“Be brave, Nannerl,” she would say, just like Papa. I did not know until later that she meant for me to be brave in the face of death. My parents had already arranged a date for the priest to read me my last rites.

Finally, two weeks later, when I had truly started to believe that I would die without seeing Hyacinth again, he came to me.

I did not recognize him at first. My bedroom had grown very dim, for the candle had burned low and the darkness had crept up to it. I’d become used to seeing the hooded figures floating outside my window. I saw them now, their shapes creating moving shadows on the wall. In the corner of the room grew patches of mushrooms and vines, red and poisonous.

I blinked sweat out of my eyes. Tonight the shadows had real weight to them, like living things. It took me a long time to realize that one of these shadows was Hyacinth.

He did not look like how I remembered him. His once-pale skin and spikes had bled as white as the color of dead birch in winter, and his blue eyes had turned gold. He was even taller than when I saw him at the château. His figure loomed over me, and when he smiled, his mouth grew so large and frightening that I wanted to close my eyes. He had sharper teeth now too, thousands of needles lined up in a row. I could barely see his pupils anymore—the gold color was so pale that it blended in with the whites of his eyes.

Even though he frightened me, his face remained as smooth and beautiful as it had always looked.

“What a state you are in, Fräulein,” he said. His voice sounded different, filled with rasps, although still wild and haunting. “Did you call out to me because you missed me?”

I felt too weak to lift my head. My lungs heaved and I burst into a fit of coughing. When he sauntered over to the edge of my bed, I simply stared at him and concentrated on breathing.

Hyacinth’s eyes burned into me. “Tell me, my Fräulein, how have you fared since the last time I saw you?”

“You told me that you were my guardian.” My voice came out hoarse and soft. “And then you lied to me. You have been visiting Woferl in secret. You gave my wish to my brother.”

He shook his head sympathetically at me. “My poor darling,” he said in a voice laced with honey. One of his hands came up toward me and pressed against my cheek. I jumped at the coldness of it. “Your brother was the one who betrayed you. Can’t you see that? He has taken from you what history would have praised you for. He will be remembered, while you will be forgotten. That is why you called out for me, is it not? Look at you, Maria Anna Mozart, here on your deathbed and struggling for your next breath. I have already seen it, you know. Your time has come. If you die tonight, history will know you only as your brother’s sister, a girl with a beautiful face and modest achievements. A commoner.”

I closed my eyes. I’d thought I was ready to see him, but his words stung me.

“Do you still love your brother, Nannerl?”

“Yes.”

Hyacinth gave me a reproachful look. “Do you truly still love him, Fräulein?” he asked again.

“I don’t know.” I frowned, confused by my answer.

The princeling drew close enough so that I could smell the staleness of his breath, the scent of an underwater cave, and he smiled. His breath was cold as snow against my skin. “You and I are one, Nannerl. I am your friend. Friends help each other, and dislike seeing each other in distress. I can help you become what you want to be, help you heal, or I can let you die tonight, mourned only by your father and mother and brother. But I can only be your guardian if you let me help you. Now, what is it you want?”

I thought again of my younger self on the night I’d first dreamed of the kingdom. I thought of the wish I had sent out into the world, with all the innocent hope of a girl afraid of being left behind by her father.

I had ached so badly to be remembered.

When I spoke now, it came out as a whisper, as harsh and cold as the winter wind. My wish had not changed. It had only grown thorns.

“I want what is mine,” I said. My talent. My work. The right to be remembered. The memory of me to exist.

Hyacinth smiled. “I have the flower, arrow, and sword. I can still hear the echo of your first wish. Your immortality.” He narrowed his lovely yellow eyes. “Do you want to finish your end of our bargain?”

I nodded. “Yes,” I said, and let the word hang on a hook between us. It was time to finish what I started.

Hyacinth tilted his head at me in approval. “Then do not tell your brother,” he answered. “Meet me at midnight in two weeks, here in this room, and we shall help each other, as friends do.”

THE PRINCESS IN THE TOWER

I began to grow stronger the following week.

My fever broke, my vision stopped fading in and out, and the rose spots on my chest lightened until they hardly looked different from my skin. A pink flush returned to my cheeks, and my hair no longer hung about my neck in limp strings. Mama wept for joy the first time she saw me pull myself up against my pillows and drink a light soup.

By the time a whole week had passed, I could sit up comfortably and even take the short walk to my window and look down at the streets of Lille. The doctor praised my good fortune. He told me that God had chosen to show me mercy, that He would not take away a girl so lovely as myself.

I smiled graciously at his words. I knew perfectly well who had healed me, and he did not deal in God’s pity.

Only Woferl saw the difference. I still practiced at the clavier with my old discipline, obediently following Papa’s instructions and criticisms, and I still chatted with Sebastian and told stories to Woferl in our spare time. But my eyes had changed, as surely and sharply as the love between us, as Hyacinth himself had shifted. When I hugged my brother good night, I did not do it with ease and warmth. When he would touch his fingers to mine, I wouldn’t squeeze his hand like before. When I watched him write his music, when I knew that a measure would be better with a set of arpeggios instead of a trill, I said nothing.

Sometimes I wondered if Woferl made mistakes on purpose, simply to test me. It didn’t matter. My focus was no longer on him.

* * *

Two weeks passed. Finally, it was midnight on the day I’d promised to meet Hyacinth, and I lay wide-awake in my bed. After my recovery, there was no need for me to stay in a room alone, and Woferl had returned to sleeping with me while Papa and Mama reclaimed their bedchamber. Our physical closeness didn’t change my demeanor. I remained distant, edging as far to one side of the bed as I could. Woferl followed my cue and stayed on his side.

That night, I listened to my brother’s shallow breathing in the darkness. He had grown more than I realized, but he was still a petite child who slept curled in a ball. I remembered him telling me once that he did it to protect his feet from ghouls under the bed, that somehow our blankets acted as a magic barrier against the supernatural. At the time, it made me smile in amusement. Now I pulled my feet closer to me and huddled tighter.