Helene wandered a dozen hallways and overheard a dozen little conversations she normally wouldn’t be privy to. A maid terrified of dismissal because of a surprise pregnancy. A cook dismayed because they were out of the archduchess’s favorite sweets. Two ladies gossiping about how Sophie had never wanted Sisi for a daughter-in-law.

And the conversation she was listening to now, leaning against peacock-printed wallpaper with another cigarette in hand. Casual, invisible.

It was Maxi. And it was less a conversation and more a speech. Him practicing to himself or arguing with an invisible person, working something out as he paced back and forth across the star-shaped patterns on the wood floor. He hadn’t even noticed Helene in the back corner.

He ran a hand through his hair and took an unsteady breath. “I shouldn’t be this nervous. I’m never this nervous.” He shook his shoulders as if he could dislodge the feeling.

Helene leaned deeper into shadow, curious, listening. This seemed so unlike the Maxi she’d encountered before, even the more sincere version in his letters to Sisi.

“He isn’t for you.” Maxi’s voice grew softer, more vulnerable as he started, stopped, and then closed his eyes like he was trying to remember what came next. “He isn’t for you. He isn’t like us. You and me—we’re the same.”

His voice shifted from passion to tenderness, both emotions a surprise coming from Maxi. “We’re a match. We fit. Just imagine us—together.”

He stopped pacing.

“Elisabeth.” He paused on the word as if it were sweetness itself. A prayer. A benediction.

Helene’s heart bunched. Could she never escape from Sisi? If she wasn’t so irritated, Helene would have felt satisfied knowing she’d predicted this: another brother in love with her sister. She wondered if Franz knew, if her sister knew—then realized she didn’t care.

“He’ll throw you to the wolves just like he did to me. He’s not who you think he is—” Maxi turned, paced in the other direction, his brows knit together.

Bitterness rose like a tide through Helene’s body. Sisi wasn’t who people thought she was either. She had her own secrets, her own betrayals. She’d lied so easily. Helene hadn’t had the faintest idea that Sisi was slowly pulling the rug out from under her.

Maxi stopped, ran a hand through his hair, then turned to the windowsill, staring out over the grounds. His voice was a whisper now, barely audible across the room. “The first time we met, I thought—I knew—you were made for me.”

Helene quietly put out her cigarette in a stone ashtray on the desk she was poised beside.

“Not him.” Desperation crept around the edges of Maxi’s voice. “Me.”

Maxi took a deep breath. “He won’t always be the one in charge, you know. We could rule together, you and I. My empress.”