Beatriz
Beatriz wakes to moonlight streaming through her window, her bones feeling like they’ve been replaced with lead—so heavy she can’t move more than to open her eyes and blink around the room. The headache that erupts when she does is so painful that for a brief, startling moment she finds herself hoping death takes her, if only to spare her from it. She closes her eyes again and tries to think past the pain, to remember the circumstances that led her here.
Fragments of the night before piece together—the wedding-turned-coup-turned-miracle, the wish that she thought for sure would kill her but appears not to have after all.
Despite her earlier desperate thought, she’s glad it didn’t. She has so much more to do before she leaves this world, and the stars will have to drag her, kicking and screaming, if they hope to take her sooner than that.
“It’ll pass soon.” A voice cuts through her thoughts, and without thinking, she opens her eyes, the pain that follows warring with confusion as she takes in the strange woman standing at the foot of her bed, with a wild mass of dark brown hair and silver eyes that glitter in the moonlight.
Instantly, Beatriz is on edge, her wariness only slightly lessened by the knowledge that if this woman wanted her dead, she could have killed her while she slept and been done with it.
But she is still a star-touched woman in a land where until very recently that trait alone would have been enough to see her imprisoned or dead.
“Who are you?” Beatriz asks, her voice coming out on a rasp.
The woman’s mouth curves into something that might be considered a smile, though there is little warmth in it. “My name is Aurelia,” she says. “It seems a wonder that we haven’t yet met, given how much I know about you.”
Aurelia.Beatriz knows that name, but it takes her a moment to remember where she heard it—or rather, where she saw it. In the letter she found in Nigellus’s laboratory, the one telling him that Beatriz was a mistake he needed to fix and assuring him she would do the same with Daphne. Aurelia is the name of the empyrea from Friv.
“Give me one reason I shouldn’t scream for help,” she says.
If Aurelia is surprised at her reaction, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she holds up a hand, showing a vial of stardust. “Because it wouldn’t be worth the headache screaming would cost you,” she tells her. “And because whatever pain you’re feeling now, I can lessen.”
It’s a more compelling argument than Beatriz is keen to admit. Still…“How do I know it isn’t poison?” she asks. When Aurelia’s eyebrows arch, Beatriz manages a small smile, relieved that the woman in front of her doesn’t know everything Beatriz does. “You told Nigellus to kill me, more or less.”
“Ah,” Aurelia says, understanding lighting her eyes. “Yes, well, you seem to be doing a good enough job of that on your own.” She pauses, tilting her head and regarding Beatriz with mild curiosity. “Did you kill him?”
Beatriz isn’t fooled by her casual tone, but she’s too exhausted to lie.
“Yes,” she says. “He was trying to take my magic and it was the only way to stop him. I don’t regret it.”
Aurelia looks at Beatriz like she doesn’t quite believe her, but after a second, she nods. “He was a pompous fool, but there are few of us empyreas in the world and for all his faults I did consider him a friend.”
Silence follows before Beatriz breaks it. “If you’re expecting an apology from me, you won’t get one,” she says. “Though I am increasingly tempted to scream, headache orno.”
Aurelia huffs out something that sounds like a laugh. “If I sought to kill you, Princess, I’d have smothered you with a pillow while you slept,” she said. “And I’ve no use for an apology—I’d have killed him too in your position.”
Beatriz eyes the stardust in Aurelia’s hand for a moment before inclining her head in a nod of assent. “But,” she says when Aurelia steps toward her, uncorking the vial, “I make the wish myself.”
“Of course,” Aurelia says, holding the vial out to her.
Beatriz tries to lift her arms and fails, her muscles too weak even for that, but Aurelia lifts her hand for her, her skin cool against Beatriz’s. Beatriz begrudgingly accepts her help in pouring the stardust on the back of her hand; then she closes her eyes and wishes.
“I wish I felt as strong and healthy as I usually do,” she says.
She sucks in a deep breath as the pain in her body and head flares, briefly, before fading. It doesn’t disappear completely, but it’s muted and manageable. She has no trouble pulling her hand from Aurelia’s, though she doubts she’ll be able to do anything more strenuous than a walk about the room anytime soon.
“Good enough,” she says, sitting up straighter in her bed. Someone, at some point, changed her out of her wedding gown and into a nightgown, she realizes with some discomfort, though she knows she has bigger issues at present. “Now, what do you want?” she asks Aurelia.
