Daphne

The sharp edge of a blade against her neck wakes Daphne, and she blinks up into the early-morning light to see Cliona looming over her, dagger in hand and expression empty and cold.

"Cliona—" she starts, but Cliona lifts her finger to her lips and presses the blade harder against Daphne's skin, the threat clear. Cliona cuts her gaze to Bairre, still sleeping beside her.

"You're going to get out of bed and come with me," Cliona whispers to Daphne. "I have orders to kill him if he makes trouble. Don't let him make trouble."

Daphne swallows, even as the movement presses the blade harder against her throat. She understands what Cliona is saying, the unspoken plea. Under normal circumstances, Daphne wouldn't be inclined to take requests from someone trying to kidnap her, but in this her and Cliona's goals are aligned.

She glances at the duvet covering her from the shoulders down.

"Will you allow me the dignity of getting dressed first?" she asks Cliona mildly. "Or does my mother wish for me to parade down the halls naked?"

A flicker of surprise crosses Cliona's face as she glances at Daphne's body beneath the bedclothes, and Bairre next to her. Just as quickly, it's gone, smoothing away into that cold emptiness once more. She removes the dagger and gives a quick nod.

"Dress quickly," she whispers. "And quietly. And don't even think about taking a weapon with you."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Daphne says, though they both know that's a lie.

"You have one minute."

Cliona turns her back, her fingers flexing around the hilt of her dagger.

Daphne hurries across the room, dressing without much thought, her mind consumed with trying to understand what is happening and why—Cliona has betrayed her. She shouldn't be surprised by that, but it hurts all the same. What did the empress offer her? Whatever it is, Cliona must know it's a lie, that as soon as Daphne is dead and the empress has won, she'll kill Cliona, too.

"Ten seconds," Cliona says just as Daphne is pulling on her cloak. In the pocket, she finds the vial of stardust Beatriz gave her the night before. She's about to shove it into her bodice when Cliona's voice stops her.

"Don't," Cliona says.

Daphne grits her teeth. "Bairre will need it if he hopes to get back to Friv alive," she tells Cliona.

Cliona hesitates, glancing at Bairre's sleeping form. After a second, she nods. "Then leave it for him," she says.

Daphne does, walking toward Bairre's bedside table and setting the stardust there.

"Happy?" Cliona whispers.

"Not particularly, no," Daphne whispers back, and that's when she sees it—the flicker of movement behind Bairre's eyes. Not asleep, Daphne realizes, but pretending. She needs to get Cliona out of the room before she realizes it too. Daphne holds her hands up to Cliona. "Would you like to search me for weapons?" she asks.

"Not at the moment," Cliona says after a second of consideration. She grabs Daphne by the elbow and leads her out of the room. Daphne chances one last look over her shoulder, her eyes meeting Bairre's; he gives her a small nod just as the door closes between them. He'll get help from Beatriz and the others, she knows, and that hope buoys her against the growing dread in her belly.

"Where are you taking me?" Daphne asks as Cliona leads her out of the sitting room and into the hall, where five guards wait, not just her usual two. Without a word, they fall into formation around Daphne and Cliona, not to guard them, Daphne realizes, but to obscure the dagger Cliona holds to her back from the sight of anyone they pass.

Cliona glances sideways at her, face unreadable before she turns her attention forward once more. "To Beatriz," she says, the words lifting Daphne's heart and shattering it all at once.

Daphne feels numb as Cliona and the guards force her down flights and flights of stairs. To the catacombs, some part of her realizes, unsurprised. She's tempted to try to speak to Cliona again, to reason with her, but she holds her tongue. The guards know what they're doing—they must have some inkling of where they're taking Daphne and to what end. Cliona won't change her mind in front of them. She can't. But as they walk, Daphne's mind turns over how they got here, what their mother is planning, and how they can get out of it.

Bairre knows what happened to her—he'll get help somehow, from someone. But if the empress already has Beatriz, who else does she have? Is there anyone left to help them? Or is this the end for her? Is this how she loses?

They approach the large iron door at the bottom of the last flight of stairs, flanked by two guards, who move aside at their approach, one of them pulling the door open and the other handing Cliona a lantern to hold with her empty hand. From there, Daphne and Cliona enter the catacombs alone, the darkness making it difficult to see anything past the ring of light surrounding them.

"Daphne?" a voice calls out—Beatriz, she knows, her heart clenching.

"It's me," she calls back, trying not to betray the fear coursing through her.

