The room that hosted the banquet had been transformed for a ball of the standard Briar had seen orchestrated in Austria, at Stefan and Leah’s command. Opulence in every corner, though this theme was a repeating one of representing all the countries and principalities of the Prince Electors and candidates, so banners and colors intermingled across the designs. A small cluster of musicians held the far corner, already playing a light, simple tune as guests entered, and Briar’s focus and heart latched onto them as a steward announced her and Phillip to the room.
She glanced back at Ben and nodded in their direction, and he motioned at his livery as if to say We’ve come far, huh?
Very far.
Too far.
But tonight’s event, at least, was more Briar’s style. Even if she would not be one of the bards playing, she knew this atmosphere, how to command a room, as her vassals said; how to perform. Something about this ball was so much more in line with who she was, despite every event demanding performance. Here, Briar could imagine the crowd was an audience; here, she could pretend she was in control.
Their group fell into what was now becoming routine. The fairies broke off on security; the vassals mingled with the crowd. Köning stepped in front of Briar and Phillip to make introductions while Ben hung back.
Briar scanned the crowd, and a Prince Elector turned in her direction from a group.
“Queen Aurora! Will you join us?”
“Us” was Frieda, Matilda with her; Johann as well; the Elector; and another candidate, Eckhardt of Hesse, remarkably awake and leaning his old frame on a cane.
The musicians shifted into a song made for dancing. It was not one of the fast-paced dances of villages like Hausach, but more formal. Still, Briar’s heart leapt, and she considered excusing herself from the Elector’s company to dance.
Köning gave her a look.
Briar sighed and put on a pleasant smile. “Yes, of course.”
She needed to be in this group, anyway, to speak with Frieda. Though how to break her off from not only Matilda, but the Elector as well?
Briar and Phillip added themselves to the cluster. Tension was so thick within the group that it warmed the air, coming entirely from Frieda and Matilda the moment Briar presented herself.
Johann smiled, a large, toothy grin. Briar returned it.
And then her heart lurched when she realized: Had anyone targeted Johann with poison or attacks? Surely any candidate here would draw the line at that. Competitor or not, he was a child.
But he was also a king. And that overshadowed any other details about him.
“I have a question to pose, Queen Aurora, and I wondered about your answer as well,” the Elector said, drawing her out of her worries.
She nodded. But her eyes flipped to Frieda.
Had Matilda instigated either of Filibert’s or Gottlieb’s absences?
Had Frieda?
Frieda wore a deep rose-colored gown, and though it was a stunning contrast to her pale skin and dark hair, she looked horrifically uncomfortable. As they had grown, Frieda had hated Briar’s attempts to play dress-up; she could rarely be found in anything other than comfortable clothes, certainly never anything this stiff.
Her discomfort hardened into challenge when Briar’s eyes landed on her.
Briar looked away.
“There is a disagreement between lands,” the Elector continued. “Of boundaries drawn. One duke claims a prosperous farm is on his property; a neighboring prince claims it is on his. Our previous emperor, God rest him, attempted to mediate, but the issue has again arisen, and it will be chief among the trials confronted by his successor.”
He paused, a soft smile on his lips, his test hanging in the air. Briar doubted there even was such an issue; it was fabricated to see what candidates would do.
Would her answer matter, though? Or had attendants already bribed the Electors to accept any answer given by their candidate? Was that the true game to the Electors, setting the stage and watching candidates tear each other apart needlessly while they rolled in coin?
Eckhardt coughed, hacked, and spat on the floor. Briar recoiled.
“Which territory is largest?” he grumbled. “That is where the farm belongs.”
Briar’s disgust was tinged with confusion. How was that logic?
Frieda’s face had the same flicker of revulsion. Briar caught it, tried to say wordlessly He’s an oaf, and maybe, maybe Frieda would have responded, if not for Matilda’s harsh whisper at her back.
“A possibility,” the Elector said to Eckhardt. He looked markedly unimpressed.
Matilda none-so-subtly nudged Frieda. Briar watched redness stain Frieda’s neck, rise up to her cheeks, but then Frieda straightened, and cleared her throat.
“It should, uh—” Frieda started, swallowed. “The duke and prince should be brought together for—No.” She visibly caught herself, and Briar frowned as Frieda glanced back at Matilda, leveled her shoulders, and said, with a cold smirk, “They should be told to settle it among themselves. This is hardly a matter to be brought before the emperor. They have armies, don’t they? Use them.”
