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doesn’t recognize the moment the carriage passes into Bessemia until Nigellus tells her as much. There are no signs to mark the border, no physical change in the terrain, no shift in the air to welcome her home. Home. She didn’t expect to return to this place for months yet, and she always imagined the journey would be filled with triumph and excitement, that she would be reunited with her sisters.

But no sisters are waiting for her in Bessemia now, and there is no triumph in her wake. The only thing she has to look forward to is a reunion with a mother who wishes her dead and more training with an empyrea she doesn’t trust. And a comfortable bed, she supposes. That, at least, holds some appeal.

“It isn’t safe for Pasquale and Ambrose to arrive with us,” says when they enter the Nemaria Woods—the same place where she last saw Sophronia and Daphne. She remembers Sophronia as she last saw her, dressed in that frilly yellow Temarinian gown and piled into that open-topped carriage, surrounded by strangers and looking terrified. closes the curtain to block out the window beside her and turns toward Nigellus. “I’m sure you can arrange secure lodgings for them.” It isn’t a question.

“It isn’t safe for you, either,” Pasquale points out. “Your mother does want you dead.”

“On Cellarian soil, by Cellarian hands,” Nigellus says. When , Pasquale, and Ambrose turn to look at him, he frowns. “Did I leave that part of the magic out?”

“You did, yes,” says. The revelation makes her feel somewhat better, though it certainly doesn’t mean her mother can’t hurt her. Or put her in chains to deliver her right back to Nicolo, who would have no choice but to kill her now.

“It won’t serve her to have Prince Pasquale killed in Bessemia, either,” Nigellus continues, so unbothered by his omission that genuinely believes he simply forgot to mention it. “He’s a bargaining chip with Cellaria’s king, and she’ll use him as one.”

Cellaria’s king. still can’t hear those words without thinking of King Cesare rather than Nicolo. She tries to picture the boy she kissed wearing that heavy crown and fails. She hopes it crushes him beneath its weight.

“I’m not keen on that, either,” she says.

“Well, I’m not keen on any of this,” Pasquale points out with more force than expected. “But since you’re insisting on this stars-forsaken plan, I’m not letting you go about it alone.” His gaze slides to Ambrose, whose brow is furrowed.

“Both of you are too important to kill,” Ambrose points out. “I’m not.”

knows he’s right, just as surely as she knows how difficult it will be for Pasquale to choose her over him. She suspects he would, though—after all, Pasquale made her a promise.

“Then you’ll be too insignificant to notice,” she says, looking at Nigellus. “He can be a servant—your servant. A footman, perhaps, or a valet.”

Nigellus says nothing for a moment, his eyes resting on ’s with uncomfortable intensity. Finally, he gives a nod and imagines he is mentally adding another debt to the ledger before him.

—

Hapantoile looks the same as remembers, as does the palace at the center of the city—the same gleaming white stone walls, the same golden gates inlaid with an array of jewels, the same sky-blue flags waving from the turrets. It should be comforting to see that the place where she was raised hasn’t changed in her absence, but instead finds herself disconcerted. After all, she is not the same person she was when she left this place.

The gates open and the carriage continues inside, and only then does suck in a breath. Not at the marble steps that lead up to the main palace doors, not at the crowd of familiar noblemen and noblewomen gathered to greet her, but at the lone figure standing on the top step, hands clasped before her and dressed head to toe—comically, to —in black.

Empress Margaraux. Her face is veiled, but would know her anywhere. She knows that beneath the black lace, her mother’s eyes are the same deceptively warm shade of amber, that her mouth has been painted her signature red and is pursed, as it always is when she looks at , like she is a problem that can’t be solved.

A footman opens the carriage door and Nigellus steps down, followed by Pasquale, who holds out a hand to her. spares one last glance at Ambrose, who will remain in the carriage and out of sight until it returns to Nigellus’s private residence. She doesn’t know Ambrose terribly well, but he offers her a small, reassuring smile and is grateful for it.

She takes Pasquale’s hand and lets him help her from the carriage, her heeled slippers touching down on the pavement the only sound audible. She lifts her gaze to her mother, standing a dozen steps above her, and drops into a deep curtsy. Beside her, Pasquale and Nigellus both bow.

