He winces, and I wish I could take the words back. Where does this new, cruel Elisa come from? “I understand,” I say by way of a peace offering. “Several times during the last months, I became so frightened I thought I’d die of it. But time passed, decisions were made and acted upon, and I didn’t have to be afraid again for a while.”
“Does that make it easier?”
I smile sadly. “I’m more frightened than ever. I’ve watched people die.” Die in my very arms. I have to swallow before continuing. “I know how hard it will be to . . . keep going. After. Even if we win.”
He wilts at my words, and I realize I’ve probably made things worse.
I stand and stretch. My appetite is gone, and I suddenly long to be with Ximena and Mara. “I hope you’ll excuse my early departure, Alejandro, but if we are to have a coronation in two days, I must begin preparations.” It’s a lie. I couldn’t care less about the coronation ceremony.
He rises and takes my hands. “I’m glad you’re back.” It’s that lost look again, the one that used to make me want to hold him close and murmur words of comfort.
His eyes fall to my breasts. The corset and riding vest push them toward my chin. I almost feel that if I lowered my head enough, it could rest there, pillowed comfortably.
His arms snake around my waist, and he pulls me toward him until my breasts are smooshed against his chest. “Elisa,” he whispers, staring at my lips.
I want him to kiss me, even though my heart squeezes with wrongness. I want to feel the victory of being desired by someone I once found desirable. With the way he looks at me now, I know I can be with a man for the first time tonight, if I choose to be.
He leans in; his lips brush mine. Gently first, then with insistence. His fingers tangle in my hair, he takes my bottom lip between his, his tongue whispers against my teeth. His indoor, gentleman’s mouth is so soft. Softer than Humberto’s.
With a gasp, I lurch away from him.
The confusion on his face is quickly replaced by a soothing smile. “I understand, Elisa. You’re not ready for this. We have plenty of time to get to know each other.” It’s the same voice he’d use with little Rosario. Placating, condescending.
“Thank you for understanding.” I smile sweetly. On the day he died, Humberto spoke of a way to be free of Alejandro. What did he discover?
But it is of no matter now. I must become queen if I’m to help the people I care about. I only hope that, months from now, there is something left to be queen of.
I enter through the door connecting our suites. Ximena is reading the Scriptura Sancta, Mara is mending her robe. They both look up in surprise.
“I didn’t expect you so soon,” Ximena says.
“Did you find that potted palm?”
Ximena sighs. “No. It wasn’t in the monastery. Mara checked the servants’ quarters.”
“The kitchen master caught me digging into a pot of soil,” Mara says, voice tinged with laughter.
I plop onto the bed, frustrated. “It’s probably decorating some noblewoman’s suite. I have to figure out a way to check every single room in the palace. Maybe Hector will help me.”
“We’ll ask him tomorrow,” Ximena says. Searching for the Godstones is awkward for her, against her staunch Vía-Reforma belief that all such matters should be left to themselves. She only agreed to help when I pointed out how much worse it would be if Invierne’s sorcerers found them first. I suppose I could order a search of the entire palace once I am crowned queen. The thought makes me scowl. What a lovely way to endear myself to my new subjects.
I take a deep breath and say, “I’m to be crowned queen in two days.”
They stare at me. “That’s wonderful, Elisa,” Mara says.
Someone raps at the door. I jump, half expecting it to be Alejandro again. Ximena opens the door a crack, grabs something, closes it.
“A message for you via pigeon,” she says, holding out her hand. A tiny canister is pinched between thumb and forefinger.
I grab it, unscrew the top, uncurl the tiny roll.
“It’s from Cosmé!” I gasp. Tears spring to my eyes. “Basajuan is overrun, the conde’s army scattered into the Hinders. All the nearby villages have been burned. She organizes a group to harry the Inviernos from behind now that they march on Brisadulce.” I look up at them, waving the tiny parchment. “It says to expect refugees. Maybe thousands.”
“That’s good, right?” Mara says. “That means she was able to evacuate a lot of people.”