Briar’s eyebrows shot up.
Frieda had spoken, but none of those words were Frieda. They were Matilda, bloodthirsty and heartless.
Frieda was trying to impress her mother.
It was one of the things she had wanted most. A family. To be out of the orphanage.
Even so, Briar could not believe her friend would willingly suggest that people get themselves killed for a disagreement between nobility. Frieda knew strategy well, but she knew better the ramifications of it. She had only ever learned about war from a place of wanting to understand how best to prevent loss of life.
“War has indeed happened over this particular farm,” the Elector said. “War for years, in fact. It is a very strategic property, but both lands are equal in might.”
Frieda’s lips parted. Matilda scowled at the back of Frieda’s head, and though Frieda was still facing forward, Briar knew she didn’t imagine Frieda’s cringe.
“Are there any magical sorts in either land?” Johann asked, drawing attention away.
The Elector shook his head. “I am afraid not.”
Johann scoffed. “Then give the duke and prince sorcerers and let the sorcerers do combat. Winner takes the farm!”
“A trial by combat,” the Elector clarified thoughtfully. “It is not an uncommon practice.”
“Your Majesty.” Köning gently prodded Briar’s own back.
Briar fisted her hand on Phillip’s sleeve. What did she know about smoothing arguments between nobles? She could not even get Frieda to speak plainly to her.
But it wasn’t about the nobles at all, was it? The duke and the prince were the cause of this problem, but they were not the victims. The Electors would not care about the peasantry affected, would they? They had not once mentioned the common people who lived and farmed that land.
How to frame it? How to make them care through their own misguided priorities?
“How much has been spent over the years on this war?” Briar asked.
The Elector looked at her, his head tilting in interest. “Oh, it almost cannot be measured at this point.”
“On both sides?”
“Indeed.”
“And how much profit is brought in by this piece of land? Is it at all comparable to what has been spent in attempting to either keep it or claim it?”
The Elector’s lips started to rise in a smile, his head cocking as he saw her point. “That would be a very astute inquiry to make.”
“I suspect this farm, though desirable initially, has long since ceased to be worth the trouble caused,” Briar said, talking with more confidence at the way this Elector was watching her, as though seeing her for the first time. “In which case, it would be in both the duke’s and the prince’s best interests to cut ties to the property and allow it to become its own territory. To appease any ill feelings,” she added quickly with a cordial smile, “the new territory could pay equal taxes to both the duke and the prince for a time.”
Disgusting for anyone to have to pay to not be attacked, but the Electors did so love bribes.
The Elector nodded and hummed in consideration. “An unorthodox solution, Queen Aurora. War halted, expenses recouped, conflict resolved. Very tidy. I commend you.”
Phillip squeezed her arm in congratulations. Matilda was seething, glaring at her. Frieda had her eyes on the floor.
Briar should have felt victorious. She had, for the first time, impressed the Electors with her skill, and not through bribery or coercion.
But she couldn’t get rid of that filth feeling, the rub of disgust at this whole campaign.
Her vassals had, maybe, been right not to tell her of its true nature.
She bowed her head. “Thank you.”
Dancing had long since started during this conversation, the room now half-filled with twirling, elegant bodies. Briar pretended to look over her shoulder and leaned into Phillip and whispered, “Ask Matilda to dance.”
“Queen Matilda,” Phillip said. “Would you do me the honor?”
The group went rigid. All here knew the oddity of the request. Well, maybe aside from Eckhardt, who lumbered off without a word of farewell. But Matilda could not refuse without breaking propriety, and so her smile was all wicked annoyance as she nodded.
“Of course, King Phillip,” she said and emerged from behind her daughter.
Phillip and Matilda swept off, and that broke apart the group; the Elector pressed into the crowd, no doubt off to torture other candidates, and Johann had spotted Flora across the room and was already half running to her.
Before anyone could intervene, Briar closed the space between her and Frieda in two strides and hooked her arm through Frieda’s as they’d done so many times in Hausach. It kept the Bavarian soldiers from stepping between them, and it made Frieda go stiff in shock.
She did not immediately throw Briar off, which was promising.
“That answer you gave was callous,” Briar said, keeping her face pleasant. The music was loud enough to muffle their conversation to any around, and she had no stomach to handle the doublespeak.
Frieda did not respond for a moment. “It is how disputes are settled. It is the way of the world.”
