“It isn’t you,” he tells her. “Believe me, you are possibly the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and everyone—everyone—has been telling me how lucky I am.”
“What is it, then?” she asks him. “You prefer blondes? I’ve heard of girls using lemon juice to lighten their hair—”
“No, it isn’t that,” he says. He looks like he wants to say something but quickly thinks better of it and closes his mouth, biting his bottom lip so hard she’s surprised he doesn’t draw blood. He straightens up again, getting back to his feet. “You’re right,” he tells her. “We can’t keep a charade like this up forever. We’ll try soon. I just need time.”
She nods. “It might help if you didn’t discuss it like you’re preparing to march into battle,” she tells him with what she hopes is an encouraging smile. “From what I’ve heard, most people find it rather enjoyable.”
He tries to smile back at her, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. All of his smiles are like that, she realizes, fleeting things that are gone too quick to really see.
“I’ll see you at breakfast, then, Beatriz.”
“Triz,” she tells him, making him stop short.
He turns to look at her, brow furrowed. “Pardon?”
“If I’m to call you Pas, you can call me Triz. My sisters are the only ones who do, but you are family now, I suppose.”
He considers this for a moment before nodding. “I’ll see you at breakfast, Triz.”
* * *
—
Once she’s dressed in a new gown of sapphire and gold brocade, Beatriz makes her way to the banquet hall for breakfast, trailed by her group of attendants. Her thoughts are a muddle of Pasquale’s words and her mother’s crushing expectations. If gossip about her cold marriage bed makes its way back to Bessemia, as she knows it will sooner or later if it’s not taken care of, her mother will be irate.
Seduction is the thing Beatriz is supposed to excel at, more than either of her sisters. How can it be her downfall?
Pasquale said he would try, she reminds herself, but from what she’s been made to understand, it isn’t the sort of thing a person should have to try at. And the way he looked at her—like she was a frightful creature, or a goblet of poisoned wine…like a friend, maybe, once or twice. But never like a lover.
She wonders if her attendants can see it, the failure that crawls over her skin—if there is something in her eyes that gives away the fact that her virginity still clings to her, no longer an attribute that secured her value as a bride, but a sign that she is lacking as a wife.
Just outside the entrance to the banquet hall, Beatriz catches sight of Pasquale, standing with a young nobleman she vaguely recognizes, a boy with light brown hair and quick blue eyes that brighten as he laughs at something Pasquale says. But her gaze only lingers on the boy for a moment.
Pasquale, though, she can’t take her eyes off. He is smiling—truly smiling, not giving the fleeting ghost of a smile she’s always seen him wear.
And the way he looks at the boy…she knows that look. It is the way she hoped he would look at her when they first met on the steps of the palace, or during their wedding ceremony, or even this morning when she asked him plainly if he wanted her.
The pieces fall into place in her mind and she understands.
Sophronia’s first few days as Queen of Temarin pass in a blur. There are so many courtiers to meet, so many events to attend, so many tasks to oversee. She insists on interviewing her staff herself—she isn’t foolish enough to believe she can keep spies out of her household altogether, but she’s determined to at least be able to figure out who they work for. Then there are the dress fittings, where she is poked and prodded with needles and every last inch of her is measured.
Sophronia has always hated dress fittings—they make her hyperconscious of her figure, how much fuller it is than her sisters’. Now, in Temarin, she feels the eyes of the dressmaker and her assistants as they assess and measure her while she stands on a pedestal in her underthings. The seamstress shouts out numbers to be jotted down, and Sophronia feels each one like a dagger beneath her skin. She waits for the judgment, for the snide looks and the whispers, but instead, after what feels like an eternity, the seamstress fixes her with a frank look.
“You’re quite lucky,” she tells her. “Not many girls can pull off Temarin Yellow, but it will suit you quite well.”
Sophronia blinks. “Are you certain?” she asks. Temarin Yellow is a bright shade, the color of a canary’s wing. “Perhaps something darker would be more slimming?”
The seamstress scoffs. “You wish to appear smaller?” she asks, shaking her head. “You are a queen. Why shouldn’t you take up every bit of space you deserve? No, I think you would thrive in color—Temarin Yellow, Varil Blue…I just got the most divine silk in from Cellaria the exact color of a pomegranate that would look spectacular on you. What do you think?”
Sophronia bites her lip and glances away from the dressmaker so the woman can’t see how moved she is by a few words. Why shouldn’t you take up every bit of space you deserve? The words echo in her mind, as if her memory is trying to etch them in stone.
“Whatever you think is best,” she says.
* * *
—
The fitting takes most of the day, and when she returns to her room Sophronia is exhausted from looking at fabrics and trying on countless muslin mock-ups of dress cuts. Her spirits lift at the sight of an envelope on her bed. She picks it up immediately and the wax seal tells her it’s from Beatriz. She breaks the seal and reads.
Dear Sophronia,
I write this to you as a married woman, and I hope you find yourself similarly wed. Cellaria is beautiful. I wish I could send you some of their decadent cakes, but I fear they won’t last the journey north. Write back to me soon.
Your sister,
Beatriz
Sophronia knows right away Beatriz’s message is in code, if only because it sounds nothing like her. Before she can begin to decode it, though, a maid bustles in to remind her she’s to have tea with the dowager queen and Duchess Bruna, who accompanied Sophronia on her journey. With a touch of annoyance, she slides the letter into her desk drawer to get back to later before following the maid out the door.
She hasn’t seen much of Leopold in the three days since the wedding. With only a few weeks left before the weather begins to turn cold, he and his brothers and several of their friends have gone to the new royal hunting lodge in the Amivel Woods, the lodge her mother’s spies reported Leopold had built after razing the village that once stood in its place. They still haven’t consummated the marriage, and Sophronia finds she is both anxious and relieved about that fact.