I nod. “It’s good.”
Pray through your doubts. I drop to my knees on the hard stone floor. I prostrate myself and pray for Cosmé, for Jacián, even for traitorous Belén. I plead for the lives of Alentín and the people of his hidden village. I beg God to show me how to combat the sorcery of the animagi. Surely, with so much at stake, he will heed my prayers.
By the time I collapse into bed, my body shimmers with sweat from the Godstone’s burning response.
The next day is a whirlwind of monotony. Everyone wants my opinion, but only on the most minor of matters. “How would you like to make your entrance, Your Highness?” “Which dishes would you prefer for the feast afterward?” “Do you want stargazer lilies or allamanda?” “Should the orchestra play the ‘Glorifica’ or the ‘Entrada Triunfal’?”
Don’t they realize a war is coming?
“It is precisely the coming war that makes them so desperate to lose themselves in the details of this celebration,” Ximena explains. “So be a good queen-to-be and smile a lot and let them have their bit of happiness.”
She’s right, and guilt twinges in my chest. I have been forgetting to be kind.
“Now tell me,” she says. “Which of these gowns do you like best?”
We settle on a silk gown with a sheer overlay. It’s an airy wine gold color, with dainty yellow vines embroidered along the hem. Next to the shimmery fabric, my sun-darkened skin fairly glows. We used to hem all my dresses, but I’m a little taller now than when I was taken into the desert. Surely that will be the last of my growth spurts.
“It will be perfect once I let it out a little in the bust,” Ximena says. “Alejandro will think you’re beautiful when he sees it.” Her eyes shine with something powerful. She is the mother I never had, and like a mother, she is going to soak up the day of my coronation, treasuring each moment in her heart. I reach forward and give her a squeeze.
“Thank you, Ximena.”
Early the next morning, my nurse awakens me by opening the balcony curtains to let the sunrise stream copper across my face. Mara helps me across the slippery tile into the bathing pool while Ximena prepares an herbal soak.
“Mara, these tiles.” I run my fingers across the glazed surface. Each one is individually painted, but they all show the same thing: a bouquet, four yellow petals to a flower, each petal with a single blue spot, like a blot of ink or maybe an eye. My Godstone responds so strangely when I look at them up close, like it’s greeting an old friend. “Can you ask around today? Learn something about them?”
“Of course.” She lathers my hair and I lean back, closing my eyes.
Hours later, I’m standing outside the audience hall for the second time in three days. I hear the buzz behind the double doors as I wait, suffocating in my creamy silk. Another rushed ceremony, like my wedding. And once again, Alejandro waits for me at the end of a very long walk. This time, though, my father is not here to escort me. Lord Hector has that honor, by my request.
I look up at his handsome, weathered face. He is taller even than Alejandro, a sturdy, comforting presence.
He studies me thoughtfully. “You are a beautiful queen, Elisa,” he says, voice pitched low.
I never expected he would say such a thing. “A month or two of pastries will fix that,” I say. Then I smile to show him I mean it flippantly.
His expression does not change. “Even then.”
It is kind of him to say so. “Thank you for doing this, Hector. I’m glad you’re here.”
He squeezes my arm. “Always.” He looks toward the doors now, his face a stone, but I know him a little better now. Like Cosmé, he becomes ice to keep from feeling too much.
The first wisps of the “Glorifica” filter through the walls. Hector and I straighten. The music ascends in steady arpeggios, the doors open inward. I hold my head high as Hector escorts me down the newly carpeted aisle. Alejandro stands transfixed by my approach, Rosario a slender shadow beside him.
It all happens very quickly. Alejandro kisses my cheek; Father Nicandro intones an oath about honor and responsibility that I repeat back to him. The priest lifts the crown from a cushioned pedestal—a thick golden thing that makes my head hurt just to look at—and lodges it firmly against my scalp with a wink.
He gestures for me to face the court, then announces, “Queen Lucero-Elisa de Vega né Riqueza!”
