Beatriz

Beatriz watches Pasquale as he walks toward her, joy, relief, and fear doing battle inside her. She knows this is the worst possible place for him to be at this moment, but she's so glad to see him safe and alive.

"The stars don't bless us because we refuse their blessings," Pasquale says as he comes down the aisle, his voice loud and more sure than Beatriz has ever heard it. "We outlaw them and we punish those who seek to accept the blessings they find."

"Cousin," Enzo says, craning his head to see Pasquale from his place on the balcony. "I'm relieved to see that the rumors of your death were unfounded."

He does manage to sound relieved, but Beatriz doesn't believe it for a moment. She swallows down the myriad of feelings rushing through her, masking them with a cool smile she borrows from her mother.

"Did Lady Gisella not mention that?" she asks, her voice innocent though she can't hide the jagged edge beneath the surface as she realizes that the only way through this is to do exactly what her mother taught her—sow chaos and let mistrust bloom thick enough to divide the factions of the Cellarian court further.

"She didn't," Enzo says after a moment, and though his tone is still mild, Beatriz smiles, knowing she's hit her mark.

"I don't think she's told you much of anything, Enzo," she says, playfully, before looking down at Nicolo. "And she's told you even less."

"Beatriz," Gisella says, a warning that Beatriz has no intention of heeding.

Beatriz ignores her, focusing instead on Pasquale, now just in front of the dais she stands on. If she weren't occupied with holding Nicolo in place and her knife at his throat, she could reach out and touch Pasquale. "I'm glad to see you, husband," Beatriz says to him, letting real warmth infuse her words. "Though it makes me wonder how many other old friends I might have here that I don't know about."

"You have a tendency to make friends everywhere, Beatriz," Pasquale replies, though surely he must know what Beatriz is truly asking—how many others are in the castle? Pasquale can't answer, though. Not verbally, at least, but his left hand lifts to scratch his nose—one finger. One other friend in the chapel—Ambrose, she'd bet, though he's even less suited to battle than Pasquale is, far more comfortable with books than blood.

"Perhaps I do," Beatriz says, filing the information away in case she needs it to make a quick escape. "Though I admit the quality of many of those friends does leave something to be desired."

Pasquale climbs onto the dais to stand beside Beatriz, and she releases Nicolo's shoulder—still keeping her blade hard against his neck—and grasps Pasquale's hand tightly, borrowing some of his strength and lending him some of hers in turn before she looks out at the crowd again, addressing them.

"Whether you are friends or foes, the truth of it remains the same—this little coup you're staging, the childish squabbles over who gets to sit on a shiny metal chair and wear a pretty crown? They're meaningless. Because in a few days or weeks or perhaps months, should luck be on your side, my mother is going to send an army across the border and crush your defenses like ants beneath the heel of a boot. And you'll be too busy fighting one another to notice until it's too late. I know that because I was meant to help her do it. And Gisella knows it for the same reason. She conspired with my mother to drug me and return me here. To assassinate me when the time came so that my mother had cause to lay siege to Cellaria."

A murmur goes up throughout the chapel.

"She's lying," Gisella says, but no matter how clear and sure her voice is, it isn't enough to erase the doubt Beatriz has raised.

"Which part?" Beatriz asks her with a laugh. "Which part, exactly, is the lie?"

For a beat, Gisella doesn't say anything, but finally she finds her voice. "Yes, fine, I did conspire with Empress Margaraux," she admits, the words sounding like they're being dragged from her mouth by force. "And yes, everything Beatriz is saying is technically true, but I was never going to hold up my end of our bargain. I lied to her to secure my own freedom after she had me imprisoned in a Bessemian dungeon."

She finishes by jabbing an accusatory finger in Beatriz's direction.

"And you expect anyone to believe that?" Beatriz asks with a harsh laugh. "When you yourself admit that you have no sense of honor? No loyalty?"

More murmurs arise at that.

"I am loyal to Cellaria!" Gisella shouts, but in the silence that follows, Beatriz knows that she lost the fight the moment she lost her temper. How many will tell the story of tonight and describe her voice as shrill, her manner as hysterical? Gisella knows it too—how can she not? She grew up in this court, watched plenty of women before her make the same mistakes she just did, likely swearing to herself that she would never be so foolish. There's a reason that Cellaria has never had a woman on its throne and that even Gisella, for all her scheming and ambition, has always tried to pull strings from behind a curtain rather than make a play for the throne herself.

