It’s a good lie, Sophronia has to admit, but it’s a lie all the same.
“How did you know to hurry back here, then? Did someone else tell you about the riot?”
Violie sighs and offers Sophronia a small, tight smile. “I’m no stranger to the shifting tempers of mobs,” she says. “I saw it often enough in Bessemia.”
Sophronia frowns. “There were mobs in Bessemia?”
“Not like that,” Violie says quickly, then hesitates. “My mother was—is—a courtesan. Sometimes the men who came to the pleasure house she worked at would get angry with the girls, sometimes a group of our neighbors would gather to try to ‘remove the stain of sin from our streets,’ as they said. They didn’t often turn violent, mind you, but I suppose I learned to recognize the signs of when they would, so that I could go for help. There’s a shift in the energy. I felt it in that crowd, so I gathered the other servants and we made our way back. We’d barely got to the servants’ entrance when that man threw the first stone.”
Sophronia regards her as she speaks, noting every slight arch of her eyebrows, every flare of her nostrils, every shift in the inflection of her voice. She wonders where Violie learned to lie so well, or if it is simply a natural talent.
“Well, I’m glad you’re safe,” Sophronia tells her, letting it drop. “I’d like to get some rest—it’s been a trying day.”
“Of course,” Violie says, crossing to the wardrobe to find one of Sophronia’s nightgowns. In a few short, quiet moments, Violie helps her change and brushes her hair, Sophronia all the while watching her face in the vanity mirror.
Who is this girl? And, more importantly, who does she work for? Sophronia’s mother seems a plausible option, though again Sophronia thinks it’s a bit too obvious for her to send a Bessemian servant as a spy. Duchess Bruna is another possibility, though Violie helped Sophronia work explicitly against the duchess’s interest. The other possibility that comes to mind is Eugenia, though that wouldn’t make sense either.
“Oh,” Violie says, jerking Sophronia out of her thoughts. “Before I forget, there was a letter for you, from your mother.”
Sophronia’s heart speeds up, but she tries to appear uninterested. “Oh? I suppose I’ll take a look before bed.”
* * *
—
Sophronia waits until Violie heads off to sleep before she opens the letter, sitting up against her pillows as she unfolds it and scans her mother’s words. The letter isn’t in code, she notes, and there is no sign it has been tampered with, which raises more questions.
What you’re telling me is that Eugenia has done a better job of destabilizing Temarin than you have. Leave her to me. It seems you are having problems with the simplest of orders, so let me be plain: I don’t care about Temarin’s finances; I don’t care about Temarin’s peasants, and therefore you don’t either. Do not delude yourself into believing you are a real queen, my dear. The role doesn’t suit.
Sophronia immediately crumples the letter in her palm, not needing to read it a second time—the words will be scalded into her memory for a long while to come.
It isn’t the cruelty that gets to her—that she’s used to from her mother. It isn’t even the insinuation that the empress is watching Sophronia, that she has someone close enough to her to deliver a message that made it to her unopened. Sophronia knows her mother well enough to expect both of those things. No, the thing that hits her the hardest is the quashing of hope that leaves Sophronia feeling like a fool for daring to hope in the first place.
Maybe her mother is right, maybe she is softhearted and weak.
The thing is, though, Sophronia doesn’t feel weak. For the first time in her life, her mother’s disapproval doesn’t feel lethal. The role doesn’t suit, her mother wrote, about Sophronia being queen. But these past days, that hasn’t felt like the truth.
Sophronia drops her mother’s letter into the cup of hot tea Violie left on her bedside table, watching the words melt away until they are illegible. Satisfying as it feels for the moment, Sophronia knows she can’t silence the empress that easily.
Stardust.
That is the gift Beatriz’s mother has sent her, hidden away in the false bottom of a small bejeweled music box along with a note:
Your time has come. Hide it on Lord Savelle. When he is discovered with it, Cesare’s council will urge him to show mercy and send Savelle back to Temarin in order to avoid war. I trust you’ll be able to convince him otherwise. Act quickly, I would hate for you to be caught with it instead, my dove.
Beatriz can’t bring herself to be surprised, really. In the two days that have followed the gift’s arrival, she has realized this was, in many ways, inevitable. The empress wouldn’t have told Beatriz to get close to Lord Savelle without a reason, and there is no surer way to start a war than by executing a country’s ambassador.
Still, for two days Beatriz has skipped her routine of taking morning walks in the sea garden with Lord Savelle, knowing that every moment the stardust remains in her possession, her own life is at risk. Her mother threatened as much—and Beatriz has no illusions that the final line of her mother’s letter is anything but a threat. She tells herself she is hesitating so that she can think up a plan, that she is waiting for the right moment, but that isn’t the whole truth of it.
Today, though, Beatriz forces herself up with the sun. She makes her way out to the sea garden and finds it deserted, apart from one lone figure standing out amid the brightly colored water plants, his back to her and his hands buried in his pockets.
Beatriz approaches Lord Savelle, each step feeling heavier than the last. When she reaches the wet sand, she takes her shoes off, holding them in her hand as she walks the rest of the way.
“Ah, Princess,” Lord Savelle says, turning toward her and looking mildly surprised. “I thought you’d grown bored with me.”
“I could never,” Beatriz says with a smile. “But I’ve had trouble sleeping the last few nights and was in no mood for company this early.” It’s not entirely a lie. Since she read her mother’s letter two days ago, her thoughts have been keeping her up, though she hasn’t felt that strange restlessness again since the night before she was summoned by the king.
“I confess I’m glad. I was beginning to worry about you,” Lord Savelle tells her.
That makes Beatriz uncomfortable, though she can’t quite say why. She isn’t sure anyone has ever worried about her before. Her sisters, perhaps, but no more than she worries about them. She doubts her mother has worried about her, personally.
Lord Savelle turns his gaze to the horizon where the sun is just beginning to crest. “Many parts of Cellaria have lost their charm for me, you know—this alone never has.”
Beatriz stands beside him as they watch the sun rise in silence, casting the sky and sea in shades of oranges and pinks.