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with me.” Helene clutched her sister’s hand as they reached the top of the stairs and walked the candlelit hallway to their bedroom. Her sister’s thoughts, Sisi noticed, seemed of a much less enthusiastic variety.
    “Shall I call Agata for some wine?” Sisi pushed the heavy bedroom door, leaving it slightly ajar.
    “No, Sisi. Just sit with me for a moment.” Helene lowered herself onto the large mahogany bed that they shared. “I am in such a state of shock.”
    “I will be with you, Néné.” Sisi opened the curtains, allowing in the last delicate rays of summer sun. She stared out the window, looking over the quiet dusk that settled over Possenhofen. The woods beyond the meadow, skirting the border of Lake Starnberg, glowed an indigo blue under the descending veil of night. In the meadow, a farmer cut a slow path toward the village, pulling a tired horse beside him. The smoke of distant hearths coiled skyward in the background, issuing from the barely visible homes that dotted the wooded foothills of the Bavarian Alps. It was such a familiar tapestry; a beloved view, one Sisi could have re-created with her eyes shut. And tonight, knowing that she would be going far away, she savored it with a newfound affection. How many more times might she behold this view? Sisi wondered.
    “You’ll only be with me until you get a husband of your own. Then what happens?” Helene’s worry tugged Sisi from her twilight reverie, and she turned back to her sister and the darkening bedroom. “He’ll probably insist on taking you back to his own palace in Prussia or Saxony or Hungary. Then what shall I do?” Helene’s lip quivered with the threat of fresh tears.
    “You heard Mamma”—Sisi walked toward her sister—“I will be at court to attend to you. I promise, I won’t even think of marriage until you are settled and happy with at least half a dozen fat little Austrian crown princes and princesses.” This promise appeared to temporarily assuage Helene’s panic. But only for a moment.
    “Marriage does sound awful, doesn’t it?” Helene thought aloud, slipping out of her heavy dinner gown and allowing it to drop to the floor. Sisi couldn’t help but notice her sister’s figure, now exposed in just a thin shift and undergarments. It looked so pale and thin and fragile. And yet this would be the body that would be tasked with producing Austria’s next emperor.
    As if on cue, Karl appeared at the bedroom door, which Sisi chided herself for having left ajar.
    “So that’s the emperor’s view on the wedding night?” Sensing that the power dynamics had somehow shifted in the household, Karl appeared reluctant to too directly challenge his sisters, but rather hovered at the threshold of their bedchamber.
    “I heard you talking about your husband.” He grinned at the partially undressed Helene, who quickly retreated behind a dressing screen.
    “Go away, Gackl,” Sisi snapped, tossing Helene’s discarded shoe in his direction.
    Karl ducked the shoe but remained in his spot in the doorway. “No, not me. It’s you two who are going away. Helene is off to Vienna to get pricked by Franz Joseph’s Austrian wiener.” Karl sniggered. “Poor innocent little Helene will likely catch syphilis from one of Franz’s palace whores.”
    Sisi ignored her brother, speaking only to Helene. “And Gackl will probably never prick a single girl in his life. Who would ever want his pockmarked face and sour beer breath?”
    This insult only further enraged Karl, who struck back. “I wouldn’t look forward to my wedding night if I were you, Helene. Franz Joseph is the emperor, you know, and therefore he gets whatever he wants. How do you think you shall compare to one of his well-practiced courtesans?” The sight of Sisi wincing seemed to encourage Karl. “And Sisi, who knows who you’ll get plucked by? Neither one of you even knows what must happen, do you? Why do you think Mamma always talks about how she cried on her