Gigi’s mouth purses. “And why should I believe you?” she asks.
“You shouldn’t,” Beatriz says. “But it’s the truth. I don’t want her help.”
Gisella doesn’t look like she believes Beatriz’s bluff, but she pockets the letter anyway and sweeps out of the room without a backward glance.
When she’s gone, Beatriz turns to Pasquale. “I can’t believe you thanked her. What was that about?” she asks him, derision dripping from her voice.
Pasquale shrugs. “The same thing I’d wager was behind your letter,” he says. “Let them believe we’re defeated, Beatriz. Let them think we aren’t a threat. They haven’t seen the last of us, and soon enough, they’ll wish they’d killed us when they had a chance.”
* * *
—
The sun is high in the sky when Beatriz and Pasquale are finally escorted from their room, through surprisingly quiet palace hallways, and out into the open air. Nicolo was likely hoping to avoid a scene, but Beatriz can see the shadows of people watching from the palace windows, faces pressed up against the glass, hungry for the slightest glimpse of their discomfort or the smallest tidbit of salacious gossip.
She refuses to give it to them. She keeps her head lifted high and her arm linked tightly with Pasquale’s.
“Chin up,” she tells him under her breath. “We have an audience. Smile, like this is exactly what we want. Let them wonder what we know that they don’t.”
Pasquale follows her direction immediately, going a step further by laughing loudly, like she said something funny.
The guards beside them exchange puzzled looks, but Beatriz only smiles at them and winks at one in particular, whose face flushes crimson. Ahead is a carriage—not the ornate and gilded beast of a thing Beatriz arrived in, but a small one, all black and several years old, pulled by a pair of mismatched horses that look past their prime.
One of the guards opens the carriage door and the other offers a hand to Beatriz to help her inside, but she ignores it, lifting her skirt so that she can step up into the carriage on her own, followed seconds later by Pasquale.
The guard shuts the door with a slam that echoes in the small, dark space, before both guards climb onto the seat at the front of the carriage. Then, with no warning at all, there’s a violent lurch and they are off.
Beatriz slumps back against the worn upholstered seat, closing her eyes for a moment. When she opens them, she sees Pasquale sitting across from her, leaning as close as he can to the window, watching the palace growing smaller and smaller.
“I’m sorry,” she says after a moment.
He doesn’t look at her, but his brow furrows. “What do you have to be sorry about?” he asks.
“It was my idea to free Lord Savelle, and I can’t regret that, but I regret trusting Nico and Gigi.”
“I trusted Ambrose,” he points out.
“Yes, but he didn’t betray us,” she says.
“But he could have,” he says, finally looking at her. “Trusting them was a chance, but it was one we took together. I can’t regret that without regretting him.”
His voice breaks on the last word, and she reaches toward him, taking one of his hands in both of hers. “He got out safely,” she says, her voice low. “For all we know, he’s in Temarin now. If he can get to Sophie, she’ll protect him, at least until his parents can reach him.”
Pasquale nods, but the worry doesn’t leave his eyes. He looks out the window again.
“It’s a strange idea, isn’t it?” he muses. “To be in trouble and seek help from your parents? Neither of us did that.”
“I sent a letter to my mother,” she reminds him. “And you couldn’t very well run to your father—he was on his deathbed.”
He shakes his head. “I mean before that. From the very beginning, from before the beginning. I could have told my father I didn’t want to marry you and why. After you found out how I felt, you could have written to your mother about annulling the marriage.”
Beatriz lets out a long breath. “I don’t think either of us would have found much help,” she says.
He laughs, but there is no mirth in it. “Exactly. But if Ambrose had been in that position, he’d have told them, and they would have done whatever they could to help him, to protect him, no matter the cost. I keep thinking about that, how ridiculous it sounds, but it’s the truth. They would do anything to secure his happiness.”
Beatriz doesn’t say anything for a moment—can’t say anything. Her throat feels so tight she can scarcely breathe.
“You had your mother, though,” she points out finally. “At least for a while, you had your mother.”
He shakes his head, his mouth twisting. “I love my mother, Triz, and I know she loved me, but of the two of us, I was her protector, not the other way around. And in the end, she didn’t protect me—she couldn’t. She wanted to, but that desire didn’t outweigh her fear of my father. I know it isn’t fair, but sometimes I’m angry at her.”
Beatriz bites her lip. “Sometimes I’m angry at my father,” she admits. “And all he did was die.”
Pasquale nods slowly. “I guess what I’m saying is that I’m jealous of Ambrose, that he has someone in his life to love him so unconditionally, people who would lay down their lives for him. I never had that. I know you have your sisters—”
“It isn’t the same,” she says, shaking her head and remembering her last conversation with Daphne. “I protected them, but they never did the same for me. They couldn’t. Maybe I’m angry at them for that, too,” she admits softly, hating herself for saying the words, hating that they taste like truth.
But as terrible as she feels saying them, there is no judgment in Pasquale’s eyes.
“No matter what happens, Triz, I’ll do whatever I can to protect you.”
Beatriz holds his gaze and smiles, a small, tight-lipped smile. “And I’ll protect you,” she tells him. “No matter what.”
Daphne must be dead—she certainly feels dead. Though as soon as the thought enters her mind, she sees the flaw in the logic. If she feels anything, she can’t be dead, can she? And certainly she wouldn’t feel like someone has dug into her chest with a sharpened spoon.
She knows before she opens her eyes that she isn’t in the castle. It is too warm here—almost sweltering—and she smells hay, hearth, and some spice she can’t name. When she does crack open her eyes a slit, she sees a darkening dusk sky outside a small window.
“Daphne?” a voice says. Bairre.
She rolls toward him, wincing as she does, and opens her eyes a little more. They’re in a small room, less than a quarter of the size of her room in the castle, and she’s lying on a narrow bed mere feet from a roaring fireplace. The roof above them is thatched hay and the walls are a rough-hewn stone. Bairre is sitting beside the bed in a carved wooden chair with a wool blanket draped over him.