Castles in Their Bones (Castles in Their Bones #1)

Beatriz

dips a fluffy angled brush into a pot of powder just a shade darker than Gisella’s skin, brushing it just below her cheekbones. In the bright light of her bedroom, Gisella looks like a performer in one of the farces the king has put on every so often—her face has been painted and powdered so much that she doesn’t look like herself any longer. She looks a good twenty years older, with bushy eyebrows, heavy-lidded eyes, and hollowed-out cheeks.

“I don’t see why you couldn’t have made me prettier,” Gisella complains, eyeing herself in the gilded vanity mirror. “A bit of rouge on the cheeks—a little tint on the lips, maybe.”

“Because,” says, trading the angled brush for the biggest, fluffiest one she has and dipping that into a pot of translucent powder— Think of it as a seal, to finish off any illusion, the Bessemian Mistress of Disguises, Madame Curioux, told her. “People notice beautiful girls—you know that as well as I do. But they tend to ignore and forget plain women. Or, better yet, women above a certain age. And tonight, we want to be ignored and forgotten.”

It’s been two days since Nicolo, Gisella, and Ambrose agreed to help and Pasquale break Lord Savelle out of the dungeon. Pasquale wanted to wait longer, to plan better, but with the king’s unpredictable moods, doesn’t want to risk him moving Lord Savelle’s execution date up.

Gisella lets out a dramatic sigh. “Fine,” she says, looking at her reflection again and frowning. “Though I could have done without this reminder of my own mortality. Do you really think I’ll have this many wrinkles?”

Before can answer, Nicolo gives a snort from his place, lounging on the chaise. “Gigi, we’re about to commit treason. If we live long enough for you to get wrinkles, consider yourself lucky.”

Gisella rolls her eyes. “Ever the optimist.”

“I am wondering, though,” Nicolo says, glancing at . “Exactly how did a Bessemian princess become so accomplished with cosmetics? Surely you had a maid to apply them for you if you wanted.”

knew this question was bound to come up, and she has a response ready. “My sisters and I used to like sneaking out of the castle from time to time to visit a tavern down in the city. It was nice to sometimes spend a night with people who didn’t know who we were.”

It isn’t a complete lie— did use her talents with a cosmetic brush on several occasions for such a purpose—it just wasn’t the original reason for her studies with Madame Curioux. But Nicolo seems to accept the answer readily enough.

“I still don’t see why the two of you have to do this bit alone,” he says. “It’s the most dangerous part.”

“Because people underestimate women, Nico,” Gisella says. “They won’t think we’re capable of breaking a man out of prison. Are you disappointed you don’t get to have any fun?”

He snorts again. “Trust me—playing lookout sounds like exactly the right level of fun for me tonight.”

Gisella opens her mouth to issue some scathing retort, is sure, but she interrupts with a smile. “You’re all done, Gigi,” she says, setting the brush down. “Do you mind checking on Pasquale and Ambrose while I disguise Nico? They should have gotten back by now.”

Gisella raises her eyebrows at but gets to her feet. “Fine,” she says. “But do try not to add adultery to our list of crimes tonight, will you?” she says over her shoulder when she reaches the door. She’s gone before either of them can respond.

Nicolo’s cheeks flush red and he doesn’t look at as he makes his way toward her, sitting down on the vanity bench his sister just vacated. “I didn’t tell her anything,” he mutters under his breath.

“I didn’t assume you had,” says, focusing on the jarred pigments in front of her. He and Gisella have almost the exact same skin tone, so she can reuse the same colors, which will make things simpler. “My sisters always used to know if I’d kissed anyone,” she admits. “It was like I had a sign hanging around my neck.”

“Did you…kiss a lot of people, then?” he asks.

glances at him. If she didn’t know better, she might think he sounds jealous, but considering that she’s married, the boys she kissed before are the least of their problems.

