The woman in blue was in a prison cell. Briar watched her writhe, bound to a chair, and tears fell down her face, hers and the woman’s, so alone, so trapped.

Stay calm, a voice said. To the woman? Briar couldn’t see a source—it was not Maleficent, not her cackling taunt—

The prison changed. Walls re-formed from stone into wood—and the prisoner became the woman beneath the five shooting stars, and she was imprisoned, too, curled helplessly on the floor of what had to be a wagon.

Empress. Wake up. Again, not Maleficent. The same voice, though, as before.

Stay calm.

Empress. Wake up.

Was the voice speaking to Briar?

You’re stronger than this.

Your people need you.

The woman who had snuffed the fire stood in the dark, terror holding her rigid as she stared into the eyes of a soldier, eyes that glowed a sickly, possessed yellow.

I called you into existence.

How do you want your story to end?

Briar was in Maleficent’s sleeping curse again.

Phillip had not saved her.

He wasn’t coming.

She was these women, trapped, helpless, alone—

Stay calm.

Empress. Wake up.

Briar pleaded, begged, screamed in her own mind—she would wake up. She would wake up from this. She would WAKE UP—

Briar jolted, a scream on her lips that was only barely kept back by the realization that she was awake now. She was not in the tower, not vulnerably awaiting rescue, not victim to Maleficent’s plots.

She was in a bed, in her suite in Frankfurt, shadows and warmth wrapping her in a cocoon.

She found her breath and gasped, then tried to cover it.

In the time since Phillip had saved her, the dreams had been only snatches of what she had experienced under Maleficent’s curse.

But they were getting worse.

These were as vivid as they’d been when she had been fully under the spell, emotions heightened, hers and those of the women.

What was the point of these dreams? What did Maleficent intend by showing her these other women, and how they suffered, and how Maleficent had no doubt tortured them, too? Was she just parading her vile deeds before Briar?

Briar rubbed her eyes, scrubbing away the last of her restless sleep.

Reality came back to her, slowly.

Phillip.

Briar stretched, felt the empty side of the bed, and sat up in alarm. “Phillip?”

The curtains were drawn around the bed, but a gap at the end showed light filtering through—so morning, then.

“Phillip?” Anxiety twisted his name louder, and that echo of his absence from her nightmare had her knotting the blankets to her chest to keep herself from bolting out of bed in a frantic search. Surely he had not gone far. He would be here. He would—

The shift of movement, passing through the beam of light.

Briar’s heart lurched and her thoughts ran in a quick tumble of Flora checking her food for poison, of their severity in monitoring her guards—

One of the curtains drew back.

Briar wilted at her childish fear.

Phillip smiled at her. He had dressed quickly, his shirt thrown on, untucked over rumpled breeches, his hair unkempt, and it made his smile even more dashing. She was just as disheveled, her shift askew, blond hair a knotted mess, but as his eyes held on hers in silence, she had never felt more beautiful.

He had a plate that he extended to her as he sat on the bed, letting the curtain fall back into place, closing them in.

She took the plate and grinned instantly.

“Since you did not get your usual late-night meal,” Phillip said. “And it is morning, after all.”

A roll of bread, a mound of jam, slices of dried sausage. She set the plate on the blanket and tore off a chunk of the bread. It was still warm, and smelled deliciously of yeast and dusty flour and something a little sour.

“I was told by the servants,” he continued, “that all the food served while we are here is in honor of the candidates’ homes—bread in the style of Lüneburg, sausages from Lothier, and so on. I know you will want to try it all, so we had best continue, I figure.”

Her smile stretched as she ate. “You know my weaknesses too well, Sir Knight.”

“You are easy to please,” he whispered.

It was meant to be sweet, and it was. But her lips pursed in a barely suppressed laugh.

He blushed, even in the low light of the canopied bed, even after last night, when nothing should have embarrassed them now.

“I meant—I—” he stuttered. “Only that—Well. Oh, eat your food and be silent.”

“I said nothing!”

“That look of yours speaks with its own voice.”

