.

The sky outside my window is still dark, lit only by stars and a sliver of a moon, but I know I won’t be able to sleep again tonight. My mind is still whirring, repeating Dragonsbane’s words about my mother over and over again.

Artemisia is fast asleep on the other side of the bed—though it’s so big she doesn’t even stir when I slip out, carefully tiptoeing around Heron’s large form that doesn’t quite fit on the sofa. He refused both Art and me when we offered to switch with him. Blaise must have gotten restless and gone back to his own room at some point.

I remember falling asleep with all of them around me. There was never a conversation about whether or not they should stay. Whoever is actually working for the Kaiser is still on the loose and I don’t think any of us trust the Sta’Criveran guards.

I should wake one of them up—especially since someone tried to kill me last night—but it doesn’t seem right to force them up at this hour just because I can’t sleep.

Besides, I don’t want any of them with me when I visit S?ren.

Quietly as I can, I pull on a dressing gown and take my dagger from its place on my bedside table, wedging it between the gown and the sash around my waist. I step into the slippers next to my bed and tiptoe out the door, closing it behind me with barely more noise than an exhale.

Still, even with my dagger, I shouldn’t go alone—especially since I doubt I could do much more with it than wave it around and try to look menacing. Even just walking down the hallway, I find myself on edge, glancing behind me every few minutes as if another assassin is going to spring from the shadows. One very well could.

This was a stupid idea, but even as I acknowledge that fact, I can’t bring myself to turn around. I make it to the riser and step inside, relieved to be near another person.

As far as I know, he could be an assassin. If he is, though, he’s in no hurry. He stares at me blankly, waiting for a destination.

“Fifteen, please,” I say, naming the floor Erik directed me to before, where the Gorakian delegation has been housed.

He nods curtly and begins to crank, sending us gliding down. As smooth as the journey is, I still can’t help but grip the bars of the riser wall behind me. No matter how many times I do this, I don’t think I’ll ever grow used to it. Luckily, it’s only a moment before we pull to a sharp stop and he opens the door.