Violie

As the battle rages around Violie, all she sees are the stars, the constellations moving across the sky in their slow but steady parade. She never learned them as well as Leopold and the princesses of Bessemia, but she knows enough to pick out the Hero's Heart, the Glittering Diamond, and there, toward the southern edge of the sky, she sees the Empyrea's Staff. She feels her eyes growing heavier, the ground around her damp with her blood, but she keeps her eyes on the stars and tries to stop her mind from wondering what will happen next.

Her mother used to tell her that when she died, she would take her place among the stars, but as Violie got older, she scoffed at the idea—only children would believe such a fantasy. Now, though, she hopes it's true. That when she loses enough blood and her heart slows to a stop and the world goes dark for her, she will awaken again in the sky, surrounded by stars. Sophronia will be there, she thinks, and one day her mother and Elodia will join her too. One day she'll see Leopold again, and Beatriz, and Daphne, and the others she's come to care for.

She believes it because now, veering toward the end of her life far sooner than she ever expected, she has no choice but to believe. The belief comes easily, and as she takes a deep breath that floods her lungs with pain, she tells herself she's ready to die, ready to leave this world behind with the confidence that it isn't truly the end.

As she lets the air out of her lungs, something catches her eye to the south—a star plunging down over the Alder Mountains. The trajectory of its fall, it almost looks like…her thoughts trail off as another star falls, then another, all of them appearing to streak past the Alder Mountains, landing in Cellaria.

Impossible,she thinks, but her eyes say differently.

Beatriz,she thinks a moment later, and she would laugh at the realization if everything didn't hurt so badly. Beatriz has caused a starshower in Cellaria—Violie would stake her life on it, precious little as it may be worth now. Warmth spreads through her—Beatriz did it, she got her power back, and what a miracle she's created with it.

Violie is so taken by the sight of the stars falling that she doesn't realize the battle around her has ceased until Leopold crouches beside her, taking her hand in both ofhis.

"Violie, someone went for the physician," he says, but Violie barely hears him. Some distant part of her knows it's too late, that she's too far gone and if there is something she needs to say to Leopold, now is the time to do it, but she can't tear her eyes away from the sky.

"It's a starshower," she manages. "In Cellaria."

"She's delusional," another voice says, one Violie doesn't recognize. "She isn't going to make it, Your Majesty."

"No," a third voice says, this one filled with awe. "No, she's right—look."

Violie feels the attention shift off her, everyone looking to the sky—everyone except Leopold, who keeps his focus on her, his grip on her hand tight enough that she feels it, even as the feeling of everything else fades.

A thought breaks through her clouded mind, sharp as a freshly forged dagger—when Sophronia died, she died at peace because she'd done all she could, said all she needed to. But Violie is not at peace. Words claw at her chest, demanding breath to voice them that she can't muster. Her body aches somewhere deeper than physical pain, demanding she get up, demanding she keep fighting. She can't die like this, not without seeing the empress fall, not without doing everything she can to help Daphne and Beatriz triumph, not without seeing Leopold sit on the throne he's earned—without seeing the king he's become reign. Not without discovering the feel of his lips against hers and discovering for sure whether the love she feels for him is platonic or romantic, not without finding out whether it's reciprocated.

Violie is not ready to die, and if these truly are to be the last moments of her life, she won't spend them stoic and serene. If this is how she dies, she intends to do it wholly as herself. She'll fight, with every scrappy, stubborn, sharp-edged part of her.

She sucks in a deep breath that pains her lungs so badly she can hardly stand it; then she searches the falling stars.

If one of them came her way…She can barely finish the thought, but she latches onto it as best she can. Violie knows she isn't Beatriz, with the power to call down stars, but she is star-touched. There is stardust in her veins, just as there is in every empyrea. And while Violie has never asked anything of the stars, never put any stock in their miracles, she does so now. After all, if Beatriz could cause the stars to fall over Cellaria, surely Violie can draw one to her now.

Please,she thinks, but when Leopold sucks in a breath, she realizes she spoke the word out loud. If I have a miracle in me, let it come now. You gave me my life, and I have so much left to do before I'm done with it.

Violie's eyes close and darkness surrounds her, but as everything else fades, Leopold's hand in hers is constant, an anchor she can't bear to release.

The stars aren't done with you yet,a voice whispers through Violie's mind, a voice that sounds like Sophronia's. Though soon you might wish they were. Dying is less painful than living.

"Look out!" The shout cuts through the darkness surrounding Violie, and her eyes fly open just in time to see the bright light barreling toward her from above—the star that hits Violie square in the chest, engulfing her body in a blinding white heat that feels like it's burning her alive.

It hurts like no pain Violie has ever felt before, but the pain tells her she's alive, so she endures.