“What look? This look? You do not care for this look? It is innocence embodied! How could you—”

He lunged across the bed, over the plate, and hauled her into a kiss. She went eagerly, him and this gift he had brought her thoroughly chasing away her nightmare until she shuddered with the fear sloughing off, shuddered more when he nipped at her mouth.

But it was morning.

Her eyes shut with a wince. “Do you know the time?”

Phillip’s hand slid down her neck, down her shoulder, in a featherlight brush that left her shivering. “The fairies will be here shortly to ready you. Your vassals left a note—many of the candidates will be gathered in a garden today, partaking in games. It is meant to be a more relaxed start to the days ahead.”

“Relaxed,” she deadpanned.

“Yes, no doubt stress will cease to exist with all candidates and Prince Electors milling in one area.”

Briar rocked forward, head going to her knees. “And Frieda.”

Phillip swept the hair off the back of her neck, taking a strand, twisting it through his fingers. “What do you wish to do about her?”

Many things. She knew what she should do—focus on impressing the Prince Electors, fight to keep Bavaria from seizing the throne, position herself so she might keep those in Austria safe. Today’s planned games would let each candidate display their cunning and calculation—qualities that, Briar knew, were not her strongest.

But what did she want to do?

She wanted to talk to her friend. She wanted to…to simply speak with her, to hear Frieda’s story.

Was it possible that Frieda did not even want this?

Her actions yesterday flashed through Briar’s mind. How Frieda had been reserved, and Briar had attributed it to her not caring—but what if it had been to cover her fear?

What if Frieda was a hostage of Matilda’s?

The idea lit such horror in Briar that she bolted upright, Phillip’s grip on her hair snatching tight.

She yelped.

“Sorry!”

“Did my vassals leave any other notes?” She rubbed her scalp. “Have they found more about her story yet?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Then I will speak to her myself.”

Phillip nodded. “I will come with you.”

She took his hand, her thumb rubbing over the lines of his palm, tracing paths she knew by heart now. “Thank you, but I think it best if I speak to her alone. Or as alone as is possible in a garden full of others. No, can you see to Ben today? Ensure he is…not well, that is hardly possible, but simply…”

“Doing nothing foolish?”

She grunted. “That may also be hardly possible with him, but yes.”

Phillip closed his hand around hers. “Of course. We have a joust to prepare for, anyway. That will hopefully distract him. I assume other jousting champions are in attendance—perhaps I can introduce him to others he will fawn over.”

“I said to see to Ben, not to make him comatose.”

Phillip smiled. It wasn’t as true as before, and it highlighted the bruises under his eyes, sleeplessness leaving its mark.

He had not slept well. Neither had she. Even in each other’s arms.

Her eyes dropped to the tangle of their hands on the bedding.

“This isn’t the place I would have chosen to celebrate our marriage,” she whispered.

Phillip tugged on her hand until she looked at him. “When this is over, however it ends, we will go somewhere, you and I. There is a hunting lodge on a lake in Lorraine. No court, no responsibilities. We will spend the days seeing only each other and dozing on the shore.”

The image was pure heaven.

“Idyllic.” What she really meant to say was It sounds like a dream. And it did. A dream far out of reach—for if she won, she would be locked into duties as empress, and if she lost, she would have to prepare Austria for Bavaria’s rise to power.

So she merely kissed Phillip to hide her uncertainty, though she knew he saw it anyway.

The time for dreaming would be later.

Though she knew not when.

Briar’s vassals escorted her to the garden. Her aunts had declared themselves her personal guards, and today it was Flora who followed close to her while Fauna and Merryweather rendezvoused with her soldiers. It continued to itch at Briar that they were so concerned for her safety. Thus far, she had seen no actual threats, merely her aunts’ fear that something would happen. But then again, they had always been concerned with protecting her, and Stefan’s death was still fresh.

The garden stretched out from the castle, a series of hedges, some waist-high, others looming in wandering mazes. A crowd was gathered, the same people from the banquet yesterday, spread among gaming tables that were arranged at random through the hedges—chess, cards, dice, others Briar thought she recognized.

