Stefan’s council room was in tatters.

No, Briar’s council room now, wasn’t it?

She had not been crowned yet, though. Queen in name only.

Queen of Austria.

The Bavarian contingent had been small, swift, and effective. No grand army; they had come for the sole purpose of either stopping the wedding to prevent the unity of Austria and Lorraine, or stopping Stefan from making an attempt at becoming emperor with both Austria and Lorraine at his back.

They had succeeded in one goal, and then fled.

Briar sat at the head of a long table, staring down at the surface covered in maps of the Holy Roman Empire, some of Bavaria specifically, others of Austria, and willed herself to feel something.

All she could conjure was rancid terror over Phillip. Who sat at her right, his eyes on her face, his own concern for her pinching his features. How he could worry about her after his state in the throne room, she didn’t know. Or, no, she did know, because this was him, honor and loyalty above all, and she loved him and all his dedication to her, but in this moment she wanted him to damn his honor and let her help him.

Even if he would, though, she was unable to.

The room held Stefan’s five closest vassals. And the fairies, at the side of the room, silent and mourning. Ben was behind Phillip’s chair, hands folded, eyes on the floor.

Queen Leah was in hysterics, apparently unable to be calmed; she had been sequestered to her rooms.

Hubert was similarly distraught and had been moved to his chamber as well, for his health.

One vassal turned to Briar. Lord Lehmann, who oversaw the troops in the castle. “This act cannot go unaddressed. I can have an army mobilized within the day, Your Majesty.”

“You would attack Bavaria?” The words were ash in Briar’s mouth.

Not you.

We.

Her.

Her first act as queen would be death?

“What other course is there?” Lehmann asked.

“There is subtlety!” another vassal countered. Lord Köning, who dealt in communications and diplomatic relations. “There are ways to react that do not bring more loss of life and all-out war!”

Yes, she thought. Yes, that, whatever it is.

Lehmann purpled, enraged—the vassals were all enraged—and Briar shoved to her feet.

“I will not condone a war,” she said. That, at least, she could be sure of.

Did no one else hear how absurd this was, coming from her lips? As though she had any experience in these matters. As though she knew anything.

But she did know. She knew the families of the soldiers in Hausach. She knew them and their spouses and children. She knew the guests who had been at her wedding—she knew of them, at least. She knew the aftermath, how many of them were still soaking blood into her throne room floor. They’d had no choice. Those who lived under the powerful rarely did.

Briar would not, would never, condone endangering anyone.

Köning nodded, grim. “Then we move to declare another candidacy.”

Briar blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Bavaria sought to prevent Austria from gaining even more power. But we are not without options for continuing the king’s plans to bring the seat of the empire to Austria.” His eyes fell on Phillip. “Prince Phillip would make a fine replacement.”

Briar went stone stiff.

“His heroics would make him a candidate to be rivaled,” Lehmann admitted. “Defeating the dragon, ridding Austria of the tyrant Maleficent, rescuing the king’s daughter and breaking her curse—he has proven his valor beyond denial, to such glorious extent even Bavaria would have difficulty smearing his name.”

Smearing his name? But Briar could not linger on that, for when she looked down at Phillip, his face was paling, whiter with each word Lehmann spoke. Strain in his jaw wrenched tighter and his chest fluttered with those too-short breaths again.

Defensive panic tugged hard on Briar’s stomach, and she slammed her hand on the table to drag attention to her. “This is an Austrian matter. We should leave him out of this.”

The room eyed her.

Uncomfortable, Köning tried, “He is Austrian now—”

“Why would we need to make a grasp for emperor still?” Briar asked honestly. “Why is that a goal we should have?”

Another awkward shift. Had she asked an obvious question? Possibly.

“To back down would be to let Bavaria’s acts today be victorious.”

It was not a vassal who had spoken but Flora.

Briar flipped a startled look at her. So did the vassals. But they deferred to Flora, respect evident in their softening postures.

She floated to the table, wings carrying her aloft as she gripped her wand like another attack was imminent.

“Stefan’s candidacy would have been the only one strong enough to dissuade Matilda of Bavaria from becoming empress,” Flora said.

Briar thought back. “When he spoke of it, he made it seem as though she would be dismissed.”

Köning made a grunt of disagreement. “It was a possibility. Her reputation walks the line between fierce and warmongering. Depending on the Prince Electors, if they are the battle-loving sort, it would not be difficult for her to sway them.”

A weight was slowly collecting in Briar’s gut. “So she will be empress now?”

