Violie

Violie, Leopold, Pasquale, and Ambrose ride hard until midday, aiming to put as much distance between themselves and the empress as possible so that any trackers she sends after them will have difficulty following. In eight hours of riding, they've crossed into Bessemia, and they stop for a short break near Lake Asteria, eating the packed lunch Violie swiped from the kitchens—a mix of apples, hard cheeses, and fresh bread—and letting the horses graze and rest.

While the others chat about the journey, Violie takes an apple from her saddlebag and palms one of the thirteen vials of stardust Daphne gave them, walking far enough away that she'll be out of earshot. She finds a boulder by a small stream and perches on it, sitting cross-legged and taking a bite of the apple, looking at the vial of stardust in her hand as she chews, thinking over whether now is the right time to use it.

She's being impatient. She knows she's being impatient. But it's been days since Daphne tried to reach Beatriz, and now that they have more information, Violie suspects Beatriz was drugged for the journey to Cellaria, which might have made it impossible for Daphne to speak with her. And she would have made it back to Cellaria by now. If she had been drugged for the journey, she wouldn't be anymore.

It's a lot of ifs, but the more Violie turns over the sequence of events in her mind, the more sure she is. Even from a distance she can hear Pasquale's voice, Ambrose's laugh. She considered telling the others her plan while she formed it during their ride, but all it would accomplish is getting their hopes up, and Violie doesn't want to do that just to have to dash them again if it doesn't work.

She takes another bite of her apple, then another, but she knows she's procrastinating.

"What are you…" Leopold's voice jerks Violie from her thoughts, and she looks up to find him approaching her through the woods, his eyes on the stardust in her hand. "Is that one of the ones Daphne gave us?" he asks slowly. "To use in Cellaria to help get Beatriz out?"

Violie closes her hand over the vial, feeling her face heat. "We have twelve more vials," she points out. "I think Daphne gave us more than enough." Even as she says the words, though, she knows she has no way of knowing that. It isn't as if she has any experience staging a rescue mission in a hostile country. Leopold simply raises an eyebrow, and she sighs, telling him her theory about Beatriz being unconscious and therefore unreachable when Daphne tried.

"For all we know, Daphne is trying again now," Leopold points out.

That, Violie hadn't considered, but of course Daphne will try again. If she has to use all the stardust in Friv, Daphne won't stop until she reaches her sister. And if Beatriz said anything to Daphne that Violie and the others would need to know, Daphne would pass it along. She, unlike Violie, can access more stardust with relative ease.

Violie lets out a long exhale. "I don't like it," she says finally.

Leopold moves closer, sitting beside her on the boulder. "You don't like trusting Daphne?" he asks. "I know her loyalty has been wobbly in the past, but—"

"No, I trust Daphne," Violie interrupts, shaking her head. "But I don't like relying on her—not just her. I don't like relying on anyone." She pauses, considering what she's just said, and Leopold, for his part, lets her think. "I've always worked alone," she says. "And it's always turned out perfectly well that way. But this"—she gestures to the woods in the general direction of where Pasquale and Ambrose are—"this is new to me."

Leopold nods slowly. "For what it's worth, I thought we made a good team before," he says, though there's an uncertainty to his voice that's new.

"We did," she says quickly. "But I suppose before, for the most part, I asked—or maybe assumed—a lot more trust of you than you asked of me."

Leopold gives a half smile. "You trusted me about Daphne, when I told you I trusted her," he points out. "And I know that couldn't have been easy."

She snorts. "No, definitely not, but you were right in the end."

"And trusting you has never led me astray," he replies.

The words steal Violie's breath. She shakes her head. "Sophronia trusted me," she says after a moment.

"She did," he says. "She trusted both of us, and I don't think she regretted that in the end."

For a moment, Violie doesn't quite know what to say. No matter what Daphne claimed Sophronia's spirit told her during the northern lights, she doesn't think she'll ever feel like she's truly earned Sophronia's forgiveness. If Violie hadn't stolen the royal seal from her bedchamber, if she hadn't used it to forge a declaration of war on Cellaria, it wouldn't have sparked the mob that arrested and beheaded Sophronia. Forgiveness will always feel just out of reach. "You must miss her terribly," she says, hoping to change the subject.

It's Leopold's turn to fall silent. When he speaks, his voice is soft, but sure. "I do. I think I probably always will. But I've gotten to know her better in death than I think I ever knew her in life."

"That isn't true—"

"I don't mean it as an insult," he says quickly. "But in all the letters we shared over all those years, I think we were both lying in a way. Each of us was showing the other the parts we wanted them to see—she was using her training even then, and I…well, I wanted her to see the Leopold I wanted to be, someone smart and brave, someone worthy of being king."

"You are all those things, Leo," Violie tells him, resisting the urge to reach for his hand. They're friends, she tells herself, and it wouldn't be the first time they've shown each other comfort, but here and now, with Sophronia's shadow heavy on them, it would feel wrong.

"I like to think I've become that person," he says. "Sophie was becoming the person she wanted to be too. In the end, I hope she felt she got there. I loved her, but I'm starting to think it was a half-formed type of love, built more on hope than anything solid because we were still half formed. Do you know what I mean?"

Violie swallows, thinking of the Leopold she knew in Temarin, the one who traveled with her to Friv, not just heartbroken but soul-broken, seeing everything he'd known to be true ripped away from him. He isn't the same person he was then. And Sophie, had she survived, likely wouldn't be the same person now either.

"I do," she says slowly. "But I don't think that makes what the two of you shared any less real."