“You caused a starshower in Cellaria last night,” Aurelia tells her, as if Beatriz could somehow forget the wish that led her to be bedbound in the first place. “The first one in several centuries.”
“Five, to be exact,” Beatriz says. “I don’t require a history lesson.”
“You require patience,” Aurelia replies tersely.
It’s hardly the first time Beatriz has heard that, but she closes her mouth and indicates that Aurelia should continue.
“I did believe you and your sisters were abominations,” Aurelia admits. “An experiment fueled by Nigellus’s curiosity and hubris that would destroy us all, just as has been prophesized for centuries.” She pauses. “Eight, to be exact,” she adds, echoing Beatriz’s earlier glibness. “But I was wrong.”
Beatriz is quiet for a moment, turning over not just Aurelia’s words but what she leaves unspoken. Aurelia couldn’t have arrived in Cellaria so quickly after the starshower unless she was already nearby, and Beatriz feels certain that her reason for coming here in the first place had to do with Beatriz. If Aurelia had found her way into Beatriz’s bedchamber two nights before, when she was deep in a drugged sleep before her wedding, Beatriz suspects Aurelia would have indeed smothered her with a pillow.
Nigellus’s betrayal still stings, and Beatriz isn’t inclined to repeat the mistakes she made with him, but she also knows that it’s best to keep her enemies close. And, as loath as Beatriz is to admit it, she still doesn’t understand her power or exactly how it’s killing her. With Nigellus dead, Aurelia very well may be the only empyrea who can help her understand her magic and its limits.
“What do you think I am, then?” she asks Aurelia. “If not an abomination.”
Aurelia tilts her head to one side, as if considering the question carefully. “A star,” she says finally.
Beatriz laughs—she can’t help it. “You’re joking.”
But Aurelia doesn’t laugh. “How foolish have we have all been, Princess, to believe something as powerful as a star could be destroyed by human hands? But it wasn’t until I saw you summon the starshower, saw what it did to you in turn, that I truly understood the nature of our power. We empyreas don’t destroy stars when we wish upon them—we give them new life, turn them into thread and sew them into our world and our lives, every bit as magical as they were when they hung in the sky.”
Beatriz tries to follow Aurelia’s thoughts. It is easy to think of her wish for the starshower in those terms, and even to reframe her wish for Violie’s mother to heal as a way of sewing magic into the world. Less so, however, when she recalls the wish she inadvertently made for Nicolo to kiss her. And what’s more…
“I don’t see what that has to do with me,” Beatriz says.
Aurelia smiles. “Don’t you?” she asks. “You know that Nigellus pulled a star from the sky to create you and each of your sisters. If those stars weren’t, in fact, destroyed, where could they have gone but inside you?”
Beatriz stares at her, speechless. Not because what Aurelia is saying doesn’t make sense, but because it does. Because she’s seen proof of it with her own eyes.
“The Lonely Heart,” Beatriz says softly, more to herself than Aurelia. “After Sophronia died, a star I hadn’t seen in the constellation before appeared. When I asked Nigellus about it, he was surprised—he said it was the star he’d pulled down to create Sophronia.”
“She returned to her rightful place,” Aurelia says. “Just as you yourself are returning, a little bit at a time.”
Beatriz shakes her head.
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me,” she says.
“I believe that each time you wish on a star, each time you pull one down, a part of the star within you returns to the sky to replace it. And each time, the star that Nigellus placed in you upon your birth dims a little more, grows a little weaker, killing the human parts of you in the process.”
“I suppose that would be a reassurance if I weren’t so fond of my human parts,” Beatriz says. “And Daphne is a star as well?”
“Yes,” Aurelia says. “Even if she doesn’t wield magic the way you do, when her time in this world is done, she, too, will return to the sky, just as Sophronia did.”
There’s comfort in that, at least, Beatriz thinks. She has no understanding of what it means to be a star, of how much of their human minds and memories will follow them to the sky, but there is a future where she, Daphne, and Sophronia will be together again.
But much as she misses Sophronia, Beatriz doesn’t want that future to come anytime soon.
“What is it you want from me?” she asks Aurelia. “To use magic, to abstain from it?”
Aurelia looks at her for a long moment. “I wish for you to understand the consequences of your actions,” she says. “I know enough of your story to know that right now, you’re far more concerned with your mother than my prophecies or theories.”
“My mother poses a very real threat,” Beatriz says. “To me, to my sister, to all of Vesteria. Whatever words you believe the stars whispered in your ear don’t.”
Beatriz expects this will rankle Aurelia, but she simply shrugs.
