Daphne

Daphne sleeps fitfully that night. She tosses and turns in the large bed she and Bairre share, earning annoyed, sleep-drenched groans from him every time she does, but she can't help it. The knowledge that she's sleeping beneath the same roof as her mother keeps her thoughts turning. In just a few hours, Violie and Leopold will be off away from Friv and the empress, but until then…what if the empress isn't wasting time? What if right this moment, she has one of her people sneaking into their bedroom, armed and ready to kill them both while they sleep?

It wouldn't be the right move, Daphne knows. Her mother is too smart to be so hasty. But that knowledge doesn't ease her mind.

After a while, Daphne's thoughts turn from defensive to offensive. What if, rather than waiting for her mother to attack Violie and Leopold, Daphne simply killed her mother? She has the advantage here; she knows the lay of the Frivian castle better than her mother or her guards. And while her mother may suspect that her loyalties have shifted, she surely wouldn't be expecting Daphne to kill her, would she?

What if tonight is the best chance she has to kill her mother? What if doing so is the only way to save Beatriz from whatever she's facing in Cellaria? What if it's the only way to protect Violie and Leopold and Bairre? What if it's the only way to protect herself?

Could she do it?

Daphne isn't sure, and she hates that. She wasn't trained to hesitate; she was trained to identify threats and eliminate them.

"Ow," Bairre grumbles as she shifts again, accidentally kicking him as she rolls onto her side. "Daphne, at this rate I'll be one giant bruise by morning."

"Sorry," she says for what she would guess is the twelfth time. "Did I wake you?"

"No," he says with a tired sigh, propping himself up on his elbows. "In order for you to wake me, I'd have had to be able to fall asleep at all, and that's been an impossible feat with you tonight. Even without all the squirming and kicking, I can practically hear you thinking."

Daphne rolls toward him. In the faint moonlight shining through the window, she can just make out the lines of his face, his star-touched silver eyes glinting as he runs a hand through sleep-mussed hair.

"I don't think I can kill her," Daphne blurts out.

Bairre frowns, looking down at her. "Who?" he asks before shaking his head. "Silly question, I suppose. Killing your mother while she's a guest in Friv would be shortsighted."

"I know that," Daphne says. "But if she tries to kill any of us—"

"That would also be shortsighted," he reasons. "And you've come to the conclusion that she wouldn't risk it."

Daphne purses her lips. He's right, she knows he's right, logically. But emotionally?

"But if she does?" Daphne asks.

Bairre looks at her for a long moment and sighs. "If we truly believe she poses an imminent threat, I'll do it."

Daphne blinks. "You'd…kill my mother?" she says slowly. She's seen Bairre kill before, but only when they were attacked by assassins in the woods, never in a planned, organized way. She wonders if he knows what he's offering.

"If it meant you didn't have to?" he says. "In a heartbeat, Daph."

Daphne laughs, the sound coming out choked. "Your hands are much cleaner than mine, Bairre," she tells him. "There's no need to protect my sensitive soul."

"Maybe not," Bairre says softly. "But she's your mother, and despite everything, I know you love her. I don't want you to carry that weight around with you—even if it is necessary, it would still haunt you."

Daphne wants to argue, but she suspects he's right. "I'll sleep better tomorrow," she tells him after a moment. "After Leopold and Violie are gone and there are two fewer people to worry about."

It occurs to Daphne that even with Violie and Leopold gone, there will be plenty of others she cares about who her mother could hurt. Bairre, of course, and Cliona. Haimish and Rufus. King Bartholomew, who might not be a very good king but is, Daphne believes, a good man nonetheless. Even Lord Panlington and Aurelia, neither of whom Daphne particularly likes, but who Cliona and Bairre love. If her mother hurt them, Daphne would still feel it.

When she arrived in Friv, things were so much simpler. She cared about herself, her sisters, her mother, and no one else. Certainly no one in Friv, of all places. The armor she wore was solid and strong, impenetrable. But slowly, bit by bit, these people have turned her armor into little more than silk chiffon. They've made it so easy for her mother to hurt her, and Daphne hates them a little bit for that—she hates Bairre a little bit for that.

But as she looks at Bairre, her silver eyes finding his in the dark, she knows she doesn't actually hate him at all. Not even close. And that's the problem.

The silence that has wedged itself between them is broken by the quiet sound of a door opening and closing in the sitting room outside their bedroom.

"Bairre," Daphne says, dropping her voice to a whisper.

"Someone's outside," he whispers back, throwing the covers off and climbing out of bed, silent as a falling star. "Stay here."

But Daphne is already jumping out of bed herself, grabbing for the dagger she keeps under her pillow, brushing past him to the door.

"You're unarmed. Unless you're planning on glowering at them until they keel over, allow me," she replies. Bairre looks like he wants to argue that, but the sound of two sets of footsteps coming toward their door stops him short. He gives Daphne one brief nod and reaches for the doorknob. When Daphne nods back, he opens the door and steps aside so Daphne can launch herself through it, dagger in hand, tackling the closest figure to the floor. In seconds, her dagger is at his throat.

"Pas!" the other intruder shouts, but Bairre already has a firm hold of him, pinning his arms behind his back.

It isn't that Daphne doubts Bairre's combat abilities—or her own—but she can't imagine her mother would send assassins who weren't highly capable in their own right. These two haven't put up any sort of fight at all.

Daphne manages to maneuver to her feet, pulling her intruder with her and keeping a knife to his throat. It's difficult to get a good look at his face in the dark, but he's young—near her own age—with suntanned skin and wide, dark brown eyes that remind her of a deer in a hunter's crosshairs.

She's seen him before.

"Pas," she says, repeating the name the other intruder called him. Something in her mind clicks into pace. "Prince Pasquale."

He gives as much of a nod as he can with her dagger still pressed to his throat, and after a second longer of searching his face, she lets the dagger drop.

"And you," he says, hand reaching up to massage his throat, "can only be Daphne."

"How did you get past the guards?" Daphne asks. It isn't the biggest question on her mind, but it's the one that reaches her lips first.

Pasquale manages a shrug. "I admit I don't have a fraction of your sister's training, but she did teach me a thing or two about sneaking around castles."

Daphne ignores the pang in her chest at the mention of Beatriz and glances over her shoulder at Bairre, giving him a nod. He releases the intruder he was holding—another boy, with hair a couple of shades lighter than Pasquale's and a deep crease between his brows as he glances between Daphne and Pasquale.

"This is Ambrose," Pasquale says, nodding toward the other boy. "He's with me, and he was—is—a friend of Triz's."

Triz's.It strikes Daphne as strange to hear her nickname for her sister in the mouth of a stranger. She doesn't think she's ever heard anyone call Beatriz that apart from her and Sophronia.

She looks between Pasquale, Ambrose, and Bairre before her eyes dart to the tall clock in the corner. It's nearly five in the morning. She lets out a small sigh. "There's a lot we need to catch each other up on," she says, making her way back to her room to grab her cloak from the wardrobe, getting Bairre's, too, and passing it to him as she returns. "But it'll be best if we wake Violie and Leopold first, to save you from having to repeat yourself."