The entire nobility drops to its knees. Alejandro grasps my hand, and together we sit side by side on our thrones. I watch enviously as Rosario is whisked away by a nurse. My rear grows cold and stiff as every single noble in the audience hall is presented to me. I remember Ximena’s words about allowing them the veil of happiness they desperately desire. So I greet each one with a confident smile and mumble words of encouragement whenever anyone brings up the subject of war.
But it is all an act, for as the afternoon wears on, my navel begins to pulse with telltale cold. It’s faint, nothing a quick prayer can’t erase. But it means that Invierne is coming for me, that they are even closer than we thought.
Chapter 31
WHEN the coronation ends I expect to return my attention to the serious matter of war preparation. Instead, it seems as though half the citizens of Joya d’Arena need a royal consultation or a queenly favor. The other half is anxious to place me in their debt, and they inundate me with nuggets of wisdom regarding certain pertinent matters, shower me with gifts, introduce me to people of crucial importance. I spend the first two days as queen bobbing my head like a chicken and saying “Thank you.”
On the second afternoon, while the petite but unlovely Lady Jada chatters at me in my suite, frustration builds like an avalanche in my gut. There are so many things I could be doing. I need to be searching for the Godstones, going over battle strategy with General Luz-Manuel, preparing for refugees, having a talk with Condesa Ariña, maybe spending time with Rosario.
Rosario. No one notices him. No one cares what he does.
I interrupt Lady Jada’s aspersion of inferior laundering practices by raising my hand. “I just realized I’ve forgotten to attend to something very important.” I smile blandly. “I hope you can forgive me.”
She wrinkles her tiny nose in confusion but recovers quickly. “We’ll have to talk again soon,” she says, curtsying.
“I look forward to it.”
As soon as she leaves, I turn to Ximena. “Rosario is going to stay in our suite for a few days. I need an extra bed brought in, some clothes for playing in, maybe a few toys. Tell his nurse she has a week off. In fact, tell her she doesn’t have to come back until the war is over.”
Her smile is broad. “I’ll go at once.”
I send Mara to retrieve the boy himself, then spend a few minutes pacing through my suite, thinking. Every time I glance at the tiles rimming my bathing pool, the Godstone hums in response.
Mara returns, Rosario in tow. His eyes are wide, his gaze bordering on suspicious.
I grin. “I thought you might like to stay with us for a while.”
His eyes narrow. “How come?”
I open my mouth to tell him something comforting and innocuous. I want us to get acquainted, or I need a companion for a few outings. But I remember growing up in Papá’s palace hacienda while adults talked over my head, and what I say is, “I need your help.”
His lips purse with serious consideration. “I told Papá I could help. With the war. But he said I had to wait until I was older.”
“Well, I need your help right now. With the war. How would you like to do a little spying?”
His lips curve into a shy grin.
Late in the afternoon, the first wave of refugees arrives. They are mostly young and healthy—the ones who could travel quickly. We accommodate several hundred in the palace, a hundred more at surrounding estates. I spend the early evening making them as comfortable as possible, sifting through their tales of hardship and escape for any possible mention of the friends I left behind. I learn that the Malficio continues to make its presence felt, that thousands of people, mostly refugees, now contribute to its purpose. But my Godstone grows colder, and I worry for the those who will not reach us ahead of Invierne’s advancing army.
That night in the dining hall, I share a private meal with my husband and General Luz-Manuel. We’re finishing off a platter of wild turkey glazed with honey and shredded orange peel when a breathless scout tumbles in, Lord Hector on his heels. He reports sighting a huge line of cavalry, less than a day away.
“Just cavalry?” Alejandro asks.
The scout confirms and is dismissed.
“That doesn’t make sense,” he muses as Lord Hector plunks down beside him.
“It’s just an advance guard,” Luz-Manuel says. “They’re here to cut us off. The bulk of the army will arrive during the next month or so.”
Alejandro sighs. “Then we must cover the pits and close the gates.”
I put a hand to his arm. “Refugees will trickle in all night. Can we keep the gates open that long, at least?”