She lifted the paper from the bed, moving two other letters carelessly as she did. She always left things out of place whenever she took a letter, taking a pained sort of satisfaction in the knowledge that her whirlwind sister didn’t keep track of where she’d placed things. If someone had gone through Helene’s things, she’d know right away. Not a corner of a book was askew. That was supposed to be the kind of person an empress was—tidy, attentive, detailed.

Helene read the half-written letter, squeezing the paper hard between her fingers, pausing on the phrase “who could not love a man like you?” Her jaw tightened. She thought about ripping the letter up, throwing it away. Burying it in a grave with her own dreams. She knew Sisi wouldn’t even notice. She would just think she’d mislaid the paper. Would never blame Helene. Or ask her. Sisi would simply rewrite it—like she had the last time Helene tore one up.

Helene lifted another crisp piece of paper. This one was from Franz—one Helene had already read. It was the first he’d signed with “your tailor.” A private joke. A response to something Sisi had once written after struggling with a particularly challenging French lesson: “If only you were a tailor and not the emperor! I only wanted you, never all this!”

Helene hated how many of their letters she knew by heart. She hated that she thought about what she would have told him in her own letters: about her childhood as a rogue, stealing baked goods and spying on Father. Or about how she foraged the garden for toads, the satisfaction she felt when she saved one from the well they always fell into.

Downstairs, a heavy door closed, and Helene knew her time was almost up. She lifted one last letter—this one not from Franz, but Maxi.

His were the most interesting. He had surprisingly good penmanship. There was something elegant in the sprawl of it, the flourishes. Helene wondered if he’d practiced often on notes to ladies of the court. It would certainly match his reputation.

His letters were always about travel and horseback riding. Sisi had always wished to go to Greece, and Maxi’s most recent letter had answered that wish with a promise: “Then to Greece we shall go. And to Hungary and Spain and France and Geneva as well.”

Maxi’s letters weren’t romantic like Franz’s, but Helene could read between the flourishes. The emperor’s brother was in love with her sister, too. His dedication to writing Elisabeth and his promises of travel and adventure made it clear. The way he held back from flirting too shamelessly also made it clear; his respect for her sister belied his reputation entirely.