“I’m sorry,” she tells Leopold, who frowns in confusion.
It’s strong enough to save a life, her mother told her and her sisters when she gave them the bracelets. A life. Not two, as Sophronia has led Leopold and Violie to believe.
She crushes the wish beneath her heel.
“I wish Leopold were with Violie, far away from here.”
For an instant, time moves like honey. Ansel lunges toward Leopold, Leopold steps toward Sophronia. Then, as quick as a blink, Leopold is gone and Ansel is grabbing nothing but air. When he realizes, he whirls toward Sophronia with fury in his eyes.
“What did you do?” he yells.
Sophronia’s smile is brittle. “Something my mother didn’t plan for,” she says.
Beatriz paces her locked bedchamber and tries to summon a plan. Daphne’s words ring in her ears, but she focuses on the ones that are actually helpful—ground apple seeds. Anyone could have put them in the king’s wine, she supposes, but there is one person she knows who had direct access to it, and who always smells of apples. And if Nicolo was the one putting them into the king’s wine, she would bet anything that Gisella was the one grinding them up.
As the sky outside her sealed stained-glass window begins to lighten, Beatriz assembles the pieces of information she has into a weapon that will get her out of this mess—because contrary to what she told her sister, she would rather die than ask for her mother’s help.
Soon, King Cesare will bring her before him, to pronounce her sentence if nothing else, and she can tell him about Nicolo’s poison. She rehearses the story she will tell, how Nicolo and Gisella conspired together and threatened her if she didn’t go along with their plans, how she is simply a victim in all of this, as much as the king himself is. The king’s moods are unpredictable, but she’s managed to wrap him around her finger before, she can do it again.
The door to the room opens abruptly, and Beatriz whirls around just in time to see Pasquale stumble inside, as though someone has shoved him. In seconds, she is across the room, her arms around his neck, holding him tight as her emotions go to war—relief that he is alive and rage that he is here, just as doomed as she is.
“Triz,” he says, wrapping his arms around her waist and holding her so tight she isn’t sure he’ll ever let her go—isn’t sure she wants him to.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, his voice hoarse and heavy. “I don’t know what happened—everything was fine, Lord Savelle got on the boat, he and Ambrose were just out of sight. Then the guards found me on the dock and arrested me.”
There is some sense of relief in that—Lord Savelle and Ambrose made it out. Hopefully, they will manage to get to Temarin; the wish she used should place luck on their side.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Beatriz says, pulling back to look at him. “Nicolo and Gisella betrayed us.” She catches him up on everything, even telling him what her sister found in the king’s wine, though that requires even more explanations, and Pasquale listens in absolute silence as she tells him more, starting with her birth and her mother’s grand plan. She expects him to be angry, to feel betrayed, to hate her for it, but instead he looks at her with tired eyes.
“We’re all our parents’ puppets, Beatriz,” he says.
“You aren’t angry?” she asks him, blinking.
He’s quiet for a moment. “Not at you,” he says finally. “I’d be a hypocrite, wouldn’t I? To berate you for not going against your mother, when I’ve never once gone against my father.” He pauses, considering. “Well, I suppose both of us rebelled, didn’t we? And look where it’s landed us.”
Beatriz bites her lip. “If Nico and Gigi have been poisoning the king, we can use that,” she says. “We can cast doubt on them, on their accusations. It won’t be easy—they caught me standing in front of Lord Savelle’s empty cell, with stardust—but perhaps we can think up a story…”
She trails off when Pasquale shakes his head and reaches for her hand, squeezing it between both of his.
“Beatriz, the guards arrested me last night. After that, they took me to my father, on his deathbed,” he says.
Beatriz goes still. “He’s dying?”
He shakes his head. “He died an hour ago,” he says, and though he’s discussing his father’s death, his voice is calm and level. “Before he died, he wanted to be sure I knew what a disappointment I was, how I sullied our family line, how I was weak to be manipulated by my wife—that’s what he thinks, by the way, what everyone will think, I suppose.”
“Pas—”
“I’ve been disowned,” Pasquale says. “My father decided, in his final moments, that the crown will pass to a cousin instead. And after months of loyal service as his cupbearer, plying him with wine and whispering in his ear, would you like to guess which of my many cousins he chose?”
Beatriz closes her eyes tight, the pieces falling into place. She knew they’d betrayed her, but she hadn’t understood what their endgame was. “Nico is going to be king,” she says quietly.
Pasquale nods. “Which means he will be the one deciding our fate.”
* * *
—
Beatriz tries not to feel bad about drugging Pasquale that afternoon and mostly succeeds. He needs the sleep, there is no arguing that, and he is unlikely to find it on his own. Luckily, the guards who combed their rooms for anything suspicious left her cosmetics case alone—inside one of the jars, disguised as eye pigment, she found a sleeping powder and slipped some of it into his tea. He fell asleep still holding the mug in his hands.
Now, alone with only the sound of his deep and steady breaths to keep her company, Beatriz longs to take a dose of the sleeping powder herself. She craves the peace that would come with a blank mind, but she knows it would be a peace she doesn’t deserve. And besides, someone has to stay on guard in case a scrap of news arrives.
Beatriz paces the dimly lit room, the only indication of passing time the slow dying of the fire in the hearth. She decides to take Daphne’s advice and write to her mother after all. It won’t be easy to get a letter to her under these circumstances, but surely her mother has allies in the palace, surely they will make themselves known to her soon, and she should be prepared when they do. But even the thought of begging her mother’s help leaves a bad taste in her mouth.
It isn’t for her own benefit, she reminds herself as she walks toward the desk, it’s for Pasquale’s. Beatriz might rather die than ask her mother for help, but she won’t resign Pasquale to the same fate.
A quiet knock interrupts her thoughts, and she stops short in the middle of the room. The knock isn’t coming from the door—the sound is too thin, the sound of knuckles against glass. She turns toward the stained glass and crosses toward it, making out the vague outline of a body on the other side. She hears the sound of a key turning in a lock, and with her heart pounding in her chest, she yanks the window open, causing Nicolo to lose his balance and nearly tumble into her room, catching himself on the frame at the last minute.