“The woman who invaded your country,” Flora said, and her voice was all sympathy, but none of it reached Briar. “The woman who killed your father.”

The woman who had killed her king, Flora meant. For that was all that had happened today. The king had been murdered, and Briar reacted to it as she had the news of the emperor’s death: a twinge of sorrow, then moving on.

What did sit with her, a welling iron tang, was the ease with which Matilda of Bavaria had invaded, assassinated the king, murdered wedding guests—and set that look in Phillip’s eyes. It was foolish, perhaps, but that was the crux of Briar’s growing foundation of action, that she wanted revenge not for her father’s death but for Phillip’s fear. For the terror wreaked on this castle and its people. For the disgust that yet another being had exacted its invasive will on her life, on her future, on innocents around her.

She had been helpless again. Matilda so easily could have murdered her, too. Or worse.

And the guests? Those who had been killed? They had been truly helpless. Briar, for all her station now, for all her power now, had done nothing to help those she was meant to safeguard.

If Bavaria came to have control of the Holy Roman Empire, then there would no longer be a third party to mediate its longstanding feud with Austria. The only thing that had ever kept the battles between Austria and Bavaria from growing to full wars had been the emperor’s decisive intervention; now, Bavaria would have all the resources, all the strength. They would consume Austria—and Lorraine, too—without question or obstacle.

Austria would be laid waste, to blood and ruin. Everyone who lived here, everyone Briar knew and loved and was now destined to protect, would be thrown into helpless, indefinite turmoil.

Briar’s hands curled into fists. Something new took root in her, and it was strong enough that it overpowered the corresponding kick of shock that she was capable of feeling this emotion.

Fury.

She was furious.

She had been terrified and hurt and scared and weak, ever since Maleficent’s curse. She had been confused and lost and in pieces.

But she had not been angry.

Now she was.

“What about me?” she heard a version of herself say. Not Aurora. Not Briar Rose. This was new, and it was a wild part of her that spoke calmly and clearly.

Her eyes were on the table. But she felt Phillip look at her. Heard his intake of breath.

“What about you, Your Majesty?” Köning pressed.

“What about me for empress?”

The room went silent.

And it was Flora, still nearby, who released a sigh of hope. “Yes! Oh, yes. Think of the position! The exiled princess, recently reunited, only to lose her father in a brutal attack on her very wedding day. The sympathy alone will sway the Prince Electors.”

“But not mere sympathy,” Fauna added, hovering next to her sister. “Aurora grew up among the people. She has their knowledge, their heart. She brings experience beyond that of any other candidate.”

“And with Stefan’s resources…” Köning said, thinking aloud, and the room shifted from hesitant to considering.

Her chest bucked.

She did not want them to agree.

She did want them to agree.

She was split, split again, and she had been in pieces already, so what was she now? Shards, sharp, wicked shards, and her hands were bleeding on them.

Lehmann rose. The others at the table followed him, until all were standing, save for Phillip, who was stiff with shock.

The vassals bowed to her. “We will press forward with your coronation and alert Frankfurt to your candidacy,” Köning said.

Briar nodded. She should thank them. They were her vassals now, her supporters.

“Thank you,” she managed.

Her eyes met Ben’s. He was a ghost, fully pale, but her eyes held on his and he gave a weak smile and he felt very, very far away.

She left the room in a rush.

Got paces down the hall.

And vomited in an alcove.

A hand touched her shoulder. It was not Phillip.

Merryweather.

Briar wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her wedding gown. “I am fine.”

“Are you?”

She turned to her aunt, unsure of what expression she was showing. “I’m to be empress, so how could I not be? Princess to queen to empress. Next I shall make a play for God, I think.”

She tried to laugh.

It came out croaking and wretched.

Merryweather magicked up a floating goblet and urged Briar to take it. She sipped minty water, cool and clean, and it washed away the sour tang in her mouth.

The goblet vanished as quick as it had come, and Merryweather gathered Briar into a hug, soft and warm and, for a moment, familiar.

“If it gives you comfort,” Merryweather started, “you did the right thing.”

Briar peeled back. “How? What part of this could be right?”

Gentle hands on her cheeks. Motherly, grounding, when Briar had never had much of either. “You limit yourself, Briar. You always have. Yes, much has happened that is unfair to you—but you are meant for so much more than you realize. Great things will come from you, I promise. Have faith in yourself.”

Great things? She did not want great things. She wanted to sing in taverns and laugh with her friends and she wanted—

The door to the council room opened, and Phillip rushed out, sighting her immediately down the hall.