“What happened to you?” Briar watched Phillip and Matilda dance. Matilda’s head was on a swivel, always keeping Frieda in her sight; she was grimacing at Frieda’s close proximity to Briar.
Frieda huffed. “How dare you ask me that? You know very well what happened to me.”
Briar ripped her eyes to her friend. They were the same height. The same in so many ways, save for Frieda’s dark hair, her steadiness, her severity. Night against Briar’s day.
“I really don’t,” she said, a plea.
Frieda glared at her, face saying she expected Briar to laugh and claim it was a joke. “You knew. You knew the whole time. I bought your facade in Hausach, but I know the truth now, Queen Aurora, and so you can drop this pretense.”
Briar said nothing, her mouth slightly agape, and Frieda pushed on after only a beat of that confused silence.
“I know now,” she said, low and hard. “I know that you knew who I was for years. That your father put you in that village solely to lure me into friendship.”
“What?” The wind left Briar’s lungs in a painful rush. “I didn’t—”
“You were very good, I will give you that. Awfully convincing. You didn’t break at all.”
Briar couldn’t refill her chest with air. “I have no idea what you are talking about, Frieda.”
“Clara,” she snapped. “My name is Clara, as it was then, though you knew that, even when I didn’t.”
“I didn’t know!” Briar half shouted, wrenching her voice low at the last moment. “How could you think I knew any of this? You think it was all a lie, that I am capable of hurting you and Ben this way?”
“What was it all for, then”—Frieda bypassed the mention of Ben, though her cheeks went red—“if you weren’t trying to hurt me? How do you explain that letter?”
“It was an apology. It was—”
“Not that letter, curse you. The other one.”
Briar’s mind went blank. She shook her head, fumbling, and Frieda’s face contorted in rage.
“How dare you continue to act as if you are ignorant? The letter you sent me telling me to meet you, after your sad excuse for an apology. The letter saying you would explain everything. But where you arranged to meet me, there were Austrian soldiers waiting to kill me.”
Briar jerked back. She kept her hold on Frieda’s arm.
“I only sent you one letter,” she whispered. Did Frieda hear? She couldn’t get her voice to work any louder.
“Of course.” Frieda sniffed and looked out at the crowd. “Of course you deny it still.”
“That is the game, isn’t it?” Briar almost regretted saying that. Except she very much didn’t, and rage sparked up again, rage and confusion. “Deny events that do not suit us, such as your mother overseeing the murder of King Stefan.”
“My mother.” Frieda snapped one more glare at Briar. “My mother is the only reason I survived your attempt at killing me. Luckily, she was coming to find me. Luckily, she was there, with Bavarian forces, not far off, and when I managed to run, I found them.”
That piece connected, made the others gleam and glow with a putrid light. “No. Oh, no…”
Matilda had staged it. All of it. How did Frieda not see?
“She did this to you,” Briar tried. “Matilda. Do you really believe these coincidences? What she told you?”
“Coincidences?” Frieda’s voice was cracking and pained. “These coincidences came because of you and your family’s manipulation of my life. You had the same fairy gift as me and couldn’t bear to have another princess with that possibility, so you sought to remove me from the board. You—”
“Fairy gift?” That fully broke Briar’s concentration. It sent a jolt of icy panic through her, head to toe.
Frieda’s rage calmed, a beat, enough that her glare turned to a sneer. “You call it a curse, don’t you? That’s why we’re both here, isn’t it? Because we were both visited by Maleficent. Because we were both given her fairy gift at our christening. Because only one of us will become empress, and I tell you now, it will be me.”
Frieda ripped free of Briar’s grasp and disappeared into the crowd, leaving her standing there, horrified, unable to move.
A presence warmed the air next to her, and Briar came to with a gasp, eyes shooting up to meet Ben’s.
“Did you hear—”
“Yes.” His face was gray.
Briar shook her head. “It isn’t—it isn’t possible,” she heard herself say.
How many times had she said that? The words were worn from being spoken and thought, and Briar couldn’t even be surprised, honestly, at this development.
She swallowed hard, tearing up.
The song ended. The moment it did, Matilda shoved away from Phillip, making a beeline for Frieda, now across the room.
Phillip, similarly, moved over to Briar and Ben. She took his hands, then forced air into her lungs.
She told him what Frieda had said, all of it, shocked that she didn’t start weeping.
Matilda had told Frieda that Austria was to blame, because they were trying to get rid of the other princess who had been given Maleficent’s curse. Gift, Frieda had called it.
