Briar shoved through the armored soldiers, heedless of their cries. When one tried to stop her, Merryweather sprayed him in the face with a stream of bubbles that shocked him enough to let Briar slip by.
She elbowed her way in, past further cries of “Halt!” and “Don’t, Your Majesty,” until she stumbled into the front room of a suite.
It was dark, soldiers trying to coax a fire to life, others holding unsteady lanterns that cut beams of orange and yellow over the dark stone room. There was a dense table, chairs pulled out; food abandoned mid-meal; an armoire beside a trunk.
Briar slipped on the smooth stone floor, catching herself on an arm—Frieda’s.
Her mind went blank. A weird, absent refusal of disconnected thought.
Why had she slipped? The stones weren’t that smooth.
Briar looked down. The flashing lantern light shone orange and yellow, orange and then scarlet. Blood.
“No.” A gasp ripped out of her, a visceral, wrenching tear. “Johann. Johann!”
She staggered forward, through the pool of blood, and her eyes caught on the source: one of his attendants, clutching a bandage to a giant slice through their arm while another tried to stop the bleeding.
“Where is he?” she asked helplessly. Soldiers were in the process of searching the rooms, and other attendants and vassals huddled in a bedchamber farther in, weeping and explaining to a guard what had happened.
An attack, quick, brutal, one masked man had forced his way in as they were settling for the night, so it had been dark. The flash of blades. Panic.
They didn’t know where Johann was.
They didn’t know what had happened to the attacker.
If he had taken Johann—
Briar spun, eyes leaping to each corner of the front room, searching, fruitlessly, because Johann had to be here still. The alternative was too horrific, unthinkable.
Her hand was still on Frieda’s arm, holding tight. Briar whipped a furious glare at her.
“Your mother did this,” she snarled.
Frieda gaped at her. “I would never sanction an attack on a child!”
“You said there is a lot you don’t know. Do you know what other measures your mother is taking to go after candidates? Rumors? Poisonings? What won’t she do? What do you know, and how will that help us here, Clara?”
Frieda’s face paled. The fireplace was coming to life, illuminating the room more fully.
“Bavaria did not do this,” Frieda said again, and a pulse of fight lit within her brown eyes. But it lessened, and Briar expected her to say something to the effect of It could have been Austria.
Instead, Frieda surveyed the room. “Where would he have gone? What enemies did Mecklenburg have?”
Briar ripped her hand off Frieda’s arm. “You don’t care. Get out.”
“No,” Frieda said.
Briar looked at Merryweather, at first wanting her aunt to throw Frieda out, then realizing—
Agony broke. Its splintered pieces stabbed into the fresh, raw wounds their argument had made. Briar had thought she was hollowed as much as she could be; now she knew the true depth of grief. “You said you would watch him, too.”
Merryweather shuddered. She was flying, wings beating hard, her short stature making her eye level with Briar.
“We’ll find him,” she promised. She glared at Frieda, then pushed away, fluttering to the nearest soldier, asking for more details.
Briar tore her hands through her hair, blond strands snagging on her fingers.
“He’s eleven,” she whispered. “He’s eleven, and your mother tried to have him killed.”
Frieda was silent a moment. “Where would an eleven-year-old go if he was afraid?”
Briar looked up at her, scowling. “I went to you.”
Frieda’s face fell slack. She tried a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
Then it blossomed, and she was grinning at some memory.
“You came after a storm. Remember it? It ripped the roof off the blacksmithy. You were sure it was a dragon come to eat the whole village. Your aunts didn’t believe you, so you came to me, because you knew I would.”
Briar curled her arms around herself. “Don’t. Not now—”
“No. Wait.” Frieda held a hand out. “You came to the orphanage. It was the middle of the night, and the priest would have been furious to find you there, so when he came in for morning prayers, we hid you—”
Briar’s eyes widened.
“In the armoire.” She spun, scrambling forward.
Her fingers fumbled the knobs on the massive armoire, taller and broader than the fireplace, and she yanked the doors wide.
And cried out in shattering relief, plummeting to her knees.
Johann was curled in the base of the armoire, hands over his ears, eyes shut, humming softly to himself.
At the cut of light over him, his eyes flared open in panic.
But then he saw Briar. And…Frieda behind her, the soldiers too, and the blood on the floor, and his terror pitched into a sharp, warbling scream.
Briar held her arms out and he toppled into her, clinging to her, screams turning to sobs as his remaining attendants heaved themselves out of the far room, racing to him with shouts of relief. He was pulled out of her arms quickly, and she let him go, releasing him into the comfort of his people. Through their mess of questions and tears, his voice was small and so very, very young as he apologized, over and over.
“I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I won’t do it anymore.”