Merryweather released her without another word, and Briar ran to him. He met her and caught her in his arms.

But she pulled back almost instantly and looked up at him, studying him in the hall’s low light. “Are you all right? Are you—”

“Am I all right?” He laughed, empty. “Briar, you did not have to do that. If you did it for me, to avoid my candidacy, you did not have to.”

“It was only partly for you,” she whispered. “I did it because I’m tired of not being in control of my own life. And this way, the move I make is my own.”

She was so tired. Exhausted, inside and out, from her head to her soul. But she had spent too much time sleeping as it was; it was time for her to wake up, to reclaim her life, whatever that would look like now.

Phillip was tired, too. He swayed on his feet, his cheeks still a pallid gray. She put her hand to his jaw, but Köning and the other vassals had already flooded the hall, seen her, and moved in.

“Your Majesty, wait but a moment—plans must be made.”

“The caravan to travel to Frankfurt will be arranged. But who should be with you?”

“The coronation can begin as soon as possible. When would you have it?”

Her head rang. Rang and rang and Briar closed her eyes, knotting her fingers with Phillip’s. She pressed that tangle to her lips.

Then she turned to face the choice she had made—the first she had ever made for herself.

The next weeks passed in a dream. Which was, Briar thought, rather cruel, given that her dreams—nightmares—were coming upon her more and more in what infrequent sleep she managed.

They were always of the women she had seen while she’d been asleep under the curse. Women she did not know, only she did, for how often had she seen them in various states of fear or worry or strain? They were in positions of power, as she was; she saw them surrounded by advisers and supporters, but even with that help, they were tormented, as she was. Were they others Maleficent had cursed over the centuries? Whoever they were, they were surely meant to torture her, fragmented ghosts of her fate, and so she would not take them on, for she had plenty in her waking life that tortured her just fine.

Most horribly, she had been denied a wedding night with Phillip.

She should probably not have listed that as the most horrible thing that was happening to her, but she was greatly annoyed by its interruption and subsequent delays. Even their nightly meetings in the kitchen had taken a pause, first due to preparations for her coronation, and then due to the endless hours of chaos that came from becoming queen of a kingdom fractured by a regicide. Guards trailed her every move, fearful of another attack. And, when those duties did not keep her up until well past midnight, the electoral embassy that would escort her to Frankfurt was being planned, and preparations were being made for her campaign to become empress.

Seven Prince Electors would cast votes to name the new emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The whole process would stretch over three weeks, during which time the Electors would meet with each candidate to get to know them, pose whatever questions they had, and judge their worth. Throughout those three weeks, there would be structured events—jousts and games, banquets and balls, all the typical pomp of the upper classes—but Briar had been warned that these events would be positioned to reveal the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses. Games would be designed to reveal cunning and mental prowess; banquets would be designed to reveal social standing and command of attention; jousts to show the strength of one’s soldiers; and so on.

Stefan’s vassals—no, Briar’s; damn, but she still had trouble believing the claim was hers now—had been coaching her in the ways of campaigning, how best to present herself and her strengths. When first they had sat down with her to go over such things, she had laughed, because weren’t her strengths the very things they had told her already? That she would win sympathy for her father being murdered so soon after she’d reunited with him, and that she had intimate knowledge of life among the people. How would she present those things except by simply entering a room?

So it stunned Briar silent when Köning handed her a list that had been decided on by all the vassals, debated over in a prior meeting and compiled so they agreed on her best qualities:

Self-assured

Thoughtful

Passionate

Envisions a peaceful future for the empire

And the one that set her mind spinning, dazed:

Fearless

She looked up at the vassals. “Truly?”

Köning, already shuffling through a stack of parchment for his next set of notes, half looked at her. “Which one, Your Majesty?”

All of them.

They saw her this way?

They barely knew her. They had only seen her in passing these few weeks, had only interacted with her on the periphery. So were these attributes truly hers, or were they things her vassals hoped she could emulate?

Fauna, who hovered just behind Briar’s chair, placed a hand on her shoulder. “You have displayed all these traits in your time here, Rose,” she whispered softly. “They honor you by recognizing what you are.”

She used the name that Briar’s aunts had called her by. That only Briar’s aunts had called her by. Briar Rose had been her full name, but Frieda had thought Briar sounded more interesting, thorny and sharp, and so Briar had acquiesced to being Briar because she had been about six and had wanted so desperately to be interesting.

But she realized, hearing Fauna say Rose now, that the split of who she was had happened even earlier than she had realized. As a child, she had been Briar to some and Rose to her aunts and Briar Rose to even more—

Had there ever been a time in her life when she had simply existed?