“A few,” she says with a shrug, dipping her brush into a slightly darker shade. She won’t need to do as much work on him as she did on Gisella—just enough that anyone who might recognize him won’t. She’ll add a few wrinkles to age him, darken the circles under his eyes, maybe shade his nose to alter its shape. “For as long as I could remember, I knew I was going to marry Pasquale, and I knew I had to be a virgin when I did, but even in Cellaria, there’s nothing that says I couldn’t kiss anyone. I suppose I thought of it as practice.”

He stays perfectly still as she begins to paint and powder his face.

“I never thanked you,” she says after a moment. “I know you’re nervous about this, and I don’t blame you for that. Pasquale and I have asked a lot of you. I’m grateful for your help.”

He shakes his head. “Don’t thank me, Triz,” he says. “Really. It’s nothing.”

“It’s treason,” she reminds him. “You said as much yourself. Not many would risk death for another person, even if that person is their cousin—”

“I didn’t offer for Pasquale,” he interrupts, his voice strained. “Don’t misunderstand—I would never have betrayed his confidence, but I didn’t offer my help for him. I offered it for you.”

becomes even more aware of how close they are—close enough that the scent of him invades her senses: clean cotton, apples, and something else that is just Nicolo. She remembers how it felt when he kissed her in the corridor. She wonders if he’ll do it again now. It would be inadvisable, but she wants it more than she ever imagined she could.

She focuses on her paints, dipping a smaller brush into a bluish-violet powder. “Look up,” she says, without thinking or preparing herself for what will happen when he does, when their eyes meet and lock and the wanting grows so strong thinks she might drown in it. She swallows and lightly brushes the color beneath his eyes, exaggerating the faint shadows that are already there.

“It’s all the more noble,” she says, forcing her voice to come out light and teasing. “To risk so much for someone you barely even know.”

“I’m not noble,” he says, his voice sharp-edged enough to fend off any argument. “If you had any idea what was going through my mind, Triz, you’d know there’s nothing noble about me.”

picks up another brush, smoothing out the edges of some of the wrinkles she’s given him. He should look ridiculous like this, with his painted-on wrinkles and the violet half circles beneath his eyes. He does look ridiculous, tells herself. It’s just that she wants to kiss him anyway, consequences be damned.

“Perhaps, then,” she says slowly, setting the brush aside, “we should just be ignoble together.”

Try as she might, can’t quite banish thoughts of her mother from her mind. Even here, standing a hairsbreadth from a boy she should not be alone with, she imagines her mother’s disapproval. A hundred miles away, and can imagine her mother’s narrowed gaze, her flared nostrils. She can hear her mother’s scalding voice in her ear.

Even you wouldn’t be such a fool as to go losing your heart, . I didn’t raise you to flutter about with one of your own pawns so shamelessly. Just when I think you can’t disappoint me more, you find new depths to explore.

The voice shouldn’t get under her skin—especially not now that she’s decided to wreck the rest of her mother’s plans to help her sister. But it does. isn’t sure there will ever come a time where her mother’s voice doesn’t follow her, offering up opinions she doesn’t want or need.

tells herself that she kisses Nicolo because she wants to, because she’s wanted to kiss him again ever since the last time. She tells herself she kisses him because she wants him and he wants her and nothing else matters—just the press of lips and the touch of tongues and Nicolo’s strong, sure hands brushing over the small of her back, pulling her down onto his lap.

It’s the truth, but it isn’t the whole truth. She also kisses him because she knows she shouldn’t, because it will upset her mother if she ever finds out, because, as Sophronia once pointed out, all her mother has to do to convince to jump off a cliff is to tell her not to do it.

The door opens and and Nicolo break apart, standing up and stepping out of Nicolo’s arms quicker than a bolt of lightning flashing across the sky. But not, she realizes when Gisella gives her a knowing look, quickly enough.

“It seems no one can keep their hands to themselves these days,” Gisella mutters, stepping into the room, followed a beat later by Pasquale and Ambrose, both of whom flush at her words.

