Violie glances down at the dress and flushes. “No, not at all,” she says. “I just…the maid who was demoted to make room for me keeps fluttering in and out, giving me dirty looks, and I wanted to stay busy but there was nothing to be done, so…” She trails off, and Sophronia smiles.
“So you’re pretending to mend a brand-new gown?” she supplies. “Clever.”
“Thank you,” Violie says before hesitating. “For hiring me, I mean.”
Sophronia nods. “It’s nice to have someone from Bessemia about. It makes me feel a little less homesick. You must feel a little homesick too.”
“A bit,” Violie admits. “Mostly, I just miss my mother.”
Sophronia wonders what that must be like. She thought she might miss the empress, but mostly, she just feels relieved not to see her every day.
“Oh,” Violie says, laying the gown down over the arm of the chair. “King Leopold returned just a few moments ago and asked me to ask you to accompany him on a ride tomorrow afternoon. You have time, after lunch with Lady Enid and Countess Francesca and before the banquet to welcome Sir Diapollio.”
“The Cellarian singer?” Sophronia asks, surprised, before she remembers he’s arriving to sing a concert. “Oh yes, I’m quite looking forward to that. They say his voice is a gift from the stars. Tell Leopold I would love to join him for a ride. Was there anything else?”
“A letter and a package arrived for you,” Violie says. “I left them on your desk—the package is from your sister in Friv and the letter is from your mother.”
Sophronia smiles her thanks as she moves toward her desk, where Beatriz’s letter is waiting as well, just out of sight. Both the box and the letter appear to have been tampered with already—apparently, her mother was right to be so concerned about codes and hidden messages.
“That will be all for now,” Sophronia tells Violie as she takes a seat at her desk. “I’ll ring if I need you.”
Violie bobs a quick curtsy before slipping from the room, closing the door behind her. Sophronia glances from the box to the letter before deciding on the box first.
As she unties the ribbon and lifts the box up, a worry seizes her—Daphne couldn’t have managed to steal King Bartholomew’s seal already, could she have? Sophronia has barely begun to sow tensions between Cellaria and Temarin! Of course, Daphne very well could be that far ahead of her. She likely isn’t losing time lobbying for mercy for thieves.
Still, when she lifts the box’s lid and finds a book she lets out a sigh of relief. Even Daphne couldn’t conceal something the size of a seal in a book so small. She opens the letter that accompanies it, scanning her sister’s words.
Prince Cillian, dead. Not so surprising, really, given reports of his health, but Sophronia feels the shock of it all the same. Though Daphne, at least, seems to have recovered and kept her part of things in motion by betrothing herself to Prince Bairre.
Sophronia picks the book up, turning it over in her hands. She spots her sister’s stitches on the spine immediately. She takes the letter opener and rips through them, finding another letter hidden there, this one sounding so much more like Daphne that it makes her heart ache and she thinks she might give anything to be with her sister now.
Her mother’s letter looms far larger than its size, and Sophronia can’t bring herself to open it yet. Instead, she reaches into her desk and draws out Beatriz’s letter, deciding to decode that first. The code work is a bit sloppy—coding has never been Beatriz’s strong suit—but Sophronia knows her sister well enough to piece the message together. Apparently Beatriz hasn’t yet consummated her marriage either, a fact that makes Sophronia feel a bit better about her own failure in that area.
She forces herself to set both letters and the book aside, picking up the envelope bearing her mother’s seal and tearing it open. She scans the brief letter, knowing it is a farce from the salutation—My dearest daughter. Surely Sophronia has never been that. The rest is bland nonsense, congratulations on her nuptials, fond wishes for her future, tender words. But Sophronia’s eyes catch on the last line. Never doubt that my love for you is brighter than the burning sun.
The burning sun is the clue. Sophronia lets out a long breath before lifting the letter to the lit candle on her desk, holding it just out of reach of the flame. The paper’s surface darkens next to the heat and another message appears in the top margin, the letters a pale white.
Find Sir Diapollio to receive a little gift from me.
When she invited Daphne to go shopping, Lady Cliona described Wallfrost Street as the fashion district, and Daphne expected something akin to Hapantoile’s fashion district—entire blocks taken up by bright, clean storefronts and even more craftspeople selling wares from street carts, shouting their latest deals to lure customers over. Instead, Wallfrost Street is the length of a single Bessemian city block of stores, all neat and tidy but decidedly lacking in glamour.
“I don’t see why this couldn’t wait,” Daphne says from atop her horse, glancing up at the gray sky. “It looks ready to start pouring rain at any moment.”
Cliona lets out a snort beside her on her own horse. Four guards ride behind them, though they keep a polite distance. “You’d have better luck waiting for fire to freeze than for fine weather in Friv this time of year,” she says.
“Still,” Daphne says. “It isn’t as though shopping will do me much good—I’m in mourning for Cillian.”
“The king told my father that it would be appropriate for you to set aside mourning gowns,” Cliona says, shrugging. “You didn’t really know him, after all, and it’s better for Friv if you represent a bright future rather than a tragic past.”
Daphne sees the logic in that, but as she realized during their journey north, Cliona is a terrible liar. And as any terrible liar would know, it is easier to skirt the truth than to try to break it.
“Why today, Cliona?” she asks, glancing sideways at her companion.
Cliona’s ears turn red and she clears her throat.
“It’s the queen,” she says, her voice low, as if someone might overhear, though apart from the guards stationed three feet ahead of and behind them, there is no one else on the street. “She’s been a bit…unwell.”
Daphne hesitates, trying to decide just how much information to share in hopes of gaining some in return.
“She said something the other day, when Bairre and I were signing the new marriage contract,” she says carefully. “Something about a curse the king had brought down on them. She seemed to blame him for Cillian’s death. I don’t see how that’s possible. Prince Cillian died of illness. A mysterious one, certainly, but I don’t see how that could be the king’s fault.”
Cliona bites her lip. “There’s an old bit of gossip—poppycock, I assure you. They say that Bartholomew solicited the help of an empyrea during the last of the Clan Wars to win Friv for himself.”