And Bairre sees it, maybe he has always seen it, from the second he handed her out of that carriage on the Frivian border. Lightning, he called her before, and that was before he saw her stab one man and shoot a second, but maybe there is a part of him that has always known what she is capable of.
She starts to pull her hand from his, but he surprises her, reaching up to cup her face. And then he is kissing her, and she is kissing him back.
It isn’t her first kiss. When she and her sisters were fifteen, their mother dared them to see who could kiss the most boys at court over the course of a month. Beatriz won, of course, kissing five, and Sophronia was too nervous to kiss even one, but Daphne managed a perfectly respectable three. Practice, their mother had called it, to prepare them for this inevitable moment.
The thought seems ridiculous now, because nothing could have prepared her for this. It is nothing like those practice kisses, which were awkward and bumbling and pleasant enough, Daphne supposes. But kissing Bairre doesn’t feel awkward or bumbling, and pleasant enough doesn’t come close to describing it. It is a kiss that threatens to consume her, a kiss that feels as necessary to her as oxygen, but as hungry and desperate as it grows, the gentle touch of Bairre’s hand on her cheek, his arm around her waist, make her feel safe and treasured and maybe even loved.
It is a new feeling, she realizes, but it is one she would drown in if she could.
They break apart when his mother returns, a bowl of soup in her hand, and her brow furrowed. When she passes the bowl to Daphne, she hesitates.
“I don’t understand why you aren’t dead,” she says slowly.
Daphne frowns. “I thought we’d established that was thanks to you.”
Aurelia shakes her head. “I told you the stars speak to me. Lately they’ve been all but screaming. The blood of stars and majesty spilled.”
“The stars said that?” Daphne asks.
Aurelia shrugs. “It’s difficult to explain, but that is what I hear, at least. The words have been echoing in my mind for weeks now. Ever since you came to Friv. At first, I worried they meant Bairre; then when he showed up carrying you with what was very nearly a fatal wound…”
“The blood of stars and majesty,” Daphne repeats. “You used star magic to conceive Bairre.”
“Just as your mother used star magic to conceive you,” Aurelia says. “It’s why you have the same eyes—star-touched. The blood of stars and majesty, meaning someone both star-touched and royal.”
“My sisters,” Daphne says, every muscle in her body going taut. “One of them is in Cellaria, with eyes like mine. Last we spoke, she was in trouble—she seemed sure she could get herself out of it, but…I need to speak with them. I did it before, with Beatriz, using stardust. Do you have any?”
* * *
—
Daphne sits cross-legged on the bed with a vial of stardust in each hand and Bairre perched beside her. She uncorks the vials and smears the stardust on the backs of both of her hands.
“I wish I could speak to Princess Beatriz and Queen Sophronia,” she says, closing her eyes.
For a moment, nothing happens; then the world around her softens and mutes and she hears the distant roar of a cheering crowd.
“Sophie?” Daphne asks tentatively. “Triz?”
“Daphne, is that you? Thank the stars,” Beatriz says. “So much has happened—”
“What’s happening?” Sophronia asks, her voice more tired than surprised. “Why can I hear you?”
“It’s stardust—too much to explain, we only have a few moments,” Daphne says. “Are you both all right?”
“Not at all,” Beatriz says. “Is that a crowd cheering, Sophie?”
For a long moment, Sophronia doesn’t speak. “It is,” she says finally, her voice strained. “I believe they’re cheering for my execution.”
Sophronia squints when the guards lead her out into the sunlight, a burst of pain exploding in her head at the sudden brightness. Beyond that, she is numb. The furious shouts of the crowd of strangers watching her, the splintered wooden planks beneath her bare feet, the all-consuming fear she knows should be present in her chest—she doesn’t feel any of it.
The execution had been postponed by a day while Kavelle and the surrounding areas were searched for Leopold, but when there was no sign of him, Ansel informed her it would be going forward this evening. Sophronia was almost relieved to hear it––the waiting had felt like its own kind of torture.
“Sophie, what are you talking about?” Daphne asks, her voice low in Sophronia’s mind, but loud enough—mercifully—to drown out the screams of the crowd, screams crying out for her head.
“It’s quite a long story,” Sophronia says softly, her eyes focused ahead on the wooden platform at the center of the city square, at the glinting silver of the guillotine blade. “I only have a moment.”
“Sophie, no,” Beatriz says, her voice cracking. “That can’t be right. Mama will save you.”
At that, Sophronia laughs, the sound hysterical. “She will not,” she says. “But I’m glad you’re both here, even if I don’t understand how. I love you both so much. And I’m so sorry I failed you.”
“What are you talking about?” Daphne asks. “What’s happening?”
But there is no time to explain it—not when Ansel is there, taking hold of her arm and guiding her toward the block of wood, still wet with dark red blood. How many have been executed today, she wonders. Have they saved her for last?
“There’s no time,” Sophronia says, focusing on her sisters’ voices, on the presence she feels in her mind. She allows herself to be guided to her knees, allows her neck to be placed in the groove of the wood. She closes her eyes. “I have friends coming to find you—Leopold and Violie. Please help them. There is so much more at play than we realized. I still don’t understand all of it, but please be careful. I love you both so much. I love you all the way to the stars. And I—”
Empress Margaraux 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 Margaraux 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.