What exactly have they gotten into, wonders, though a part of her is happy for Pas, dangerous as it might be. Perhaps it should alarm her that Gisella has apparently just witnessed both her and Pasquale kissing other people, but it doesn’t. They’re all committing treason together—there’s the promise of mutually assured destruction in that.

Hastily, grabs the powder brush and dusts some translucent powder over Nico’s face. “There,” she says quickly. “Done. Ambrose, Pas, did you get the clothes?”

Pasquale nods, his ears still red, as he drops a bundle of clothes in varying shades of gray on top of the bed. “It’s laundry day, so we grabbed a few things off the drying lines. Nearly got caught but didn’t.”

“Then let’s get dressed,” says, eyeing the servants’ garb. “If the guards change at midnight we only have an hour to get down there.”

—

The plan, if it can even really be called that, is a simple one.

Ambrose and Pasquale ready Ambrose’s family’s boat, currently docked at the city port rather than the one reserved for royalty and nobility. It’s a small boat, but one Ambrose has sailed on his own many times to visit his family’s estate on the northern coast near the Temarin border. He told his uncle he would be doing just that so no one will think his absence for the next few weeks strange while he ferries Lord Savelle to the safety of Temarinian soil. It will be a longer trip than Ambrose has taken before, but he feels confident he can manage it.

Nicolo is the lookout, playing the part of a servant sweeping the hallway outside the palace dungeon. If he sees anyone who shouldn’t be there, he’s supposed to waylay them however he can.

Gisella and , dressed and made up like middle-aged servants, bring dinner and wine for the guards—a duty relieved two young serving girls of by demanding in her most princess-like tone that they forget whatever else they had to do and organize Pasquale’s bookshelves right this moment.

But as and Gisella lower the trays they carry before the two guards standing watch over the dungeon cells, the knot in ’s stomach refuses to loosen. So much can go wrong, she knows, and if it does? It isn’t only her life on the line anymore. It’s Pasquale’s and Gisella’s and Nicolo’s and Ambrose’s. The thought makes her feel sick, but she forces herself to hold on to her bland smile and make pleasant small talk about the weather with the guards until both men drain their wine goblets. Mere seconds later, they are both slumped over, heads lolling and eyes closed.

“Do you think we gave them too much?” Gisella asks, biting her lip, though she doesn’t sound too concerned.

checks both men’s pulses. “They’re fine,” she says. “Just sleeping. It should last half an hour, but if they wake up sooner—”

“I know,” Gisella says, shooting her a quick grin. “I’ll express my concern and tell them you ran for help and then very subtly…” She trails off, holding up ’s poison ring, with its hidden needle. “And when we’re through with this, you must tell me where I can get one of these.”

“When we’re through with this,” echoes, taking the ring of keys from its peg beside the guards. Now she has thirty minutes—preferably closer to twenty to be safe—to figure out which of the fifty or so keys will unlock Lord Savelle’s cell.

hurries down the hall, away from Gisella, sparing each cell a glance only to confirm that Lord Savelle isn’t inside. Most of them are empty—the main prison is down in the city, and both are mostly cleared out every two weeks on Burning Day—but a few are occupied by servants or minor courtiers who angered the king in some way or other. A few call out to her as she passes, but she ignores them, aware of the heavy key ring she holds and how quickly twenty minutes can pass.

She almost hurries right past Lord Savelle’s cell, coming to a sharp stop when she recognizes his light brown hair in the moonlight coming through the small window above him. Stripped of his usual fine clothes and dressed in the same threadbare dull gray outfit the rest of the prisoners wear, he looks like a stranger.

“Lord Savelle,” she whispers, stepping up to the bars and beginning with the first key.

Lord Savelle blinks at her. It takes a moment for him to see through her disguise. “Your Highness?” he asks. “What are you…?” He trails off when his eyes fall to her fingers, trying the first key, then the second, and he gets his answer. “Why?” he asks instead.

doesn’t answer at first, trying a third and then a fourth key, to no avail. She’s played tonight’s events countless times in her head during the past day, running over every little thing that could go wrong and smoothing them all out. She never did figure out what to say to him, though. She decides to tell him the truth—she feels she owes him that at least.

