“There you are,” Cress’s voice says, and I whirl around to see her, standing mere feet from me in a gown of ink-blue silk, with a wide neckline and gossamer bell sleeves studded with diamonds, making her look like the night sky itself. Her white hair is loose, falling just to her shoulders, still brittle and frayed at the ends. Her lips are blacker than they were when I saw her last, but when she steps closer, I realize that it isn’t all natural—she’s painted them with black lacquer.

I wonder if she’s trying to make it into some kind of style, something strange and beautiful instead of a flaw. I wonder if the court is now full of noblewomen with painted black lips, if merchants are charging absurd prices for a lacquer shade they likely made using nothing more than coal and grease.

“You’ve been forgetting about me. I haven’t seen you in days,” she accuses.

I feel the old urge to apologize, and have to hold myself back. I don’t owe her apologies. I don’t owe her anything.

“I’m dead,” I tell her with a shrug. “I have better things to do than entertain you. In fact, perhaps I should go.”

I make a move to leave, though I’m not sure where I would go or how I’d make myself wake up, but the bluff works. Cress grabs my hand roughly, her fingers hot against my skin.

“No, don’t,” she says, her desperation leaking through before she hastily adds “Please,” her voice small and childlike.

I pretend to hesitate. “Fine,” I say. “I suppose I can stay for a bit.”

She releases my hand and instead loops her arm through mine, squeezing it and smiling broadly.

“Exciting things are happening, Thora,” she says. “Very exciting things. I had to give up Prinz S?ren to set them in motion, but it was a price worth paying, I suppose,” she adds with a pout.

My stomach turns as I think about Brigitta and Laius. Has she already discovered that Laius isn’t Jian? Has Brigitta broken so soon?

“What sort of things?” I ask. “It must have been something for you to give up the Prinz.”

She scoffs. “I’d hoped Prinz S?ren would be useful to me, but he proved far more trouble than he was worth. I was glad to see him go. And what I got in return was far better, I assure you.”

I swallow. “And what was that?” I ask.

But instead of answering, she frowns and leans in to sniff my hair. “You smell like him. Did you know? Like driftwood and sea salt. I suppose if he’s joined you in death so soon, he didn’t survive the journey to Sta’Crivero. Pity—I think King Etristo had quite the execution planned. You’ll give him my regards, won’t you?”

“I think he’s had enough of your regards,” I tell her.

She only laughs, throwing her head back. “No need to be so dramatic, Thora. It’s war. Surely S?ren understands that, even if you don’t. And besides, I gave him back to you in the end. Shouldn’t you be thanking me for that?”

“You tortured him,” I remind her. “You burned your words into his skin. What part of that should I thank you for, exactly?”

She blinks languidly. “Well, he’s dead now, isn’t he? What does any of that matter?” she asks with a laugh. “I suppose it’s the least you could hope for. Both of you failed, but at least you’re together in death.”

No, I want to tell her. We’re together and alive and we are coming for you. But I hold my tongue.

“What did you trade him for?” I say instead, focusing on what matters.

She laughs again. “I traded him for an end to this war, an end to any future rebellions. You could say, Thora, that I traded him for control of the world itself.”

My heart beats so loudly in my chest that I fear she can hear it, but I proceed cautiously. “A weapon, then?” I ask her, as if I don’t already know the answer.

But Cress is unbothered. Instead she raises a thin, ashen eyebrow. “Don’t think so mundanely, Thora,” she says. “It’s unbecoming and I expected better of you. A weapon. What I have planned is so much greater than that. Come. I want to show you something.”

Without waiting for my response, she pulls me out the throne room door and down the palace hallway. It’s exactly as I remember it, down to the details on the stained-glass windows we fly past. It even smells the same, like the lye and lemon soap they use to clean the floors. She rounds a corner, then another, and I realize where she’s taking me—to the main balcony, the one that overlooks the rocky coastline.