Phillip was white at the end. Briar gripped his hand in earnest, fearing he would have another panic spell, but his lips parted. “She visited someone else? How did we not hear?”
“It was Bavaria. Austria would not have cared what transpired there.”
“But that witch—” Phillip stopped. Caught himself. Color returned to his cheeks, bursts of vibrant, furious red, and he lifted the tangle of their hands to his lips. “I had thought her effects contained. I had thought her touch on our lives done with.”
“Me too,” Briar whispered.
“You were both in Hausach,” Ben said. He had been quiet through Briar’s recounting. And now he stood still as a statue, eyes on the floor. “How is that possible? Why? Especially if Frieda was Bavarian. Hausach is in Austria. And she was visited by that…sorceress…too? To what end? No curse ever befell her, did it? She was in Hausach until after Maleficent was killed, and I would’ve known if she’d fallen into some magic slumber. She mentioned one of you becoming empress because of it?”
Too many questions rushed through Briar’s head. Too many answers now given, too many other uncertainties now revealed.
How could Frieda believe Matilda over Briar? How had Matilda managed to pit Frieda against someone she had grown up with, someone Briar knew she loved?
And how, how, was what Maleficent did in any way a gift that factored into one of them becoming empress?
Briar shook her head. Shook it again, because she couldn’t, couldn’t believe that there was some great plan attached to Maleficent’s cruelty, that her manipulation of their lives had not ended with her death. She saw her fear echoed loud and harsh on Phillip’s face, and she wanted nothing more than to haul him upstairs to their suite and block out the world. Or, better, to flee back to Austria and renounce this responsibility. If Maleficent’s curse—for it was a curse, not a fairy gift—was intended to somehow affect her chances at becoming empress, as though Maleficent had known this would happen…
No. No. It was too fantastical, too inconceivable, too horrific.
She was shaking. Shaking so hard that it broke Phillip out of his matching terror, and he touched her jaw, pulled her to look at him.
He said nothing for a moment, studied her face with ever-growing heartbreak.
“Ben,” he said. “You two should sing.”
It was such an unexpected thing for him to say that Briar flinched. Ben did too, but the air shifted with his smile.
“What?” Briar asked. “Why? What will that do?”
“For the election? For your campaign? Nothing.” Phillip’s hand held the back of her neck, his thumb stroking fire up her cheek. “But this is a ball, and there is music already. Why shouldn’t it be you? Singing will get you back into your element. I have not seen you happy like that since the tavern in Hausach, and I am incredibly selfish, Briar. I want, no, need to see you happy again.”
If she had not been unendurably in love with him already, those words would have melted her thoroughly.
“And”—he threw a look at Ben—“you too, squire. You have spent weeks getting calluses with swords. Your hands have forgotten how to hold a lute, I bet.”
Ben’s smile went fully gleaming. Wide with challenge, with joy he could latch onto. “You insult my honor, sir, and I am forced to prove you wrong. Bri?”
He eyed her, pausing, waiting for her reaction.
Briar hesitated. The temptation was too great. Overwhelming, really, and she was nodding before she could stop herself.
Ben squeezed her arm. “I’ll steal a lute off the musicians and request they stop this racket for a few minutes to—”
“I know what we should sing,” she said in a rush.
“Sure. What?”
Briar shifted her gaze around the room. Frieda and Matilda were in a heated discussion by the far wall, Matilda red-faced again, Frieda bent in surrender, nodding her assent.
“‘Take Me Far,’” Briar said, and slid her eyes back to Ben to gauge his reaction.
His lips flattened. He swallowed, glanced over to Frieda—Briar noted that he knew where she was—and turned back to Briar.
“For her,” Briar whispered. “If we cannot reach her through talk, maybe we can reach her this way.”
It was a song Ben and Frieda had often sung, requiring the overlapping voices of two lovers.
It was the song Ben had them sing the night he proposed to her. He hadn’t been able to afford a ring, he’d said, but he had this song, and it was hers as much as he was.
Ben’s humor slipped away, and for a moment, Briar feared she’d misstepped.
But he nodded. And gave her a small smile, albeit forced. “If you think you can handle competing with my voice, Bri. It’s been a while. You’re rusty.”
She shoved his shoulder. He slipped away, and she stood next to Phillip, feeling the press of the people around them, the weight of her reality.
“This is not the behavior of a queen,” she said.
