HELENE’S HEART WAS A RAINSTORM OF DOUBT, AND she was afraid she might drown. Nothing had gone right since they discovered the trunks were missing. She was in a mourning dress. Imagine! Meeting the emperor—the most powerful man in the empire, the most powerful, perhaps, in the world—in a mourning dress. It was laced too tight. It was too dark. The neckline was too high. Helene knew she looked like a corpse, pale as death and twice as quiet.

And it was made even worse because of where she and Mother were sitting: on plush golden chairs in the most beautiful room Helene had seen in her life. Elaborate crystal chandeliers hung from a ceiling intricately painted in pink and white. The walls around them were a hundred shades of blue and gray that brought out the purple in the marble columns and their golddrenched tops. And the vases—oh, the vases! Painted with such detail, so many subtle shades of color, Helene could stare at them all day. It was all stunning. Breathtaking, even. And Helene knew that the room’s lightness only made her look more austere.

This wasn’t at all how she’d imagined meeting Franz. She’d pictured it so many times. In her daydreams, she was wearing a white dress with embroidered daisies, fresh flowers laced through her hair, their green stalks and pink petals drawing out the whites and golds of her clothes. The blue puff sleeves of her jacket brought out the blue in her eyes. Oh, how Franz would have gasped when he saw her. It may have been unseemly, but he wouldn’t have been able to help it.

She had always been planning to marry Franz out of duty, but this was Helene’s secret: she imagined he’d love her at first sight, too.

But now.

Would he even like her? Without that gasp-worthy entrance, how would she find the courage to be charming? She’d imagined herself making him laugh, too, but she’d never felt less funny in her life. Oh God, what if she fainted when he walked in? The chances felt high.

Not to mention that Sisi was nowhere to be found, the third chair, supposed to be hers, empty.

“Helene,” her mother said sternly, fanning herself in the stiflingly hot room, “you look pale. Pinch your cheeks, child. You don’t want your aunt to see you in this state.”

The comment brought another worry jangling across Helene’s nerves: her aunt. Franz’s mother. The real power behind the throne. Even if Franz found Helene charming, it was Sophie she really needed to impress. Mother had made that clear. Sophie was the one who’d arranged all of this. What if she thought Helene was unsuitable? Pale and nauseated and nervous. The thought was terrifying.