Archive of Our Own ^beta

The empress’s bedchamber is soft with candlelight. It’s a compromise Sisi has made with herself: Franz likes to see her; she likes it dark. Her beauty is her only weapon, but the possessiveness in his eyes exhausts her.

She makes the room mellow and gold, with shadows flickering and leaping from the corners, chasing each other up the walls and across the ceiling, falling from the curtains around the bed to lie across her. She dresses in a nightgown dripping with lace, with frills at her wrists and throat, with yards of diaphanous skirt heavy with embroidery.

Der Tod has not visited her in months. Sisi reminds herself that this is a good thing. She won’t leave with him. He won’t speak with her. There is no candlelight compromise to be found.

Franz knocks on the door and opens it in the same moment. He would listen if Sisi told him to leave. He has never so much as sent a servant for an extra key on the nights when she’s locked the door against him, only left, silent and offended. He accepts a silent Yes. He’d like a louder one, probably. It would please his pride if Sisi desired him openly, but he accepts her toleration and she cannot bend her own pride to beg for the touch of a man who’d put her in a jewel case with his medals if he could.

“Elisabeth,” he says, smiling.

Sisi smiles back, because an empress’s duty is to crush her own heart, and because surely the dowager empress can’t take all her babies and children should have friends, and a little bit because she’s lonely and even Franz is better than nothing at all.

“You look beautiful tonight, as always.”

She does. The nightgown is new. “Thank you,” she says politely.

Franz believes himself to be a mighty lover, which is inconvenient because he isn’t. Sisi tips her face up for his kiss, which will be brief, and lets her mind drift, into the corners with the shadows.

Since her wedding ball, der Tod has never come to her when anyone else has been there. She thinks that’s the only reason he stays away now, when she imagines the shadows deepening to reveal him and a stray flare of candlelight reflecting in his fathomless and tear-bright eyes.

She shivers, and Franz, taking the credit, makes a pleased sound as he unbuttons her nightgown.

If der Tod were here, Sisi would have to fear him. She would have to, because he has the power to unmake her world around her, and he wants her to die, and…

And unlike Franz, he would not be contented with a silent Yes. Though he wants her life, which she will not give, and doesn’t want her body, which—Sisi would be ashamed, if she thought he even noticed. He’d embraced her, once, holding her the way people who don’t know animals touch a cat; he’d flinched away from her terrified grasp as if her icy hands had burned him.

Alone again, in the dark, with the heavy embroidered curtains of the imperial palace hanging over her head, Sisi will be grateful that he doesn’t want her. She will be glad that he doesn’t touch her, or offer any kindness, or even tell her why he, too, is so sad that she can feel the ache of it in her bones. She wants to live, and she wants to claim her victory over this miserable prison of a court; she wants the dowager empress’s apology, and peace in Hungary, and to make whatever she can of this life.

Now, though, Franz is cupping her breasts, which he likes to do because he enjoys the feel of them against his hands. He might almost as well cup her elbows the way he does it, but it pleases him, and Sisi prefers to save her arguments.

Der Tod would listen without argument, if he had any use at all for bodies.

He sees her, as Franz never has, not as just a pretty girl to ornament his arm. Der Tod would drape her in starlight, not jewels, and never say she runs too fast or laughs too loud. He would never make her talk to people who hate her, or leave her alone in a room of sneering courtiers, or let the dowager empress take her daughters away, and then…

Franz guides Sisi back onto the bed. She stares into the shadows above her and thinks not of der Tod’s sympathy, or his sorrow, but of his grace, his power, the way he seems to thaw when he touches her. Chastely, only ever chastely, with so much care it’s as if she might break, or he might.

She will not break.

She would kiss him, if she could. She has learned to by now. She would like to, she thinks, if it were him. His hair would be soft against her fingers, cool like shade, as she held him; she might have to be the one to bring their lips together.

They could puzzle it out together, allies in this too.

Sisi opens her mind to the possibilities, buries herself in them. Franz has mounted her and Sisi imagines pale hair falling down toward her face, the startled moment when immortal lungs draw in a breath. Der Tod would watch her, to learn what she likes him to do, or he would let her take his hand, this time, and show him herself.

It is unseemly for an empress to desire, and Sisi does. She wants to brighten the mournful beauty of his face, she wants to touch and taste and learn, she wants to show him ecstasy if he would only stop trying to show her despair.

Franz finishes above her, and Sisi gives him her breathless smile.

He bids her good evening. He dresses, and leaves, and Sisi lies alone again. She rolls over and blows out the candles, and the shadows rush in, wrapping around her. There is no movement in the room as she slips her own hand between her legs, though she strains her eyes looking.

It’s just as well, she thinks, after. It would be so much harder to tell him no again, if only he were here.