Beatriz
In the day following her conversation with Nicolo, Beatriz hasn’t seen him—not even at mealtimes in the banquet hall, surrounded by courtiers; his seat always remains empty. But the court itself seems like a different one entirely than the court Beatriz left mere weeks ago, and nowhere is that clearer than in the banquet hall.
Before, King Cesare lorded it over the hall from his seat on the dais, drunk, belligerent, and sometimes dangerous, surrounded by a court that was desperate to find favor with him and terrified of what would happen when that favor inevitably turned sour. It had made for a fraught atmosphere, but Beatriz never realized just how fraught it was until she saw the court without King Cesare’s influence. Without any royal influence at all.
She thought they might be lighter, freer—or else, more desperate to scramble to fill the vacuum of power Nicolo’s absence opened up—but as Beatriz enters the banquet hall for breakfast two days after speaking to Nicolo, every eye in the room turns toward her, expectant and relieved, and she realizes that in the wake of losing a tyrannical king, replaced with an ambivalent upstart who’s more absent than not, the Cellarian court isn’t lighter or freer at all. They’re aimless, unused to being without a strong source of power to guide them, however violent that guidance often was.
The only person in the banquet hall not looking at Beatriz is Gisella, who sits to the left of Nicolo’s chair on the dais, the plate in front of her loaded with toast smeared with a mix of soft cheese, honey, and herbs, layered with paper-thin slices of blood oranges, which Beatriz has been craving since the last time she was in Cellaria. Gisella takes a bite of her toast and glances up at Beatriz, her expression a practiced sort of empty that tells Beatriz she’s still fuming about Beatriz’s telling Nicolo’s council that story about how she’d crawled through a sewer—not the ladylike, pristine image Gisella tries so hard to maintain.
“Gisella,” Beatriz says, sitting down in the seat on the other side of Nicolo’s empty chair.
“Your Highness,” Gisella replies.
“Just think—soon you’ll be calling me Your Majesty! Won’t that be a fun change,” Beatriz says, unable to resist needling her even though she knows it’s as smart as tugging at a viper’s tail.
Puzzlement clouds Gisella’s expression, but she tries to hide it by taking a sip of her steaming-hot coffee. She glances out at the court breakfasting before them, pretending not to watch their every move. No one is close enough to overhear them, though, and Gisella must realize this, because when she lowers her cup, a smile is pasted onto her face.
“You’ve had quite a change of heart,” she comments.
“What can I say? I’m an eternal optimist,” Beatriz says, smiling as a servant places a plate with her own orange toast before her. He bows and backs away, and when he is out of earshot, Gisella snorts.
“Is that what you’re going with?” she asks. “You’re going to pretend you’re happy to be here, like I didn’t drug, kidnap, and blackmail you into that seat.”
Beatriz shrugs. “Obviously, I’d rather you’d not done any of those things, but I’m going to become Queen of Cellaria, Gisella. I consider that a silver lining. You, however, miscalculated.” She pauses, taking a bite of her toast and resisting the urge to let out a sigh of pleasure. The only thing she’s missed about Cellaria, she thinks, is the food, but while she’s here she plans to enjoy it as much as she can. Another silver lining.
“Did I?” Gisella asks, her voice tight even as her smile remains fixed in place, for the benefit of their audience. “What, exactly, did I miscalculate?”
Beatriz smiles, inclining her head toward the banquet hall full of courtiers. “You made me a saint, Gisella,” she says. “And now a queen. And you believe I won’t use the power you’ve given me to destroy you?”
Gisella’s smile slips—a gratifying achievement for Beatriz until she sees the expression that hides beneath. Not fear or doubt but pity. More than that, it’s the fact that Gisella tries to hide her pity with a worried frown that makes Beatriz suddenly lose her appetite and push her mostly uneaten toast away.
Nigellus told her that for her mother’s wish to rule Cellaria to come true, Beatriz would need to die on Cellarian soil, by Cellarian hands. The truth clicks into place, and Beatriz wants to kick herself for not putting it together sooner. She asked about the details of Nicolo’s deal with her mother, but she didn’t think Gisella would have made a deal of her own.
“There was more to your deal with my mother,” Beatriz infers.
Gisella doesn’t speak for a moment, and that silence is all the answer Beatriz needs. “Eat up, Beatriz,” she says finally, her voice hollow. “We can’t have you passing out at the altar, can we?” Without waiting for a response, Gisella finishes her coffee in one final sip and pushes away from the table, sweeping out of the room without a backward glance.
Beatriz doesn’t return to her rooms, though she knows she can’t go far without the guards Nicolo assigned her coming up with some excuse to drag her back. It’s part of the illusion Nicolo and Gisella have orchestrated to ensure that everyone in Cellaria believes she is here of her own free will, not as a prisoner. Even the guards have been told they’re to prevent her from going too far for her own safety, rather than out of worry that she’ll run.
Right now, running is the first thing Beatriz wants to do, but since that isn’t an option, she makes her way down to the sea garden, one thought repeating in her mind. Her mother enlisted Gisella to kill her and Gisella agreed. Knowing Gisella, Beatriz suspects she won’t fail, especially since her strength lies in poisoning, which has always been a weakness of Beatriz’s. If Daphne were here, maybe she could avoid whatever Gisella has planned, but Beatriz is alone.
When she reaches the sea garden, it is all but deserted, with only a few courtiers strolling through the shallow water, along paths that cut through the jewel-bright corals and anemones and other sea creatures cultivated for the garden. Beatriz shucks off her slippers, leaving them on the sand as she wades in, her guards—as ever—just behind her.
Even though it’s winter in Cellaria, there is only the barest chill in the air and the water lapping at Beatriz’s ankles is more refreshing than bracing. As she makes her way down a sandy path, her mind turns.
