Daphne

The afternoon passes in a blur. The physician Daphne's mother sent arrives, and when Daphne tells him the only lingering symptom of her fall in Friv is some muscle aches, he withdraws a vial of stardust from his leather medical case. Rather than giving it to her to use herself, as she's always done in the past, the physician makes the wish. Her muscles scream with a brief burst of pain before going quiet, all traces of achiness gone.

"Thank you," she says to him, but when she asks for more stardust in case the pain returns later, he shakes his head with an apologetic smile and no further explanation as he packs up his case and leaves. Daphne doesn't require an explanation, though.

"My mother's orders, I expect," she tells Bairre, who has watched the exchange quietly from a chair by the window. "Though whether it was her plan to begin with or retaliation for arguing with her downstairs, I can't say."

"Surely you can find stardust easily regardless," Bairre says. "There must be merchants happy to sell it to you."

Daphne isn't sure. "A few years ago, Sophie tore her favorite gown, but my mother said it was a just punishment for her clumsiness. The royal seamstress refused to mend it on her orders. Beatriz tried to take it to one of the seamstresses in Hapantoile, but they all refused to mend the gown. Beatriz said she even tried to buy thread in the same color as the gown so she could fix it herself—and what a disaster that would have been, given Beatriz's impatience—but they wouldn't even sell her that. Eventually, Sophronia had no choice but to throw the gown out." She remembers how sad her sister was, how she touched the delicate blush silk reverently before she handed the dress to a maid to discard. And the lesson did nothing to remedy Sophronia's clumsiness.

Not a lesson, Daphne corrects herself, seeing that memory through new eyes. It was simply a cruelty.

"Perhaps I can convince someone to sell it to me," Bairre says, though that, too, Daphne doubts. But she knows that having stardust on hand could be a welcome boon if the empress has her backed against a wall.

"Cliona may have better luck," Daphne says before frowning. "Where is she? I'd have thought she'd have arrived bynow."

Bairre frowns, glancing behind him at the window, the sky outside darkening to dusk. "I don't know," he admits. "But surely she'll be here when we return from the Sororia."

Night has just fallen when Daphne and Bairre arrive at the Sororia in a carriage. Daphne was unsure whether they would be allowed to leave the palace, but when she told her guards of her intentions, they made sure that a carriage was waiting in front of the palace for them. Two of the guards followed the carriage on horseback, so Daphne knows she is in no way free from her mother's reach, but it's still more freedom than she expected.

She supposes she's meant to feel grateful for the trust, that she's meant to soften toward the empress. That if the empress isn't treating her like a threat, perhaps Daphne shouldn't view her as one either.

If that was the empress's goal, though, she's failed. Mother Ippoline greets them at the front door with same pursed lips and mirthless eyes she seems always to wear, and before Daphne can attempt to order the guards to remain outside, Mother Ippoline beats her to it.

"I'll not allow weapons inside the Sororia," she tells them. "But you are welcome to do your duty here and ensure that no threats breach our walls."

The guards exchange a look, but there is no arguing with her. If they offer to lay down their weapons, they'll expose their true purpose in following Daphne—not to protect her but to watch her.

Perhaps, Daphne thinks as she and Bairre follow Mother Ippoline into the Sororia, Daphne's reading of her was flawed. But she isn't ready to trust her quite yet, so she continues to play the fool.

"Where will we receive the stars' blessing, Mother?" she asks, glancing around the hallway Mother Ippoline leads them down, lit by golden sconces and lined with paintings of ancient saints martyring themselves in ways as creative as they are gruesome.

Mother Ippoline scoffs. "I have yet to treat you like a simpleton, Princess," she says without glancing back at them. "And I would appreciate it if you granted me the same courtesy. Your sister certainly did."

At the mention of Beatriz, Daphne's heart gives a kick. She felt Beatriz's presence in the palace, but they spent most of their lives together in those halls. Now, though, she's struck by the knowledge that her sister walked these corridors, that she spoke to Mother Ippoline and likely had the same reservations Daphne herself feels about the woman's loyalty.

"My sister is nicer than I am," she says.

"Is she?" Mother Ippoline says, turning left down a smaller hallway, Daphne and Bairre at her heels. "I always heard you were the most charming."

Daphne has heard that too. Her mother always said that Daphne could convince a snake to eat its own tail. Still…"Nice and charming have little to do with one another. Charm is an arsenal. Sometimes niceness holds a weapon within it, but even then it's a facade put up to serve a point."