“Do what?” one attendant asked, smoothing Johann’s curls back from his tear-slicked face.
“Magic. I won’t do magic anymore. It didn’t stop that man and it was foolhardy and childish and I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I should’ve done something to stop it, something real—”
Johann was gathered into a series of arms and bent heads, a tangle of hugs as people cooed over him, reassuring him, promising him it wasn’t his fault.
Briar straightened upright, muscles stiff. She felt Frieda next to her, watching Johann and his group, and without a word, Briar left the room.
She walked, in a daze, her panic receding in a stupor until she was halfway back to her room and came to with a shivering wheeze.
“Briar—wait.”
“Don’t. Don’t talk to me. Not now.” Briar leaned against the wall, the cold of the stones bleeding through her sleeve. She couldn’t breathe for the relief of knowing Johann was alive, couldn’t breathe for the onslaught of horror this day had brought.
Frieda stopped next to her. “Bavaria didn’t do this. My mother is not the monster you think, and I came to talk to you because—because I do know you. And I know this campaign, this life, is crushing you, and I wanted to give you a way out. I can do this. Lead. I can do this.”
“So if I concede to you,” Briar said, staring at the floor, “and Bavaria takes control of the empire, I am expected to believe you will leave Austria unscathed? That my country, my people, will be protected?”
Before Frieda could answer, Briar laughed. She laughed and it hollowed her out.
“Listen to us,” Briar said. “Talking about leading and empires and duty like we weren’t both singing for our meals a year ago. Do you really feel you could, in any way, contribute to bettering this empire, Frieda? That if it were in your hands, you would not be manipulated by your mother, you would not make choices that harmed others, that you would have all the skills necessary to rule? Really rule? Because I don’t. I don’t, at all, and I am not fool enough to believe I ever will, and it’s ridiculous, idiotic, that the Prince Electors expect one person to bear this.”
Frieda’s face was gray in the low light. She blinked quickly, eyelids fluttering. “That is why Maleficent cursed us. Or—gave us those dreams. To prepare us in ways that other emperors were not.”
“You think the scenes she gave us are meant to prepare us?” Briar blanched.
“Yes.” Frieda nodded. “Those women were all leaders. The images we see of them, the things they went through, the choices they made—all of it is information, examples, showing us how successful leaders endure.”
Briar couldn’t rationalize that. Yes, some of the images in her dreams had shown her beneficial things—but she refused to accept that anything good could come from Maleficent.
“Why us both, then?” Briar asked instead. “Why two of us, if it would only ever be one?”
Frieda’s lips parted. “A spare, I told you. Or to prove which of us is truly worthy. Or—”
“I don’t know about you,” Briar said, “but I am tired of outside forces determining my life’s course. Especially ones that tortured me and hurt people I love. I don’t care what Maleficent’s intent was. I determine my future. And you should start thinking about what you want out of yours, too. And”—she paused, gasping—“you should ask your mother who ordered the assault on Mecklenburg. And the poisoning of Lüneburg, and all the others, and who really killed Stefan, if you so wish to know things now.”
Briar heard the flap of wings, then Merryweather’s startled “Away from her! Briar—you cannot leave alone! What if—”
“We are done,” Briar said, and walked off without another word to Frieda.
She walked, faster and faster, until she raced back to her suite and shut the door on her aunt.
In the bedchamber, Phillip was still asleep, now curled on his side.
Briar shut that door, too, and leaned her forehead against it.
What do you wish to do?
In a wild, limitless world. No rules, no restrictions.
She wanted to protect Austria, to know the people she loved in Hausach and villages like it were safe and cared for. She wanted to rule, but only alongside those she trusted and could depend on. Phillip. Ben.
Frieda.
Who, even after these months of pain and separation, still knew Briar’s deepest wishes. Who was headstrong and confident where Briar could be uncertain and hesitant.
That was what she wanted most.
To be whole again.
Her knees trembled, gave out, and she slid to the floor, not crying, just staying there, bent in half, trying not to fall apart.
The next day, Johann withdrew his candidacy, and his party set off to return to Mecklenburg. Briar went to say goodbye to him, Ben and Phillip in tow.
Johann was somber now, not in his crown or brocade, just a boy, gaunt and small and scared.
He promised to write to her, and his attendants assured her that he would be well watched over. Their attitude toward him had changed in recent days—honest affection was now unmasked, and Briar knew, hoped, that he had the support he needed for what his future would hold.
Ben crouched in front of Johann with a flourish as he produced a thin wooden rod.
“Every zauberer needs a wand,” he said.
Johann hesitated. “I do not think I want to be a sorcerer anymore.”
