Daphne
That night, lets herself into Leopold’s room at the castle, mildly disappointed that the door is unlocked and her picking skills are unrequired. She hurried back to her room from the celebratory dinner, letting a maid help her ready for bed before sneaking out again in order to arrive in Leopold’s room before he did, and takes the opportunity to give the room a quick search, looking for letters or anything else that will serve her purpose. But she finds nothing more than a change of clothing, so she sits down on the edge of his narrow bed to wait for him.
Moments later, the door opens and he steps inside, stopping short when he sees her.
For a moment they only stare at each other, and takes another opportunity to search his face, looking for exactly what Sophronia found so enchanting that she turned her back on her family. He’s handsome enough, can admit that, but she simply doesn’t understand it.
“I’m not sure what to call you anymore,” he says after a moment, closing the door behind him. “I feel like a fool calling you Your Highness still, when you know who I am.” He pauses, but when doesn’t fill the silence, he continues. “Sophie talked about you so much, I almost want to call you Daph.”
can’t stop herself from flinching. “Don’t,” she says, her voice tight. “ will suffice.”
“, then,” Leopold says, nodding. “I owe you a thank-you, for saving me, and my brothers.”
The words twist in ’s gut—she didn’t save them, not really, she only drew out the inevitable.
“It must have been a shock for you,” he says. “Finding out who I am.”
At that, barks out a laugh. “Oh, I knew almost immediately,” she says. “But I confess, I wasn’t sure what to do with the information, and I didn’t want you to run if you suspected I recognized you.”
“Should I run now?” he asks. His eyes are wary. He reminds of a caged animal, seeking an escape. She could be honest with him, tell him that if he ran, he’d have to leave his brothers behind or risk Bairre following him. He found them once, he could find them again, and Leopold is a stranger in Friv. It would be true, and it would likely work to keep him here, close enough, but decides on a softer approach. She bites her lip the way Sophronia used to and tries to appear uneasy.
“You were traveling with that servant girl before, weren’t you?” she asks. “Violie?”
Leopold frowns but gives a quick nod.
“She took me by surprise,” says. She’s planned this speech out during the last few hours, but still the words taste bitter in her mouth. She forces herself to say them anyway. “If she’d just given me a chance to understand what she was saying—imagine, someone telling you your mother murdered your sister. Would you believe them straightaway?”
Something flickers in Leopold’s expression, but it’s gone before can name it. She carries on.
“But the truth is, Sophronia didn’t trust our mother toward the end of her life. She told me as much and I didn’t believe her.” She pauses, taking a deep breath. “Whatever you may think of me, I loved my sister very much, and I miss her every day.” That much, at least, is the truth. “And if my mother did have anything to do with her death, I’d like to see her answer for it.”
A long moment stretches between them in silence, and worries that she’s overplayed her hand, that she isn’t as good an actress as she thought, that he doesn’t believe her loyalties have shifted. Finally, though, Leopold softens.
“Sophie didn’t believe it either, at first,” he says quietly, and stiffens.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“Ansel was the one who told her, actually. You heard him admit that he worked for your mother,” he says.
doesn’t deny it, but what she heard from Ansel wasn’t exactly a confession. Just because he worked for her mother at one point didn’t mean she was behind Sophronia’s death. It was far more likely that Ansel had double-crossed the empress.
Leopold continues. “I suppose she knew at that point that her mother was working with the revolutionaries, that she’d orchestrated the plot to have her—have us—killed, but she believed it was reactionary. She believed that it was because she’d failed in your mother’s eyes, that she’d betrayed her orders. She thought it was a punishment.”
suddenly has to remind herself to breathe. Their mother is not a forgiving woman, she has no illusions about that. Hearing it laid out in this manner, can almost believe her mother is capable of having killed Sophronia. If she believed Sophronia was a threat to her plans, would she have done it? wants to say no, but the truth of it is, she doesn’t know.
“Was it a punishment?” she asks.
Leopold gazes at her and for a moment, feels like he sees every secret she’s ever kept. He looks at her with pity.
“No,” he says. “Ansel said that killing Sophronia was always your mother’s plan, from the very beginning. That everything Sophie had done, your mother had expected. That it was always going to end just as it did—well, nearly. Your mother wanted me dead as well. Sophie did manage to surprise her that once, I suppose, using her wish to save my life.”
’s fingers fly to her own wish, hanging from her wrist. There’s one question answered, at least, though she doesn’t feel any better knowing that information. It just makes her miss her sister more.
“Beatriz confirmed it, when our paths crossed,” he says, jerking out of her thoughts.
She frowns. “Beatriz confirmed what?”