“Oh, my child,” her mother says, her voice loud enough for everyone gathered to hear as she lifts her gown to descend the steps. “Oh, I’m so glad you are safe.”

has barely risen from the curtsy when the empress folds her into a hug, holding her tight. The sobs are a bit much, thinks, but she is careful to hold her mother just as close, to let fake tears well up in her eyes as she buries her face in her mother’s shoulder. This is a performance, after all, and if there is one thing knows how to do it is put on a show.

“Mama,” she says, pitching her voice just as loud as the empress’s and adding an edge of hysteria. “Oh, I was so frightened, so terribly frightened.”

“There, there, my dear, you are home and safe with me,” her mother says, brushing a rebellious strand of auburn hair away from ’s face. She keeps hold of ’s arm and turns back to the courtiers, watching and whispering. “After the tragic loss of my darling Sophronia, I’m grateful that Nigellus could bring Princess and her husband, Prince Pasquale, back safely.” She takes Nigellus’s hand in hers and lifts it up, cueing applause from the crowd, though it is halfhearted at best. Still, must admit, it’s the warmest greeting she’s ever seen for Nigellus, and he seems perturbed by it.

“Come, my dove,” the empress says, leading up the stairs and giving Pasquale and Nigellus no choice but to follow. “I’m sure you’ve had a trying journey, but there is much to discuss.”

—

In a matter of moments, the empress has stripped away ’s only defense, having a servant show Pasquale to his chambers so he can rest. She sends Nigellus away too, though isn’t sure whether she should be grateful for that or not—he certainly didn’t count as a defense, but he was, if nothing else, a buffer.

Now, when the empress leads into the throne room and closes the door behind her, finds herself completely alone with the woman who killed her sister—the woman who would have killed , if her plans hadn’t been ruined by a couple of scheming twins with an eye on the throne.

“So, you’ve failed,” the empress says now, pushing the veil back from her face. Every trace of the grieving mother has disappeared, the performance over. The empress steps onto the dais and sinks onto her throne, crossing her ankles. half expected her mother to take her somewhere else—a parlor, perhaps, somewhere cozier. But then, her mother intends to lecture her, and there is no place better to do that than from her throne.

“We were outmaneuvered,” says, lifting her chin.

“By a boy and girl of such little importance, I still can’t bring myself to recall their names,” her mother says, each word frozen in ice.

“Gisella and Nicolo,” supplies, though she knows her mother didn’t ask. “ King Nicolo now, I suppose,” she adds.

“You’re slouching, ,” her mother replies, but makes no move to straighten up. Her mother rolls her eyes. “How, exactly, did that happen?”

Because I trusted them when I shouldn’t have. Because Sophronia asked for my help and I gave it to her. Because I sabotaged the plans you spent seventeen years making.

But can’t say any of that—her mother doesn’t know the truth of what went wrong in Cellaria, how sought out Gisella and Nicolo’s help in getting Lord Savelle out of prison to prevent war from breaking out between Temarin and Cellaria. If she did, is sure they’d be having a very different conversation, if it were a conversation at all. thinks quickly, spinning a lie as close to the truth as she dares.

“King Cesare was mad,” she says with a sigh. “I found out afterward that Nicolo and Gisella had been poisoning him with small, regular doses of cyanide from ground apple seeds. It’s what eventually killed him.” That much is true, but from here, deviates. “Mad as he was, though, he had decided not to execute Lord Savelle—a decision he’d entrusted only to Pasquale and me, as far as I know. I’d tried to convince him otherwise, but reasoning with a madman was enough to drive me mad myself. So I thought to visit Lord Savelle in the dungeon, to use the wish you’d given me to further incriminate him,” she says, lifting her bare wrist to indicate the place where her bracelet once hung. In truth, she used the wish to help Lord Savelle escape, transporting him to the docks where he met Ambrose at his uncle’s boat.

She isn’t sure whether her mother believes her; her expression remains infuriatingly impassive. But has no choice but to continue weaving her tale.

“I couldn’t get to the dungeon myself, so I solicited help—my fatal error, I’m afraid. Like you, I’d thought Gisella harmless and I told her I wanted a moment to speak to my…lover.” It’s a struggle not to choke on the word lover, but that was what her mother had sent her to become to Lord Savelle, and for all the empress knows, she succeeded. “She said she would help me, but instead she brought the guards in to arrest me for treason. I tried to use the wish to save myself, but Lord Savelle knew what it was somehow and took it from me, using it to escape.”