Watching Gisella realize her mistake, Beatriz expected to feel triumph or pride—how many nights has she fallen asleep imagining the moment of Gisella's downfall?—but instead all she feels is sad. Years of Gisella's plotting, of carefully creating alliances, of cultivating power so slowly and meticulously that no one noticed what she was doing until it was too late, and it all ends like this—with a single display of unregulated emotion. A shrill voice doing more damage than the bloodshed that reigned just moments before.

Never mind that nearly everyone in this chapel was all too happy to bend the knee to King Cesare through his many temper tantrums. Never mind that his temper tantrums had a habit of ending in executions. But the second Gisella let her temper show, the respect of the men who were ready to slaughter one another under her clever manipulation disappears like mist in sunlight.

Despite everything, Beatriz pities Gisella in this moment. More than that, she's angry on her behalf. If she removes her own personal feelings from the equation, she can see that Gisella would make a better ruler of Cellaria than Nicolo, who floundered the second she left his side. Better than Enzo, who was too cowardly to stay in the same city as King Cesare during his reign, let alone try to remove him from the throne like Gisella did. Beatriz has to admit that Gisella would even make a better ruler than Pasquale, for the simple reason that he has never wanted power.

Gisella, she thinks, might just have been the best ruler Cellaria could ask for, if King Cesare and all the kings that came before him hadn't nourished a populace too ignorant to see it.

Gisella's eyes meet hers, and even though Gisella must know she's lost her following, must have noticed even Enzo inching away from her, trying to put as much distance between them as he can on the small balcony, her brown eyes are steely, her chin lifted. A queen, even without a crown.

An equal, Beatriz realizes.

Thinking quickly, Beatriz looks to Pasquale beside her and gives his hand a squeeze. She still can't believe he's here, and while she would rather he were somewhere far, far away and safe, she's grateful for his presence.

"Pasquale, you have the strongest claim to the Cellarian throne," she says, loudly enough to be heard in the back pew of the chapel. "King Cesare disinherited you, yes, but I don't think anyone present would argue the fact that he was not in his right mind at the time." She pauses for dissenters, but after some uncertain glances, no one speaks, so she continues. "Do you want to be king?"

She knows his answer before she even finishes the question, but in this she can't speak for him. And he doesn't need her to.

"As dearly as I love my country and as much as I have missed being home," he says, his voice as loud and sure as her own, "I believe I can better serve Cellaria away from the throne and the court."

He's being more polite than the courtiers listening to him deserve—Pasquale was miserable at court, and while she's sure he does love Cellaria, she doubts he's missed it. Still, it's a good speech and his voice doesn't waver once—a feat she isn't sure he would have been capable of the last time he stood before his court, drowning in the shadow his father cast.

Beatriz tears her eyes away from him and drops the dagger from Nicolo's neck, urging him to stand on her other side. He no longer looks confused, but his eyes are still wary as he looks from Beatriz, to Gisella and Enzo, to the crowd.

"And you, Nico?" she asks, using his nickname intentionally. "You once told me you wanted to see more of the world. Surrendering your crown by choice and going willingly into exile will allow plenty of time for that."

Nicolo reaches up to touch the aforementioned crown, his brow furrowed but his eyes as calculating as ever. Searching for ways forward, weighing each one carefully in the space of a few seconds. He inclines his head toward her slightly, a small smile tugging at his lips, like they've been playing chess and she's finally put him in checkmate. He lifts the crown off his head and looks at it for a moment before passing it to Beatriz. She has to release Pasquale's hand to hold both the crown and the dagger, and the crown is by far the heavier of the two.

She turns her attention to the balcony, where Enzo is leaning on his elbows over the balcony, a stone-faced Gisella beside him.

"Your Grace," Beatriz begins.

"I'll save you the trouble, Princess," Enzo says, his voice bored. "I very much do want to be king, and have no interest in relinquishing my claim. Which is lucky, I suspect, as we're quickly running through anyone with a drop of royal blood in their veins."

It isn't lost on Beatriz that he's ignoring Gisella altogether, whose claim to the throne is stronger than his and every bit as strong as Nicolo's.

"Seize the three of them," Enzo orders.

With no one else to heed, the crowd moves toward the dais, uncertain but dangerous all the same.

"Beatriz," Pasquale says. "Do you have a plan here?"

"She has the same plan I do," Nicolo says through gritted teeth. "Not to die."