Ben leaned in, his grin sly. “It is not a real wand. I am not paid enough for such trinkets.” He shot a look at Phillip and rolled his eyes at Johann in shared annoyance, and Johann finally managed a smile. “It’s actually a piece of a broken lance that I sanded down. You can have it as a reminder that there is power to be found even in small, broken pieces. And, failing that, you can use it to greatly annoy your attendants by jabbing them in the stomach.”
Johann grinned but tried to stifle it.
Ben handed the rod to him. Johann took it.
And immediately jabbed it into Ben’s side.
Ben flailed away with a startled cry, lost his balance, and landed hard on his back.
There was a pause throughout the room, Johann’s attendants halting their packing to gape at Ben on the floor.
And then Johann howled. He giggled so hard his eyes teared up and he bent double and wheezed.
Ben looked up at Briar and Phillip with a grimace.
“How did you not see that coming?” Briar asked, unable to stop the hiccup of laughter that escaped. It set Johann off laughing even harder, and Ben’s head flopped back on the stones.
There were only three candidates left.
Eckhardt of Hesse.
Clara of Bavaria.
Aurora of Austria.
A day of lockdown was declared to search the castle for the attacker who had assaulted Johann and the candidate before him. None was found. Even Ben, who threw himself into investigating, could not find any information tying the attack to Matilda, or even Eckhardt, or anyone else.
Another day was given to allow the remaining candidates to rest and recuperate.
Phillip slept more now. He still awoke, but the mere fact that he could sleep now, even in few-hour snatches, was a marked improvement. Briar, by contrast, slept worse than she had since just after the curse, lying awake next to Phillip most nights, unwilling to see her own dreams.
When she did, she saw the women. She saw their supporters and friends. She saw them standing in grand halls or on battlefields, faces determined, mouths shaping words she couldn’t hear. But she knew the intent—they were leading. Directing. Making choices. Confident and strong and powerful. She had seen their origins, too. How they had all started scared and uncertain, like her.
These images, stories or history or things yet to come, did have lessons in them that she needed.
And she hated that.
She hated that Maleficent had, in fact, given her a gift. That Frieda was right. Their curse had been a blessing, a thing meant to build them into better rulers.
It made her want to abdicate her throne and run away, if only to escape whatever plot Maleficent had forced her into.
She feared her unworthiness. But she knew others were unworthy, too, and they held their positions without flinching. Like Matilda; like the Prince Electors who rolled in bribes; like Eckhardt of Hesse, who had not said more than a handful of words the whole campaign and was more often than not asleep during events. These were the people she would leave to rule the empire, all because she didn’t feel like she had anything to contribute?
The game was corrupt. The players, corrupt. The whole lot of it corrupt.
And as Briar woke one morning, knowing another banquet awaited her and, in only a few days, the Prince Electors’ vote, she was oddly numb. She moved in a fugue state, letting her aunts dress her and style her hair. Phillip escorted her down through the castle, Ben behind them, and they spoke to her, but she only managed monosyllabic responses, and they shared a concerned look.
The banquet was smaller. Only three candidates and their retinues. The Prince Electors, all seven of them, were clustered together, already in deep conversation with Frieda and Matilda.
Eckhardt of Hesse was asleep in a chair by the window.
The Electors welcomed her into the circle with smiles that didn’t light their eyes. They had some test to present, no doubt. Another test, while their hands reached behind their backs for money her vassals were paying. While Matilda plotted to send her attacker after Briar next. Or Eckhardt, even, and why not? He was an easy target. Johann had been, too.
Briar stopped before them, her arm through Phillip’s.
They posed a question to her.
“The empire deserves better than this,” she said to whatever they’d asked.
A few exchanged looks. Frieda, across from her, cocked her head, eyeing the Electors, then Briar.
Matilda already, always, smoldered with anger, knowing Austria was up to something, waiting for them to unseat Bavaria, to attack. Everything was about Matilda, of course.
“Pardon, Your Majesty?” one Elector pressed.
“The empire deserves better than this. Than us. Than you,” Briar clarified. It earned a hiss from Flora, behind her, but Briar ignored it. “Look at the candidates left. One is asleep at ten in the morning—has anyone checked whether Eckhardt is even still breathing? Has he been a corpse simply moved and posed for days? What good would he do as emperor?”
A stifled gasp rang through the banquet hall, peppered with cries of restrained outrage. “Your Majesty!” and “I dare say!”
“And another candidate,” Briar said, “is puppeted so thoroughly by a warmongering murderer that I am shocked she has not been throttled by the strings.”
She said that with a pointed glare at Frieda. Whose face was, for the first time, full of emotion, not held in furious blankness.
She was horrified. Hurt.
Good.
“You would dare accuse me of murder?” Matilda shrieked.
That shone clarity through Briar’s building fury. She could so easily eviscerate her own decorum, but she breathed, breathed deeply, and reached for her poise.