“Not yet,” Aurelia says. “And hopefully, that remains the case. But the war between you and your mother is not a war for the stars to fight on your behalf.”
“Oh, they told you that, did they?” Beatriz asks.
“They didn’t have to. I learned the hard way about the cost we incur by involving the stars in our wars, Princess. The thread we sew with when we wish our wishes can sometimes become a noose. I tried it once, used magic to place a man I believed to be a worthy king on Friv’s throne, to stop centuries of war from dividing my homeland and drenching it in blood; I laced his legacy with magic I believed him worthy of. I asked too much from the stars, so they returned the favor. They took my magic and demanded my son as well.”
“You have no magic?” Beatriz asks before she can register the mention of the son.
“I still have my prophecies,” Aurelia says. “But while I haven’t attempted to pull a star down from the sky since the night I made Bartholomew king, I know that power is gone from me.”
Beatriz knows what she means by that—she remembers how different she felt when her own magic was bound, how she could no longer feel the pull of the stars.
“No one else knows,” Aurelia adds. “Bartholomew wouldn’t have named me his empyrea if he did.”
“What of your son?” Beatriz asks.
Aurelia is quiet for a moment, a flash of pain crossing her face. “There is a prophecy I told your sister once, but I only told her part of it.”
“Daphne?” Beatriz assumes. Aurelia nods.
“I told her that the stars had been repeating the same thing to me, that they’d been all but screaming it. The blood of stars and majesty spilled.”
The words pool in Beatriz’s stomach like oil. “Sophronia,” she says.
“Yes,” Aurelia says. “And, also, no. As I said, it wasn’t the whole prophecy. The whole of it is this:
The blood of stars and majesty, distilled
In the veins of a champion, who will lead us to light
Or doom us to darkness, an unending blight.
Choices made and prophecies fulfilled when
The blood of stars and majesty, spilled.”
Beatriz’s unease grows with each word Aurelia speaks. Not Sophronia. She understands why Aurelia seems sure that it’s her, but she isn’t eager to concede anything to prophecies. After all, Beatriz herself made one up just recently, to name Gisella Queen of Cellaria. She swallows.
“Perhaps you aren’t giving Daphne enough credit,” she says. “Or Prince Bairre, for that matter—I’ve heard he’s star-touched as well.”
At the mention of Bairre, Aurelia narrows her eyes, and Beatriz recalls what she was saying about the prophecy, how she tried to fulfill it herself—presumably by trying to create a child born of stars and majesty. The stars, Aurelia could handle herself, and if she made Bartholomew king, it stands to reason she knew him well.
“Bairre is your son,” Beatriz says, recalling the few details she knows of Bairre’s birth. He was found abandoned on the steps of the Frivian castle not long after Bartholomew was crowned king, after a hasty marriage and the birth of an heir to solidify Bartholomew’s claim to the throne.
Aurelia hesitates for a moment before she shakes her head. She leans forward, dark brown hair obscuring her face. “No,” she says after a moment. “Though I’ve led him to believe as much, for his sake as well as mine. Bairre’s mother was Queen Darina; Bairre was born two weeks after my son, though he was big for his age, and my boy was small. They looked so similar, both the very image of their father, both star-touched—I suppose Bartholomew was eager for an heir to solidify his reign and used stardust to achieve it. I remember how they looked when I laid them down beside each other in the royal bassinet—they could have been twins.”
Beatriz hears what Aurelia doesn’t quite say. “You took the prince—the real Cillian—and left the bastard in his place,” she says.
Aurelia nods. “I had no desire to raise a baby that wasn’t mine,” she says. “But I kept him for a few months, called him by my true son’s name, cared for him. And when he’d grown enough that I was confident no one would confuse him with his half brother, I left him in his bassinet on the steps of the palace. I thought…I suppose I thought it was a small kindness, to keep him close with his mother, even if I couldn’t remain close to my own son. Though from what he—Bairre, as he’s now known—told me, Darina spared him no love or kindness. A tragedy for both of them, I suppose.”
“A tragedy you inflicted,” Beatriz points out. “Because you wanted your blood to run through the veins of the star’s champion.”
“And I paid for it,” Aurelia says, her voice rough. “By then, my magic was gone and I thought my price paid, but they weren’t satisfied with that, so they took him too, my boy. I watched from afar as the stars drained him of life before he reached seventeen. The stars calling back the piece of them I stole for the sake of my ambition.”