But the moment she exited the castle into the bright, sunny space, the blue sky wild and vibrant over her, Filibert of Lüneburg staggered past, all but shoving her aside in his desperation to get back inside. He stumbled, face a putrid shade of green, and Briar leapt away as he faltered to freedom without a word.

His attendants rushed after him. “Apologies, Your Majesty, the duke is unwell. Apologies,” they said, and then the party was gone.

Briar eyed Flora, who was frowning after Filibert.

“Ben said he is renowned for being in his cups,” Briar offered.

That snapped Flora’s attention to her in a horrified gasp. “Your Majesty must not speak so freely of your fellow candidates!”

Oh, how was that a true concern, when the mother of a fellow candidate had murdered Stefan? But Briar let the argument drop.

She needed to find Frieda.

Briar set off into the garden. There was no formal announcement, thankfully, but eyes lifted as she passed, candidates in deep games with Prince Electors or members of their households. She spotted Johann at a table across from the Prince Elector of Saxony, face scrunched in concentration over a game of chess.

He looked up at her and gave a bright smile.

She could practically see the word “decorum” flash through his mind, and he sank into himself, switching to give her a formal, too-mature nod.

In return, Briar crossed her eyes and curled her lip.

Johann barked a laugh and slapped his hands over his mouth. Most of the others in this area were engrossed in their games, and barely flinched at his outburst; still, Briar grinned.

“Your Majesty,” Flora said in chastisement, but Briar was surprised to find her usually stoic aunt fighting a smile.

She faked a sneeze as though that was the reason for her odd face. “So sorry. The flowers.”

“Hmm.”

But Johann had noticed Flora now, too, her wings out and wand in hand, and that joy returned to his face without pretense.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “The things I do for children,” she muttered and flicked her wand, letting a sizzle of glittery magic fill the air in front of her, temporarily taking the form of a galloping horse before it faded away.

Even across the space, Johann’s wonder was palpable.

The Prince Elector playing against him said something, unaware of the magic or the silent interaction he was having, and Johann jerked back to the chessboard, stealing furtive glances at Flora.

Briar pushed on, ducking out of this area, but the weight in her chest did not much lighten, particularly as she rounded a hedge and saw Frieda.

Briar had never had the patience for games. Frieda had, though, and when days had been particularly bleak for their coin earned through song, Frieda was able to bring in handfuls of winnings through whatever game she could join in town.

So as Briar spotted Frieda at a table by a wall of blooming pink roses, a Prince Elector across from her, it was too fitting, almost as though she were watching her friend play a hand in Rolf’s tavern.

Briar stopped just inside the clearing, unseen by Frieda for a moment.

Matilda was paces behind Frieda, speaking with another Elector, her smile empty and her eyes intent. Not at all subtly, Matilda took the Elector’s hand and placed a small bag of what was clearly money into his palm.

She curled his fingers around it. He inclined his head in thanks.

Briar’s vassals were in conversation behind her. Some had drifted away already, mingling or seeking out information on her behalf. Flora, though, was close by, eyeing Frieda and Matilda with a scowl.

“Did you see that?” Briar asked.

Flora’s scowl deepened. “Indeed. Your vassals, though, will handle any such interactions. Do not allow me to catch you debasing yourself by passing off bribes with your own hands. Matilda should be ashamed. Then again, I take it not much shames the likes of her.”

Briar stood in uncomfortable stillness.

Flora was upset not about the bribery itself, but that Matilda had been the one to pass it off, and not one of her staff.

Briar should ask what other things were a part of campaigning that she would recoil at. But she didn’t want to know.

Frieda was at that table still, and it looked as though she had beaten the Prince Elector. In good humor; they were both smiling.

Frieda was smiling.

Utterly different than yesterday, her eyes were bright and her face clear and she was the happy, observant woman Briar had known in Hausach.

It sat in Briar’s stomach like a rock.

Flora nudged her. “The place at the table is free. Go—play against her. You would do well to assert yourself after yesterday.”