When we arrive, the balcony isn’t empty. A lone girl stands by the railing in a black, billowing gown that glistens in the moonlight. When she hears us approach, she turns, her sharp-angled face illuminated. Dagm?r. In the months since I last saw her, she’s grown more gaunt; her limbs are barely more substantial than bits of string. Her blond hair is paler, cut bluntly like Cress’s—perhaps another trend Cress has started. But as Cress pulls me closer, I realize that isn’t it at all. Dagm?r’s lips aren’t painted black. They’re charred, just like the skin of her neck. Just like Cress’s.

And she looks at me the way Cress does, as if she can truly see me as clearly as I see her. In this dream, she is every bit as real as Cress and I are.

“Oh, Dagm?r,” I say quietly. “What’s happened?”

But Dagm?r gives a feral smile.

“I’ve been saved,” she tells me, before shifting her attention to Cress. “I did it, Your Highness.”

Cress smiles and peers over the railing. “So you did,” she says. “Well done. I knew you could. And now you’re truly free.”

I force myself to lean over the railing to see what they’re talking about, and when I do, I can’t muffle a gasp. Sprawled out on the rocks below are bodies. I count ten of them altogether, some of them too small to be fully grown. Necks snapped, limbs at unnatural angles, pools of blood around them.

“You see, Thora?” Cress says, pulling me back from the edge, her grip on my arm so tight, I feel her nails digging into my skin. “Dagm?r is free now and justice has been served, just as it was for me.”

“I did to my husband what he did to his wives before me,” Dagm?r says, her voice thin and far away. “What he will never be able to do to me now. And then I killed his sons, too. Now no man controls me. Only I do. And my Queen, of course.”

She looks at Cress with fawning eyes, a loyal devotee. And why shouldn’t she be? Cress saved her, let her liberate herself from a husband who beat her, who would have killed her if she hadn’t done it to him first. But his sons? Lord Dalgaard’s youngest was only six. I think of the small body I saw on the rocks below and feel sick.

“There are so many women in the world, Thora,” Cress says, cutting through my thoughts. “So many who suffer at the hands of the men who think they can control them. My father controlled my life for years, but at least he was a kind jailer. The Kaiser wasn’t kind, though I don’t need to tell you that, do I? And he’s not the only one. He may not even have been the worst. But I won’t let them do it anymore.”

I push my nausea aside and face Cress.

“And what of the Astrean women who suffer at your hands?” I ask her. “If you want to save women, what will you do for them?”

Cress’s face contorts in fury as quickly as I blink. “It’s never going to be enough for you, is it?” she snaps. “I’m doing good, Thora. I’m helping people with this curse you forced upon me, and you can’t even appreciate that.”

“Why do you care so much what I think?” I ask her, my own voice rising. “Why are you showing me this? Why can’t you let me rest?”

“Because,” she all but shouts, her voice shaking. “Because I am making a new world, Thora. Because you weren’t strong enough to be a part of it, but I want you to see it anyway.”

Before I can formulate an answer, the dream world begins to flicker, tearing itself apart until I am left in the darkness of my tent once more, the only sound S?ren’s steady breathing next to me.

One thought stays with me, forcing its way past all of the others. Cress knew I would likely die when she gave me that poison, but she hoped I wouldn’t. She didn’t want to kill me; she wanted to change me. And she still has no idea that she did.

* * *

—

I don’t find sleep again, and I don’t really yearn for it. I don’t want to see Cress again, but maybe more than that, I don’t want to see Dagm?r. I don’t want to remember that Cress wouldn’t have had to save her from her wicked husband if I hadn’t meddled to have them married in the first place. That crime was mine, and so in some ways, the crimes that followed in its wake are mine as well.

And now she’s like us, like Cress and me. It must be the blood that binds us together, Cress’s blood now a part of all of us, allowing our dreams to cross over like this. It makes me sick to think about. How many others are there?

I scratch at my arm idly for a moment before noticing there is something off about it. It itches, yes, but the skin there is raw and almost painful. I sit up in bed, careful not to wake S?ren, though I don’t think an earthquake would be enough to do that, as heavy a sleeper as he is. I summon a small flame to my fingertips, just enough to see my arm. When it’s fully illuminated, I gasp.

The skin from my wrist to my elbow is bright red—the color of a fresh tomato—and there, in the soft underside of my forearm, are four small crescent-shaped indents from Cress’s nails.