I do, but Amiza doesn’t. I shake my head, and Cress smiles grimly.

“It’s a fire potion, brought from the deepest parts of the Fire Mine. Scentless. Tasteless. As soon as it touches your lips, though, it begins to burn its way through you, down your throat, into your belly. It burns you alive from the inside out. I saw it happen to my father—it killed him in a matter of minutes, but those minutes were agony. I never thought I would see my father cry, but he sobbed like an infant, voicelessly begging for mercy. I couldn’t cry at all. I felt the pain of it, the burning, but unlike with my father, my agony didn’t end after a few minutes. It stretched on for hours, and I kept hoping—begging—for death to save me from it. Yet death had other plans for me, and when the pain finally did subside, the poison had left me quite changed.”

“That does sound gruesome,” I say, barely trusting myself to speak. “I’m very sorry that you had to endure such misery.”

For a long moment, Cress doesn’t say anything. She takes another sip of her wine before replacing the goblet on the table with a thud that echoes throughout the room.

“I’m not,” she says finally. “You see, I used to be like you, Amiza—may I call you Amiza?” I nod, and she continues. “I thought power was something that could be attained through marrying the right man, through impressing the right people. Through being liked. No one likes me now.”

“I’m sure that’s not true—”

“Oh, it doesn’t bother me,” she says with a hard laugh. “I suppose it did, once, but not anymore. Because I realized that power—real power—isn’t attained through winning the approval of others. The only kind of power that matters is when you’re the one doing the approving, making the decisions. The kind of power that comes from being feared, not liked. You understand, though, don’t you?”

I nod because there is nothing else to do or say.

“It’s a shame about your father-in-law’s health,” Cress says, leaning back in her chair and surveying me. “But it’s a shame, too, that when he is gone your husband will be the one who will rule in his place and you will only be queen consort—a role without any power at all.”

There is something dangerous hiding under her words that I cannot quite place. Something Amiza would not hear at all because she doesn’t know Cress as I do. She does not know the focused look Cress gets when a thought takes root in her mind.

“I don’t mind,” I say, forcing a smile.

“Of course you do,” Cress says, reaching across the table to take hold of my hand, her skin still warm but lifeless. “You can’t tell me that you don’t want to rule in your own name, as a true queen instead of a mere vessel for future princes and princesses.”

I bite my lip, aware of my heart beating rapidly in my chest. Tell her what she wants to hear, I think.

“And if I did want that?”

Cress’s smile broadens. “Then I think you and I could help one another. I think that we could be true allies—beyond this farce of a truce. Let’s not pretend, between you and me, Amiza. King Etristo has no plans of keeping this alliance for more than a few months. As soon as the rebels have been subdued, he will try to take advantage of the fact that the Kalovaxians have—to his way of thinking—a weak ruler. He will try to take my throne from me, and with it Astrea’s magic.”

I don’t know how much of her rambling is founded on facts and how much is sheer paranoia. It sounds ludicrous. King Etristo is greedy, it’s true, and he underestimates women in all of their forms, but he doesn’t know the first thing about waging war, and he is too lazy to try.

It doesn’t matter, though, what is true and what is Cress’s imagining. All that matters is that Amiza tells Cress what she wants to hear.

“I believe that we could arrange that,” I say slowly. “What would you need from me?”

Cress draws a vial from the pocket of her gown. Encatrio. My breath catches as the pieces of her plan come into focus.

“I need for you to take the power you so desperately want,” she says. “Even if it costs you dearly.”

“What is it?” I say aloud because Amiza has never seen the poison before.

Cress slides the vial across the table toward me.

“Encatrio,” she says, as easily as she might say honey or water.

“You want me to kill Etristo?” I ask, hoping that playing dumb will buy me time.

“I want you to drink it,” she says.

“But—but that will kill me,” I stutter.

Cress shrugs. “Perhaps. It isn’t pure Encatrio—that has become elusive these days, so it’s diluted a bit. Less lethal. Most of the time, at least.”

Diluted with her own blood, I think, with a nauseous lurch of my stomach.

She continues, oblivious to my discomfort. “It’s a risk, yes, but isn’t the risk worth it? For that kind of power?”

She pushes the vial closer toward me.

“Now?” I ask, casting my eyes around the room desperately, searching for something—anything—that will give me a reason not to once more find myself drinking Encatrio forced upon me by Cress. This time, it will kill me. I know that with a crushing certainty.

“I need to know that I can trust you, Amiza,” Cress says, her voice level. “So now it is. We’ll tell your husband you aren’t feeling well, that your journey home will be postponed for a day. And if it does go poorly, I’ll blame the poisoned wine on the rebels. The alliance between our countries will stand.”

That hardly reassures me, and I can’t imagine Amiza would take any comfort in it, either.

“I have a child,” I say. “He needs his mother.”

Cress doesn’t even blink. “He needs a mother he can be proud of,” she says, nodding toward the vial. “Go on. From what I understand, Sta’Crivero is on the cusp of a crisis. It’s only a matter of time before its walls fall, before its people riot. You can save them. You can be the queen they deserve. Take it. What is fleeting pain compared to a lifetime of power?”

She takes my hand and wraps it around the vial, then unstoppers it, like I am a doll she is playing with, controlling my movements, making my decisions. And what’s worse, I let her. I am in a state of shock, speechless and still.

A knock on the door interrupts us, and Cress yanks her hand away from mine as if my touch burned her.

“What is it?” she snaps, glaring at the guard who enters clutching a roll of parchment in his hand, its seal unbroken.

“Apologies, Your Highness,” he says, bowing. “It’s a letter from the palace. I think you’ll want to see this for yourself. It’s urgent.”

With a huff, Cress gets to her feet, stalks toward the guard, and snatches the letter from him. She reads it with her back to me, but I see her shoulders tense. When she finishes, she crumples it into a ball in her fist.

“Ready our horses,” she says, her voice tight. “We’ll leave at once.”

The guard bows again before departing, leaving Cress and me alone once more. She turns back to me, but now she is all taut fury, any glimpse of the Cress I knew gone once more.

“Something has come up, I’m afraid,” she says, shaking her head. She takes the vial from me and stoppers it again. “We will stay in touch. When your father-in-law is on his deathbed, take the poison. In all of the chaos surrounding the shift in rulers, you’ll be able to seize the throne easily.”

I can only nod and take the poison from her, but when I do, she clasps her hands around my own. Her gray eyes search mine like she’s seeing straight into my soul. “You remind me of someone, you know,” she says. “A friend I had once. I hope that you will prove to be a better friend than she was, Amiza. Together, you and I could conquer the entire world, I think.”

* * *

—

I don’t let myself relax until the Kalovaxians disappear over the horizon. When they are finally out of sight, I sag with relief, leaning against Heron, who brings an arm around my shoulders.

“We did it,” I say, but the words taste strange. I can’t quite believe they’re true.

“We did,” he agrees, but his voice sounds distant. “The delivery took longer than we expected—we had to get the messenger around the Kalovaxian troops in order for its arrival to be believable.”

“It came at the perfect moment,” I assure him. “I’m fine. You’re fine. Our people are safe. And what’s more, we got S?ren and Erik back.”

Heron nods, but his eyes are troubled. “And the Gorakians Erik brought with him to the capital? What do you think happened to them?”

I don’t know. I don’t want to know.

“Come,” I say to Heron, pushing the thought from my mind. “Let’s go see Erik and S?ren.”