Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

I WOULD SAY THERE WAS NO WAY OUT, but that would be a lie.

It wasn’t that I thought ‘everything could be solved,’ it was that ‘nothing was impossible,’ and by that standard this could be a problem that I couldn’t solve, just as—by that standard—there could be a way out and I hadn’t found it yet.

Really, what loomed over me right now was that this felt too coincidental, too alike to Fate pulling its strings and sewing events together—too jarring yet fitting at the same time: like how I’d found my way to the Queen’s Cage. This feeling I couldn’t pinpoint—this paranoia that was unwarranted—I had seen this face before, but placing the name divine intervention to it seemed strange.

Unusual.

But there were far more pressing matters.

“What will it be, Your Consulship?” I said to Cecilia, spreading my hands. I was careful not to sound challenging, keeping my tone even and soft. Now that I looked at my surroundings, this was a very large courtyard I was in. Thick, luscious plants and the occasional Eurusan-esque pillar, a palatial building in the distance—ah, and Roman legionaries everywhere. The Romanus Estate, I was sure of where I was now.

Divine intervention.

Damn it.

After the conversation and the dramatic reveal, the Consul Romus’ face hadn’t hardened or softened, studying me like a war map before Julian cut in.

“Seize her,” he said, head still turned away from my eyes. Not now, was the most diplomatic equivalent.

I was seized and I walked mildly, Cecilia approaching me as I let myself be dragged across the tiles. The legionaries were needlessly rough but I grinned at the Consul as the former did, and she didn’t smile back as she spoke in a Galani dialect (which was terribly difficult to learn and of course hidden from the legionaries).

“Do you understand me?”

I continued smiling. “Yes.”

“Good.” She continued walking as I was dragged, speaking just loud enough for me to hear her at the distance. “You’re going to be put in a room for now, as an esteemed guest. No one will know your identity, no one will be able to help you, but you will be treated fairly before your interrogation in front of the Senate, when you will be debated over.”

“Then my fate lies in your hands, Your Consulship,” I returned, equally evenly. Interrogation in front of the Senate. That seemed ominous.

“You are a prisoner,” replied Cecilia, simply. “Call off your hounds. If they try to rescue you, your eyes will go first.”

Threat of torture—I’d never found the taste for it.

Should I kill myself before they wrangled the information out of me? The pain was pointless after all, but…

I needed to see how this would unfold.

“I am a prisoner,” I said as the legionaries continued to yank me forward, “but you are not a warden anymore.”

She didn’t halt or stop at my taunt, raising her eyebrows instead.

“Kings can’t fight on the battlefield,” I continued. “If you die, who’s going to replace you? You’re not guarding the fortress, you’re in it—you’re not fighting for the city, you’re ruling over it—but whatever you do, I hope you do it well.” I was uncharacteristically earnest on the last bit. “Of course,” I continued to chatter, “if you’re going to torture me, the well wishes might sour a bit, but—”

“Which side are you on?” Her voice was steely.

I was dragged into a back door, along a short hallway, into a room with a high stained glass ceiling with hanging crystalline baubles dangling from complicated wire strings, a spiderweb above sewing pillars and fusing concrete together. The legionaries peeled away from me as Cecilia snapped a signal, sunlight streaming through above and hitting the baubles in dancing shapes, leaving kaleidoscopic fingerprints on the Consul’s face.

I could easily stab her—but what would that really do?

Warrant a painful execution?

If I could get through to Julian—if there was anything to get through to—this was someone my Mari could influence. If Greta did offer a protectorate after all this, would this Consul be a forgive-and-forget type? The latter’d been the head of an administrative body, practically: she wasn’t a saint, but what kind of sinner was she?

There was no political benefit to me taking up the knife.

I studied her before letting my gaze drift away, letting it dance around the expanse as I ignored her question.

“Is this going to be my room?”

Sparsely decorated, with a rug thrown on the floor and a collection of sewn cushions in a corner. One table, one chair—not even any color, save the spheres and a small mosaic on the wall. It was the size of my closet back home—or even a bathroom. Well.