“Did he have magic?” Beatriz asks.
Aurelia shakes her head. “No, as it turns out. But the sky called him home all the same. And if you expect me to have some reason for why they took him while you and your sister still live, I don’t have an answer for you. Making sense of the stars’ motives is a fool’s game, as I’ve long since learned.”
Aurelia looks pitiable now, mouth twisted and eyes red with unshed tears, but Beatriz has no pity for her. “It must have been terrible for you,” she says coolly. “To watch all of your schemes and plots for him die with his body.”
Aurelia’s glare is so sharp Beatriz can almost feel it, but she doesn’t heed it.
“You and my mother are exactly the same,” Beatriz says. “But at least my mother’s plan was a smart one, built on more than a hallucinated interpretation of the stars’ words. Instead you threw your son’s life away for nothing at all. And if you expect any sympathy from me for it, you’ll be waiting a very long time.”
“I made mistakes, yes,” Aurelia says. “But I don’t need sympathy from you—I need you to learn the lesson I couldn’t. Because even if you have a star in you, you’re more human than not, and as humans, we serve the stars. They don’t serve us. And should you forget that, they will remind you by taking everything you love, whether you’re one of them or not.”
From what Aurelia has just told her, Beatriz doubts that she bore her son any love at all, but she understands the warning all the same. It doesn’t necessarily mean that she believes the warning, or that she can promise to heed it, but she does understand it.
“Fine,” she says, smoothing her hands over the duvet covering the lower half of her body. “But my mother poses a very imminent, very real threat, and the last I heard, my sister was with her in Bessemia, ready to go to war with her alone if need be. I don’t intend to let her do that, so magic or no, I’m leaving for Bessemia tomorrow morning, as early as possible. I can’t stop you from joining me, but you would be far more welcome if you had enough stardust to hasten our journey.”
Aurelia opens her mouth—no doubt not quite done with her omens and warnings—but Beatriz has heard enough. She reaches for the velvet rope hanging beside her bed. “You can leave now, of your own accord, or you can explain yourself to Cellaria’s new queen, which I personally wouldn’t recommend.”
For a moment, Aurelia looks like she wants to call Beatriz’s bluff, but when Beatriz gives the rope a sharp tug, she inclines her head with a small smile. “Until tomorrow, then, Princess,” she says.
By the time the servant Beatriz rings for alerts Cellaria’s new queen to her recovery, Beatriz has managed to drag herself out to the sitting room sofa—a feat that would have been impossible before the stardust Aurelia gave her but is still difficult. By tomorrow, though, she should be back to her full strength. She’ll need to be, because lingering any longer in Cellaria won’t be an option. Daphne told Beatriz to meet her in Bessemia, and Beatriz doesn’t intend to keep her waiting.
When the door opens, Pasquale enters first, just ahead of Gisella, now officially crowned with a gleaming gold-and-ruby crown, Nicolo trailing just behind, his own blond hair now unadorned, and Ambrose rounding out the group.
“Not that I’m unhappy to see all of you…well, half of you, but there’s no need to swarm me all at once,” Beatriz says, but when Pasquale reaches out for her, she takes his hand and pulls him to sit beside her. Ambrose sits down on Pasquale’s other side, but Gisella and Nicolo remain standing.
“I do hope you’ll forgive me for remaining seated, but I just don’t think I could manage a curtsy at the moment,” she says to Gisella, who fights a smile—seeing through the fib Beatriz didn’t truly bother to hide. She could rise, if she really wanted to, and could likely even manage a decent curtsy. If she wanted to.
“Are you feeling all right?” Pasquale asks. “You look better than before.”
“I do feel better,” Beatriz says carefully, setting her teacup down on the low table in front of the sofa. “Though I have Aurelia to thank for that—the Frivian empyrea. She appeared in my room just as I woke and offered me stardust to heal quicker,” she adds before glancing at Gisella. “I missed an official proclamation, but I assume in admitting that I didn’t just confess to a crime?”
“Merchants have been bringing in vials of the stuff since dawn,” Gisella tells her. “I’ve tried it myself now—it got rid of the peskiest pimple that was haunting me for weeks.” She reaches up to touch the side of her nose, as if in memory of the spot.
“If Aurelia is the Frivian empyrea,” Ambrose says, frowning, “what’s she doing here?”
Beatriz recounts her conversation with Aurelia; she feels Pasquale tense beside her.
“You don’t trust her,” he says.
