Beatriz

Beatriz spends the next day shut away in her room, with breakfast and lunch delivered on trays by servants who don't meet her gaze, let alone speak to her. It reminds her of the last time she was under house arrest in Cellaria, but then she had Pasquale at her side to bolster her and keep her sane and strong. Now, though, she's entirely alone with nothing but her very loud thoughts to dwell on.

Her magic is gone—why, she doesn't know, but she has a feeling it's to do with Nigellus, since she hasn't made any wishes since he died. Was it possible that one of his wishes to strip her of her magic actually worked, even if he never fully got the words out before he died? Or perhaps this is the stars' way of punishing her for killing him. Perhaps they've seen fit to finish what Nigellus began.

But even the stars themselves aren't strong enough to keep Beatriz in Cellaria. If they've taken her magic, Beatriz needs to take it back. And in order to do that, she first needs to find a way out of this room.

The sun outside her window goes down, and not long after, a knock sounds at the door—her dinner, she assumes, but she doesn't respond and the servant doesn't wait for her to. But the door opens, and instead of a single servant carrying a dinner tray, five servants file in one after another, heading toward the dining room attached to her quarters with table linens, wine goblets, fine china and silverware, and a feast fit for an army. Beatriz watches them set up, dread growing. After a day spent trapped in a loop of her own thoughts, she doesn't have the strength to engage in another mental game of chess masked as conversation with Nicolo, but perhaps she can convince him that she'll behave herself enough to be allowed out of this room. It seems a fool's errand, though—Nicolo has always had an uncanny way of seeing straight through her.

But when the servants file back out of her rooms and another figure appears in the doorway, it isn't Nicolo but Gisella, no longer in the dirty shift dress she wore the last time Beatriz saw her, but clad in an elegant brocade gown, fit for a princess. Officially, Gisella isn't that, but it seems to be the role she's claimed for herself in Nicolo's court—the last time Beatriz was in this palace under house arrest, after Nicolo claimed the throne that should have been Pasquale's, Gisella even came to gloat wearing a tiara.

"I thought I'd join you for dinner," Gisella tells her with a breezy smile, as if she didn't poison and kidnap her days before.

"Oh, are we moving on from imprisonment to torture, then?" Beatriz asks. She looks at the girl standing in front of her—suntanned skin clean and gleaming, pale blond hair braided in an elaborate style without a strand out of place, a smile curling at her lips that Beatriz desperately wants to smack off. But Beatriz tries to tamp that impulse down, searching beneath the facade and looking for the Gisella she met when she first arrived in Cellaria, the one she considered a friend and the cousin Pasquale loved. Did she kill him and Ambrose? Beatriz wonders, looking at her now. Beatriz isn't sure, but she's learned what a mistake it is to underestimate Gisella, and it isn't a mistake she will make again.

Gisella's smile widens. "Perhaps I should remind you which of us has a habit of poisoning the other when we sit down for meals," she replies.

"Next time, I'll make sure to double the dosage, since it clearly didn't suffice," Beatriz says, taking a seat, watching as Gisella follows suit, reaching for the carafe and pouring both herself and Beatriz a glass of red wine.

"Oh, you could have given me the whole bottle and it wouldn't have had any effect. Salt water often doesn't," Gisella said. When Beatriz doesn't respond, she shrugs. "Your mother had a servant go through your belongings and switch out all of your poisons."

Beatriz purses her lips. "You're a fool to trust her," she says.

Gisella laughs. "I assure you I'm not and I don't."

"And Pasquale and Ambrose?" Beatriz asks, the question she's been dreading the answer to. "I assume my mother told you to kill them."

For a moment, Gisella doesn't respond. She swirls her glass of wine, eyes focused on the red liquid inside as if she's scrying, before she takes a long sip.

"She did," Gisella says slowly, setting the glass back down. "She also told me to ensure that the poison I told you to make wasn't actually lethal, since she didn't want to end up dead by mistake."

Beatriz blinks, struggling to hide her surprise. She used that poison on Nigellus, and it certainly did its job. "You were playing both sides," she realizes.

"Up until you failed to kill the empress like you were supposed to. You had your chance and you didn't take it," Gisella says. "You became the losing side."

"So it wasn't personal," Beatriz says, her voice scathing. "Just like betraying Pas and me the first time wasn't personal. Do you truly believe that absolves you of guilt? Pasquale and Ambrose are dead by your hand."

Beatriz expects the accusation to land—Gisella did love her cousin, even if she's proved she loves herself and her power far more—but Gisella doesn't flinch. Some stray bit of hope sparks in Beatriz's chest, catching fire.

"You didn't kill them," she says quietly.

For an eternity of a moment, Gisella doesn't speak. Finally, she leans back in her chair.

"I didn't kill them," she admits. "You and I are the only ones who know that—though I daresay your mother figured it out when her men didn't find their bodies in the inn where they expected to."

