“Tell me, Princess Beatriz,” he says, loudly enough that his entire entourage can hear him. “How are you finding married life? A girl like you is certainly made for it, I’m sure.”
The courtiers erupt into giggles. Beatriz keeps her eyes trained straight ahead, but she can feel King Cesare’s gaze focused down the front of her dress. Bile rises up in her throat, but she forces it down.
“Oh yes,” she says as pleasantly as she can manage. “Prince Pasquale and I are very happy. I’m so grateful to Your Majesty and my own mother for arranging the marriage. He is truly everything a girl could hope for in a husband—you must be so proud of him.”
Beatriz hopes that by talking about Pasquale, she will remind him that she is his daughter now and he should stop ogling her breasts, but it seems to have the opposite effect. If anything, his leer intensifies.
“Of course you would think so, having never been with a real man,” King Cesare says, to more laughter from his entourage. Beatriz never knew she could find the sound of laughter so grating, but it’s beginning to make the headache Gisella made up feel all too real. “Should you be so inclined, we can always remedy that, Beatriz. I’m sure Pasquale wouldn’t mind.” He slides his hand over her arm, a gesture that seems to leave a trail of slime in its wake. She could take a dozen baths and still feel it on her.
“Oh, I don’t…” She trails off. She’s always been an excellent flirt, better than Daphne or Sophronia, but suddenly she feels like she’s been thrown into some new game she doesn’t understand, one with life-and-death stakes where she has to balance on the thinnest tightrope.
Something bumps into her back, and suddenly she feels liquid soaking through her skirt.
“Apologies, Your Highness,” Nicolo says.
Beatriz glances behind her to find that he’s spilled wine on her gown, making a deep red stain against the aquamarine silk. She’s so relieved she wants to sob—she’ll have to go back to her rooms to change now. A quick glance at Nicolo tells her that he knows this as well, that he spilled wine on her intentionally.
“You bumbling fool!” King Cesare roars, snatching the goblet off the floor and hurling it at Nicolo’s head. The gilded rim glances off his temple and his hand flies up to cover it, but not before Beatriz sees the trickle of blood.
“Apologies, Your Majesty,” Nicolo says, bowing deeply. “Allow me to fetch you a new goblet of wine—and I can escort the princess back to her rooms so she can change into something clean.”
“Yes, do,” the king snaps, letting go of Beatriz’s arm. She’s so glad to be rid of his hands on her that she stumbles as she walks toward Nicolo, and he puts a hand on her elbow to steady her. “I’ll see you again soon, Princess,” the king calls after her as she and Nicolo make their way down the hallway, Gisella hurrying behind them.
“Thank you,” Beatriz says to Nicolo when they round the corner and are out of sight and earshot of King Cesare and his entourage. Gisella has managed to catch up with them and now falls in on Beatriz’s other side.
“He’s gotten worse lately,” Gisella says, keeping her voice to a whisper even though they’re the only ones in the hallway. Beatriz can’t blame her for being paranoid—any word against the king could translate to treason. “He’s always…liked younger women,” she says carefully.
“Children, really,” Nicolo points out. “Lady Emilia’s handmaiden was only fourteen. Still, I’d have thought his son’s wife would be off-limits.”
Beatriz thought as much as well, even after he groped her on their first meeting. She thought he was all bawdy talk and inappropriate comments. Even after he’d leered at her while inspecting her bedsheets after her wedding—she’d felt uncomfortable, certainly, but never unsafe. She felt unsafe today, despite being surrounded by people who could have spoken up, could have helped her. But only Nicolo had, and paid a high cost for it.
“Let me see your head,” Beatriz says, stopping in the middle of the hallway and pulling Nicolo to a stop beside her.
“Trust me, it isn’t the first time he’s thrown something at me,” Nicolo says, trying out a laugh that rings false.
“His temper’s been getting worse as well,” Gisella says, peering over Beatriz’s shoulder as she eyes the wound on Nicolo’s temple. It’s a shallow cut, and it should heal with only a bandage. In Bessemia, an injury like that wouldn’t even warrant the use of stardust to heal it.
“I’m sure we can find bandages in my chambers,” Beatriz tells him, tearing one of several ruffles off the sleeve of her gown. She presses it to the wound, then brings his hand up to hold it in place. “Keep that on it until we get there, unless you want to stain your shirt.”
“Instead of just ruin your gown?” he asks, though he does as she says.
Beatriz snorts. “Please. If my maids can remove a wine stain, they can mend a sleeve,” she says before hesitating. “You keep saying he’s getting worse,” she says. “What do you mean?”
Nicolo and Gisella exchange another look, have another wordless conversation, though this one Beatriz can surmise the gist of well enough.
“If you think I would betray your confidence—” she begins.
“It isn’t that,” Gisella says, shaking her head. “But it’s a difficult question to answer. He’s always been…temperamental.”
Beatriz nods—that much she knew. Reports of King Cesare’s volatile moods were common when she was in Bessemia; she expected them. But they’re worse than she’d thought. It almost seems as though King Cesare has no inhibitions whatsoever—perhaps unsurprising given that he always seems to have a goblet of wine nearby. When Beatriz says as much to Nicolo and Gigi, they exchange another look.
“I may have started diluting his wine, along with the other cupbearers,” Nicolo admits. “We started off a little at a time so he wouldn’t notice, but by now his wine is roughly half grape juice.”
“When did you start diluting the wine?” Beatriz asks, frowning.
Nicolo shrugs. “It must have been about six months ago? I suppose his behavior started becoming more erratic just before then.”
Which would have been in the spring. Beatriz thinks back to the reports her mother received from her Cellarian spies around then—she remembers the usual scandals, affairs with younger women, a temper tantrum or two. She remembers a story about King Cesare stripping off his shirt in the middle of his birthday banquet because he proclaimed the room too hot. From someone else it would have been alarming behavior, but from King Cesare, it was more of the same.
But it’s possible some of the king’s behavior went unreported, Beatriz tells herself, before another thought occurs to her. It’s also possible that her mother didn’t share those reports with her. It’s a ridiculous thought—Beatriz might have plenty of her own reservations about her mother, but keeping that information from Beatriz wouldn’t help either of them. Yet her mother also hadn’t told her about Lord Savelle’s daughter, even though the information would have helped her. It’s possible her mother didn’t know about that, either, though it’s doubtful. The empress is playing her own game, Beatriz knows this better than her sisters, and there must be a reason for it.