Beatriz
, Pasquale, Ambrose, and Nigellus depart the Etheldaisy Inn in far more comfort than they arrived, bundled into Nigellus’s private carriage with several fur blankets between them and hot bricks at their feet to stave off the cold. The carriage, its driver, and its two white horses left Nigellus at the Sororia in the mountains and took the long and winding roads in order to make it to the inn safely just hours after Violie and Leopold departed. The driver suggested they all stay another night to let the horses rest.
When the sun creeps over the mountains the next morning, though, they depart. While the first few hours of the journey pass with some polite conversation—comments about the blistering cold weather, compliments for the basket of breakfast the innkeeper packed them— notes with relief that Pasquale and Ambrose are appropriately wary of saying too much in front of Nigellus.
Nigellus, for his part, doesn’t pay any of them much mind, either keeping his silver gaze out the window as they make their way down the winding road or thumbing through a well-worn copy of last year’s Astral Almanac.
When they stop for a late lunch at another inn, Nigellus leads them into the public room, nodding toward the innkeeper who approaches them, this one a middle-aged man, bald, but with an impressive mustache.
“The gentlemen will dine here, but I’ll need a private room for the girl and me—just for an hour,” he says smoothly.
stiffens, her gaze darting to Nigellus. He’s shown no interest in bedding her, but surely he must know how that sounds and what the innkeeper will think. Sure enough, the innkeeper looks uneasily between the two of them.
“And is that what the lady wishes?” he asks carefully.
Nigellus frowns and opens his mouth, but gets there first, offering the innkeeper a bright smile.
“Oh yes,” she assures him, looping her arm through Nigellus’s. “I’ve a fear of crowds, you see, and my dear uncle indulges me.”
The innkeeper is visibly relieved and nods. “I’ll see if we have a spare room for you, then,” he says before hurrying down the hall. As soon as he’s out of earshot, Pasquale turns to and Nigellus.
“Where goes, I go,” he tells Nigellus, his voice coming out stronger than expected it would. Though she’s touched by his standing up for her, she isn’t afraid of Nigellus. Whether that makes her brave or foolish, she isn’t sure. She releases her hold on Nigellus’s arm and reaches out to touch Pasquale’s.
“It’s fine,” she assures him with a smile. “Nigellus and I have things to discuss.”
Pasquale doesn’t look terribly reassured, his brow still creased in a frown, though he nods once, looking back at Nigellus. “If you lay a hand on her—”
“I can assure you, I’ve no interest in children,” Nigellus replies, his voice colder than the weather outside.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” she says when Pasquale’s frown deepens. “Go, enjoy a good lunch with Ambrose.”
—
The innkeeper leads and Nigellus to a small room, sparsely decorated, with a narrow bed and a round table set with two chairs. He promises to bring them drinks and lunch as quickly as possible, then departs, leaving and Nigellus alone.
“This is to be my first lesson, I take it?” asks, circling the room as if inspecting it, though there is little to inspect. Moving calms her, though, just as it always has.
“Yes,” Nigellus says, watching her with weary eyes. “ You didn’t think I was planning to seduce you, I hope.”
laughs. “No,” she assures him. “You’re familiar with the training I had in Bessemia—I know when I’m wanted like that. But I’m glad the innkeeper ensured I wasn’t in danger, and Pasquale…” She trails off, thinking about Pasquale’s father, King Cesare, who made no secret of his attempts to bed her. The thought of his hands on her makes her shudder. The man is dead now and hasn’t mourned him for a moment. The world is better off rid of him.
She doesn’t say any of that aloud, but Nigellus’s eyes trace over her expression.
“It shouldn’t surprise you that your mother has spies in the Cellarian court,” he says after a moment. “From what they had to say, Prince Pasquale was not nearly so…protective then.”
grits her teeth, the insult to Pasquale digging beneath her own skin. “I didn’t need him to be,” she says. “It was only what I’d been raised for, after all.” She tells herself it’s the truth, but talking about it needles at her. “I didn’t realize you were so terribly interested in my personal trials and tribulations,” she says, forcing her voice to stay light and unbothered. “Would you like to dissect my diary, or can we get to the lessons?”
Nigellus stares at her with uncomfortable intensity for a moment before one corner of his mouth lifts ever so slightly. “Come now, —we both know your mother taught you never to commit your thoughts to paper where anyone can read them.”
He reaches into the pocket of his cloak and pulls out the Astral Almanac he was studying in the carriage. He holds it up so she can see the cover—cornflower-blue leather, embossed with gold script. “You’re familiar with these?” he asks.
shrugs. “Passingly,” she admits. “Daphne and Sophie have always been more interested in horoscopes than I am and I never saw the point in looking at horoscopes past.”