“That your mother killed Sophie intentionally. She said she’d tried to kill Beatriz as well, but there were complications in Cellaria.”
can’t help but snort. “I wouldn’t take Beatriz too seriously—she’s always been the dramatic one of us. It’s possible she’s seeing murder plots everywhere, especially after Sophie was killed.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Leopold says, and gets the feeling he is being delicate with her, handling her like a hollowed-out eggshell. She detests it. “When we met Beatriz, she was traveling with Nigellus. He was the one who revealed the empress’s plots to her.”
’s stomach drops. “Nigellus?” she asks. “You’re sure?”
“Positive,” he says. “That’s why we came to Friv—not just because it’s the only place I can be safe but…well…” He trails off, struggling to find his words. “I think it’s what Sophie would have wanted. For us to warn you and Beatriz, to protect you if we could.”
doesn’t know whether to laugh or sob at that. She doubts she is in any kind of danger, at least not from her mother, but she knows, too, that he’s right about Sophronia. Even with her life in danger, she was thinking about others: Leopold, and her, and Beatriz too.
For the first time since hearing of Sophronia’s death, the truth of it hits square in the chest. She lifts a hand to her mouth, as if she can keep her emotions in that way, but she doesn’t realize she’s crying until Leopold’s hand comes to rest on her shoulder. When she looks up at him, that awful pity is back on his face, along with an understanding, which hates even more.
Leopold doesn’t understand her. They aren’t the same. No matter what he might believe, he didn’t love Sophronia, not really, not the way did. If he had, he wouldn’t have let her die.
But then, as soon as she thinks that, she hears Sophronia’s letter again in her mind, read in her voice. I need your help, Daph.
She shrugs Leopold’s hand off and takes a step back. “I’m fine,” she says, her voice coming out harsher than she intended. She forces herself to soften, at least on the surface. “I’m fine,” she repeats. “It’s just…difficult to talk about her still. And difficult to imagine that what you’re saying is true.”
Leopold nods, making no move toward her again. Instead, he clasps his hands behind his back, his expression tense. “Strange as it is, I do understand to an extent,” he says. “My mother wants me dead too.”
looks at him, not quite surprised given what Violie said about Eugenia and what she herself witnessed in the way the woman spoke of Leopold.
“I didn’t believe it at first either,” he continues. “But I suppose I was faced with the proof of it much quicker than you.”
Unease seeps through ’s veins as she forces herself to nod. Even pretending to go against her mother makes her feel ill, though she’s sure if the empress were here she would encourage ’s deception, and the endgame it ensures.
Just now, though, she doesn’t want to be around Leopold for another moment, not with the ghost of Sophronia between them, or this sham of an understanding he thinks they’ve forged. It’s too much, and suddenly feels exhausted by it, by all of the other deceptions as well. Suddenly, she would give anything in the world to have Sophronia back, for just a few moments.
“He was lying, you know,” she blurts out before she can stop herself.
“Who?” Leopold asks.
“Ansel,” she tells him. “When he said that after you left her, she sobbed for days, heartbroken.”
He doesn’t reply, but can see the doubt in his eyes, the guilt lingering there. She owes Leopold nothing, certainly not grace, but she knows that Sophronia would want him to know this at least.
“I spoke to her,” she tells him. “Frivian stardust can be stronger than the regular kind, it can allow star-touched people to speak to one another. That day, the day she…I used it to speak with her and Beatriz. She wasn’t heartbroken, and she wasn’t crying. She told Beatriz and me to look out for you, to keep you safe. In her last moments, she wasn’t upset with you for leaving her, she was relieved that you had gotten away.”
Leopold doesn’t speak for a moment, but she can see him absorb her words. “Thank you, ,” he says. “I’d hoped Sophie was right about you.”
Those words haunt as she leaves Leopold’s room. She just makes it to the stairway before she can’t hold her tears back anymore. She grips the banister tightly with one hand while the other rises to her lips as if she can shove the sobs back down her throat, but to no avail. The sobs wrack her body, almost painfully, but worse still is the shame that burns through her. She feels disgustingly weak, crying like a child. She knows her mother would be so disappointed to see her now, and that thought only makes her sob harder.
A hand comes down on her shoulder and she whirls around, prepared to find herself face to face once again with Leopold and that hateful pity in his eyes, but instead she finds Bairre.
Rather than pull away, she turns toward him, pressing her face into his shoulder and wrapping her arms around his neck as if by holding him tight enough, she can disappear into him, can cease to exist altogether.
She feels his surprise, but his arms come around her all the same, one hand rubbing small circles between her shoulder blades.
Mercifully, he says nothing—not questions or words of comfort or empty platitudes. He just holds her and lets her cry.
When she has no tears left, she tentatively steps out of his embrace, wiping at her eyes.
“Levi is King Leopold,” she says, trying to get back to the matter at hand rather than her own histrionics. She’d planned on telling him, though she’d hoped to be more composed.