She could tell Nicolo her suspicion that Gisella is planning to kill her. With everything she knows, it’s more than a suspicion, and she can make him see the truth as well. His trust in Gisella already seems fractured—she can use that. But Nicolo isn’t some sentimental fool, even if he does care for Beatriz. He betrayed her once and he’ll betray her again, especially if her mother has offered Gisella something tempting to lure her into murdering Beatriz. Something like naming Nicolo her heir after she dies childless—a promise the empress would never actually follow through on, but one that would be tempting to both Gisella and Nicolo nonetheless.
She could tell both Nicolo and Gisella the truth about everything—her mother’s plans to take all of Vesteria for her own, Sophronia’s death, her true mission in originally coming to Cellaria. It could serve to break the illusion of whatever promises the empress has made and show how little the empress can be trusted, but again it requires more faith in Nicolo and Gisella than Beatriz is comfortable placing in them. And, knowing her mother, she’s devised contingencies for that.
No, Beatriz needs to do something her mother won’t expect of her, and that means doing exactly what she’s been raised to.
Beatriz looks around at the courtiers in the sea garden, taking in the new faces. One of those new faces is familiar, as if summoned from Beatriz’s musings.
“Your Grace,” she says, calling up a bright smile as she approaches the Duke of Ribel, who bows deeply in return.
Beatriz thought him handsome at breakfast the other day, but here in the garden, as he stands in the golden sunlight, his tan skin glows and the waves of his dark brown hair are tousled by the sea air. His trousers are cuffed just below his knees to avoid the tide and his white linen shirt is rolled up at the elbows, baring strong forearms that Beatriz has to force herself not to stare at. She doesn’t think she’s ever found forearms a particularly attractive body part before, but there is a first time for everything.
“Your Highness,” he says, rising from his bow with a smile, his blue eyes glinting. “It’s nice to see you up and about.” At her confused look, he continues, “My cousins said you were exhausted after your ordeal in Bessemia, which was why you were not much seen.”
“Ah, yes,” Beatriz says, and it takes every ounce of self-control not to roll her eyes. “I’m feeling much better, and I’ve always loved the sea garden.”
“As have I,” he says. “I missed it in my time away from court.”
Beatriz mentally sifts through the decade of gossip that made its way from her mother’s spies in Cellaria to her schoolroom in Bessemia, her memory catching on the information she seeks. The Duke of Ribel left court several years back, after he became a target of the late king’s temper one too many times. Beatriz suspects that the reason for that is King Cesare’s jealousy of the much younger, handsomer, more charming man who was a rival to his throne. She suspects it’s the same reason King Cesare was so cruel to Pasquale, why he gave Nicolo the position of cupbearer and hurled goblets at him when he felt like it.
“How long were you gone from court?” Beatriz asks him as they begin to walk together, side by side down the path, her guards a few steps behind them. They’ll tell Nicolo about this, she’s sure, and she welcomes it. Let Nicolo know that he can kidnap her and force her into marriage, but he can’t control her. And, after their last conversation, let him worry what she might do if he refuses her demand for an equal partnership—let him wonder if she might find a new king of Cellaria to give her what she wants. After all, Nicolo’s hold on the throne is tenuous, and the Duke of Ribel has every bit as much of a claim to it as Nicolo does, both of them nephews of the last king.
“Five years. I left just after my father died and I inherited the dukedom. I was twelve. My guardian—an uncle on my mother’s side—thought it would be unsafe for me here.”
“He was likely right,” she tells him. “I wasn’t a member of King Cesare’s court for long, but I was here long enough to see the effect it had on Pasquale, Nicolo, even Gisella. I don’t think it was any place for a young person with any proximity to power.”
“From what I’ve heard, it wasn’t safe for you, either,” he says, his voice softening.
Beatriz laughs, shrugging. “I wasn’t here long enough to have had too many issues. Until the end, I suppose.”
“Until you helped a condemned traitor escape from the dungeon and found yourself banished to a Sororia?” he asks.
Beatriz nearly misses a step but catches herself, offering the duke a bashful smile. “I didn’t understand what we were doing,” she says, the lie rolling off her tongue.
“Ah, of course, it was Pasquale’s idea, wasn’t it?” he asks, echoing the lie that Gisella and Nicolo planted to keep Beatriz’s name clean and allow her to marry Nicolo. “I must say, it doesn’t sound like the cousin I remember.”
It wasn’t at all like Pasquale, in truth. He’d only gone along with her mad plan because she’d asked it of him, convinced him that everything would be fine. But now here they are, her a prisoner in Cellaria, him somewhere in the world, trying to survive without his name, title, or any money. It is, she supposes, better than the time they spent in the Sororia and Fraternia, but not by much.
“People change, Your Grace,” Beatriz says.
“Call me Enzo, please,” he says. “Your Grace sounds so stuffy, and I hope that you’ll consider me a friend, Your Highness.”
“Then you must call me Beatriz,” she says, taking the opportunity to survey him. He’s using her, she knows that, but to what end? She assumes, based on the information she heard at the council meeting she attended with her mother in Cellaria, that he’s going to make a play for the throne, and she knows he’s already amassed some support. Perhaps, like Nicolo, he thinks marrying her, a saint in the eyes of the Cellarian people and the way to maintaining a prosperous alliance with Bessemia, will make him a more appealing option for king. If that’s the move he’s intending to make, he’ll be disappointed, but Beatriz sees no reason she can’t use him in return. “And I hope we can be friends, Enzo. I suppose we both know how lonely court can be.”
They reach the start of the path where the sea meets the shore, and Enzo turns toward Beatriz, lifting her hand to his lips and kissing it, lingering a half second longer than seems appropriate.
“Good day, Beatriz, I hope we meet again soon,” he says.