The empress leans back in her chair, surveying with cold eyes.

“That’s interesting, ,” she says. “From what I’d heard, Nicolo himself was your lover.”

tries to hide her surprise—she and Nicolo weren’t lovers. They only kissed twice, and both times was sure no one had seen, so how did that information reach her mother’s ears? She forces herself to smile brightly. “Well, Mother, you didn’t say I could only have the one, did you?”

The empress looks at like she sees straight past that smile. “I didn’t think I raised a fool, , and I refuse to believe I raised two.”

The allusion to Sophronia causes to ball her hands into fists, though luckily, her full skirt hides them.

“Sophronia wasn’t a fool,” she says, careful to keep her voice light, not to let venom leak in. She can’t show her hand too early, certainly not within moments of being in her mother’s presence. She can’t blame her mother for Sophronia’s death, not yet. She recalibrates. “Nigellus said you’d laid claim to Temarin with no issues. I trust those responsible for Sophie’s murder have been killed?”

Her mother schools her expression into one of grief so flawlessly that herself would be fooled if she didn’t know better. “All except one,” she says, a frown creasing her unnaturally smooth forehead—the product of copious amounts of stardust. “King Leopold managed to escape somehow.”

frowns like this is news to her, like she didn’t see King Leopold with her own eyes, hollowed out by grief as he was. “What did Leopold have to do with Sophie’s death?” she asks, assuming even as she asks the question that her mother’s answer will be a lie.

Her mother winces, like the thought physically pains her. “I have it on good authority that the boy sacrificed Sophronia to save his own skin. Of course, if she’d listened to me in the first place, he would have been in no position to do so, but your sister always had a weakness where he was concerned. I did everything in my power to prevent it, but…” She trails off with a mournful sigh.

It takes all of ’s self-control not to launch herself across the room and wrap her hands around her mother’s neck.

“The point remains, though,” her mother says, straightening up, “that King Leopold is still at large, though my people have picked up several promising leads. I have that well in hand. What I don’t have is Cellaria.”

shrugs, clasping her hands in front of her and trying to appear unbothered—the insolent, rebellious princess her mother believes her to be. “I doubt Nicolo’s reign will be a long one—the court isn’t with him, not really, and once you have Friv under your control, you should have no trouble using your combined militia to take it quite easily. It simply requires patience.”

Her mother snorts. “Patience is rich advice coming from you, ,” she says, shaking her head. “No, I don’t have any plans to wait. It doesn’t matter what a mad king proclaimed on his deathbed—Pasquale is his heir and the rightful King of Cellaria. The two of you will simply have to return to Cellaria to claim the throne. Have the usurper and his sister executed, along with anyone who tries to support him.”

stares at her mother, unblinking, for a long moment. “That,” she says slowly, “would be suicide.”

The empress rolls her eyes. “Always so dramatic, . I didn’t raise you to fail.”

She raised you to die, Nigellus’s voice echoes in her mind. If had any doubt that he was telling the truth, it evaporates now.

“You can’t be serious,” she says. “Power doesn’t come from technicalities; you know that better than anyone.”

Her mother ignores her. “I will, of course, be sending some of my troops with you to support your claim,” she adds as an afterthought. “Though I can’t very well pull them all out of Temarin at the moment, nor leave Bessemia defenseless, so it will be a small army, but I trust your ability to manage the situation.”

So, this is her mother’s plan for her, then, thinks. Sending her back into the lions’ den and slaughtering the lions in her name when she’s immediately devoured. If her mother has set her mind to it, there is no use arguing, though every star in the sky will fall before sets foot in Cellaria again.

She lets out a long exhale as if she’s considering her mother’s words. “We’ll need time to regroup,” she says finally.

“Two weeks,” her mother replies. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have dinner with the Frivian ambassador to prepare for. You can find your way back to your rooms, I’m sure.”

And just like that, she’s dismissed. is nearly to the door before her mother’s words hit her and she stops.

“I’m a married woman,” points out. “Surely I should be housed in quarters with my husband.”

The empress looks up at her with a wry smile and realizes that a handful of kisses with Nicolo are the least of what her mother knows. “Please, , don’t insult me. If you insist on acting like a child, you can sleep in your childhood rooms.”