Beatriz lets out a string of curses in both Bessemian and Cellarian as they draw closer. Daphne takes in the hazy sight of her Beatriz, Pasquale, and Ambrose bound to marble pillars—none looking injured, she notices with some relief, but incapacitated all the same.

"Cliona?" Pasquale says. "What are you doing?"

Cliona doesn't look at him as she guides Daphne to the pillar on Beatriz's other side, pushing her to sit down and pulling a coil of rope from the pocket of her cloak.

"What I must," Cliona says coldly as she binds Daphne's hands behind her, just like the other three.

Daphne looks up at her onetime friend. "Cliona, whatever she promised you, whatever she threatened—"

"Don't," Cliona snaps, the venom in her voice surprising Daphne. "You have precious little life left—don't waste your words on me."

With that, Cliona turns and leaves again, taking the light with her.

When she's gone, Daphne lets out a long exhale.

"Constrictor knot?" she asks Beatriz, tugging at her wrists experimentally.

"Afraid so," Beatriz says. "It's the same one Adilla used on Ambrose, and I expect whoever tied up Pasquale and me used it too, by the feel of it."

"Adilla?" Daphne asks, raising her eyebrows. "I should have known she was a part of this. She's a bundle of sunshine, isn't she."

"A delight," Beatriz agrees. "And very adept at tying knots—unlike your friend."

Daphne turns her head toward her. "What do you mean?" she asks.

Beatriz drops her voice to a whisper. "I suspect that if you twist your wrists with a good deal of pressure, should you not dislocate your shoulder in the process, you might be able to slip free."

Daphne's fingers grab at the knot, feeling as much of it as she can and trying to summon an image of what it looks like. Beatriz is right—if Cliona meant to tie a constrictor knot, she made a mistake.

"A simple error, if one doesn't have much practice," Beatriz says, but Daphne hears the question in her voice. Was it an error? Or did Cliona purposefully mistie her bindings?

Daphne doesn't know the answer, and she isn't going to place all her hope in someone else when being wrong means death.

"What are you waiting for?" Beatriz asks. "Break your bindings and get us out of here."

But Daphne doesn't move; her mind is a whirl of possible ways out of the catacombs, yet nothing comes to her.

"Where are Violie and Leopold?" she asks.

Beatriz looks at her, confusion clear even in the dark. "We split up when we were attacked on our way out of the city—we think they got away. Ambrose said the guards were looking for them when they raided the Crimson Petal."

"They came about an hour after Beatriz, Ambrose, Violie, and Leopold left," Ambrose says. "They brought me here, but they took the women somewhere else."

"Alive?" Daphne asks.

"I believe so," he says. "But I can't be sure."

Daphne is sure, though. If her mother wanted the courtesans dead for helping them, she'd have had them killed in their beds, a message sent loud and clear. If she's keeping them alive, there's a reason for it.

"Daphne, what are you thinking?" Beatriz asks.

"I'm thinking that we wanted to face Mama ourselves," she tells Beatriz, relaxing her arms and easing tension from the knot binding them—for now. "And she's been kind enough to give us that chance."

Beatriz looks at her for a moment. "Do you have a plan you'd like to share?" she asks.

Daphne doesn't reply for a moment as Cliona's words come back to her from what feels like a lifetime ago. Sooner or later, Daphne, you're going to have to trust someone. Easier said than done, in Daphne's experience. She's always worked alone—even when it came to her sisters, she always felt separate. But she isn't alone in this. They aren't alone in this. She thinks about Bairre, imagines him sneaking out of the palace the same way they did last night, going for help. She thinks about Violie, the most persistent person Daphne has ever met, as determined to see the empress defeated as Daphne and Beatriz are. She thinks about Leopold, how Sophronia once called him brave and Daphne didn't understand it. He is brave, though, and he's out there somewhere, ready to fight with them. She thinks about the courtesans and the Sisters, risking their lives for a fight that has little to do with them, working together despite the different paths their lives have taken. She even thinks about Cliona, how each of them has betrayed the other in different ways, how perhaps Cliona did fool her—but she doesn't think so. In her gut, she knows who Cliona is, and she trusts her.

"Mama raised us to stand alone," she tells Beatriz, a thread of steel winding through her voice. "But we aren't alone, Triz. My plan is to trust that, and to be ready to act when the time comes."

She can hear Beatriz gritting her teeth. "That isn't a plan. It's a prayer," she says.

"You're the saint," Daphne volleys back. "If anyone can work with a prayer, it's you."