Daphne
This is it, Daphne thinks, watching her mother’s impassive face as she comes toward her, holding Cliona’s severed hand with a dagger aimed at her. This is how it ends. But stars damn me if I don’t fight until the last. Contrary to what her mother said earlier, she will not die a good girl. She will die a warrior.
She throws herself back against Adilla, driving her boots into her mother’s stomach and using the leverage to propel Adilla backward, her head slamming against the marble pillar Daphne was bound to with a crack. Adilla has no choice but to release Daphne’s arms, and Daphne wastes no time, snatching a dagger from the ground and stabbing Adilla with it, just where her neck meets her shoulder.
Daphne doesn’t pause to watch her die, trusting her work and her aim, instead coming toward Beatriz and slicing through the ropes binding her hands. She tosses the dagger, still dripping with Adilla’s blood, to Beatriz, hilt first, and her sister catches it without looking, scrambling to her feet, attention focused on their mother, doubled over and catching her breath.
Daphne grabs Adilla’s dagger from its scabbard and comes to stand beside her sister, both of them facing their mother, still holding the severed hand and the dagger.
The empress straightens to stand, her chest heaving as she looks between Beatriz and Daphne, both approaching her now, armed and unyielding.
“My doves,” the empress says slowly, a soft smile curling at her lips. “Surely we can discuss this. I know I raised you to be sensible creatures.”
“You raised us to be lambs, blindly awaiting slaughter,” Daphne tells her, taking a step forward, then another, Beatriz matching her every move. “Your mistake was in telling us we were lions often enough that we believed it.”
“I underestimated you, yes,” the empress says, her voice a soothing coo. “But all the more reason for us to work together now, to rule over Vesteria together. I can give you power, more power than you could ever hope for without me.”
“I don’t want power,” Daphne tells her mother.
The empress laughs. “Liar,” she bites out. “I know you, Daphne. I know your heart better than you ever could. You’re like me—you always have been.”
Daphne has thought the same. Once, it felt like a compliment, then it felt like an insult. Now, though, it is simply a fact. She shares a good many traits with her mother—but she isn’t her, and that is a choice she has made, one she will always make.
“You,” Daphne tells her mother, “are nothing. What power do you think you’ll wield when you’re dead? What legacy have you left behind? The world will forget you, but I will forgetyou first. After today, you will never cross my mind again, do you understand?”
Hate shines in the empress’s eyes, but Daphne is strangely relieved to see it. After all, it’s real. Here, in the end, she sees beneath her mother’s many masks, at the pain and ugliness and hate that have shaped her.
“I’m not like you,” Daphne says, more to herself than her mother. And then she charges at her without hesitation, burying her dagger in her mother’s chest, piercing her heart. Daphne watches, centimeters away, as the light leaves her mother’s dark brown eyes, the tension sapping from her body as she collapses against Daphne, and Daphne releases her to the ground. Dead.
It’s only then that Daphne feels the cold steel, piercing her stomach, the pain a quiet throb, dulled by shock and adrenaline. She looks down and sees the silver hilt of the empress’s dagger protruding from her stomach.
“Daphne!” Beatriz screams, reaching her just as Daphne collapses, darkness swarming her vision.