Bairre looks surprised at the news, if not entirely shocked. She supposes it makes sense to him—Leopold’s accent was hideous, and it was difficult to discount how attached Gideon and Reid were to him after their rescue. Bairre must have known something was amiss, even if he didn’t know what it was.
“Right now, I don’t care about Leopold,” Bairre says before shaking his head. “I mean, I do, but are you—”
“I’m fine,” she says, though the words are a palpable lie and she knows Bairre doesn’t believe her. She doesn’t believe herself. Though she can’t cry anymore, she feels thoroughly wrung out, like the slightest breeze could shatter her. She looks up at Bairre, relieved to find that he at least doesn’t look at her with pity, or like he understands her. It is almost worse, though, because he looks at her like the fact that she is hurting hurts him.
“Does it get easier?” she asks him.
He doesn’t ask what she means. “No,” he says. “Can I walk you back to your room?”
should say yes. She should let him walk her back to her room, say good night, and go to bed, alone. She should wake up tomorrow and forget that this conversation ever happened, this one moment of weakness banished to the back of her mind forever. She should forget the way it felt when he held her, the way she felt safe. Not weak, even as she was falling apart. She should close the door between them and remind herself that she is perfectly fine on her own—better on her own.
Instead, she shakes her head. “I don’t want to be alone,” she tells him quietly. “Can I…can I stay with you?”
Asking the question feels like being ripped open before vultures. For an awful moment, she worries that he will say no, that he will tell her he doesn’t want to be with her for another moment, that she has shown herself now to be too open, too emotional, too wanting. That whatever fragile thing that once existed between them has been slaughtered, murdered by the lies and secrets that have amassed between them.
It is terrifying, she realizes, to need someone, even for a moment. Her mother was right, it is better to need no one at all.
Instead of answering, though, he takes her hand in his and leads her down the spiral staircase, away from the servants’ corridor and into the royal wing. Instead of making the left that would take them to her room, he makes a right and brings her to his.
In many ways, his room is a replica of her own, with a large bed piled with furs, a roaring fireplace, heavy velvet curtains covering the windows, but his room is done in rich navy blue instead of the shades of lavender that make up her own room. When he closes the door behind her, he stands awkwardly, watching her with wary eyes, like he isn’t sure what to expect of her.
Her fingers go to the ribbon that ties her cloak around her neck and she shrugs it off, leaving her in just her nightgown. She goes to his bed and crawls beneath the covers, turning on her side and watching him, but he doesn’t move toward her or away.
“I’m not stealing your bed from you,” she tells him. “It’s hardly the first time we shared.”
“That was different,” he says. “You were poisoned.”
“It was nice,” she tells him. “Not the poison,” she adds quickly with a small smile. “But being held. It was nice to be held by you.”
He exhales but doesn’t speak, so continues.
“It feels like we were different people then, doesn’t it?” she asks. “We were, I suppose. All dressed up in lies.”
“It wasn’t all lies, though,” he says softly.
“You called me lightning,” she says. “ Terrifying and beautiful and dangerous and bright all at once. I suppose I’m more terrifying and dangerous than bright and beautifulnow.”
For a moment, he doesn’t speak, but finally he shakes his head. “You’re still all of it,” he says before pausing. “…”
She doesn’t know what he is going to say, but she knows she doesn’t want to hear it.
“Please, just hold me,” she says before he can get the words out.
His shoulders slump forward, but after a second he nods, coming around to the other side of the bed and climbing in beside her, wrapping an arm around her waist. She feels herself soften in his hold, her eyes closing. She focuses on the rhythm of his heart beating, her own slowing to match it.
“Leopold was hiding who he is because he’s convinced that my mother is responsible for killing Sophie and he didn’t know if he could trust me,” she says into the silence. She hopes that saying the words out loud will make them sound as ridiculous as they do in her mind, but it doesn’t. And in the silence that follows, she hears him considering them, weighing them as if they could possibly be taken seriously.
“It can’t be true, obviously,” she says. “But I told him I believed it in order to earn his trust.”
“Hmmm,” Bairre says, the sound a rumble in his chest that feels more than hears.
“It isn’t the truth,” she repeats.
“You know her better than I do,” he says after a moment. “Is that what upset you so much?”
She frowns, considering the question. “Not only that. It was just everything—hearing him talk about Sophie, how she wanted him to find me before my mother tried to kill me, too. To protect me, as if that’s necessary.”
“Well, someone has tried three times now to have you killed,” he points out. She hears his breath catch. “…”
“It wasn’t my mother,” she says quickly. “She loves me. She needs me.”
He doesn’t answer, and finds that she’s grateful for it. After a few moments, his breathing turns steady, and joins him in sleep soon after.