“I—” Again, Briar’s mind went blank, freezing her in place. “I had intended to, but not to play against her. I want to speak to her. And why are you encouraging me to interact with her? I would think you, of all people, would be set against it.”

Flora’s face fell. In that moment, Briar saw not a powerful fairy, but her aunt who had spent years dedicated to protecting a cursed, exiled princess, buried under a secret, tasked with an existence she had no training for. There were many things she faulted Flora for, but Briar loved her too.

“If I had a say,” Flora whispered, “no, you would not interact. But it is necessary. And you will dispel any rumors if you assert yourself to her. Now, go.”

Briar thought nothing at all of the campaign as she crossed to the table, the hem of her scarlet gown and gold kirtle brushing the smooth stones of the garden path.

Frieda was bidding farewell to the Prince Elector. She did not notice until Briar stood next to the empty chair across from her.

Then Frieda snapped to attention.

Her smile plummeted off her face, cheeks going vivid red. Her lips tightened into a line, jaw bulging, and Briar couldn’t find a way to force air into her lungs as they simply looked at each other for a moment.

“May I sit?” Briar asked.

Behind Frieda, Matilda was watching. Not intervening. She was holding back a grin. All in the area around them, those nearby between these hedges, had paused in their games or conversations, and were watching now, too.

So no private conversation, then.

Still, Briar could question her somewhat, find out, at least, if her friend was being ill-treated or forced into this role. But her smile had been so real.

Briar hated, hated, that her next thought was to hope that Frieda was being forced into this. Because if she was here willingly, Briar wasn’t sure how she could handle that.

Frieda nodded. As Briar drew out the chair and sat, Frieda arched one eyebrow.

“Though I am surprised you wish to,” she said. “Given how much you hate this game.”

Briar’s eyes dropped for the first time to the board set before Frieda.

Damn it all to burn and writhe in the afterlife.

Rithmomachia.

A game that was equal parts chess and arithmetic with no end to the complication of strategy. The board was longer than one for chess, with pieces shaped like triangles, circles, and squares, all with a variety of numbers on them that could be stacked into pyramid pieces valuing certain sums. Those numbered pieces could influence others depending on whether they were equal to, lesser than, or greater than the numbers of enemy pieces, multiplied by spaces on the board between them, and the whole thing was a creation straight from the devil himself.

A passing merchant had brought rithmomachia to Rolf’s tavern a few times. Frieda had picked it up instantly and played not merely to win coin, but because she’d enjoyed it in what Briar could only imagine was latent masochism.

Ben had bellowed laughter at the first line of instruction and spent the whole time Frieda played strumming his lute.

Briar had tried to play and come away with nothing but a raging headache.

This did not bode well, then, facing Frieda across a rithmomachia board.

Briar forced a smile. Whatever game it was did not matter.

“Are you well?” Briar asked with a smile meant to assuage any onlookers.

Frieda began arranging pieces on the board.

“We do not have to play,” Briar said. “I was hoping we could simply—”

“You concede already?” Frieda’s eyebrows went up. With eagerness.

She glanced to the side, at where her mother stood; but she didn’t turn all the way around, more a quick flinch, a barely restrained Do you see? I have bested her already!

That was pride in Frieda’s eyes.

She wanted to please Matilda.

Briar stared at that spark, willing it to become something else.

This hedge area was silent now. The Prince Electors and the other candidates alike all focused on them, on their tense interaction. Briar’s vassals had gathered, and Flora too.

Still, Briar held Frieda’s gaze, trying to impart everything to her wordlessly.

I am terrified for you. What did Matilda do to you? Did she hurt you? What happened?

“It has been a while since I have seen you,” Briar tried again. “I want to know how you are. To talk to you.”

Frieda held the game pieces in her hand. “I will talk. If you play.”

“Frieda—”

“Clara.” Frieda bent over the table, eyes igniting. “Princess Clara. As you should well know. Queen Aurora.”

She was angry. At Briar’s use of her name. If she were here against her will, coerced into all this, would she be upset by that?

But that flash of anger was close to the Frieda that Briar knew.

