Beatriz wakes up to someone shaking her shoulder none too gently. She tries to shove them away, a groan working its way past her lips, but it does no good—the shaking continues.
“Triz,” a voice says, and somewhere past the skull-splitting headache, she recognizes it as Pasquale. “Wake up, my father needs to see you.”
That gets Beatriz’s attention. She forces herself to sit upright, her eyelids so heavy it takes all of her energy just to lift them. When she does, she sees Pasquale, already dressed and looking at her anxiously.
“I feel horrid,” she tells him—the truth, even if it is entirely her own fault. How many glasses of brandy did she drink last night? Still, this feels like more than her usual postdrinking morning. Not only does her head feel like it’s been split in two, but it’s as if her blood has been replaced with lead. Every small movement costs her. “Can we postpone it?”
“No,” he says, and somehow that single word sends a bolt of fear through her. She blinks, truly looking at Pasquale, and she sees that same fear echoed in him. “A servant girl was arrested with stardust in her possession,” he says. “She’s claiming she found it on our windowsill.”
Beatriz tries to swallow, but her mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton. There was no starshower last night—if Cellaria’s drought of starfall had been broken, she would have seen it—and the only other way for stardust to appear is when an empyrea wishes on a star, pulling it down from the sky in the process. She saw Nigellus do it once, and though he hadn’t appeared to do anything remarkable, she remembers the pile of stardust that appeared near him, glittering and gray and brimming with power.
Her stomach lurches and she feels like she might be sick. “I need water,” she tells Pasquale, forcing her voice to come out level. “And then I’ll get ready as quickly as I can.”
He starts to leave and she climbs out of bed, even though every muscle in her body protests. Her mind is a whirl of panic and bewilderment. How did stardust get on her windowsill? Did someone put it there? Who? She thinks back to last night, when she drunkenly wished on a star in a fit of homesickness, though she pushes that thought from her mind as soon as it appears. She’s no empyrea, after all, and if that wish had come true, wouldn’t she be home right now? No, someone is trying to frame her.
“Triz?” Pasquale asks her tentatively. She turns toward him, eyebrows raised.
“You want to ask if I did it?” she says, her voice coming out sharper than she intends. She takes a deep breath, forcing herself to at least appear relaxed. “I didn’t. Not everyone from outside Cellaria has the gifts of empyreas—only one in ten thousand or so has that power. Even if I were a heretic—which I’m not—I assure you, I’m utterly incapable of magic.”
Pasquale nods and disappears from the room to fetch her water, but as Beatriz rings a bell that brings servants fluttering in to help her dress, she can’t stop thinking about the words she spoke last night.
I wish I could go home. Idle words, really, an expression of longing, not a call for magic. That’s all it was. It was only words, just a silly, magicless wish. And yes, she imagined herself home, felt for a moment that her imaginings were real, but that was the brandy, surely. Nothing more.
But no matter how many times she tells herself that, it doesn’t untangle the twisted knot of her stomach.
* * *
—
The throne room is so packed full of courtiers that the guards escorting Beatriz and Pasquale have to push their way through the crowd to clear a path. The stifling heat caused by so many bodies crammed into such a small space heightens Beatriz’s nausea, and she has to force herself to take deep, calming breaths to still her roiling stomach.
I’m never touching a drop of alcohol again, she tells herself, but as soon as she thinks the words, she knows they’re a lie—she knows how seriously Cellaria takes charges of sorcery, knows too that King Cesare has become increasingly paranoid. If she makes it through this without being tied to a stake, she’ll celebrate with an entire bottle of wine.
At least she knows how to hide how ill she feels. She did it often enough in Bessemia when her mother would summon her and her sisters at some ungodly hour—seeming always to know exactly which nights Beatriz had had one drink too many—for some lesson or other.
After her maids helped her get dressed, Beatriz managed a few minutes to herself to delve into her cosmetics case. She dabbed some tinted cream beneath her eyes, added a touch of rouge to her cheeks, and dusted her whole face with powder. She even added a couple of her drops to her eyes, though she’d used them before going to bed, as she always did.
It can’t hurt, she tells herself now. If she’s to stand before the king under charges of being an empyrea, she isn’t about to chance her silver eyes showing themselves.
When they make it to the front of the room, Beatriz sees King Cesare sitting on his throne, his head propped up on his arm, reminding her of a bored child. When he sees them, he sits up slightly and waves a hand behind him.
Nicolo steps forward, a glass of red wine on a tray that he offers to the king, who takes a long sip before placing it back on the tray. Nicolo must be the king’s cupbearer—in Bessemia it’s a servant’s job, but not so in Cellaria. Beatriz remembers one of the missives she and her mother received from their Cellarian spies: King Cesare is never out of arm’s reach of his goblet of wine, and his cupbearers are some of the hardest-working noblemen in the country. They are well rewarded after some time in service with a place on his council, estates—sometimes titles of their own. Most young lords, however, don’t last long enough to reap the rewards.
Beatriz files this information away in her mind and hopes she will have the chance to use it.
“Your Majesty,” she says, dipping into a low curtsy before rising. She flashes him a beaming smile, as if she isn’t quaking in her satin slippers. Beside her, Pasquale echoes her words and executes his own bow. “I understand there was some trouble with a servant this morning?” she says, tilting her head. “I assure you, Prince Pasquale and I will help in any way we can.”
King Cesare’s expression doesn’t waver. His eyes cut to the left, where a girl no older than fourteen stands, flanked by guards, her wrists bound in iron manacles. She isn’t crying, but Beatriz suspects that’s only because she’s cried herself out already—her face is red and her eyes are bloodshot.
“This servant girl claims she found stardust on your windowsill while cleaning this morning,” King Cesare says, his voice indifferent even as his eyes spark with malice. “I would like to know how it got there.”
“As would I, Your Majesty,” Beatriz says, tearing her eyes away from the servant girl and looking back at King Cesare. She makes a show of hesitating, then biting her lip, as if she is debating her next words, when she has, in fact, been reciting this speech in her mind the entire time she has been dressing and making her way here. “Though I do have my suspicions. I must confess…” She trails off, giving a heavy sigh.