Briar sat down the paper with her best qualities, eyes blurring as she read it over, and over.

Were these the traits of Briar?

Or of Aurora?

Which would best win empress?

She looked up at her vassals, who had fallen silent, watching her, waiting for her reaction.

Köning leaned forward, sincerity in his dark eyes. “This list is not of things you should force yourself to display. They are qualities we have noted you display innately, and so we will work to enhance what is already natural to you.”

“Far easier to do so,” Lehmann added, “than to choose qualities you do not have and force you to play a part. The Prince Electors will see through any act.”

Briar nodded absently. Self-assured. Thoughtful. Passionate. Envisions a peaceful future for the empire.

Fearless.

“Thank you,” she said. “I shall strive to continue displaying these traits to the fullest of my abilities. For Austria.”

She smiled and they returned it with gracious bows.

Briar felt, in that moment, that no matter who she would need to be in the future, maybe these weren’t just Stefan’s vassals after all.

Maybe they really were hers, too.

Campaign preparations aside, as queen, she did begin pressing to understand how she could extend Austria’s resources to counter the inequities she knew of in Hausach. She would not wait to stanch the helplessness she knew people suffered under now, and no one could dismiss her requests for such things anymore, though her vassals seemed confused about why she would ask for reports about the poorest areas of Austria as compared to the wealthiest, advice on the ways they could address those imbalances, and a list of the most common complaints made by village leaders. That was her only solace, that she was at least trying to improve life for the people she knew and loved.

She had power now. The most power in Austria. And she would use that power to help the powerless.

After a quick, private coronation—now husband and wife and king and queen, with no time to celebrate either—Phillip left to escort his father home to Lorraine, and so he was not even under the same roof as her for days that stretched to weeks. Soldiers accompanied him, no chances taken now, though Briar doubted Bavaria would strike again; they had been successful, and even if they heard of her candidacy for emperor, would they truly fear her? Ben went with Phillip, squire that he was, and that was a strange, irksome blow, that he was now more tied to Phillip than to her. Briar tried not to be too annoyed at feeling abandoned, but she had been, and she was bristling and anxious and so very, very alone.

She had her aunts. She had the Queen Mother now, who had not spoken a word since Stefan’s death, clothed in mourning black and utterly unresponsive.

But she was alone, and she was terrified, and the date of her departure for Frankfurt loomed.

She almost asked Merryweather to check in again on Frieda. To reassure her that her friend was still well. To see if, maybe, Frieda was as alone as Briar, and then she would have reason to seek her out—

But she did not ask. Could not allow herself to.

Peasant to princess to queen to empress.

To spring from the first to the second was an act of God. To leap all four in a single year—it was impossible.

And yet here she was, living her impossible life, Briar Rose the peasant bard, Aurora the princess, some new furious woman the queen.

What version of her would rise up once she became empress?

How many different versions of one person could she hold within her body until she broke from the strain?

Her electoral embassy left the castle in an unintentional parade. That was the natural pomp that came with being queen, Briar had found; where she went, finery followed, and her dozens of carriages, mounted soldiers, attendants, and carts were beset with well-wishers who lined the road all the way past Hausach.

She watched out the window of her carriage as the procession made its way through the village, noting faces she recognized in the crowd. Rolf and his wife, a few from Ben’s family. People she had grown up alongside and loved, and now she watched them through a gilded window frame.

Whatever she met in Frankfurt, whatever challenges arose in this campaign, this was what she was fighting for, that there might not be such a disparity between her position and theirs. That it might not be such an impossible thing for a peasant girl to be a leader. That a little girl might not be shocked to see real meat on her table, as though it was some rare, special thing.

She left silent promises on the road as they passed, and off her impressive retinue went—bound to meet up with Phillip’s caravan when they were outside Heidelberg, one day from Frankfurt.

Briar knew the decorum that was expected of her. She had the Queen Mother’s fixed grace implanted in her mind, and she had sat through dozens of lessons on propriety.

So it was entirely intentional when her entourage stopped to wait for Phillip’s caravan and she took off at a dead sprint as he rode up.

“Your Majesty!” Flora cried in horror.

Briar hefted her blue skirts to free her legs, feet pounding on the summer-dry dirt road, racing past her carriages, laden with her vassals and luggage and household excesses, so much stuff for her, for who she was now.