So Briar nodded. “Princess Clara. I will play, then.”

Frieda laid out the pieces. Briar was so aware of the eyes on them, Prince Electors studying, analyzing; of Matilda’s bribe to one already; of the game on this table and the game being played around them and the way Frieda gave her a wicked smile that looked so very much like Matilda’s.

“Your move first, Your Majesty,” Frieda said.

Briar lifted a piece, moved it; it hardly mattered who started. “How did you come to leave Hausach?” she asked. She tried to keep her voice low, though the garden was so silent that every rustle of fabric echoed alongside the buzzing of insects.

Frieda, hand extended to make her move, went stiff. Her fingers arched into claws and she snapped up with a look of such malice that Briar drew back.

But Frieda transformed it into a smile, though it seemed to take effort. “You know the answer to that, Austrian queen.”

The tension in the air was agonizing, a kettle rising to a boil, and Briar had no idea why it had spiked so quickly.

“I had gotten all I needed in that village, anyway,” Frieda continued as she laid her piece on the board. “It was time to move on, with or without your involvement.”

“My involvement? I was not even in Hausach when you—”

Frieda gripped the edge of the table. The pieces rattled. “No. You weren’t. Were you?”

That too-familiar shame flooded Briar’s body. “I left you. I know. I wanted to apologize. I did apologize—you got my letter, at least. I came down to Hausach not long after. Ben said you were—”

“Your apology means nothing.” Aching vehemence tinged Frieda’s words.

Because Briar had mentioned Ben.

She bit the inside of her cheek.

Frieda leaned back with a sniff. “What I am more interested in,” she continued, and Briar moved her next game piece, “is how you left. Escorted by a trio of magical fairies, who knew the details of Maleficent’s curse all along? Before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday, she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel.”

Briar set her jaw at Frieda’s tone. At the look in her eyes, a hunter’s look, but Briar could not see the prey.

“Yes?”

“So why, do tell—I have wondered since I heard the tale—did your fairy guardians not wait until the day after your sixteenth birthday to return you to the castle? Would that not have circumvented the curse entirely? They knew its stipulations. And instead of seeing it through to the logical end that would have ensured your safety, they cast you back into harm’s way with hours left of your timeline.”

Briar’s eyes widened. She had no response to that.

She had wondered that very thing herself, though she had never voiced it aloud. She’d had too many other things to be upset over after the curse lifted.

Flora was gripping her wand and glaring at Frieda.

“I am sure their intentions were good,” Frieda kept on. She moved her piece on the board, and Briar sat frozen. “But even given their failure, you have kept them on as your closest counsel. What does that say of you? That you forgive them for endangering your life, for carelessly shirking their sole duty—”

“That is not what—”

“—and then you reward them for imperiling your whole country by continuing to tolerate their advice and influence? What advice are they giving you that is weakening Austria, that would, in turn, weaken the whole empire?”

Briar could only manage quick, inefficient breaths. No explanation came, no arguments or counters—because Frieda was right. It was more complicated than she was implying, though, and what other choice did Briar have? How could she cast out the people who had raised her? How could she unload her anger at them—how betrayed they had made her feel, how hurt she was by their actions and lack of actions and shortsightedness?

Even just yesterday, Flora had suggested Ben die for Briar, as though it was a natural thing, when all Flora had to do to test a food’s safety was use her magic.

Frieda did glance back at Matilda now with a wide, satiated grin. Matilda didn’t bother to mask her own luminous smile.

Frieda had been cunning, before. In Hausach. It had kept them alive, and Briar had been the balance to her ruthlessness: envisions peace, as her vassals had noted. Whereas Frieda had gone after any who cheated them on payments or stole their earnings, Briar had more than once discovered that the thief or cheater themselves were starving, too. Frieda had called her soft, but conceded to share what little they had.

Now Briar saw the utter uselessness of her soft qualities over Frieda’s single-minded cruelty.

Briar could barely speak.

A murmur ebbed through the crowd as the Prince Electors acknowledged the truth in Frieda’s words.

