Castles in Their Bones (Castles in Their Bones #1)

Margaraux

Empress understands the value of secrets better than most, and she knows that her own secrets are invaluable. She doesn’t entrust them to her closest advisors, or her daughters, or even to Nigellus—stars know he doesn’t tell her his secrets, either. No, there is only one person in the world tells her secrets to.

And so she steps down from her gilded carriage, dressed in an elaborate black silk mourning gown, so heavy with onyx beads that it resembles armor. Her face is covered by a black net veil, though it is not opaque enough to hide her dry eyes or the hard set of her mouth.

It has been six days since the guillotine blade fell and Temarin dissolved into chaos, four days since her armies invaded in retribution for Sophronia’s murder, two days since the rebels realized they’d been betrayed, that they were outmanned and outarmed, one day since she accepted their surrender and Temarin became hers. She conquered a country without ever setting foot in it.

The empress looks up at the towering stone fortress of Saint Elstrid’s Sororia, a formidable and cold place so different from the palace, though it is only a twenty-minute ride from the palace gates. Cold and formidable as this Sororia might be, from what she’s heard, the one Beatriz is in now makes it look like a palace.

She grits her teeth at the thought of her firstborn daughter, who should be dead right along with Sophronia. Soon, she tells herself.

The unvarnished wood door swings open and the mother superior steps out into the sun. Mother Ippoline has always struck the empress as the living embodiment of the Sororia, every bit as cold, hard, and unyielding. Though, for the first time in their almost two decades of acquaintance, there is a trace of pity in the woman’s eyes. The empress doesn’t care for it.

“Your Majesty,” Mother Ippoline says, dropping into a brief curtsy. “What brings you to the Sororia today?”

“I find myself in need of solace, Mother Ippoline,” says. She has run the words through her mind so often on the way here that they come out unstrained. It isn’t as though they are a lie, either. But she lets Mother Ippoline fill the gaps in herself, lets her make assumptions.

“Of course,” Mother Ippoline says, bowing her head. “We were all devastated to hear of Queen Sophronia’s death. Please, take whatever solace you can inside these walls.”

“Very kind of you, Mother,” says. “I assume Sister Heloise is here?”

“Where else would she be?” the woman replies, eyebrows lifting. “She is in the usual place.”

“Of course she is,” says, glancing back at her coachman, footman, and the rest of the entourage that accompanied her for this short excursion. “I’ll be back in an hour’s time,” she says. Without waiting for an answer, she follows Mother Ippoline into the Sororia, through the dark, cold, windowless halls lit only by a few scattered sconces with dying candles.

“I don’t think Sister Heloise enjoys your visits, Your Majesty,” Mother Ippoline says.

It’s a bold thing to say, but appreciates the honesty.

“I don’t enjoy my visits to her, either,” she tells her. “But Sister Heloise and I understand each other. And I can’t imagine she receives any other visitors.”

Mother Ippoline doesn’t deny it. She stops before a nondescript wooden door and pushes it open, letting through. doesn’t have to ask for privacy, not anymore. Mother Ippoline closes the door behind her and hears the steady fall of her footsteps retreating down the hallway.

It’s only then that she takes in the room—the chapel, as dark and dank as the rest of the Sororia, but with the benefit of a single stained-glass window above the altar, a dark blue sky with pinpricks of gilded glass for stars. It doesn’t let much light in, but supposes that is the point—aroom where it is always night, where the ersatz stars always shine.

A woman kneels before the altar, her plain homespun dress spread out around her and her hair bound underneath a wimple and hood. Her hair was pure gold once, the envy of every woman at court, though supposes it must be going gray now, not unlike her own.

“Sister Heloise,” she says.

The woman’s spine stiffens at the sound of the name, but she doesn’t turn around. tries again, using a name the woman hasn’t been called in nearly two decades, since she made her vows and joined the Sororia.

“Seline,” says, her voice sharper at the edges.

With a heavy sigh, the woman hauls herself to her feet and turns to face her. It takes longer than it should, thinks, before realizing how much time has passed. The woman is no longer the regal and imposing figure who intimidated a young to the point of tears on more than one occasion. Or, rather, she is still that woman, only now she has become old, her skin wrinkled and sallow from so much time spent in this room, her spine stooped from hours kneeling before the altar.

realizes that she has aged as well. Time, it seems, stops for no one, not even empresses.

“You always were an impudent creature,” the woman says, the words dripping venom.

“Yes,” says placidly, taking a seat in the front pew and pushing her veil back. “It is why I took your throne and you were sent here.”

Age has not taken the woman’s ability to lift a single dark eyebrow, to level a look so withering a lesser woman would be turned to ash at her feet. But is not a lesser woman. Not anymore.

“And here I thought that was because you wrapped an empyrea around your finger and brought the heavens down to serve your purpose,” she says.

shrugs. “Yes, but I was impudent enough to do it, and you didn’t have the strength to stop me.”

“Strength I had, ,” the woman says quietly. “But I didn’t have the soul for it—or rather, perhaps I had too much of a soul.”

“A lot of good your soul has done you,” tells her. “And it’s Empress to you.”

A ghost of a smile flickers across the woman’s mouth. “Yes, I know,” she says. “The title was mine before it was yours, after all. Before you pulled your strings and rewrote our fates, before I was sent to this place while you took my life, my husband, my country.”

“None of it was truly yours if you couldn’t hold on to it,” tells her.

“Perhaps you’re right,” the woman says, not sounding terribly bothered by it. “I understand Sophronia is dead.”