"You didn't tell Nicolo?" Beatriz asks, surprised again.

"He's set to marry you—it didn't seem prudent to give him any reason to believe the union won't be legally binding because your husband is still alive," Gisella says, shrugging.

"Then why are you telling me?"

Gisella surveys Beatriz over her glass of wine, taking a sip. "Because you're a smart girl," she says, her voice cool. "And you know that if the rest of the world—my brother included—knows that Pas is alive, he will have a target on his back and a price on his head. I'm sure your mother already has people hunting him—would you add to those numbers?"

The hope in Beatriz fizzles slightly. "Of course I wouldn't," she says softly.

"Then I expect," Gisella says, drawing each word out, "that you won't cause any trouble. That you'll marry Nicolo without any hysterics and stop acting like being Queen of Cellaria isn't exactly what you were born and raised to do."

Your mother raised you to die.

Nigellus's words come back to her like a bolt of lightning. That is what Gisella is telling her, even if she doesn't realize it. In order to keep Pasquale safe, Beatriz has to go along with her mother's plans, sacrificing herself and Cellaria in the process. If Beatriz were in the mood to be amused, she might find it funny that Gisella is blackmailing her into going along with a plot that will see her and Nicolo dead too.

"Very well," Beatriz says after pretending to think over Gisella's terms for a moment, when in fact it's the easiest lie she's ever told and one she feels no guilt over. "I take it that means I get to leave these stars-forsaken rooms, then?"

"But of course," Gisella says, not even trying to hide the triumph in her smile. Beatriz wants to launch herself over the table and slap her former friend across the face. "The Cellarian people will be anxious to reacquaint themselves with their lost princess."

The way Gisella says those words sounds like a threat, but as they begin to eat their supper in silence, Beatriz's thoughts are spinning madly. She has no intention of keeping her promise not to cause trouble—she just needs to do it wisely if she's going to have any chance of seeing Pasquale, Ambrose, and Daphne again.

Beatriz isn't sure how Gisella convinces Nicolo that it's safe to release Beatriz from house arrest without telling him about using Pasquale's safety as leverage, but she must have figured out a way, because the next morning, Beatriz is awoken with an invitation to join Nicolo and his advisors for lunch, and a legion of handmaidens follow the missive, arranging her hair, painting her face, and lacing her into an ornate ivy-green brocade gown.

The five girls chatter in rapid Cellarian as they get her ready, but they don't speak to Beatriz at all—not that she minds. The sound of their voices serves as the background to her thoughts.

Star magic, and stardust, are illegal in Cellaria, but Beatriz knows that doesn't mean they've been eradicated completely. And with the overzealous King Cesare dead, it's possible proprietors of stardust are beginning to make their way out of the shadows, now that the threat of execution by burning doesn't loom quite so large. Beatriz only needs to be smart and patient—the latter far more difficult for her than the first.

She's so lost in her thoughts she almost doesn't hear the girl combing her hair mention her eyes.

"Have they always been silver?" she whispers to the girl holding a small brush and a pot of cream that matches Beatriz's skin, dabbing lightly at a pimple that appeared on her chin at some point since she left Bessemia.

Beatriz's stomach sinks. Her eyes. The last time she was in Cellaria, she had eye drops from her mother's apothecary, specially brewed to turn her star-touched silver eyes green. In Cellaria, star-touched eyes can get a person arrested or killed—at least, that was the case in King Cesare's Cellaria. She doubts that so much has changed in the few weeks that Nicolo has been king.

"My sister saw her once—she swore the princess had green eyes," the girl applying Beatriz's cosmetics whispers back in quick, rushed Cellarian that Beatriz nearly misses. The girl lacing Beatriz's dress sees her understand their conversation, though, and hushes the other girls.

"When the traitor prince attempted to use magic to take King Nicolo's throne by force, Princess Beatriz risked her own life to stop him," the girl fastening Beatriz's dress tells them, though her gaze remains locked on Beatriz's. "The stars struck Prince Pasquale down where he stood, but showed their blessing for the princess by touching her eyes, and returning her to Cellaria as our queen-to-be. Is that not right, Princess?"

It's a ridiculous story—concocted by Nicolo and Gisella, no doubt—but Beatriz supposes the truth of what's transpired since she left Cellaria would sound even more ridiculous. Still, the handmaiden's words sound almost like a challenge, like she's daring Beatriz to contradict her.

"Yes, that's correct," Beatriz says slowly, already thinking of all the ways she can use this story to her advantage.

The story has been designed to explain Beatriz's return, to ensure that Cellaria believes Beatriz innocent of Pasquale's supposed treason and is therefore the ideal bride for Nicolo to take. It's designed to add to the mythos of Nicolo's reign, by giving him a queen blessed by the stars themselves. But it also makes Beatriz herself a saint, and that comes with power Beatriz can use against them.