My Ability sparked as it reached out uncharacteristically dynamically, strands wrapping around the room as I stopped restraining it. I felt the Consul’s presence behind me, tracking my movements like a wolf as I walked around and flopped myself on the floor.

“Interrogation,” I enunciated. “What are you going to do before that? I’m sure you guys need time to collect yourselves, but I’m open to friendly questions.” I watched the Consul study me as I returned her gaze with a wide smile.

“You will be guarded,” Cecilia said, the legionaries behind her trailing away. “Hand over the knife you slipped.”

Surety. The promise of further action. Read was back, strands wrapping around the Consul’s expression. I reached and tried to untangle more as I closed my eyes.

“How do you know I slipped a knife?” I asked lazily. “Hero blood?”

I could feel her eyebrows dip, just a bit.

“Knife,” the Consul switched languages.

I reached in my robes and felt for the flat blade, sliding it to my hand before I poised it in the general direction, feeling it spark towards the Consul as I threw it towards her. My eyes closed and felt Cecilia snatch it out of the air almost expertly.

“‘What side am I on?’” I repeated out loud.

My memories flashed before me, deadly dinners and crude jokes, familiarly shaped smiles and the warmth of a portrait. Yet still. The grass beneath me, prickly and warm as I laid sprawled on the dirt, a flower crown on my head and one on another’s, spilled blood engraved in my hands and sleepless nights. Would I be better off dead than alive? I wondered. Orion’s amber caves of eyes, echoes of what the man that had been my brother used to be: but I hadn’t seen what Orion used to be: I’d only been here for so long.

What if it had me that had thrown myself off the cliff that night?

“As I’ve always been,” I said aloud, smiling, “I am on no one’s side but my own.”

This princess had a flair for the dramatic. It felt like an over-exaggeration, but it wasn’t really—everything she did felt like an exaggeration, but it hit all the right beats and the lines were delivered so smoothly that it felt more like a well-constructed Play than anything else.

Her eyes were closed, right now, but the knife Cecilia had caught had been delivered smoothly. They—and by they, the Consul meant Julian and Seraphina—had been in a fight, it had been obvious. From the way the princess held her knives, not like they were cherished possessions but like they were tools: the glint in her eye had been sharp, but strange.

Cecilia had never seen the two interact with each other before, but the air had been gnarled like a twisting bramble bush, heavy but not warm: there hadn’t any fire, no scorching hate or scathing wrath. Intense. From how Julian’s expression hadn’t even twitched at Seraphina’s familiar way of speaking, that meant Cecilia had a lot of things to talk to the Consul about.

And not as a fellow Consul.

As a somewhat-cousin. (Sister? Friendly war companion? Comrade?)

“Are you doing something?” Cecilia asked, giving a wave that the Consul somehow knew that she would feel. The legionaries left, and there was a silence.

The room brimmed with colorful light, but there was something else that it was humming with, something that warmed Cecilia’s Hero blood. It was faint, but Cecilia relied on her senses the same way Julian did his strength. The Consul felt the temptation to shake something off, like an invisible spider that had landed on her shoulder: that unsettling crawl, the feeling magnified by those crystalline blue eyes.

The princess’ tone sounded genuinely surprised, even if the feeling was mild. “You can feel it?”

It.

“Your...Ability,” guessed the former praetor.

Does it give her the Ability to see everything even when she closes her eyes? Sensory omniscience?

“Yes.” Her Republica was fluent, the accent just barely there. The Imperial Princess opened her eyes, rainbow light scattering over her bronze skin in ripples. “I’m surprised you can feel it. I don’t know if it’s you, or it’s new.” She tilted her head, as if musing to herself without speaking.

Silence.

“No sane person,” Cecilia felt herself say, breaking it, “would come in here without at least a backup plan.” If the Consul were talking to a friend, she’d have a roguish grin on her face; but this wasn’t a friend.

But there was an unusual feeling that she wasn’t an enemy, either.

“To answer your earlier question,” the Consul clarified, pushing the feeling down.

“Huh.” The princess’ lips curled.

(Seraphina was young, the same age as the spoiled patrician scions that ran down the streets like they owned them with their gaudy robes, but it was like Cecilia was dealing with a ghost. A spirit, possessing someone’s body. There was something unreal about this conversation that most would classify as shock. The Consul blamed it on sleep deprivation.)