“Because we both know that if one of us should be imprisoned for using magic, it should be me,” she says, her voice a whisper in the darkness, an admission she has never before spoken aloud. It’s much harder to ignore once she says the words. It’s also impossible to take them back.

Lord Savelle isn’t surprised, though. Of course he isn’t. She thought he might have guessed, but now she knows for sure.

“I was worried you would tell someone that you suspected me,” says, focusing on the lock so she doesn’t have to look at him. “So when the opportunity came to…remove you, I took it. I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t tell him the rest of it, about her mother’s plan, though she’s tempted to.

For a long moment, Lord Savelle doesn’t reply. manages to try six keys in that time, none of them the right one.

“I can’t say I fault you for that, ,” he says softly. “If my daughter could have lied to save herself—even if it meant pushing the blame on another…stars help me, I wish she had.”

was ready for fury and condemnation, expected him to react as her mother would have. But if she’d had a thousand years to guess, she couldn’t have imagined him forgiving her. In her bewilderment, her fingers fumble with one of the keys and she drops them, letting out a curse. She picks the ring up. She isn’t sure which key she tried last, so she has to start again.

She considers telling him the rest. He must assume the stardust she planted in his room was stardust she created herself—he can’t know her mother had anything to do with it. This, she finds, is a secret she can’t surrender. It’s too big, too much a part of herself. Once it’s gone, she isn’t sure what will remain.

“My friend has a boat,” she says instead, leaving another wrong key in the lock so she can reach into her satchel and pull out another servant’s cloak, pushing it through the bars to him. “Put this on,” she adds before going back to the keys.

How much time has gone by since she left Gisella? Five minutes? Ten? She isn’t sure.

“A boat?” he echoes.

“To take you to Temarin,” she explains. “It’s the only way to save you—and to prevent a war.”

At that, Lord Savelle gives a surprised laugh. “War might be a bit extreme,” he says. “Only a mad king or an idiot would…” He trails off.

“King Cesare hardly seems sane, does he?” she asks. “And though I’ve heard enough about King Leopold to question his intelligence, my sister tells me the declaration of war he sent was a forgery. If we can get you back to Temarin, it might be enough to prevent the war from happening. But we have to hurry.”

Lord Savelle doesn’t need to be told twice. In a few quick motions, he throws the cloak over his shoulders. It’s long enough to mostly cover his prison clothes, and it’s dark enough out that no one should look too closely at him. tries a few more keys, but the door stays locked. Her heart is beginning to pound loudly in her ears, drowning out every other thought.

“Are you coming too?” he asks her.

looks up, surprised, and almost drops the keys again. “What?” she asks.

“To Temarin,” he says. “Surely you don’t mean to stay here.”

She blinks. The thought had never occurred to her, though now that he’s said it, she wonders if it should have.

“, if you stay here, they will find out what you are,sooner or later,” he says slowly. “And they will kill you for it.”

frowns, trying another key, then another. “It isn’t that simple,” she says, thinking of Pasquale and Gisella and Nicolo. She doesn’t want to leave them, to abandon them to the whims of a mercurial king. “I think someone is poisoning the king, causing his madness. I can’t prove it yet, but when I do—”

“Ah,” he says, looking at her with appraising eyes. “I’m merely the first part of your plan, then. You mean to make yourself a queen.”

bites her lip, shame heating her face. Daphne always said she was shameless—if sees her again, she’ll delight in telling her sister she was wrong.

“You can’t deny, Cellaria will be a far better place with Pas and me on the throne,” she says. “We could change things, fix things.”

It occurs to her as she says it that it’s what her mother has always said—the same justification she gives for all of her ugly deeds. It’s not the same, tells herself, but she doesn’t quite believe it. And then there is the threat her mother now poses— knows she won’t let go of her dream of a united empire without a fight. But if and Sophronia form an alliance, they might stand a chance. A small, optimistic part of her imagines Daphne joining them, though she doubts that possibility. loves her sister, but she knows that Daphne is the empress’s creature, through and through.

