“No, I don’t think that,” Beatriz interrupts.
Neither of them speaks for a moment, but the words linger and she can smell a faint scent that’s worked its way indoors—the smell of smoke and fire and something else that she now knows is the smell of burning flesh. How easily they could both find their way into those flames.
She sits down at the edge of the bed, folding her arms over her stomach. “Does anyone else know?” she asks him.
He shakes his head. “Not a living soul.”
“Then we keep it that way,” she says.
Pasquale stares at her, mouth gaping open. “You…want to help me? Most think people like me are an abomination.”
“The only thing abominable about you is your taste in shoes,” she tells him, which makes him smile ever so slightly. For a second, she considers telling him about the wish on her wrist, but just because he has to trust her, that doesn’t mean she can trust him. “Our fates are tied together now, Pas,” she says instead. “If anyone finds out, it won’t ruin only you. Our marriage will be annulled, and I could very well end up burning beside you for keeping your secret.”
Pasquale swallows, staring down at his hands. “I know,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry.”
Something about his apology chafes her.
“You shouldn’t apologize,” she tells him. “I’m sorry that you’re in this position, that you have to deny this part of yourself. I don’t know how you do it.”
He shakes his head. “What are we going to do, Triz?” he asks her.
“For starters, you can’t keep sleeping on the sofa,” she says. “If anyone happens to come in without warning, rumors will begin.”
“But—” he starts.
“We’ll only sleep,” she says. “I don’t think either of us will have a hard time keeping our hands to ourselves.”
She means it as a joke, but his face turns red all the same.
“You were right before, though,” he says. “It’s only a matter of time before people start to talk.”
She pauses for a moment, choosing her words carefully. There is no delicate way to ask the question, but she has to ask it anyway.
“I knew men like you in Bessemia,” she says. “But there were others who were rumored to enjoy the company of both men and women. Might you…” She trails off.
He doesn’t say anything for a moment but then shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I can’t imagine I could. I just…I don’t think I work that way. I’m sorry.”
Again, with apologies she doesn’t want or need.
“We have time to figure it out, Pas. As long as we’re in it together, we can figure it out.”
He holds her gaze, unflinching, before nodding once. “Thank you, Triz.”
The solemnness in his voice makes her uncomfortable. She shrugs off his gratitude.
“We’re in it together,” she says again. “Now come on, I’m sure your back is aching after a week on the sofa.”
She crawls into the bed, making room for him to climb in beside her. The bed is so large that they don’t come close to touching.
* * *
—
Beatriz tosses and turns for hours, but sleep doesn’t claim her. It isn’t that she’s restless, not exactly. She feels strangely at peace now, not because a sword no longer dangles over her head, but because she knows it’s there, because she can name it, because her mother taught her that it is better to know what one is up against than to believe there is safety in ignorance.
No, it is not her busy mind keeping her awake, it’s her body. She feels as if it is the middle of the afternoon, as if she could go for a long walk in the sea garden or go for an hours-long horseback ride. She feels like she could climb a mountain, even.
She gets out of bed carefully, so as not to disturb Pasquale, and crosses to the cabinet by the door. There she finds a bottle of brandy and pours herself a glass, drinking it down in a single gulp. After a moment, she pours herself another. She paces the room, lit only by the moon and stars shining through the open window. After a few minutes of that, she returns to bed, tosses and turns some more, and goes back for another glass of brandy.
She becomes pleasantly tipsy, but no more tired. Instead, she feels the strange desire to run through the halls, knocking on doors and rousing the rest of the castle so that she isn’t the only one awake. She even tries to wake up Pasquale, but he sleeps like the dead.
If Sophronia were here, she would tell Beatriz to try reading a book, and Beatriz would roll her eyes and call Sophronia boring, but she’s just desperate enough to try it. She takes a book off the shelf at random and sits down on the chaise by the window.
The book, it turns out, is a record of the early years of the Celestian War, when King Cesare was new to the throne but already overzealous, determined to outlaw the use of stardust not just in Cellaria, but across the entire continent. It’s a history Beatriz knows well, but reading just the first paragraph threatens to bore her to tears.
Her attention keeps drifting out the window, to the moon shining down and the constellations that surround it, moving across the sky at a slow and steady crawl. There is the Hermit’s Cane, with its hooked top, thought to encourage seclusion and introspection. It has long been Beatriz’s least-favorite sign because whenever it appeared, the entire Bessemian court became quiet and withdrawn. Balls were canceled. Tea parties postponed. The Hermit’s Cane meant, to Beatriz, boredom.
There is the Queen’s Chalice, with its gently curved goblet. Usually it foretells good fortune, but tonight it hangs upside down over Cellaria, a bad omen, though Beatriz has always thought that the zodiac, like most superstitions, gains its power from belief.
She wonders if Sophronia and Daphne can see the stars where they are; she wonders which constellations they can make out. Her eyes seek out one star in particular—she doesn’t know why; it isn’t particularly bright or large, just one of countless stars. It makes up one of the spokes of the Wanderer’s Wheel—a constellation meant to signal travel or, more broadly, change. If she believed in the stars, she might take it as an omen of her going home, and as unlikely as she knows that is, her heart clenches around the possibility.
She closes her eyes and thinks of her sisters as she last saw them, dressed in the fashions of their new homes, looking like strangers as they set off in their separate directions. She imagines walking back into the palace she grew up in, the familiar marble floors beneath her slippers, the paintings of her ancestors lining the walls, the scent of bergamot heavy in the air. It feels real—so real she swears she can feel the sharp edges of the crystal doorknob beneath her palm as she pushes open the door to the rooms she shared with her sisters. On the other side she can hear Sophronia’s laugh and Daphne’s low voice. Her heart lurches in her chest and she steps into the room, but there her fantasy fades and she is back in Cellaria, lonely and alone, with nothing but yearning to keep her company.