The princess laughed, long and hard, as light twinkled in her eyes.

“You’re the first person who’s called me sane to my face,” she admitted.

I can see why.

The Consul shrugged. “It’s not a question of sanity when something’s predictable.” Cecilia nodded towards the Imperial Princess. “The fact that people usually do anything it takes to survive? That’s predictable. But just because you can’t predict a person, that doesn’t mean they’re insane—no one’s completely unpredictable if you know enough about them.” She felt herself lean casually on a pillar. “The fact that they’re going out of their way to seem unpredictable? That’s what makes them sane.” The words she used to address her troops, being spoken towards the enemy, felt foreign in her mouth.

Know the enemy.

That was the first lesson taught to anyone and everyone even near the Armies.

It was so cliche, so overused that most people used it as a fundamental without even being taught its lesson.

“Are you my enemy?” the Consul asked the princess.

As if they were friends, Seraphina smiled evenly.

“The more pertinent question is,” the Chosen replied as she stretched, getting up from the floor, “can I be your friend, Your Consulship?”

Cecilia chuckled, meeting those blue eyes. Seraphina’s likeness had been drawn in a portrait, for the Senate but not able to be widely distributed just yet—the painter hadn’t been able to capture that unnerving gaze, the edge of the smile.

The Sixth Princess hadn’t been considered a proper threat.

The Consul raised her own lips in a smile. “Would you be willing to be my friend then, Your Imperial Highness?”

The small room felt brighter than it was as Seraphina’s grin sharpened, pulling back to reveal teeth.

“But there lies the problem, doesn’t it?” asked the Chosen. “Can I afford to?”

A finger was pointed, gestured between the two.

“It all comes down to cost and benefit, as it always does,” said Seraphina. “The question for you, dear Consul—” her eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled pleasantly “— is that can you afford to make me your enemy?”

This was phrased deliberately like a childish threat, Cecilia about to reply when the Princess undercut herself with a laugh.

“Let’s talk shop then, Consul,” she said while leaning back into a cluster of cushions. “Torturing me won’t be productive. Not that I’m saying that I’ll grit my teeth till the end, but I can be much more useful alive than half-dead—I can’t promise that Naxy won’t try something, but what I can promise is that, as long as you keep me alive, my dearest oldest sister won’t do anything to get me out.”

Cecilia raised her eyebrows. “Is that a guarantee?”

The other blinked. “It’s what’s pragmatic,” explained the girl. “I don’t have any terribly important plans in my hands—at least, plans that you haven’t considered—so why would she need to rescue me? Even though the public do somewhat favor me—Mace’s public relations one-man-army did wonders—rescuing me because I made a stupid mistake won’t do anything. She knows I’ll stay alive, and as long as I stay alive, I’m not off the board. And if one of her pieces isn’t off the board, she doesn’t need to waste her moves.”

On the board. Waste her moves.

Following the metaphor, the Consul spoke. “Is this endgame, then? Her closing moves?”

A crucial question.

Seraphina tilted her head. “Endgame’s the logical conclusion at the moment,” the princess admitted. “But I have a feeling that something’s going to happen. Someone—and I do have speculations about who that someone may be, for the record—will start playing a very different game, I can feel it. This isn’t the end of it.”

For once, Cecilia agreed. There were too many cards at play, too many loose ends. But—

“You don’t know what your sister’s up to?” questioned the Consul.

There was common sense telling Cecilia to strategically extract information, maneuver the conversation. But there was instinct telling her to throw common sense out the window and follow this trail.

“Does anyone?” Athena’s Chosen offered in return. “If you’re worried I won’t be of use, have no fear—I can help you out with your current situation, even though that would mean entrusting me with classified information.” She paused. “But I do feel that my active role in this war has come to a bit of an end. I don’t know what Greta wanted me to do here—probably damage control with Naxy—but there’s nothing I can do that Greta can’t ask someone else to.”

This was—

“You would help the enemy?” There was surprise, but then Cecilia had to remind herself that Imperial loyalty—

“Who said I was going to help?”