That is, more or less, the gist of Beatriz's plan. She casts another desperate look toward the stars, and what she sees steals her breath. There, moving overhead, is the Empyrea's Staff, the constellation that represents magic, the one that Nigellus pulled a star from the moment she was born. The one that is, quite literally, a part of her.

Now,the voice inside her whispers, not a moment too soon.

And looking around at the frenzied chapel, the mob of Cellarians broken by decades—maybe even centuries—of inept kings, by wars stemming from bitter jealousy that ruined them, by the knowledge that no matter what their lore tried to tell them, the stars had forsaken them, Beatriz knows exactly what to wish for. Not an escape hatch at all, but a miracle.

She turns her face toward the sky and breathes deeply, her eyes finding a star in the constellation. Not a small one this time but the largest one she sees at the very top of the staff's shape. She lets emotion flood through her—fury at Enzo, at the guards and courtiers following his orders, at her mother. At the stars themselves, even. She lets the fury course through her and then she opens her mouth.

"I wish…," she begins. Pasquale shouts at her, calling her name, telling her to stop as he realizes what she's doing, but she ignores him. "…For the stars to bless Cellaria once again and forevermore, just as they do the rest of Vesteria."

If she'd had the time, she would have found a way to word her wish better, but the stars hear her all the same. They brighten until the entire night sky is a pure, blinding white, a mirroring pain lancing through Beatriz's head—a pain she knows will only get worse. Everyone around her is screaming, cursing, crying, but Beatriz keeps her gaze on the white sky, watching the impossible brightness of the stars fade, until the dark sky is visible once again.

"What did you do?" Nicolo asks her, his voice more awed than accusatory. Everyone else in the chapel is staring at the sky as well, slack-jawed and wide-eyed—in some mix of terror and wonder. Faces Beatriz can see clearly now, she realizes, because the stars are still brighter than they were before she made her wish.

Beatriz doesn't have time to answer Nicolo's question before the stars answer it for her. A lone star streaks across the sky, a trail of light following behind it.

"Was that—" Pasquale begins, but before he can finish, another star falls. Then another. Then they are falling in groups of two or three at a time, flickering across the sky as they make their way to the ground. To Cellaria.

It is the first starshower in five centuries, and Beatriz summoned it.

The shocked silence in the chapel gives way to murmurs, to shouts as people point up at falling stars, to cheers. Some sink to their knees in prayer. Others openly sob. Among them, one voice rises above the rest.

"All hail Saint Beatriz!" a man shouts.

Other voices echo him until the entire chapel is praising her name. Or rather, almost the entire chapel.

Her eyes find the balcony again, catching sight of Enzo, his face white as the sky was moments ago. He alone looks terrified of her, and she can't blame him for that.

"Seize the usurper," Beatriz says, and the mob turns, starting toward the door that must lead to the staircase to the balcony, but Gisella is closer and quicker. In the blink of an eye, she has a penknife to Enzo's throat.

Gisella is nothing if not an opportunist, Beatriz knows, but then, so is Beatriz herself. She offers Gisella a sharp smile.

"Bring him to me," she orders.

As Gisella and Enzo make their way downstairs to the chapel, Beatriz wavers on her feet. Pasquale is quick to steady her with an arm around her shoulders.

"You shouldn't have done that," he tells her.

"Of course I should have," she says, though already she's feeling the consequences of the wish, the toll the magic takes on her body. The last time she wished on a star, she coughed blood and Nigellus told her that continuing to use magic would kill her. Will this be it? she wonders. Will this be the wish that ends her life? If so, she'd better make sure it counts for something.

She forces herself to shrug off Pasquale's arm, to stand up straight and tall, to ignore the darkness swarming around her, trying to draw her under. Beatriz knows that to show weakness now would change the story being written with every breath she takes, that it would transform it from a tale of power and triumph to a tale of tragedy. They may call her a saint, but she will not let herself become a martyr.

She focuses on her breathing, on standing on her own two feet, and ignores the pain refracting through her like shards of a broken mirror.

"Is she all right?" Nicolo asks Pasquale, his voice low, though not low enough for Beatriz to miss.

"No," Pasquale tells him through gritted teeth at the same time Beatriz says, "Yes."

Before Nicolo can ask any further questions, Gisella enters the chapel through the side door, forcing Enzo in ahead of her with the sharp edge of her penknife against his throat. Her expression is guarded, and there is no sign of the girl who lost her temper, no sign of the girl who before that threatened and betrayed Beatriz and made no apologies for either.

