Beatriz should feel relieved—she’s done everything she was meant to do. She has set up her dominoes and knocked the first one down. All that’s left to do is watch Cellaria tumble. She should feel relieved—proud, even—but all she feels is dread and guilt.
—
“Are you all right?” Pasquale asks her as they head back to their rooms after breakfast.
“Fine,” she says, shaking her head. “I just…never believed he would do it, I suppose. Which is foolish, I know, but…”
“You and Lord Savelle have spent some time together,” he says. “You like him. But if you’d said anything else, you know you very well might have ended up executed beside him.”
Beatriz hesitates before nodding. “He said I reminded him of his daughter,” she admits.
Recognition flashes in Pasquale’s eyes. “I remember Fidelia,” he says. “I saw it, you know.”
Beatriz frowns. “Her death?” she asks. There are plenty of people who enjoy watching the burnings, people who make an event of it, with parties before and after. But Pasquale hasn’t struck her as the type.
“Oh no, not that,” Pasquale says, looking away and lowering his voice. “I saw her…you know…use magic.”
Beatriz nearly stops walking. “You did?” she asks. “What…what did she do?”
“It was the night of the summer solstice,” Pasquale tells her. “She was a year or so older than me, and, well, you know my father and his attentions.”
Beatriz barely suppresses a shudder, but Pasquale must notice it, because he continues.
“He tried to lead her away from the party, but she didn’t want to go—I saw it, I’m sure plenty of other people saw it too, but no one did anything. I wanted to, Triz, but I froze. I couldn’t even move. She said something—I don’t know what, but I saw her lips move and her eyes were casting around wildly, looking for help. Looking for the stars, I think now, calling on them. Then everything happened quickly. A candle blew over even though there wasn’t any wind. A fight broke out in another corner of the ballroom. A tree outside crashed through a window. Any one thing might have been a coincidence, but all together?” He shakes his head. “I wish you’d let me go. That’s what she said, I think. My father never said as much, he just called her an empyrea and had her executed, but I think that’s what she must have said. She wanted his hands off her badly enough that she brought a star down—you can see it missing, from the Hero’s Heart. And it worked. He let her go—if only so the guards could arrest her.”
Beatriz swallows, unable to speak. Fidelia knew what she was doing, she tells herself. It was a choice, one she understood the consequences of.
The king’s words still nag at Beatriz from earlier, conflicting with Sophronia’s. Beatriz knows she should let them go, that they don’t matter anymore, but she can’t.
“Pas, have you heard of the Cosella vineyard?” she asks him.
He frowns. “Cosella?” he repeats, shaking his head. “It sounds vaguely familiar, but I don’t think it would be familiar to me if it is a vineyard. Why?”
“It’s nothing,” she says, giving his arm a squeeze. “It doesn’t matter.”
—
That night, King Cesare throws an impromptu banquet—a celebration, he says, though with him that can mean any number of things, many of them bad. Still, she and Pasquale dress up for the occasion, as they’re expected to, and sit in their appointed seats in the banquet hall, just to the right of the king. As Beatriz looks around the crowded room, she notes that most people look somewhat confused by the gathering as well, though no one seems keen to question a party.
When glasses of wine are served, the king takes his from Nicolo—who seems to go out of his way to avoid Beatriz’s gaze—and stands. A hush falls over the room, and King Cesare clears his throat.
“As you may know, we discovered a heretic in our midst,” he says, prompting some jeers. “There was some question of what was to be done with Lord Savelle—execution would have been a foregone conclusion for anyone else, but I was told I must consider the consequences of such a decision. Surely, executing an ambassador will bring the Temarinians to our borders in force, frothing at the mouth for blood and war. There are many on my council who wish to avoid that, even if it means allowing Cellarian laws to be broken in my own court.”
King Cesare pauses, his gaze falling on Beatriz. She feels the rest of the crowd follow his look, feels the eyes of the entire room on her.
“But as the…divinely alluring Princess Beatriz said,” he begins, and Beatriz has to fight to suppress a gag, “there can be no mercy for heretics. The stars would see Lord Savelle burned for his sacrilegious behavior.”
These words are met with overwhelming applause, giving Beatriz the opportunity to lean toward Pasquale and ask through a pasted-on smile, “Did I say that?”
“I don’t believe so, no,” Pasquale replies, sounding more tired than confused. Though Beatriz hasn’t known the king nearly as long as Pasquale has, she feels a bit tired of all of this as well—of feeling like she’s walking a tightrope, of having her words twisted, of never knowing which side of the king they will be subjected to tonight.
Guilt threatens to drown Beatriz again, but a small part of her is relieved as well, like her own armor has grown another layer. Who would accuse her of using magic now, with the king himself making her out to be the stars’ most devout defender?
Then again, she thinks, casting King Cesare a sideways glance, she is the furthest thing from safe. All she can do is hope the king’s affection for her doesn’t lessen—or grow, for that matter. Walking a tightrope indeed.
Pasquale, Nicolo, and Gisella have all said that he wasn’t always this way, that he’s grown worse over the years, and she knows that oftentimes people’s minds can begin to go before their bodies do, but King Cesare is only in his fifties. It can’t be aging, and if it were some sort of malady, surely someone would have diagnosed him.
When the applause dies down, Beatriz sees the king reaching for his glass of wine again. Her eyes follow the wineglass—refilled so many times tonight she’s already lost count. Nicolo mentioned that the cupbearers had taken to diluting the wine. As soon as she thinks it, another thought occurs to her: if she wanted to poison the king, his wine would be an excellent means—he’s never far from the stuff, and she would never have to handle it herself. So long as the bottle was poisoned, the culprit could be untraceable. Perhaps when Nico and the cupbearers diluted the wine they were actually diluting a poison, decaying his mind instead of killing him outright.
It’s what I would do doesn’t mean anything, Beatriz knows this. But something about the notion won’t let her go, and her mother has always told her and her sisters to trust their instincts. She only wishes she knew more about poisons, but she’s never been as good with them as Daphne, and with something like this, she isn’t inclined to take chances.