She would speak, and she would be heard.
“And then there’s me,” Briar continued, “who has fallen too easily to these superfluous games. What other tests will the Prince Electors run us through for entertainment while we fill their coffers with gold from our kingdoms? While we risk our very lives being here? The people of this land deserve better than a ruler selected by the amount of gifts bestowed. Meanwhile, seven candidates have been driven off, threatened, poisoned, and attacked as this game plays on.”
An Elector scoffed through pale shock. “The road to emperor is paved with—”
“I was not finished speaking,” Briar said calmly. Commanding the room. “I have heard nothing but excuses of that sort all along. This is how things are. Dangers are expected. This is how it’s done. I will no longer be part of it. This is no way to determine the next ruler of our empire, and if you cannot find it within yourselves to choose a leader through worth, merit, and heart, then I do not want to be considered.”
She hadn’t known she was going to say that.
She truly hadn’t planned to.
But that was the choice that had started to grow in her, the roots digging down into her soul.
She didn’t want this. Had never wanted it. But now she didn’t want it because it was vile and cold, and she refused to be a part of a system that was so blood-soaked.
The moment her declaration lit the air, Electors gasped again, dismay and offense. Matilda’s face curved in a devilish smile. Briar’s vassals cried out in shock.
And Frieda watched her, eyes watery, but not relieved, as Briar would have expected. Frieda looked concerned, still, the way she’d been when she’d asked Briar to concede.
Briar turned without another word, Phillip falling into step beside her, Ben scurrying ahead and spinning around to walk backward in front of her.
“Well,” Ben said, wincing with shock and humor.
“Briar, I—” Phillip’s lips parted. He looked down at her as they crossed the banquet hall, and she shrugged, her heart racing, aching.
“I didn’t plan to do that. I—I had to do something. I couldn’t take this anymore.”
Phillip stopped them once they were in the hall. He pulled her into his arms, and a tremor started in the base of her spine, reverberating up her back, down her arms and legs, and she felt what she had done.
She had withdrawn her candidacy for empress.
Bavaria would win. They would have the empire’s resources at their disposal.
Austria would suffer. Maybe Frieda would restrain her mother’s bloodlust. Maybe. But Briar knew better; Frieda was under her mother’s control now.
The vassals and her aunts were moments behind them, all open-mouthed.
“Your Majesty,” Köning croaked. “What did you do?”
She squared her shoulders at him. “I will not play their game anymore. I will not play anyone’s game anymore. We are going back to Austria, and we will fortify our borders against whatever Bavaria inevitably throws at us, and I will focus on making my country the strongest, healthiest, happiest it can be. As I should have done all along.”
Weight was lifting from her shoulders, from her soul. She could breathe again.
Köning’s lips flapped, but he shut his mouth and nodded. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather looked at her with teary eyes. She expected the same anger and confusion, so seeing it on them should not have been so jarring.
“You would not be empress, Aurora?” Fauna pressed.
Briar’s shoulders went tense. “No.”
“But,” Flora protested, cheeks reddening, “you are capable of such greatness! You are destined for more—”
Merryweather put a gentle hand on Flora’s arm. “We must accept her choice and trust her path. We must trust her. We owe her that, and more.”
Merryweather met Briar’s eyes. The echo of their conversation vibrated in the space between them. Had Merryweather told Flora and Fauna what she and Briar had spoken of? They had not offered similar apologies or mentioned it, and their shock now said they still clung to their prior expectations of her.
Flora looked like she was going to burst. “It’s her, though. It’s her. How can she give it up?”
It’s her? What did that mean?
Merryweather guided Flora away.
Briar shook it off. With the weight lifting, she felt other things now, like a grinding discomfort in her chest, in her eyelids.
She thought she might actually sleep tonight. Soundly, dreamlessly.
“Let’s go home,” she whispered to Phillip.
He kissed her temple and they began walking again, back through the halls.
Only Ben lingered.
Briar glanced back to see him looking into the banquet room, where Frieda still was.
The next time they saw her, if they ever did, would likely be on a battlefield, or over war negotiations.
She and Frieda had playacted such things in the forest. Frieda, wielding a stick that became a sword in her mind. Briar, drawing battle lines in the dirt, begging for mercy for her captured soldiers. Frieda laughed and agreed, and they had celebrated their pretend war’s end by splashing in the cool water of a nearby brook, drenching each other silly.
What memory was in Ben’s mind? What ache was he stuck in?
“Ben.” Briar stopped.
She held out her hand to him.
A pause, and then he joined her. She looped her free arm through his.
They were going home.
But, like the lance piece Ben had given to Johann, a part of them was separated from the whole, and Briar felt it as strongly as a gouge in her heart.