Above all else, Beatriz knows, Gisella is smart. Smart enough to know when she's been beaten and conniving enough to get into the good graces of whoever bested her, to live to scheme another day.

"Bow," Gisella tells Enzo, and when he hesitates, she digs the blade into his neck until a bead of blood blooms against his skin and he finally acquiesces, bowing deeply to Beatriz. Gisella herself manages as deep a curtsy as she can while keeping Enzo at knifepoint.

Beatriz doesn't care about Enzo—no more than Gisella did, she supposes. He was only ever a vessel for Gisella's ambitions, just as Nicolo had been once. Instead, Beatriz surveys Gisella, wary and calculating.

She may regret this, she thinks, but that has never stopped Beatriz from acting before.

Beatriz summons every scrap of her theatricality and fakes a great shudder that races through her entire body, throwing her head back and looking at the stars with dramatically wide eyes. She sucks in a large breath and holds it for a few seconds before letting herself collapse forward onto her hands and knees.

"Beatriz!" Pasquale shouts, and drops down beside her.

"I'm fine," she says, though she makes no effort to sound fine. Instead, she lets her exhaustion and pain color her words, leaving her sounding as drained as she feels.

Pasquale helps her to her feet, and she lets him before looking out at the crowd of courtiers staring at her in rapt attention.

"The stars have a message for Cellaria," she says, pitching her voice a tad lower and giving it an ominous quality. "They have declared that one person and one person alone is fit to rule this land and have promised that as long as this person and their heirs—chosen or born—sit upon the Cellarian throne, they will shine down on Cellaria, and Cellaria will prosper."

She feels the attention of everyone in the room like a tangible thing against her skin, and despite the pain in her head and the sharp ache in her body, the power that comes with that attention is delicious. She shifts her gaze to Gisella, who must know Beatriz is acting but appears as rapt as anyone else.

"The ruler the stars have chosen is Queen Gisella, the first of her name," she says.

Genuine surprise and confusion play over Gisella's expression, but they're gone as quickly as they appear, replaced with a more practiced look of humble shock.

"Surely, I am undeserving," Gisella murmurs, bowing her head, and the performer in Beatriz respects Gisella for how easily she embraces the role of the chosen one. "I conspired with the enemy, you said it yourself, Princess Beatriz."

"The stars know this," Beatriz says with a benevolent smile. "They have seen everything you've done, but they've also seen inside your heart, and they know that every act you have taken has been in the interest of Cellaria." While Beatriz hasn't communed with the stars, she believes it's true—Gisella has killed a king, she's betrayed Beatriz and Pasquale several times over, she's made deals with enemies, and Beatriz is sure there are far more sins than she knows about. But Gisella has never acted against Cellaria's best interests. Still, Beatriz isn't foolish enough to hand Gisella unfettered power that can later be wielded against her.

"But," she adds, and notices a flicker of unease in Gisella's eyes. Good, she thinks. "Should you ever betray the stars or your country, the stars vow to cast Cellaria's sky into darkness forevermore. Is that understood?"

She holds Gisella's gaze, communicating the greater threat wordlessly. I have made you queen and I can make you nothing just as easily. Gisella hears the threat as clearly as if Beatriz spoke it aloud, and she purses her lips.

"It's understood," she says, bowing her head again. "I vow before the stars and every soul present that I will dedicate my life to seeing Cellaria through every triumph and every difficulty, to steering her into a bright future and ruling justly and fairly, for the rest of my days."

Beatriz has thought before that Gisella lies as easily as she breathes, but these, she knows, are the truest words she's ever spoken. And that is enough.

With the last vestiges of her strength, she drops into a deep curtsy. "All hail Queen Gisella. Long live the queen."

The crowd echoes the words, men dropping to their knees, their swords clattering to the floor beside them, women curtsying and clasping their hands to their hearts. Even Enzo drops to his knee, though if he hopes for mercy from Gisella, Beatriz suspects he'll be disappointed.

Rising from her curtsy is the most difficult thing Beatriz has ever done, her muscles screaming as she comes to stand. She loses her balance, but both Pasquale and Nicolo steady her. Gisella launches into a speech that she has likely practiced in the mirror since childhood, but Beatriz has heard and seen enough. She makes her way down from the dais on unsteady feet, Nicolo and Pasquale at her heels, and only just manages to make it out the door and into the empty hallway before finally giving in and letting the darkness swallow her up.