Dulciana's eyes never left Beatriz. She stalked towards her like a cat hunting a mouse. Behind her, King Louis and Genevieve's father exchanged a look.
"You will leave my kingdom untouched in exchange for your sister?" the Vareinnian king asked.
"Yes," Dulciana replied.
My heart lodged itself in my throat. Beatriz shouted something through her gag and Armando crossed the room to slap her. She reeled back, almost toppling over from where she knelt.
"Oy!" I shouted, my hands curling into fists.
"Shall we shake on this agreement, Dulciana?" King Louis rose and straightened his jacket.
"Please, Your Majesty, you cannot!" Genevieve cried, as the king extended his hand to Dulciana.
"Control your daughter," the king barked over his shoulder at the duke.
"I must protest this—" I began, lurching towards the king's hand. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do, whether I would bat it away or simply put myself between them. But before I could so much as get within an arm's reach of Dulciana, Armando's sword was drawn and pointed at my throat.
King Louis huffed a startled exclamation and backed away from the blade, while steel rang behind us, from his guards in the hallway.
"Enough, Armando," Dulciana said quietly in Ardal. Her face was still lit with that frenzied glow when she turned to King Louis and extended her hand. "You have my word."
"No!" Genevieve and I shouted in unison as their hands met. The point of Armando's sword pricked the skin of my throat.
"I have no interest in such distasteful violence," the king huffed, then swept from the room. Genevieve's father followed him out, seizing his daughter's arm with a muffled curse and dragging her ou despite her protests.
"Get him out of here," Dulciana said to Armando. "And bind the children."
"I'm not leaving," I said firmly, staring down the length of the blade at Armando.
Dulciana's wild eyes turned to me and narrowed. "Do not tempt me, principito. Run now while you still can, like the pathetic coward you are."
"I will not."
"Fine," she said evenly, then turned to the guards still holding the Carvalho children. "One of you, restrain him."
With the sword still pointed at my throat, I had no choice but to allow my arms to be wrestled behind me. As he drew his sword back, Armando offered me a sly smile that I longed to punch off his face.
"Take out her gag," Dulciana instructed Armando. "I want to hear what she has to say for herself."
"Gladly, my queen." His feral smile ignited every ounce of hatred in my entire soul. He jerked Beatriz' head back and brushed her scars with his fingers before he ripped the wad of cloth from her mouth. To her credit, she tried to bite him before he snatched his hand away. Somehow, though, Beatriz did not snarl insults at her sister, and instead remained silent, despite the strain etched into every line of her body.
As Dulciana approached her, Armando shoved Beatriz' head towards the floor. "Bow before your queen, traitor," he snarled.
I struggled against my captor when Dulciana's slipper peeked out from her dark skirts to lift Beatriz' chin. But the moment her head lifted, Beatriz jerked upright and spat. The glob landed square in the middle of Dulciana's brocade bodice.
"Stop!" I shouted, when Armando smacked her with the hilt of his sword. He yanked her head back by the hair and shoved the gag back into her mouth.
"And here I was thinking to be lenient with you, sister." Dulciana wiped the spittle from her dress, her mouth twisted with disgust. "But I see you have not changed. By order of the crown of Ardalone, I sentence you to death for treason," Dulciana said. She glanced at Armando. "Do it."
Every one of my senses sharpened as dread froze my blood. This could not be happening. It simply couldn't. Yet Armando's sword flashed as he raised it. And Beatriz' eyes remained defiantly on her sister as she knelt, not cowering from the executioner behind her.
"You cannot kill her!" The words escaped my mouth before I could think them through, before I could bite them back.
Dulciana's cruel, vicious gaze slid from Beatriz to me. "Give me one good reason not to, principito."
I had one. The only one. But telling her...telling her would show all my cards.
It was my only hope.
"She's my wife." My voice held every ounce of my father's disciplinary authority and not the warbling bleat I'd allowed earlier. Now, my tone was filled with warning and, thankfully, none of the trembling of my fisted hands.
Only the hop of her eyebrows betrayed Dulciana's surprise as she glanced back at her sister. Beatriz did not look at me, she simply met her sister's gaze with the same murderous look she'd worn from the moment they'd laid eyes on one another.
"Your wife?" Dulciana repeated, before her face melted into a wicked, delighted grin. "Oh, now this is too much. Poor dear Frederico, selling his sister for a foreign alliance." She laughed and every one of the hairs stood up on the back of my neck when she stopped, steeping the room in silence.
"I don't see any ring though." Dulciana pinned me with a dancing, amused gaze. One that hid careful calculation. Calculation she'd needed to buy time for as she laughed.