“Cellaria would be a far better place with a pig on the throne,” Lord Savelle says, and, more out of habit than true fear, casts a glance around to make sure no one else heard that. Lord Savelle notices and laughs. “I’m already due to be executed, . There isn’t much point in holding my tongue.”

reaches the last key on the ring, but that doesn’t work either. She frowns. Did she miss one? Perhaps the lock stuck and she should have tried harder? There isn’t time to try them all again—the guards will be waking up any moment now, and if Gisella doesn’t manage to subdue them both on her own…she pushes the thought from her mind. She will not let her friend pay for her mistake.

As if summoned by her thoughts, she hears the sound of heavy boots pounding against the stone floors, coming toward her. She lets out a string of words that were decidedly not a part of her Cellarian lessons.

“Leave me,” Lord Savelle tells her, his eyes somber. “Perhaps if you hide somewhere, they’ll think—”

He breaks off when drops the keys, her fingers going to the bracelet around her wrist. Use them wisely, her mother said. Break the crystal and make your wish. But knows that if her mother could see her now, wise is the last thing she would call her. doesn’t care. She drops the bracelet to the ground.

“Find my sister,” she tells Lord Savelle. “Tell her I sent you. Tell her…tell her I tried.”

Lord Savelle opens his mouth to say something, his brow creased in confusion, but doesn’t give him a chance. “I wish Lord Savelle could make his way safely to the docks, and on to Temarin.”

“—” Lord Savelle begins, but before he can say more, lightning strikes out of a clear sky, hitting the stone wall of the dungeon and creating a crack in the narrow space of Lord Savelle’s cell, just wide enough for him to slip through. Shouts go up from the other prisoners, and the rhythm of the approaching footsteps grows faster—several sets, she thinks. “Go,” she tells Lord Savelle. “Or they’ll kill us both. There’s a boat waiting in the city harbor. Run.”

Lord Savelle hesitates only a second, but he must hear the boots as well, know how close they are, know that there is nowhere for to hide. He gives her one quick nod before forcing his way through the crack in the wall and disappearing from sight.

A mere heartbeat later and the guards round the corner and come into sight. turns to meet them, forcing herself to appear calm despite her racing pulse. She holds her hands up to show that she is unarmed.

One guard steps forward, a golden stripe on the sleeve of his jacket marking his higher rank. His eyes widen slightly as he takes in the empty cell with the hole in its wall, and with stardust at her feet. His eyes scan her face, and she feels him searching through the layers of cosmetics, though he seems already to know what he will find.

“Your Highness,” he says, his voice not wavering even when she meets his gaze with a challenge. “You’re under arrest for treason.”

She doesn’t protest as the guard takes hold of her arm while another binds her wrists. All she can do is hope that the others are safe, that Ambrose and Lord Savelle got away, that maybe Pasquale decided to join them—he’s surely safer there than here.

But as the guards lead her down the hallway toward the entrance, she hears the guard’s words again. You’re under arrest for treason. Not for breaking a man out of prison, not for using magic—though she’s sure the latter at least will be added to her charges—but for treason. For plotting against the king.

Only four people know of her treason, the four who participated in it with her. By the time they reach the dungeon’s entrance, isn’t quite surprised to see Gisella and Nicolo standing near the door, their heads bent together as they speak in whispers. Both of them look up as the guards lead her past, and Nicolo, at least, has the grace to look away, too ashamed to meet her gaze. Gisella doesn’t. Her dark brown eyes hold ’s, unflinching and unapologetic. She lifts one shoulder in a shrug, and it is all can do not to launch herself at the other girl and strike her however she can. Even with her hands bound, she’d bet she could manage to hurt her. Not enough, though.

So she looks away from both of them and focuses her gaze forward, keeping her head held high and her mouth closed, and goes to meet her fate.