“Of course not,” Beatriz says, taking another sip of her tea. “But I’m also not fool enough to refuse any help she might give. In the fight against my mother, we need every weapon we can find, and while she doesn’t have magic, I believe she might still be a weapon we can use.” She sets her teacup down and turns to Gisella. “Which brings us to the next matter we need to discuss,” she says.
Gisella seems to know where the conversation is going. “You made me queen, and I’m grateful for that,” she says slowly. “But I can’t have my first act as queen be to throw our army into a war that has nothing to do with Cellaria.”
“I thought your first act was legalizing stardust,” Beatriz says, unbothered.
“You know what I mean,” Gisella says.
Nicolo clears his throat. He’s been largely quiet since his public dethroning, reminding Beatriz of a dog with its tail between its legs, but now he speaks up. “Under other circumstances, I’d agree with you,” he tells his sister. “But while you may be queen, Gigi, Beatriz is currently the most beloved person in Cellaria. You can’t doubt that they would gladly go to war for her after what she’s done for us. An army is a small price to pay for a miracle we’ve been waiting on for five centuries.”
Gisella doesn’t respond.
“She doesn’t doubt it,” Beatriz infers. “But that is, precisely, what scares her. That despite the crown on her head, her subjects still prefer me to her.”
“What scares me,” Gisella snaps, her tone giving away how close Beatriz is to the truth, “is the very likely scenario where you lose and we lose with you. Your proclamation and prophecy were a nice touch, Beatriz, but I’m not about to trigger the trap you so cleverly wove in. Leading my people into a losing war would be many people’s idea of betraying Cellaria, especially when the empress brings her own army to our borders, demanding vengeance. My reign wouldn’t last the moon’s cycle.”
Beatriz winces, realizing that Gisella is right, but before she can summon a protest, Nicolo jumps in again.
“Do you believe it will last any longer if you refuse help to Cellaria’s savior? The voice of the stars? The girl who brought magic to Cellaria again?” Nicolo asks.
“You know she isn’t going to marry you, right?” Gisella snaps at her twin. “Save your flattery for a cause that hasn’t already died a dozen painful deaths.”
Nicolo’s face flushes and Beatriz feels her own face warm, but Nicolo doesn’t stand down. “You know as well as I do that the streets of Vallon are saying all of that and more,” he says. “And by the week’s end, so will the rest of Cellaria. Should she fail—should she die—while you refuse aid, who do you think the people of Cellaria will blame?”
Gisella’s mouth snaps shut and she glowers at him.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the support, Nicolo,” Beatriz cuts in. “But since we’re spinning hypothetical situations, I’d like to posit one where I don’t die or fail. As you said, Gisella, you are a new queen—the first queen in Cellaria’s history. You’ll need allies outside your court as well. You may wish to hedge your bets, but you’re still betting. And if Daphne and I do triumph over our mother, are you sure you want to make enemies of us?”
Gisella doesn’t speak for a moment, but her face betrays the thoughts racing through her mind, frustrating her when they don’t present a choice she likes.
“No one said being queen would be easy, Gigi,” Beatriz says, allowing a taunt to slip into her voice. “I doubt it will be the last impossible choice you have to make, but in the end it’s simple. Which enemy would you rather have? My mother, or me?”
Gisella considers that. “I’ll loan you ten thousand soldiers,” she says finally, shaking her head.
“How many are ready to ride at dawn?” Beatriz asks.
Gisella falters, unsure of the answer to that, but Nicolo steps in.
“Cellarian soldiers are always ready for war—King Cesare made sure of it,” he says. “We can spare five thousand from the battalion based in Vallon, plus send word to two more battalions in the mountains that will be ready to join you as you pass.”
Gisella purses her lips. “Take ten thousand and one,” she says. “Nicolo will join as well.”
Nicolo turns to his sister, bewildered. “I have no experience with war.”
“You’re good at bossing people around,” she points out. “And you’ve always had a head for strategy. Besides, you asked for exile—consider this the start of it.”
“Is this a punishment?” he asks her, sounding more hurt than surprised.
“It’s an opportunity,” Gisella says, her voice softening. “To decide who you want to be without me or anyone telling you.”
“Despite the fact that you’re telling me to be a soldier?” he asks.
“Consider it a choice, if you like, since we’re all making difficult ones, apparently,” she says, shrugging. “I won’t force you, but either way—you can’t stay in Cellaria. You know that as well as I do.”
Nicolo looks at his sister for a long moment before turning toward Beatriz. “Then we leave at dawn,” he says.