"No," he agrees. "I believe the man I'm becoming would have loved the woman she would have been, and there is a part of me that will always be angry that that future was taken away from us."

Words escape Violie again. She feels the urge to defend Sophronia, but defend her against what? Leopold has a point, and if Sophronia were here, Violie knows she would agree with him. "We'll make the empress pay for that," she says finally, the only thing she can think to say. She is drowning in a sea of complicated emotions, reaching for anger—trusted and familiar—to keep her afloat.

Leopold laughs, but the sound comes out harsh. "I wish I could think of it like that," he says, shaking his head. "Like there was a price I could extract from Margaraux that would heal that wound, that would balance the scales, that would make the world feel just and right again, but there isn't. I'm not here, standing against her, to get some sort of revenge, Violie. I'm here to stop her from hurting anyone else."

Violie looks at him for a long moment. She assumed anger was driving him, like it's driving her. Not because she thinks it will balance any scales, but because anger has always driven her. It's only now, in this moment, that she realizes it isn't the same for everyone. She envies him that, but at the same time, she doesn't know who she is without her anger—at the empress, at the world, at herself. She doesn't know how she could survive without it to fuel her.

Silence stretches between them for a long moment, and when Pasquale shouts their names and says they should get going, Violie is relieved.

In the evening, they reach a fork in the road with a crudely crafted signpost pointing out where each tine leads. The path to the right takes them west, toward Temarin, the path to the left takes them east toward Hapantoile. The path straight ahead takes them through the Nemaria Woods and into Cellaria. To Beatriz.

Violie doesn't hesitate before starting down the path straight ahead, but Leopold pulls his horse to the left. Pasquale and Ambrose come to a halt, looking between them.

"We're going to Cellaria," Violie says over her shoulder, trying to keep patience in her voice when she doesn't feel particularly patient. She would wager everything she owns that all three of them received a far better education than she did—surely they can read a simple signpost.

"Going through Hapantoile will be less suspicious," Leopold argues.

Violie pulls her horse's reins, bringing the mare to a stop. She turns, looking at Leopold over her shoulder, then toward Pasquale and Ambrose. She snorts. "I'd argue that would be extremely suspicious," she points out.

"Which is exactly why Margaraux will think you're too smart to go that way," Leopold counters.

"There's no reason to waste time in Hapantoile; Beatriz—" Violie starts.

"Will survive the day's delay stopping in Bessemia will cost us," Leopold says, his voice decisive.

"We don't know that—"

"Violie," Ambrose says, surprising her. She turns back to him and sees an unexpected softness in his face. "How long has it been since you've seen your mother?"

A year and a half,Violie thinks immediately, but she doesn't say it aloud. Instead, she tamps down the way her heart lifts at the thought of seeing her mother and raises her chin, keeping her expression carefully cool. "You said Beatriz healed her. I'll see her when this mess with the empress is through."

As she says the words, she knows they're all thinking the same thing—that this mess with the empress very well may never be through, that just because her mother has been healed doesn't mean she's in any less danger, especially now that the empress knows Violie betrayed her. But she trusts that her mother can fend for herself, and she knows she has the help of the other women at the Crimson Petal.

What Violie doesn't say aloud, what she barely allows herself to even think, is that as desperate as she is to see her mother, she doesn't want her mother to see her. Does she know what Violie has done over the last year and a half, the people she has hurt, the damage she has caused? She is largely responsible for bringing an entire country to ruin, for the siege that killed not just Sophronia but countless others. She did it to save her mother, but Violie knows her mother will not be moved by that knowledge, and she doesn't want her mother to look at her and see the person she's become. She'd rather her mother remember her as she was, even if it means never seeing her again.

The other three exchange a look that Violie can't read before Pasquale finally clears his throat.

"When we were in Hapantoile before, when Beatriz healed your mother," he says slowly, "everyone at the Crimson Petal was grateful, and the madam there made it clear their loyalty was to Beatriz—that she believed a debt was owed."

Violie scoffs, hoping to hide how the words clench at her heart. The madam at the Crimson Petal, Elodia, had been a grandmother of sorts to Violie when she was growing up, a woman as shrewd at business as she was loyal to the woman who worked for her. She wasn't one to swear that loyalty to an outsider, but if she'd offered it to Beatriz, it was too valuable a gift to pass up. Still…

"We aren't dragging my mother into this, or Elodia, or any of the others there," Violie says, her voice firm. "They have plenty of troubles of their own, and who sits on what throne has nothing to do with them."

"Normally, I'd agree with you," Pasquale says, his voice low. "But Beatriz's life is on the line, and I will take every bit of help I can get, from every corner offering it, if it means saving her."

"We aren't asking anyone at the Crimson Petal to charge into Cellaria with us," Leopold adds, looking between Violie and his cousin. "But if there's a chance to gather more resources, more intelligence about what is waiting for us, more time to formulate a plan—"

He breaks off, a frown creasing his forehead as he looks at Violie, noticing the spark in her eyes as a plan comes to her, half formed and tentative, but a plan nonetheless. A plan they will need the help of the Crimson Petal to execute, because she knows that courtesans can find an open door just about anywhere in the world, even in palaces, and they are always, always underestimated.

"Vi…," Leopold starts, but Violie is already digging her heels into her mare's sides, urging her forward and steering her down the left tine of the fork, toward Hapantoile, to her mother and her home, joy and dread going to war inside her as she gathers her words.

"I know how we can get into the Cellarian court," she says, her words curt.