Phillip kissed her temple. “No,” he said into her skin. “But you are not only one thing.”
She whipped a look at him.
No. She wasn’t.
But was she allowed to let that show now? Was she allowed to still have this smallest piece of her true self?
Only one way to find out.
The musicians in the corner ended their song, but instead of another immediately picking up, silence reigned for a beat.
Then Briar heard the telltale strum of Ben’s fingers on a lute, the warm-up he always did.
The crowd sought out the noise as Ben moved across the dance floor. Briar gave Phillip a parting kiss and began to weave her way toward Ben. Those who had been dancing made room for them, a small circle carved out as their stage.
Frieda and Matilda, still by the far wall, had noticed the shift. Noticed the single pealing lute.
Frieda, at least, was staring, wide-eyed, going perfectly still as Ben transitioned from his warm-up into the first chords of the song.
Briar had not sung in weeks, not since that tavern night in Hausach. It had felt like a goodbye then—so now, as her throat stretched and her lungs filled, a foggy sense of dream descended over her, as though this weren’t real.
How she wanted to be only a hired entertainer at this election, no responsibilities beyond which songs to sing next and how she, Frieda, and Ben would divide their earnings.
Maybe if she could keep this piece of Briar the peasant bard, it would not hurt so much to be Aurora the queen. Maybe if she gave in to this part of her, Frieda would see, and remember what Briar meant to her, and realize that Briar would never have done any of the things Matilda had let Frieda believe she’d done.
This had to reach her, and it had to reach Briar, too, and the whole thing was so necessary that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it until now. Phillip knew her better than she knew herself.
Ben hit a note, and she sang:
“I knew you once, now here you stand
From far across the lake
Cast out from home, I’d leave it all
If only you would take.”
Murmurs rippled out that Queen Aurora was singing, who was that playing, oh, King Phillip’s squire, how odd—
Ben played on, the tempo picking up, and Briar couldn’t help the rising smile on her face, the levity of music buoying her.
“Take me, take me, anywhere, far
Into cold or fire,
Your fingers play, your lips weave song,
I become desire.”
A risqué song for a queen to sing, possibly, but in this moment, Briar was hardly just a queen. She was dancing now, twirling around Ben as she’d done so often in Hausach’s tavern, kicking and jumping and flurrying her skirts while his fast fingers sped up even more, pushing her voice and her legs, a challenge and a safety net in one, because she knew his talent was equal to her own, they were on the same level, she and Ben and—
Not Frieda. Not anymore.
Around them, a few nobles began clapping along.
Briar twirled again, facing off with Ben as the song shifted to his verses, and he sang, his voice light and clear:
“To you I come on bended knee,
From far across the hill
For you a plea I weave in song,
Each chord I strum, a thrill.”
They danced in circles, Ben on his lute, Briar adding harmony to his parts, and all the while, she searched out Frieda as they spun. The crowd had begun to dance somewhat, attempting to mimic the kicking motions of Briar’s peasant moves, and it was absurd and delightful and somewhat chaotic to see people in fine silks and jewels doing Hausach village dances.
Frieda did not move, and her face had not changed, a look of unmasked sorrow.
Briar faced Ben again and his eyes glittered. The final verse.
He gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod toward Frieda.
Briar got his meaning. They danced, twisting to the edge of the crowd, and it parted, letting them through—toward Frieda. Stationary, stricken.
Ben cut a dramatic spin, bowing his shoulders forward as the lute crooned in his hands and he finished the song.
“A thrill, a thrill, deep in your eyes
I traveled just to see
Your wanting look, your fall apart
And know its cause was me.”
On the last line, he staggered to a halt in front of Frieda, gasping hard, and extended his hand to her.
The whole of the room went utterly silent. The absence of the song, the shock of his approach to the Bavarian princess.
Briar, not two paces behind him, held her breath, begging, pleading for Frieda to react.
Matilda was next to her, though. But Briar and Ben could help her, she had to know—she had to see that Matilda had manipulated her, and even if she hated Briar, Frieda couldn’t blame any of this on Ben—
Frieda looked at Ben. Briar watched her face change, a rapid flicker of emotion—shock to anguish, longing, such potent, raging love that it knocked the air from Briar’s lungs and it wasn’t even directed at her. How Ben was still standing, waiting, patient, and not sweeping Frieda into his arms, Briar didn’t know.
But then Frieda dropped her chin and cut into the crowd, running, sprinting for the doors, and she was gone.