The question was mild, the wording brusque.

“I said I can,” corrected Seraphina, continuing. “And that I could be of use. I never said that I would help you win this war.”

A few beats of silence.

She was serious.

“My part has been played,” the girl said. “What other roles I can—and am willing to take—are up to negotiation. But I cannot—” the words were emphasized strangely “—stand by you against the Throne.”

There was a subtext that Cecilia wasn’t picking up on.

“Not that,” the princess continued, “I would want to, all things considered—no, I’ve gone too far now. I’ve gambled away too much—I owe too much to this Empire to betray it. You might as well be asking for my life at this point.” Then she laughed, as if the last sentence was a hilarious joke. “Never thought I would say that,” the girl muttered to herself.

There was a step.

“Negotiation,” the Consul tested out the word, as if reaching out for a rickety banister.

Why did she feel like she was losing?

Seraphina propped her chin on her hand, leaning forward.

“So, Consul,” said the Queenscage, “what will it be?”

Josephine had never seen Greta alarmed. Never. Concerned? Shocked? Surprised? In the ten-some years she’d known her sister, the mask had stayed on. It wasn’t even indifference, because Greta could feel emotion. Irritation, annoyance, frustration—Josephine could tell that Greta had been upset about Orion’s death: ‘upset’ in this case, of course, being an umbrella term for shutting everyone out about it.

None of the Imperial Family talked about their feelings. If they wanted to feel something, they dove themselves into their self-destructive endeavors, poisoning and plotting and politicking. On the rare occasion that they were vulnerable, nobody put it past anyone to not strike when they were. Moments of weakness were just that: weakness. There was no sense of family in that: there was loyalty, of course—maybe even bonds—but these people, Josephine thought, knew best of all how nothing was below them.

What they wanted, they took.

They had that right—they’d fought for that right, they’d sacrificed for that right.

Whether or not that was their due, was it really anyone’s right to contest it?

When Josephine had first come inside the Palace ten-some years ago, she remembered the scene very vividly: Greta and Orion, voices not raised, but in a seemingly quiet argument; Cyrus polishing—his sword or his spear, Josephine didn’t remember.

“Josie, nice to meet you.”

She’d grinned even though she’d wanted nothing more than to shut herself in her room and never come out again, bathe herself of invisible sticky blood and throw things and be angry at everyone but herself—

She felt so tired.

Everyone’d paused for a beat, green and amber and blue eyes tracking her movements for the longest of seconds.

“Cyrus.” The first voice had been brusque, cold.

“Orion,” offered the second, quiet.

“Greta.” The tall woman—as Josephine had labelled her—stilled.

Cyrus gestured to a seat, sharply but without hostility, unlike what Josephine had expected. There had been no tests, no probes.

Josephine had sat.

A silence had prolonged as Orion and Greta had taken a seat at the table. Flowers had filled the air with an indistinguishable scent, leaves falling from the trees and onto the ground in a peaceful scene. It had felt absolutely nothing like Josephine had expected: it wasn’t until the others joined when it had become exciting, but the peace she’d felt back then was in a league of its own.

“What tea?” Cyrus had asked, breaking the quiet. He’d laid the weapon aside and was picking up the teapot— gently.

Gently.

His tone was firm and even, but it was restrained, as if trying not to scare her off.

“Apricot,” she’d replied.

“Okay.” Cyrus had poured the tea. His eyes were careful, unlike the others’. Orion was watching Josephine intently with vague curiosity—no ulterior motives, she would’ve known—while Greta had been still.

It was all twisted and strange—not even anything dramatic, like she’d expected.

Pressing her lips together, the marquis’ daughter had pointed to a biscuit on Cyrus’ plate. “Can I have that?”

It would’ve been stranger if he hadn’t questioned it. “Why?” had asked the prince.

Josie had tilted her head, intent on pushing just one limit.

“I like it,” she had settled on.

Blue eyes had narrowed. “I like it, too.” As if to prove his point, he had picked it up and stuffed it in his mouth daringly.

Josie’s eyebrows had raised themselves.

“Ask the kitchen for more, Cyrus,” had admonished Orion. “Don’t pick on the kid.”