But no. This had not come from Frieda. Briar’s reality broke, fractured around her, as she realized she was not sitting at this table with her friend from Hausach any more than Briar the peasant bard was here.

This was Princess Clara. And she was Queen Aurora.

Briar made her next move on the board, the numbers blurring—would this piece get captured? She didn’t know. Her hand shook.

Frieda was not here against her will. She was not trying to seek Briar’s help; she was not trying to make amends.

She was out for blood. Out to win empress.

She had left Ben, left Briar too, with all the callousness that Briar had feared.

“It is hypocritical,” Briar started, the words ash in her mouth, “for you to sit here, spewing talk of my failures in council, when your own council is so marvelously flawed.”

Frieda’s eyes narrowed. Her next move came, and she did capture Briar’s piece.

“Were you part of the plans made to assassinate my father?” Briar snapped. “Or did that honor fall on Matilda’s shoulders alone?”

“You would accuse Bavaria of assassinating the Austrian king?” Frieda gaped at her, but there was a glimmer in it, of hope that Briar was doing exactly that.

Briar absorbed her response. “You deny it?”

“I do not deny that your king was assassinated. But my mother certainly did not have a hand in it.”

She was denying it. Outright. As though Matilda had not marched into Austria, armored and gleaming; as though Matilda had not murdered the king, at Briar’s feet.

“So he assassinated himself?” Briar snapped. “Yes, I have heard that people spontaneously grow arrows out of their necks.”

A harsh thing to say, and Briar regretted it immediately—Stefan had been her king, her father somewhat, and she should not speak so mercilessly of him.

A gasp sucked the air around her. Murmurs sharpened.

Frieda shook her head in a quick show of annoyance. “This false information must be attributed to your council, which we have already established is lacking. Queen Matilda had no involvement in King Stefan’s death—though not for lack of your allies attempting to pin it on her.”

“My allies? What are you—”

“Oh, I would not dare speak ill of any fellow ruler.” Frieda gave Briar a pointed look that said Unlike you. “But if you took a moment to analyze the situation beyond the whispers in your ear, you would have looked into, perhaps, the quality of the Bavarian armor supposedly used by the assassins, and how the make of the plated metal was a style known to come from your newest solidified ally, and not from my country.”

“Are you saying that Bavaria was framed for Stefan’s murder? By Lorraine?”

Another gasp from the onlookers.

Why? What was she saying that was so much worse than Frieda’s accusations? She could barely stomach this conversation, let alone the misplaced horror coming from the Prince Electors and other candidates.

After Briar fumbled through a move, it was Frieda’s turn again, and she managed to create a pyramid piece that would trump most of Briar’s remaining regular ones. “I would not make such a tactless accusation. I am saying, merely, that evidence points one way, and your advisers point another.”

“There is no evidence like what you mentioned. And what explanation do you have for your mother’s presence in Austria at all?”

“She was invited to your wedding, of course.”

“She was invited?” It came as a shout, and more started to follow, screams that welled up in Briar’s throat. How Matilda had marched into Austria in full armor, sword ready, and led the charge herself.

But she quickly saw what that would look like, crying Liar and dissolving in hurt emotions while Frieda simply brushed it off with a controlled shrug.

Briar had never been on this side of Frieda’s manipulation before, her control wielded like a knife. And she realized…that was how Frieda had always been to others. She had been Matilda’s daughter, cutthroat and focused, even when neither she nor Briar had known.

“It is your move, Queen Aurora,” Frieda said with an unfurling grin, before she nodded at the table. “On the board.”

Briar’s chest constricted. Her vision began to go spotty, tunneling to only Frieda—Clara, this woman was Clara, not Frieda, and Briar could not convince herself that her friend was this now.

Her heart was breaking. But at the same time, that salvaging fury was rising up again, and she clenched her hand into a fist and played the next few moves in dwelling silence.

Frieda was going to win this game of rithmomachia. Briar had known she would.

As she made her last move, letting Frieda claim victory, Briar looked up and said the only thing she knew would rattle her.

“Ben would be ashamed of you. He is, in fact. And so am I, Princess.”