Phillip saw her coming, of course he did, and gave her a wide, gleaming grin. He vaulted from Samson, landing with that soldier’s grace, and tore up the road toward her. He was dressed in lighter travel wear, a brown tunic and boots caked in dust, his face sweat-slicked—and those were the only details that registered, because he was here and he was safe and he was hers.

She threw herself into him, and he caught her, and the stress of the past weeks, of simply not being near him, evaporated as he held her forcefully against him.

Then she remembered she was angry with him, and she swatted the back of his head.

“You abandoned me,” she grumbled into his shoulder.

He tried to put her down, no doubt to look at her to plead his case; she clung tighter, not ready to let him go yet.

She heard a satisfied moan in his throat and his grip on her went almost painfully tight.

He smelled of travel and horses and that heady musk that was him, and he was as solid as ever.

Home, part of her sighed. Home.

“I did,” he admitted. “There was far too much business piled up to leave it all to my father. But I know, I am now—”

“‘—so fully in my debt that you will never be out of it,’” she parroted. They’d had had this conversation already, in letters, but it bore repeating.

“I sign my life away to you entirely,” said Phillip. “If I remember correctly, you collect souls? Consider mine best among your stock.”

“Best? You certainly think favorably of your soul’s quality, Sir Knight.”

He laughed, and now she did pull back to see his face, the way the laughter lit his eyes and broadened his smile.

His eyes were still sunken with sleeplessness. She knew hers matched his—she and Phillip were ever the rather haunted pairing—and as his smile faded, a weight settled in her gut.

“You are well?” she asked. They were surrounded by dozens of members of her court. He would not answer the way she wanted.

“Are you?” he pushed back.

She gave him an incredulous look. “One day, you will answer that question.”

“I say the same to you.” His face collapsed, but before she could question it, he pressed his lips to her temple, holding there a moment. Something went out of his shoulders, of his arms, tension she had not noticed. “Heaven help me, I missed you.”

“It is good to be missed,” she said, eyes stinging.

“But it is horrible to do the missing. If it is in my power, I will never have to miss you again.”

Hoofbeats thundered up the road behind Phillip.

Briar looked over his shoulder and gawked. “Is that Ben, on a horse?”

Phillip pulled back from her, arms still around her waist, and glanced back with a prideful smile. “What good would a squire be if he could not ride?”

“You broke him of his fear of horses?”

Ben was close enough now that he heard her, and he rolled his eyes. “I was never afraid of horses, you dolt—”

“Now, watch your tongue!” Flora had buzzed over, Fauna and Merryweather close behind. “You will not address Her Majesty in such foul words!”

“Hallo, Mistress Flora,” Ben said through a tense smile. “Still after my head, I see.”

Briar very much expected Flora’s head to pop off.

She landed next to Briar. “You will show proper decorum in the presence of Her Majesty, or I shall take no pleasure in magicking you into something truly lacking in decorum.”

“Flora,” Briar pleaded.

Ben gave Briar a look that said Could she truly transform me into something?

Briar eyed Merryweather with the same unspoken question.

Merryweather shook her head.

Briar relayed that to Ben.

And Flora threw her hands skyward at this exchange. “A smidgen of decorum is all I ask! The smallest of requests, the barest attempts at civility—”

“And we’re back on the road!” Merryweather clapped her hands and dragged her sisters to fly around to the soldiers, vassals, and others who had enjoyed the break while they reunited with Phillip’s party. “Off again! Let us depart!”

Briar, who had not left the circle of Phillip’s arms, kept hold of his neck when he started to pull away. “You will ride in my carriage. That is not a question.”

He splayed his hand on her back, thumb rubbing against the thin, summer-cool linen of her kirtle. “My wife is rather demanding.”

It jolted through her. Those words on his lips. The way he smiled after, and blushed, hearing himself say it for the first time.

My wife.

Ben dismounted next to them. “Me as well?”

“No,” she said without looking at him.

“I—All right, first of all, Bri, I wasn’t asking you. Second, you think I would choose to willingly subject myself to being, yet again, the invasive third party to this downright insufferable tension between you two? But as it happens, we have business to discuss.”

Briar gave Ben a wide-eyed look of bemused horror.

“Flora is right,” she said. “A smidgen of decorum from you would be excellent.”

“Oh, I have been trying to extract even a fraction of that from him these past weeks.” Phillip gave an anguished sigh. “It’s a lost issue. I have given up.”

“But he can ride a horse now, so you chose your battles.” Briar cocked her head. “Now, what business do we have to discuss?”

Ben smiled. “Ah, your husband has transformed me in more ways than one, Bri. Just you wait and see.”