“It goes like this,” she tells them, sitting cross-legged on the blanket, her veridian skirt spread around her in a circle of frothy silk. The wine bottle she holds in her hands is half empty, but there are several more to go. “I’ll go first and confess something—it has to be something interesting, no boring facts about what desserts you prefer or the names of your childhood pets—and you lot will decide if the confession is the truth or if I’m bluffing. For each person who gets it right, I take a drink, but if you get it wrong, you drink. Simple, no?”
“Deceptively simple,” Nicolo says from where he sits to her left, his long legs stretched out in front of him and his hands behind him so that his face is tilted up toward the sky. Beatriz tries not to notice how close his leg is to hers, but she’d have an easier time ignoring a flame held to the palm of her hand.
“Dangerously simple,” Gisella adds, her voice a low purr in the night. She hugs her legs to her chest, her chin resting on top of her knees. Her blond hair is unbound from its usual style and hangs in loose waves around her shoulders.
Beatriz winks at her. “Aren’t all the best drinking games dangerously simple?” she asks. “I’ll go first so you can see how it’s done. Once, at a ball in Bessemia, I ran through the gardens in my chemise on a dare.”
The four of them exchange looks, but Pasquale is the first one to speak.
“Truth,” he says. “I don’t think you’re one to turn down a dare.”
After a second of contemplation, Gisella and Ambrose agree with Pasquale, but Nicolo frowns.
“Bluff,” he says finally.
Beatriz purses her lips, and after a second she lifts the bottle to her lips for one drink before passing it to Pas, who looks surprised.
“The three of you lose,” she says, nodding at Gisella and Ambrose as well.
Pasquale laughs, but he takes a drink before passing it to Ambrose. “I thought for sure that sounded like something you would do,” he says.
Beatriz shrugs, leaning back on her hands. “It almost was,” she says. “But the actual dare was to run through the gardens in my corset. My sister didn’t think I’d go through with it, but as you said, I never turn down a dare.”
“How did you know she was bluffing?” Pas asks Nicolo, shaking his head.
Nicolo shrugs. “Just lucky, I guess.”
“And now it’s your turn,” Beatriz tells him. “What will your confession be?”
Nicolo holds her gaze as he takes the bottle of wine from his sister, and she realizes that the words sounded more flirtatious than they should have. Not that anyone else seems to have heard it, but then again, that’s how Beatriz talks to everyone.
“You know the court treasurer?” Nicolo asks, leaning forward and tearing his gaze away from Beatriz to look at the others. “Lord Nodreno?”
“Vile man,” Gisella says, wrinkling her nose. “I caught him trying to accost a serving girl once. He stopped when he saw me, but I doubt it was the first or the last time.”
“That’s the one,” Nicolo says. “He was opposing a motion my father was trying to get before the king, so I…slipped some herbs into his midday glass of wine. It didn’t do anything serious, but it did render him unable to get more than a foot from the privy for the next few hours, and he missed the council meeting.”
Gisella gives a very loud, unladylike snort. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I hope it is, so I’m going to believe you.”
Pasquale considers it for a moment, and Beatriz can practically see the gears turning in his mind, no doubt weighing the morality of the move as well as the believability of it. “What herbs?” he asks after a second.
Nicolo glances at Beatriz. “Are questions allowed?” he asks her.
She inclines her head. “Any good bluffer knows how to defend their lies. I’ll allow it.”
Nicolo turns his attention back to Pasquale. “Bichterwood leaves and helve.”
Pasquale frowns. “Bluff,” he says.
Ambrose leans forward. “Pas knows his herbs,” he says. “I’m with him on this one. Beatriz?”
Beatriz chews on her bottom lip and regards Nicolo thoughtfully. “Truth,” she says after a moment.
Nicolo smiles before taking two quick drinks from the bottle and passing it across the blanket to Pasquale.
“No,” Pasquale says, but he takes the bottle. “Bichterwood and helve wouldn’t cause that.”
“They wouldn’t—they were to mask the flavor of the sylxen root,” Nicolo says.
“But you didn’t say—”
“He didn’t have to,” Beatriz says, impressed despite herself. “He wasn’t obligated to tell you the whole truth in the follow-up questions.”
Pasquale groans and takes his drink before passing it to Ambrose, who frowns at Nicolo and Beatriz before taking his drink. “You two are far too good at this. It isn’t fair,” he says, wiping the red stain from his lips.
“It’s a drinking game—it’s not meant to be fair, it’s meant to make you drink,” Gisella says, taking the bottle from his hands. “My turn now. I’ve never kissed anyone.”
Beatriz has to smother a laugh, having seen firsthand that Gisella is telling a bald-faced lie. But she holds her tongue, letting the others answer first so as not to ruin the game. The others pronounce Gisella a liar immediately and she grins, taking four drinks.
“Fine,” she says with a loud sigh. “I suppose that one was a bit easy. Pas? Ambrose?” she asks, holding the bottle toward them.
Ambrose takes it first, his fingertips tapping at the glass while he thinks about his confession. Even before he speaks, though, Beatriz knows whatever he says will be the truth. She doesn’t think Ambrose is capable of lying about anything. The realization makes her vaguely uneasy. After all, she knows what to expect from liars, but earnestness is another matter entirely.
“I don’t know how to swim,” he says finally.
For a second, Beatriz is tempted to tell him it’s not a scandalous-enough confession. But as she looks at Ambrose, she feels her heart soften slightly. He is not someone made for scandals, so perhaps not being able to swim is enough.
“Truth,” she says.
“Is it in the rules that we can toss him in the ocean to test?” Gisella asks her.
Everyone laughs except for Ambrose, whose eyes widen before he realizes she’s only joking.
“Never mind,” Gisella says, waving a dismissive hand. “That gave me my answer. Truth.”
After a second of thought, Pasquale and Nicolo vote truth as well, and with a strained smile, Ambrose takes four quick drinks from the bottle of wine.
“I’m not good at this, I’m afraid,” he says, passing it to Pasquale.