“Ah,” Nigellus says, sitting down at the table and gesturing for her to sit across from him, which she does. “But that is how we find the patterns. And once you understand the patterns of the past, you can spot them in the future. Of course, this would be a more instructive lesson if we had the night sky to study, but that will have to be saved for another time. For now…” He thumbs through the pages, landing on one in particular and passing the book to her. “What do you notice here?”
takes the book and examines it—not only the page, but the book itself. It’s well-worn, though only a year old. The page he’s opened to is a midsummer night, with a list of the constellations that appeared, their proximity to one another, and interpretations of what it could mean. squints.
“The Thorned Rose is one of my birth constellations,” she tells him, noting its presence on the list. She and her sisters were born beneath the Thorned Rose, the Hungry Hawk, the Lonely Heart, the Crown of Flames, and the Sisters Three. “It symbolizes beauty, and this says it appeared beside an upside-down Queen’s Chalice, which would signal misfortune. Their close proximity would indicate that these things are linked, no?” she asks, glancing up at Nigellus, who is watching her intently. “What happened on this date?”
Nigellus’s eyebrows rise. “You don’t recall?” he asks her.
searches her memory. Midsummer, last year. She was still in Bessemia, still spent each and every day in the company of her sisters, still had never seen more of the world than palaces and the gleaming cities around them. The days all blended together in her mind.
“You broke your nose,” Nigellus tells her.
blinks. She did break her nose last summer, during hand-to-hand combat practice with Daphne. It wasn’t the first time such practice had led to injury, and Nigellus himself healed it so quickly with a pinch of stardust that it didn’t leave much of an impression on her.
“A misfortune that affected my beauty, however briefly,” says wryly, passing the book back to him. “I’ll admit, I feel quite flattered that the stars saw fit to mark the occasion.”
If Nigellus understands her humor, it has no effect on him. “I’m sure others were affected as well, in different ways. And as you said, it is one of your birth constellations, so you would be more affected by its presence in the sky.”
“And my sisters’, though I don’t recall them suffering similar incidents,” she says before pausing. “That isn’t true. Daphne woke up with a pimple the size of the moon on her chin. And Sophie…”
“That would have been the day the newest portrait of King Leopold arrived. Your sister was quite taken with it, if you remember.”
did. All day, Sophronia talked of little else. By the time the sun set, thought if she heard another word about his handsome face and kind eyes, she’d take a dagger to the canvas herself.
“And her infatuation turned out to be an unlucky thing indeed,” finishes, though as she speaks, she remembers Violie’s words. For whatever it’s worth, I believe he loved Sophie as much as she loved him. It was difficult to imagine her sister falling in love with the hapless king—infatuation, certainly. herself wasn’t blind, and even covered in more than a week of grime, she could acknowledge that Leopold was handsome. But love was something else, wasn’t it?
Though she doesn’t mean to, she thinks about Nicolo. That wasn’t love. She didn’t make Sophronia’s mistake there, though she can’t help but think that was more due to Nicolo’s betrayal than any restraint on her part. A few more weeks and perhaps she’d have thought herself in love with him, too.
“So all of us were affected in different ways,” says, pushing Nicolo from her thoughts and focusing on Nigellus. “Though no offense to Daphne’s unfortunate pimple, but is that really comparable to a broken nose? And I hardly think we can blame the appearance of a couple of constellations for Sophronia’s death—that was my mother’s doing.”
“Everything ties together, . Especially where the stars are concerned,” Nigellus says mildly. “But you aren’t wrong. You were the most affected that day, and by other appearances of the Thorned Rose, and there is a reason for that. It took nearly two hours from when you took your first breath to when Sophronia took hers. You’re triplets, your births stretched on some time, so I marked each constellation that appeared overhead during the labor. The Thorned Rose reached its peak as you drew your first breath. It was still in the sky when your sisters came along, but it is strongest in you.”
It might be new information to , but it doesn’t surprise her. She’s always been told that her beauty is her greatest asset—by her mother most of all. She’s well acquainted with the rose and its thorns.
“And my sisters?” she asks. “What signs would you say belonged most to them?” She almost regrets asking the question as soon as it leaves her lips, but she suspects the answer.
“I’d like to hear your guesses,” Nigellus says, leaning back.
grits her teeth. “I’m sure I don’t know,” she says, but it’s a lie, and he seems to know it.
“Your mother never saw fit to give you the lessons your sisters had in star reading,” he tells her. “She thought the more you knew of it, the more likely it would be that you would say the wrong thing in Cellaria and get yourself killed.”
“Isn’t that what she wants, though?” asks, another wry comment that Nigellus doesn’t acknowledge.
“For the right ends, not for a slip of blasphemy on your first day in the palace,” he replies. “But my point is that you have no formal education in star reading, so I’m curious what your instinct tells you.”
rolls her eyes. “The Hungry Hawk seems very like Daphne,” she says. “To take it literally, I suppose, there’s something a bit hawkish about her. And she is more ambitious than Sophie and I.”