Kid.

As Josephine had been considering whether or not she should be offended, silent pale fingers had reached forward and pushed a biscuit on Josephine’s plate. The very same biscuit Josie’d asked of Cyrus.

A show of support?

She hadn’t known, and to this day she still didn’t know.

Greta Highlander was a mystery, but the fact that the Empress was grieving was not.

Josephine entered the mausoleum with a smile, greeting the Undertakers with an urn and a package before stepping in front of Cyrus’ corpse, laid bare on a coffin.

She reached for her brother one last time after setting the urn and package on the floor.

“Brother,” she pronounced, “I brought you Brother.”

Dead silence.

“Come on, that was a good one. You’d be rolling on the floor laughing right now if I could see your ghosts.”

A pause.

“On second thought, I don’t know if I believe in ghosts,” she amended, “but the point still stands.” In the quiet that followed, the Fourth Princess reached for the package and unfurled it to reveal a tea set, a bottle of alcohol, and three small cups. Picking up the bottle of alcohol first, she uncorked it and poured herself a cup, doing the same for the other two cups before she sipped one while setting another in front of the urn.

“This,” she introduced with a flourish, “is the wine you were drinking that day, Oldest Brother.”

Another silence followed, one that Josephine occupied by setting up the tea set, pouring cold apricot tea into a glass and placing it next to the corpse.

“And this,” she added, “is the apricot tea that I wanted the first day that you poured for me. You poured, what? Red tea?”

A pause.

“Ara’s still running amok, by the way,” Josephine informed the empty room. “Doing his thing, making political plans, trying to stop Oldest Sister like he always has been: I mean, this time, he’s more obvious, but he’s still doing what he’s always been doing.” She took a sip of the wine. “Greta...well, all things considered, I’m concerned.”

The princess looked at the urn.

“You were supposed to be the one to stop her before she went too far, Oldest Brother, but I suppose you can’t really do that now.”

A beat.

“Oh come on, that was a great joke, Older Brother—I can feel you glaring. I swear you’re going to be one of those vengeful ghosts who haunt the kitchen.” Josie rested her eyes on the corpse, looking at the cold tea and colder skin.

“You know,” she said, leaning forward and propping her chin on one hand while taking another sip with another, “I thought of Reviving you—both of you, actually. But then I thought of the morality of it all—you know, philosophy—and I asked myself, ‘Would I want to be alive?’ But then I was like, ‘You know that’s a stupid question, Josie, that’s where everyone goes wrong,’ but then I thought about both of you, and I realized if you kept going you would run yourselves into the ground.”

Sunlight streamed in from the window and illuminated a dead man’s face, an urn, and a talking woman with golden eyes.

“That’s the way the saying goes, doesn’t it? ‘Run yourselves into the ground’?”

Without waiting for an answer, she continued.

“And then I thought about both of you again, and then I realized what I wanted to say, and it’s that I’m sorry.”

Another sip.

“This is a shot of courage, you know.” The Fourth Princess wiped her lips. “I’ve never, ever, not even once told anyone I’m sorry—except that one time—but I am. I don’t know what I’m sorry for, and I don’t even know if I want you both to come back, but—” she hiccuped “—shit, I’m drunk. I’m a bad drunk, aren’t I? I don’t even know what I’m saying and I—”

Her voice finally gave way.

Her daring smile was gone as she lowered her gaze.

“I just want to stop playing my part,” Josephine murmured. “I want to go home, and I don’t think I’ll ever find it—I don’t think any of us’ll find where we’re meant to be, because— it sure isn’t here; we aren’t supposed to be an us, this isn’t who I wanted to be, and I think that applies for all of us because I just—”

She broke off again and pressed her hands to her eyes, fingers coming away with moisture.

“I just wanted to live,” she said after a lingering while. “And I don’t doubt that both of you did, too.”

Aphrodite’s Chosen set down her cup.

“So I won’t Revive you,” the woman conceded with finality. “And this is my favor to you.”

The tea tasted cold and bitter, she thought before she took the urn with her and left, the cup of apricot tea laying cold beside Cyrus’ body.

Victory always did.