Mother Ippoline considers this. "And yet you feel no need to put up that facade with me?" she asks, sounding almost amused. "Should I be offended?"

"Flattered, I think," Bairre says. "It means she doesn't think you'd be fooled by it."

Daphne glances sideways at Bairre, surprised at the frank appraisal, though she can't argue with it.

"Then I'm flattered," Mother Ippoline says, her voice warmer than Daphne has ever heard it in the lifetime she's known the woman. She stops in front of a polished oak door with a cut-crystal doorknob and knocks three times. After a hesitation, a woman's voice shouts for them to come in. Mother Ippoline pushes the door open and gestures them into a large, well-lit sitting room warmed by a fire in the hearth. Two dozen women are seated—some clustered on the sofas and chairs but many sitting on the rug itself, the skirts of their dresses settled around them like flower petals.

It's the dresses themselves that surprise Daphne. Half, she would guess, are the gray dresses worn by Mother Ippoline and the sisters who live in the Sororia, but the other half are brighter in color and bolder in cut, showing off as much skin as the sisters are careful to hide.

"Princess Daphne, Prince Bairre," Mother Ippoline says, nodding toward the lone woman standing. She's maybe a decade younger than Mother Ippoline, with dark brown hair threaded with gray that hangs loose around her shoulders. The dress she wears is loose and light, but Daphne can tell even at a glance that it was expensive, made from silk embroidered with gold that is shimmery and almost sheer in the firelight. The woman is looking at Daphne with appraising eyes and a slight smile to her full, painted mouth. "May I introduce my sister, Elodia," Mother Ippoline says. "I believe you have mutual friends."

Daphne looks at the woman uncertainly for a moment. Mother Ippoline called her sister, but Daphne doesn't think she meant it in the way that all the women who call the Sororia home are sisters. There's a resemblance in their eyes, she thinks, and though she can't see Mother Ippoline's hair beneath her wimple, she wonders if it's the same shade of brown—with a bit more gray threaded in, perhaps.

Still, Daphne is wary. "What friends might those be?" she asks, aware of the attention of the other women in the room weighing on her skin.

Elodia smiles, as if Daphne's mistrust is endearing. "I'm the madam of the Crimson Petal," she says. "Does that ring any bells?"

It does, and judging by the way Bairre straightens, he recognizes the name too. "Violie," Daphne says.

"My daughter," another of the women in the bold dresses says, this one younger and blond and the very image of Violie, the more Daphne looks at her. "And we recently hosted some other friends of yours at the Crimson Petal for a night before they went on their way."

Leopold, Pasquale, and Ambrose, Daphne knows. She glances around the room, looking at the Sisters in their habits and the women she now realizes are courtesans in their bright gowns. She doesn't think she could have imagined a less likely group to gather, but she can wager a guess at what, exactly, has brought them together.

"I take it the empress doesn't know about this?" she says, glancing at Mother Ippoline with raised eyebrows.

Mother Ippoline's smile is pointed. "An empress does," she says with a shrug before nodding toward the woman seated at the center of the sofa, dressed in the habit of a Sister but with what Daphne immediately recognizes as the bearing of royalty. "Sister Heloise, though she was formerly known as Empress Seline of Bessemia."

Daphne's thoughts fog over. There is only one living Empress of Bessemia as far as she knows. But then…she doesn't know everything where her mother is concerned, does she? Strangely, Bairre doesn't look half as surprised as she feels.

"Your Majesty," he says, bowing his head before pausing. "Is that still the correct address?"

"No, but I appreciate it all the same," the woman—Sister Heloise now—says, her eyes on Daphne. "Stars above, you truly are the very image of your mother."

It isn't the first time Daphne's heard that. Once, she considered it a compliment. But the way Sister Heloise says it certainly doesn't sound like a compliment.

Sister Heloise continues. "Your sister—Beatriz—didn't know who I was, and it seems you don't either."

Bairre glances sideways at her, brows raised. "Empress Seline was the wife of Emperor Aristede," he explains. "The first wife."

Pieces slide into place in Daphne's mind. But…

"Let me guess—you, too, believed I was dead?" Sister Heloise asks. "I'm sure I would have been if I hadn't recognized a losing battle when I saw one. Your mother was a strong adversary, and one who played by no one's rules but her own. I knew that it was only a matter of time before she or my husband got rid of me, and there are only two ways for an empress to vacate her role. I chose the one that let me keep my life."

