She doesn’t give Bartholomew a chance to reply—though he doesn’t look like he has a response anyhow. Instead, she turns and stalks out of the room, mourning veil streaming behind her like smoke.
* * *
—
When King Bartholomew chases after the queen, Daphne is left alone with Prince Bairre, an uncomfortable silence settling so heavily over them it’s smothering.
“I’m sure Queen Darina is hurting worse than anyone,” she says finally. “She didn’t mean it.”
“She did,” Bairre says, not looking at her. “She’s been saying the same thing for months, ever since Cillian got sick. My father says she’s distraught.”
Daphne frowns, filing that away in her mind. Friv is a more superstitious country than Bessemia, but she isn’t sure what kind of curse Queen Darina referred to. But as Bairre said, she’s distraught. Daphne pushes the thought away and focuses on him instead.
“It isn’t every day a bastard becomes a prince,” she says, taking a sip of her tea, which has gone cold.
Bairre doesn’t say anything for a moment, instead staring at her like she’s suddenly grown horns.
“My brother is dead,” he says slowly. “And suddenly I’ve had his life forced upon me, his title, his betrothed, his position.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she says quickly. “I have two sisters, and I cannot imagine what hell I would go through if anything happened to them. But you’ll be king one day—something that was impossible before today—”
“Something I never wanted,” he interrupts, shaking his head. “Not all of our lives revolve around a crown. Difficult as it might be for you to believe, I have no desire to be king. I was quite happy to be the bastard brother of a real prince.”
It is difficult for Daphne to believe, but she knows better than to say as much. He already thinks her a snob; she isn’t about to prove him right.
“And what would you rather do, then?” she asks, unable to keep a touch of derision out of her voice.
He blinks at her, silver eyes unreadable. He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter, does it? My father’s right—this is my duty; it’s what Cillian would have wanted me to do. It doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.”
He gets up to leave, but she finds her voice before he reaches the door. If he wants to sulk about his lot in life, she has plenty of ammunition to join him.
“Did it ever occur to you that this is my duty as well?” she asks, stopping him short. “Difficult as it may be for you to believe, I’m not exactly keen on marrying you—Cillian, either, for that matter. It has been my duty since I was only weeks old, so I will see it through. But it would be an awful lot easier if you didn’t treat me like your enemy.”
He pauses, one hand on the doorknob, though he doesn’t look back at her. She waits for him to reply, but after a moment, he merely gives a grunt and continues through the door, closing it firmly behind him and leaving her alone.
Daphne leans back in her seat. She got under his skin—that’s a start.
Beatriz isn’t sure what wakes her up first—the pounding in her head or the voices murmuring outside her bedroom door. Their bedroom door, she remembers a second later, slitting her eyes open to find Prince Pasquale, blinking awake on the sofa, a gray silk quilt pulled up to his chin.
“There are people,” she says, her voice coming out raw and groggy. “What do they want?”
She realizes after she says it that they still haven’t spoken much more than a dozen words to each other, she and her new husband. The day before still feels like a hazy dream, not quite real, not quite her life. She half expected to wake up back in her childhood bed in Bessemia, to Sophronia’s laugh or Daphne’s off-key singing.
But here she is, a new bride in a cold bed with a husband who seems perplexed by her very existence.
Prince Pasquale looks at her that way now, like she’s some sort of puzzle and he can’t quite understand her question. When he does, though, he sits up straight and lets out a string of Cellarian words under his breath. She’s not sure what they mean, exactly, but she’d imagine they’re curses—not language her tutor thought to instruct her in.
He’s on his feet in an instant, pacing the room and searching for something.
Outside, a male voice calls out. “Your Highness, have you risen yet?”
“Hopefully he has several times,” another voice adds, followed by snickers.
“What do they want?” she asks him again, keeping her voice low even as her stomach is tying itself into knots.
“Proof,” he whispers back. He crosses to a basket of fruit on the table near the door, picking up a bunch of red grapes, a pear, a banana, before putting them all back.
“Proof of?” she presses.
The prince’s cheeks go red as he looks at her again. “Proof that we…” He trails off, glancing away. “Proof that the marriage was consummated.”
Beatriz stares at him, agog. “I didn’t think anyone participated in that antiquated tradition anymore.”
Pasquale grimaces. “They didn’t, not until a few months ago when my father decided to reinstate it,” he says, holding up a strawberry. “Do you think this will work?”
She shakes her head. “Too pink,” she tells him, getting out of the bed and pulling the comforter back. The sheets beneath are a pristine white. She turns toward the door, where more voices are joining in on the din. “Just a moment,” she calls out, keeping her voice breathy and sleep-lined. “We aren’t quite decent.”
“I should hope not!” a man calls back.
Beatriz rolls her eyes at Pasquale, making him smile fleetingly before going back to the bowl of fruit. “Have you seen it before?” she asks him. “What these bedsheets should look like?”
He nods. “A couple of times. Beatriz…” He pauses, seeming to realize he’s never said her name before. It sounds strange in his mouth, unsure and a bit frightened. “My father will be out there. If he realizes we didn’t…”
He trails off, but he doesn’t need to finish. Beatriz’s mind is already a whirl of possibilities. Everyone will know that she’s failed, that she couldn’t manage to entice her husband. Her mother will find out, she’s sure, and Beatriz cringes as she imagines her reaction. All that training, she’ll say. All that time spent around courtesans, learning the art of seduction, and Beatriz couldn’t even manage to seduce an awkward boy prince. Worse still, if the king knows the marriage hasn’t been consummated, he’ll have grounds to annul it, to send her back to Bessemia. It wouldn’t be logical, but King Cesare rarely is. Beatriz’s mother would never let her forget her failure then.