My shoulders steeled. She was worried. My surprise had cost her the upper hand, and now she was struggling to win it back. I was not about to let her. With a swift prayer that I'd saved up a little good fortune after all the games I'd ever played in royal courts, I threw myself into the one that mattered the most.
"Because she is owed one of my mother's. When we were apprehended, we were on our way to the port to do just that. I've had my fill of Ardalone and she's had her fill of being ordered around." I folded my arms and studied the usurper queen. "I'd have thought you'd be happy, Your Majesty. I fulfilled our treaty and rid Frederico of one of his finest weapons, all in one fell swoop. Almost as if I were your ally, despite our rocky start."
I didn't dare look towards Beatriz, to be sure she knew I was lying. I didn't dare soften the harshness of my statement or my face, not while Dulciana was watching.
For the queen was watching, her eyes darting across my face as she puzzled it together in her head. But then they narrowed as she folded her arms. "You lie almost as well as I do." She gestured to Armando. His sword came to rest against Beatriz' neck.
"Kill her and you go to war with Pretania," I said, careful not to shout and expose the panic that lanced through my veins.
"Then I'll just kill you too," Dulciana waved at Armando. The blade left the back of Beatriz' neck as he drew it back, preparing to swing.
I'd lost. I'd lost, the one time it counted. I'd—
The blade paused, drawn fully back.
Every inch of my ruse crumbled. I flung my hand out before the guards flanking me seized my arms and held me back. "Wait!"
Dulciana, who'd watched me the entire time, barked, "Stop, Armando."
With an irritated sigh, Armando rested the point of his sword on the floor. "Enough games, mi amor. It's time to end this."
But Dulciana didn't appear to have heard him. She took a few mincing, careful steps towards me. "Is she really your wife, principito?"
I held her gaze, with my lips pressed closed.
The grin that spread across Dulciana's face lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. "If she's really your wife, then perhaps you'd be willing to bargain for her life."
Beatriz shouted through her gag. Armando kicked her and she fell forward, smacking against the floor.
"What do you want?" I asked, forcing down the panic scrambling up my spine. I needed to be calm. I needed to keep my wits about me. I needed not to worry about the bruise blooming on Beatriz' cheekbone as Armando hauled her up from where her face had met the floor.
Dulciana studied me the ruthless, penetrating way one might study a portrait for critique. "I want your father's alliance. I want the throne of Pretania to stand behind me and lend me their support. I want your armies to crush the rebellion and your ships to join my armada, so we may punish both Frederico and my people for daring to stand against me."
Of course she did. An impossible wish, but when leveraged against Beatriz' life...
"Let us go home and I'll deliver you what you ask," I said, careful to keep my tone even. "You've already swayed Vareinne to your cause, and I'm guessing Germania as well. If there's one thing my father doesn't need, it's another excuse for our neighbours to attack us. We'll stand by your side, provided Germania maintains the peace on our eastern borders."
Dulciana tilted her head, considering. Then she clicked her tongue and turned away from me. "You bargain like you hold the cards, principito." She seized Beatriz' chin, her fingers crushing violently into her skin. "But really, I'm the one with all the cards. She will come to Relizia with me until you deliver you what I demand." She tilted Beatriz' face so her scars caught the light. "If you don't, these scars will be nothing compared to what she'll face."
I would kill her. I would tear her head from her neck. I would shove a knife through her heart. I would squeeze the air from her lungs. I would kill her in a thousand different ways for daring to threaten Beatriz.
My tone was as cold as ice. "If you harm her in any way, the deal is off."
Dulciana chucked Beatriz' chin away and wiped her hands as if she'd soiled them. "You are trying my patience, principito. She comes to Relizia with me, alive, until you return with my army. If you delay, she dies. If you don't return, she dies. If you try to send a warning to Frederico, she dies. If your father's men fail to win me this war, she dies." She fixed me with her murderous brown eyes. "Do you understand?"
"Yes," I ground out.
Dulciana inclined her head. "Then we have a deal." She waved to Armando. "Chain her, throw her in the ship's brig."
With a reluctant sigh, Armando obediently sheathed his sword. He hauled Beatriz up and spun her away before I could so much as catch her eye.
"I'm coming back for you," I called after her, hating that I couldn't say more.
I hoped she understood. I hoped she knew that I was going to do everything in my power, everything humanly possible, to both keep her alive and keep Dulciana from winning her war. I hoped she knew how hard I would fight, how carefully I would plot, and how ruthlessly I would act. I hoped she realized how much vengeance I would rain down upon Dulciana to ensure Frederico won this war.
**A/N: Guess where that leads us, readers...it's almost time to head back to Pretania! And I think you all know what/who is waiting there 😉
I hope you are all staying safe and well. Sending quarantine-safe hugs to those who need them!**