“Do you want to be king?” Beatriz asks. Though they are alone in the room, she still lowers her voice.
Pasquale looks at her with a furrowed brow. “What sort of question is that?” he asks.
Beatriz remembers the game on the beach, how he said he was lying about not wanting to be king, how Beatriz knew it was actually the truth.
“I think you would be a good one,” Beatriz says softly. “Maybe not the one your father was, even in his prime, but a fair one. A just one. You could create a better Cellaria.”
Pasquale’s frown deepens. “We aren’t talking about that,” he says, more firmly than necessary.
Beatriz looks at him, at the boy she married knowing she would eventually betray him. The husband who is nothing like what she expected, nothing like what she hoped, but somehow the friend she needed.
“We are talking about that,” she says, holding his gaze. “That’s exactly what we’re talking about. Your father is unwell. He’s making bad decisions for Cellaria. The only way this ends well is with you on the throne. So I’m asking you, is that what you want?”
Pasquale lets out a long exhale. He looks away from her, but when his gaze returns, she remembers how she thought he looked when they met, like a frightened puppy. Now, though, she thinks the puppy might have teeth. “I never thought I did. I still don’t. But I think it’s what I need to do, or rather what’s needed of me. And with you by my side, the prospect seems less frightening.”
Beatriz nods slowly, a plan taking shape. A wild plan, an impossible plan, maybe, but the only chance to help her sister. Stars damn you, Sophie. You and your blasted conscience. She looks at the boy whose life she has bound irrevocably to hers, and a brittle smile forms on her lips.
“Well then,” she says. “I suppose we’ll have to stage a coup.”
* * *
—
Trust is not something that comes easy to Beatriz. Her mother has never encouraged it, not even between her and her sisters, though that at least was inevitable. But she, Daphne, and Sophronia have never had friends—anytime they grew close to others their age, their mother did something to wreck the blooming friendship. Beatriz remembers when she was eight and she began to make friends with the daughter of an earl who shared her love of both fashion and theater, and how the girl’s family soon moved away from court, to their country estate, and Beatriz never heard from her again. Though it seemed like a cruel twist of fate at the time, Beatriz sees her mother’s fingerprints clearly now, on that incident and so many others like it.
Trust no one but me, their mother has always seemed to say, even if she’s never said the words exactly. The lesson has been learned nonetheless. Beatriz and her sisters don’t have friends, they don’t have confidantes, they only have themselves, and their mother.
I love you and I trust you and I miss you, Sophronia said in her letter, and it’s those words that Beatriz repeats again and again in her mind as she and Pasquale sit in their parlor and wait for their guests to arrive. She does trust Sophronia, maybe more than anyone—certainly more than Daphne, who Beatriz is fairly certain will never say a bad word about their mother, let alone act against her. In that, Beatriz knows Sophronia is mistaken, but that is a problem for another day.
She trusts Pasquale, too, she thinks as they watch the door. In part, it’s a mercenary trust; they have no choice but to put their trust in each other, at least for now. But that isn’t it, not entirely. She trusts him because he’s Pasquale, and from the moment they were thrust together, their fates were forged.
And when Gisella and Nicolo step into the room with Ambrose at their heels, Beatriz realizes she trusts them as well, in part because she has little choice, but also because they’re her friends. Maybe, with Ambrose most of all, it’s a tangential trust—Pasquale trusts him, so Beatriz does as well. But Gisella and Nicolo trusted her enough to warn her about the king’s proclivities—Nico even risked his own safety to protect her from them.
When they’re all seated around the roaring fireplace, Beatriz and Pasquale exchange a look. They didn’t talk this part over, but Beatriz knows she’ll have to take the reins. She looks around at the other three and clears her throat.
“King Cesare is unstable,” she says. “We all know that, don’t we?”
Ambrose looks uncertain, while Gisella and Nicolo have one of their wordless conversations, but no one disagrees. After a moment, all three nod. Beatriz considers mentioning that she believes someone has been poisoning his wine, that it might have proven fatal if Nicolo and the others hadn’t been diluting it, but she holds her tongue. She’ll wait until she hears back from Daphne before saying anything for certain.
“If he continues to go unchecked, he will bring ruin to Cellaria,” Beatriz says. “This war with Temarin will only be the beginning.”
“Temarin declared war on us,” Ambrose says, his voice soft. “It hardly seems avoidable now.”
Beatriz bites her lip. “I had word from my sister, Sophronia—the declaration is a forgery. She and Leopold have no desire for a fight with us, just as we should have no desire for a fight with them. We’re family, in more ways than one. It’s in both Cellaria’s and Temarin’s best interests to maintain the truce.”
Beatriz takes a deep, fortifying breath before continuing. “Once Lord Savelle is executed, there will be no turning back, no stopping this war.” No stopping my mother from claiming both broken countries as her own, she adds silently. Because that is what she is doing in supporting Sophronia. Beatriz has never shied away from rebelling against their mother before, but those were little rebellions, meaningless rebellions, done for show and little more. This, though, there is no coming back from. Beatriz knows this, but frightening as it might be to break with the empress, turning her back on Sophronia isn’t a possibility. She steels herself and continues. “If King Cesare wishes to damn us all by crossing that line, it is up to us to stop him.”
Nico glances around at each of them in turn. “We’re talking treason here,” he says.
“Nico,” Gisella starts.
“I’m not passing judgment,” he says quickly. “I just want to be very clear. What we’re discussing is treason. People burn for this.”
“People are burning for a lot less these days,” Beatriz says.
Nicolo levels her with a look. “That’s not funny.”
“No, it isn’t,” she agrees, holding his gaze. “Do you think it’s right? Burning people for using magic?”
She finds that she desperately wants to know what he says—not just to know if he will stand with them, but to know what he would think if he knew the truth about her. Would he look at her any differently? Would he happily watch her burn? She doesn’t think so, but she can’t be sure.
“Not even using magic,” Pasquale puts in. “We all know that the evidence presented against most of them is flimsy.”