“Trust me, Néné, all right?” After a pause, Helene nodded her reluctant assent. Oh, how she longed to be atop Bummerl! “Helene, when I say ‘run’-you run. “Hush, Néné.” Sisi quieted her elder sister. “Now we’re really in for it, Sisi.” Helene paced in their hiding spot like a wounded animal as the sound of hoofbeats grew louder. The beast whinnied in response, and then Sisi felt the earth begin to vibrate beneath her. And that fate is-pain!” Karl dug his leather boots into the sides of his horse. “So be it,” Karl hollered from outside the woodline, on the far side of the meadow. Helene responded with a whimpering sound. “We’ll show Karl the Beneficent what a formidable foe he really is.” Sisi nodded at her sister, picking up a cool, smooth stone. But though she lacked his girth, Sisi knew she could best Karl with wit. Two years younger than Sisi, her brother was nearly twice her size, his thirteen-year-old body robust from adolescence, beer, and bratwurst. “We should surrender, Sisi.” Helene crouched beside her, worry pulling on her sharp, dark features. But she hadn’t expected to have to fend off her brother when she had wandered toward the wooded lake shore with her sister, Helene, to pick wildflowers. The odds were not just if she had had the chance to mount her own horse, Bummerl, she would chase Karl all the way to the Bavarian border, and he knew that. And when I do, you shall wish you had surrendered!” The horse pawed at the ground, agitated under Karl’s grip. But if you continue to run and hide like rodents, I shall have to flush you out. “Kiss the ring and I shall show you mercy-more mercy than you deserve.

“Karl the Beneficent, Duke of Bavaria, demands that you come meet your lord and surrender!” He scoured the woods, his words finding Sisi even as his eyes failed to locate her. Sisi watched Karl, her contempt thickening as she discerned his thoughts: clutching the reins, he imagined himself a Germanic warrior atop a stallion, ready to ride on the Hungarians or the Poles and seize glory from the battlefield. Her brother Karl had not yet found her, and he yanked on his horse in frustration, as if to remind the beast of the authority his sisters so brazenly flouted. Just then Sisi spotted the figure crossing the meadow, a dark silhouette piercing the backdrop of the crenellated white castle and deep-blue sky, and she ducked once more out of sight.

Her gaze was alert, her legs ready to spring to action, her heart pumping blood throughout her veins with a speed that only the hunted can sustain. Sisi crouched low, peering over the wall of brush.

The accidental empress book