She says it so flatly, so matter-of-factly. There is no apology in her voice, no simpering, no pity in her eyes. It takes a second to remember she is grateful for it, that it’s why she’s here.

“And Temarin is mine,” she adds softly. “Just as Cellaria and Friv will be soon.”

“Three daughters in the ground, three lands in your grasp,” Seline says. “That is what you were promised so long ago, no?”

doesn’t deny it. It was the first confession shemade to her onetime rival, a little more than sixteen years ago, when her belly was so swollen she couldn’t stand for more than a minute at a time and had to be carried everywhere like a beached whale. She had truly hated being pregnant, but that had been the cost of power, so she’d paidit.

Three daughters in the ground, three lands in your grasp. That was what Nigellus promised her, and he has delivered on one count now. She does not doubt that the other two will be swift to follow—Beatriz has narrowly avoided a death sentence already, and then there is Daphne. After Prince Cillian’s early death, grew impatient and worried that his bastard brother might meet the same fate. She’d hoped she could manage to kill Daphne before she married Bairre. It would have been simpler, without tying her dynasty to Bartholomew’s failing reign or Bairre’s tainted bloodline, and Daphne’s murder alone would have given her more than enough cause to send her troops into Friv—her troops and now Temarin’s as well. They would have made quick work of Friv’s ragtag rebellion.

Perhaps it was foolish to hire those assassins—perhaps she’d done too well in training her daughter to avoid them—but no one else in Friv seemed to aim for Daphne’s death. Stars above, the rebels had initially been counting on to kill her even came to like her. feared if she waited too long, the rebels might rally around her.

“You raised those girls like lambs for the slaughter,” Seline says, bringing her back to the present.

It is an accusation, fitted with knife points, but the blow doesn’t land. It slides off ’s back like water from a duck’s wing.

“Yes,” she says simply. “That is what lambs are for. I suppose you’re going to tell me you will pray for their souls?”

If Seline hears the mockery in ’s voice, she doesn’t show it.

“I would if they were human,” she replies evenly. “Star magic can do many magical things, I will admit, but it cannot create a soul.”

That surprises , and she leans back, surveying the other woman thoughtfully. “You think they are not human?”

Seline falters for an instant before regaining her footing. “You forget that I was married to the emperor for more than two decades and I never fell pregnant.”

“Perhaps you are barren, then,” replies.

“Perhaps,” Seline allows. “And all the many mistresses who came before you? Were they barren as well? Because he never sired a single bastard. I always thought he was the barren one.”

purses her lips and doesn’t answer. “You’re speaking treason,” she says after a moment.

“Our little talks have always been full of treason, haven’t they? Treason and filicide and all of your dastardly schemes.”

“Filicide implies that I killed them. I didn’t kill Sophronia—Temarin did.”

“You signed her death warrant before she’d even been born, before she’d even been conceived or created or however it is that she was made.”

doesn’t speak for a moment. Instead, she settles her hands on her lap and fixes the former empress with a thoughtful look.

“Conceived,” she says finally. “You aren’t wrong—the emperor couldn’t have children, not without help, without a good deal of star magic, more than even he had access to. That was where Nigellus came in. I assure you, Seline, they are human, mine and the emperor’s, though, yes, perhaps there is a third part to them as well that is something else. I don’t suppose it will matter in a few months’ time.”

A series of emotions flicker over Seline’s face, and reads them one by one. Surprise. Horror. Disgust.

“You are a monster,” Seline says, sounding almost awed.

doesn’t flinch from the word. “All powerful people are monsters,” she says quietly. “If that is the price I pay, so be it.”

“You don’t pay a price,” Seline says with a harsh laugh. “ They do. The daughters of your own flesh and blood, and they don’t even know it. They must think you love them—”

“I do,” interrupts, her voice sharp.

Seline searches her face and barks out another laugh. “They are a means to your end and you are sacrificing them, their futures, their lives, to secure your own. That isn’t love.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to know anything about children, Seline,” replies, her voice cold.

The former empress goes quiet, casting a gaze over her shoulder at the pane of stained-glass sky.

“Why are you here?” she asks. “Why do you insist on dragging me into this, telling me your horrible secrets when you know…” She trails off, shaking her head. “ Because you know.”

“That no one will believe you,” says. “The jealous spurned wife of the dead emperor, banished to a Sororia to make room for a younger, prettier, more fertile bride? Of course you’re bitter and angry, of course you want nothing more than to see me laid low. No one will believe a word you say against me.”

“I’m not,” Seline says after a second. “Bitter. Or angry. You were willing to sacrifice more for the throne, so you took it. I find I don’t miss being empress. I don’t wish to see you laid low, . I merely pity you.”

“Pity?” asks, her lips twisting around the word with distaste. “ You pity me ?”

“I do. Because one day, when you have killed the only three people who have ever loved you, you will realize what you’ve done and you will regret it until the day you die, alone, unloved, and unwelcome among the stars. You took enough control to write the tale of your life. I commend you for that, I do, but the tale you’ve crafted for yourself is a tragedy.”

says nothing for a long moment.

“I tire of our conversations,” she says finally, getting to her feet once more.

“And yet you will come back,” Seline says. “You always do. The next time I see you, I’m sure there will be another daughter in the ground.”

She means the words to wound, but doesn’t flinch. “Daphne and Beatriz will do their duty. Just as Sophronia did. I raised my daughters well, after all.”

She turns and starts down the aisle, toward the door, but she doesn’t get there before Seline speaks again, determined to have the last word.

“You didn’t raise them, . You built them. And now you will bury them.”