Helene forged on. “Say no, Sisi, and everything can be fixed. It’s not too late.”

“It is too late, Néné.”

Helene wanted to smack her. How dare she use her nickname at a time like this. How dare she remind her of the love between them. Sisi was the one who’d broken it—smashed it to pieces on the polished marble floor, ground it to dust under their heels.

“I’ve never felt anything like this.” Sisi’s voice was so tender it hurt. Salt rubbed in an open wound.

Helene’s mouth dropped open, the incredulousness bitter on her tongue, hurt burning back to anger. “Did you sneak into his bed so he would choose you? Is that where you’ve been disappearing to?”

The blow landed—Sisi’s face going white with shock—and Helene wanted to laugh. Good. Feel one tiny portion of the shame I do.

“Of course not.” Sisi reached for her hand.

Helene pulled it away. “Then what? Why should he want you?”

Guilt needled at her heart, but she shoved it away. Sisi was childish and unruly. She’d refused every opportunity to be trained for a life like this. She didn’t deserve it. Helene did. Helene had earned it.

The thoughts built up until Helene could no longer hold them back. “I meant what I said before. You will never be a good empress. You’re going to ruin him.”

It suddenly made horrible sense why Sisi had been so offended when Helene joked she wasn’t cut out for the throne. It hadn’t been theoretical to her.

And it hadn’t been because Helene was leaving.

Helene’s face folded in on itself again, tears cutting down her cheeks. She’d thought her sister would miss her! She’d thought she loved her. Instead, she’d been plotting against her the whole time. The hurt swallowed Helene whole. It hurt so much more than losing Franz. She’d lost her sister somewhere along the way, and there was no getting her back now. Helene’s heart was a cliff, and she was hurtling off it.

Sisi followed Helene up the last steps and pulled her into the nearest room, messy with shed clothes, empty wineglasses, a mussed canopy bed. The cheerful yellow wallpaper mocked Helene; the cream carpet laughed at her.

“What are you doing?” Helene’s voice was cutting. She didn’t try to soften it.

“Explaining myself—somewhere other than a hallway where anyone might hear us.”

Helene crossed her arms. “Then explain.”

“We kept meeting by accident. In the garden when I was rescuing a bird. Once when I was just trying to stay cool from the heat. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”