Nigellus doesn’t agree with her, but he doesn’t correct her, either. “And Sophronia?”
swallows. “She was born beneath the Lonely Heart, wasn’t she?” she asks. “It symbolizes sacrifice.”
Now Nigellus nods. “The other two constellations, the Crown of Flames and the Sisters Three, were never directly overhead, yet present nonetheless,” he says. “But yes, you have the right of it.”
laughs. “There are plenty of ugly children born beneath the Thorned Rose,” she tells him. “Everyone knows birth constellations are to be taken with a grain of salt.”
“Under normal circumstances, yes,” Nigellus tells her. “But we’ve already established that the circumstances of your birth were anything but normal.”
“Because my mother wished for us?” asks.
“Because it wasn’t only one wish,” Nigellus says. “There was the original wish for her to fall pregnant with triplets—that I made on the Mother’s Arms.” The Mother’s Arms is a constellation that resembles a pair of arms holding a swaddled infant. “But the larger wishes had to be made when each of you took your first breaths, to tie your fates to the fates of the countries you would one day call home.”
blinks. “If an empyrea could so easily conquer countries, how has no one else done it before?” she asks.
Nigellus shakes his head. “It is far too big an undertaking, even when wishing on stars,” he says. “But your mother didn’t rely on the stars alone to make her wishes come true. She planned carefully for seventeen years and made sure every piece was in place for her plots. The wishes we made on the day you and your sisters were born aren’t responsible for those plans, they were simply meant to ensure a greater chance of those plans’ success.”
processes this, not speaking for a moment. “It didn’t work, though. Not for me. Or Daphne, apparently.”
“Because wishes require sacrifice, and her sacrifice of you and Daphne is as yet incomplete,” Nigellus says. “But as I was saying, your mother wished on a separate star upon each of your births. I had to pull a star from each of those constellations in order to make her wish come true. There is a piece of the Hungry Hawk inside Daphne, just as there was a piece of the Lonely Heart inside Sophronia. Small stars, the kind I told you to look for because few would notice them missing, and those who did knew better than to ask questions.”
“So the constellation you took my star from was what?” she asks. “The Thorned Rose?”
It’s a disappointing revelation. Though ’s beauty is the first thing anyone remarks upon when meeting her, she believes it is quite possibly her least interesting trait.
Nigellus leans back in his chair, folding his hands on his lap and surveying her. “No,” he says after a moment. “From another constellation that edged its way into the sky when you were born, ever so slightly. Not present enough to be worth mentioning in your zodiac, especially when it was gone before your sisters followed you.”
’s chest tightens. “And what constellation was that?” she asks.
Nigellus smiles. “The Empyrea’s Staff.”
The Empyrea’s Staff, for magic.
’s mouth suddenly feels dry. “You planned this, then,” she says slowly. “You planned me.”
“Yes,” he says simply.
“Why?” asks.
For a moment he doesn’t respond. “The stars don’t only give blessings and twist fate, ,” he says finally. “They demand balance. As an empyrea, you will come to understand that, to hear that demand as clearly as you hear my voice now. And you will come to know how to answer it. When the stars sent the Empyrea’s Staff overhead during your birth, I understood it for the demand it was.”
Goose bumps rise on ’s skin. She wants to laugh at how melodramatic he sounds, at the very idea of the stars demanding anything with regard to her, but her mouth is still dry. It takes a moment for her to speak and when she does, she manages only one word. “Why?”
“Because the stars require a balanced world. It’s why wishes come with sacrifices, why you feel terrible after pulling stars down. There’s an ages-old prophecy, from some empyrea whose name has long been lost. To unbalance the world is to darken the stars.”
repeats the words under her breath, frowning. “That doesn’t sound like a prophecy,” she says.
“Given how many times the words have been translated from one language to another and back, that isn’t surprising. But the meaning remains. The stars are good to us, but they require balance. Creating you and your sisters threw the stars off-balance—I should have known then that your mother was asking too much, but I was young and foolish and too curious for my own good. But when the stars made their demand, I knew we’d gone too far. Your mother was creating weapons to use against the world, and so the stars demanded a weapon of their own.”
“And that weapon is supposed to be me?” asks, not bothering to mask the skepticism in her voice. Nigellus’s eyes narrow.
“These lessons will go much faster if you don’t fight everything I tell you,” he says.
wants to argue that point, but she realizes that would be proving his point. “Fine,” she says. “I am a weapon, created by the stars. To do what, destroy my mother? Certainly if the stars truly wished to stop her, there would have been easier ways of doing it seventeen years ago.”
“Ah, but you aren’t listening, Princess,” he says, shaking his head. “The stars aren’t on your side, or hers, or mine for that matter. The stars aren’t soldiers in anyone’s war—they are the battleground, and they prefer to keep it as even aspossible.”