Daphne looks at the woman, an empress erased from history. Ripped out at the seams without so much as a stray thread left behind. And all this time, she's been living in the shadow of the palace. Daphne isn't sure whether she finds the woman's story to be a tragedy or a triumph.

"I told Princess Beatriz to make the same choice," Sister Heloise continues. "To run while she still could."

Daphne laughs—she can't help it; the thought of Beatriz ever running from a fight is every bit as unimaginable as her wearing the habit of a Sister.

"Yes, Princess Beatriz laughed too," Sister Heloise says. "I thought her a brave fool, but then I began to hear things, rumors that made their way even inside the Sororia walls, stirring a feeling that I haven't felt in quite some time. Hope."

"What rumors?" Daphne asks.

"Your sister healed one of my girls," Elodia says, motioning to Violie's mother. "A woman she never met. And she did it by pulling magic from a star."

"I saw it happen during my nightly prayers," Mother Ippoline says. "I cursed Princess Beatriz at the time for a foolish novice empyrea, learning her gift at the expense of our sky."

"You knew what she was?" Bairre asks.

"Nigellus told me soon after he realized himself, but I had my own suspicions long before. I thought the stars had a strange sense of humor in choosing her—after all, empyreas must be cautious above all else, and Princess Beatriz has never been that. But then I saw the constellation she pulled a star from—the Glittering Diamond—reappear in the sky a couple of nights later, and I realized a new star had risen in the place of the one your sister took down. The constellation was as whole as it has ever been in my lifetime."

"Violie and her friends confirmed it during their stay at the Crimson Petal," Elodia says. "That Beatriz can not only pull stars from the sky, but create new ones."

"She could," Daphne confirms. "But our mother knew it too—at least that Beatriz was an empyrea—and she found a way to bind her power. I tried to use…" She trails off. The wish bracelet will be too difficult to explain, and she feels like a fool for wasting the wish in the first place. "Well, I tried to break the bind from here, but it didn't work."

Mother Ippoline's brow furrows. "Are you certain about that?" she asks.

"Of course I am," Daphne says. "That was two days ago now. If it had worked, Beatriz would be here, or at least would have gotten word to me."

At that, a murmur ripples through the room, women turning to one another and speaking in low voices, but Daphne catches a few phrases. She hasn't heard. No one told her. How could she miss it?

Uncertainty settles over her skin and she turns to Mother Ippoline, who smiles.

"Last night, a starshower fell over Cellaria—over Vallon, specifically," she says. "It was a thing to behold, even at a great distance—we could see it from our windows. You didn't see it?"

Daphne shakes her head. They'd been traveling, holed up in a carriage farther north. But her mother was more irritated than usual this morning, and she was quick to give in to Daphne's insistence over the room arrangements—a small battle, Daphne thought, but her mother had bigger ones to fight, it seemed.

"What does it mean?" she asks, not quite daring to hope that it means what she thinks.

"It'll be some time before word of what happened makes its way from Vallon to Hapantoile, but I don't believe it's a coincidence that the starshower happened on the night of what was meant to be Beatriz's wedding to King Nicolo."

Daphne's breath stutters. She can see it so clearly—Beatriz waiting until the wedding to use her magic, and causing quite the spectacle when she did. Beatriz always had a flair for the dramatic. A laugh forces its way past her lips.

"Beatriz did it," she says. "Beatriz summoned a starshower. To Cellaria."

"That is our theory as well," Elodia says. "And if it holds true, I assume Beatriz will be coming back to Bessemia as soon as she's able."

"Yes," Daphne agrees, remembering her last words to Beatriz, urging her to meet her in Hapantoile so they could fight their mother together.

"And what's your plan for when she does?"

At that, Daphne's joy dims slightly. Do they have a plan? She feels like the entirety of her plan so far has been to stay alive, to keep Bairre and Cliona alive. It's been all she could do. But with Beatriz here, they'll be able to do so much more. Instead of constantly defending themselves, they'll be able to actually attack.

"It's a work in progress," she says, her thoughts already turning. If Beatriz has the power of the stars on her side, what can't she do? Still, the empress bound her powers once, she can do it again. Which will mean they need a backup plan. And a backup to that plan as well, knowing the empress.

"You'll have our help in whatever it may be," Mother Ippoline says, gesturing to the room and to the women gathered, Sisters and courtesans together, united in a common goal.

Daphne smiles. In her mother's wildest dreams, she couldn't imagine what's coming for her.