“We need to stop meeting like this,” she tells him, remembering how he stayed by her bed while she recovered from the poison. “Where are we?”
Bairre glances away. “With a friend,” he says carefully before pausing. “After you were…”
“Shot?” she supplies.
He nods. “You were going to die,” he says. “You were dying. I wasn’t sure even Fergal would have been able to save you. But I knew someone who could, and she was nearer than the castle.”
“Who?” Daphne asks, frowning.
At that moment, a woman pushes open the door and steps inside holding a tray. She looks about the empress’s age, or at least the way Daphne thinks her mother would look first thing in the morning, before her hair was dressed and her face slathered with all the creams and pigments she uses. There is no varnish or polish on this woman—even her hair has gone gray, though in the bright sunlight it seems to glint silver.
She also looks familiar.
“Your mother,” she says to Bairre, who nods.
“You can call me Aurelia,” the woman says, setting the tray down on the foot of Daphne’s bed and pouring steaming-hot tea into a chipped cup. She offers it to Daphne, who takes a small sip—bitter, but tolerably so––as she looks the woman over. Cliona said Aurelia was the greatest empyrea she’d ever heard of, but the woman reminds Daphne of her childhood nurse more than anything else. “I’m sure you feel like death itself,” Aurelia continues.
“But I’m not,” Daphne says. “Dead, that is. I’m assuming I have you to thank for that. Is Cliona all right? Her shoulder—”
“She’s fine,” Bairre says. “She went back to the castle to tell my father what happened, that we’re safe.”
Daphne nods slowly, taking another sip of tea. She thinks back to the events in the forest, how Bairre hadn’t questioned Cliona’s skill with a dagger, or her own. How he’d handled himself better than she expected him to. She thinks back further, to Cliona’s implicit trust of him, despite the fact that her father was trying to overthrow his. To Bairre’s resentment of his new position.
“How long have you been working with the rebels?” she asks him.
For his part, Bairre isn’t surprised by the question. He holds her gaze, his silver eyes on hers. “It must be five years now?” he says, glancing at his mother for confirmation.
“Thereabouts,” she confirms. “You were twelve.”
Bairre nods, frowning. “I was in the woods one afternoon and a strange woman approached,” he says. “She claimed to be my mother.”
Aurelia shakes her head. “He didn’t believe me at first, but as you noticed, the resemblance is uncanny,” she says.
“But why?” Daphne asks Aurelia. “From what I heard, you put Bartholomew on that throne, you wanted to unite Friv. Why would you go through all that trouble and then assist the rebellion?”
Aurelia and Bairre exchange a look, but Bairre is the one to answer.
“She reads the stars,” he tells her.
“And?” Daphne asks. “All empyreas read the stars.”
“Not like me,” Aurelia says. “I never had to learn it or train my gift. The stars have been speaking to me my whole life, telling me tales of the world to come. For so long it was war and bloodshed and death, so much death. I was young and tired of it all and foolish enough to believe I could stop it.”
“But you did,” Daphne points out. “There has been no war in Friv in nearly two decades.”
“No,” Aurelia agrees. “But I’ve learned that the absence of war does not equal peace. The stars still tell me a tale of war, Princess, but now I’m wise enough to know that war never dies, it only sleeps.”
There is more Aurelia doesn’t say, Daphne is sure of it, but Bairre seems to have accepted her reasoning easily enough, so Daphne holds her tongue. For now.
She thinks of her mother’s plans for Friv, the way she’s forcing them into a war with Cellaria that no one wants, the many people who will have to die for a country and a conflict that aren’t theirs. She can’t be angry with Bairre for keeping secrets, not when her own are far worse. If he learns the truth about her, he will never forgive her for it. Suddenly, she understands why her sisters went against their mother—she can’t agree with their decision, but she does understand it.
“War is waking up now,” Aurelia continues. “I’ve known it for some time. So when Lord Panlington came to me and asked for my assistance, I gave it to him, and we’ve been working together ever since.”
“But why did you join?” Daphne asks Bairre. “To go against your father and Cillian?”
Bairre flinches and looks away. “I believed I could win Cillian over,” he admits. “I still think I could have, if I’d had more time. As for my father…I love him. But you can love someone and still disagree with them.”
Daphne considers this for a moment, leaning back against the pillows. “You must have been horrified,” she says slowly. “When your father named you his heir.”
Aurelia looks from Daphne to Bairre, her brow creasing. “I’m sure you’re hungry,” she tells Daphne. “I’ll warm some soup for you.”
When she slips back out of the room and closes the door behind her, Bairre lets out a deep breath.
“I wanted to wait,” he says. “Once I inherited the throne, I could refuse it. It would have been an easy ending, but Lord Panlington, my mother—everyone, really—disagreed. So nothing changed when I was named heir—it was a crown I knew I would never wear, no matter what happened. The only thing that changed, really, was you.” He pauses for a moment, and part of Daphne wants that pause to go on forever, because she knows where this is going, and even though it’s exactly what her mother wants—what she wants—she also knows that if they continue down this road, it will hurt them both.
“After the poison, when you were delirious and feverish, you said some things,” he says slowly.
Daphne nods, pressing her lips together into a thin line. “My memory is a bit fuzzy,” she says. “But I remember you saying some things as well.”
“Daphne,” he says gently, but it is a warning all the same.
She ignores it and reaches for his hand, taking it and squeezing it tight, the way she did before they went into the woods, as if to say I’m here, I’m not going anywhere. Another lie, she thinks, but one she wishes were the truth. He squeezes her hand in return, lifting it to his lips to brush a kiss over her knuckles.
Daphne understands, suddenly, exactly what she is—not a girl, not a princess, not a spy or a saboteur. She is a poison, brewed and distilled and fermented over sixteen years, crafted by her mother to bring ruination to whomever she touches. Poison is a woman’s weapon, after all, and here she is, a weapon of a woman.