The Girl of Fire and Thorns

Chapter 7

CANDLES sputter in the breeze from my open balcony, and the words of the Scriptura Sancta blur on their pages. I am reaching over to snuff the flames when someone knocks on the mysterious door.

Ximena tumbles into my room through the atrium, her hair mussed, her face alert. I shrug in answer to her unasked question. The knock sounds again.

“Come,” I call as my nurse sidles close to my bed.

The door opens silently. Alejandro stands in the doorway, straight and tall and wonderful.

“Hello, Lucero-Elisa. Ximena.”

Ximena relaxes into a graceful curtsy. “Your Majesty.” She straightens and smiles. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll return to bed.”

The king and I haven’t been alone together since our wedding night.

“How was your first day in Brisadulce?” He leans against the wall; the distance between us is disappointing but safe.

“Fine.” I search for something clever to say. “Your kitchen master makes excellent honey and coconut scones.”

At his raised eyebrow, I consider pulling the covers over my head. Queen Rosaura’s delicate face and slender neck swim before me. I doubt she spent much time in the kitchens.

But his pleased smile holds no contempt; he’s taking the compliment to heart. “I’m just sorry I wasn’t able to show you around myself.”

I’m sorry too. I would have liked the excuse to cling to his arm all day. “Lord Hector was pleasant company.”

“Lord Hector is a good friend,” he says carefully. “He became my page when he was a boy. As he grew older, I took him more and more into my confidence.”

I nod politely, wondering what the point is. I haven’t known Alejandro long, but he does not seem one for idle conversation. To fill the space, I say, “He spoke highly of you.” It’s not the exact truth, but it seems appropriate.

“He speaks highly of you also.”

“Oh?” I hope the dim candlelight hides my blush.

“Indeed. He says you’ve got steel in you, that you are wise beyond your years. He wouldn’t say more, which is odd because, as I’ve said, we’re very close.” It bothers him that Hector would keep something from him. And it bothers me to see how deeply aware of my “years” Alejandro is.

“I have no idea what he means,” I lie. Lord Hector watched me intervene on Father Nicandro’s behalf. I don’t know why the guard chose not to relate the incident to Alejandro, but I don’t mind having this harmless secret together.

Alejandro shrugs and looks away, and I find the gesture so vulnerable, so endearing, that I almost blurt the day’s events. I wish he would sit next to me on the bed. I imagine what it would be like to feel his cheek against mine, my fingers in his hair.

Finally he says, “I need your help, Elisa.”

“My help?”

“Please. I’m leaving tomorrow for Puerto Verde, to visit my mother and retrieve my son. He’s been fostering there the last three years.”

“Oh.” I look down to hide my disappointment. “How long will you be gone?”

“A month.”

A whole month! I’m proud of the evenness in my voice when I say, “And how do you want me to help?”

He grabs one of my new chairs and swings a long leg around to straddle it backward. His arms hug the chair back, and he cocks his head. “Yours is the newest presence in Brisadulce, and a royal one, no less. While I’m gone, some of the others will approach you to take your measure. Maybe to see how useful or important you can be to them.”

I nod along with him. I understand these subtle battles, this understated leveraging for power. I’ve observed it my whole life, my response always one of stunning disinterest. At home, Juana-Alodia is the virtuoso, and Orovalle’s nobleza d’oro dances enthralled by her melody.

“You can help me so much, Elisa,” he continues. “Just by paying attention. Write it down if you must. Write down who seeks you out, what they offer, anything you think may be important. And then, when I return . . .”

He wants a spy in his own household. Perhaps he worries that some in his court are preparing to move against him. Or maybe, like Alodia, he simply uses every available pawn to play the game. They would have been well matched, my husband and my sister.

He takes my silence for hesitation. His gaze is unwavering as he rises from the chair and approaches my bed. “Please, Elisa,” he whispers.

My heart pounds in my throat as he takes my hand. It’s shapeless against his straight, strong fingers. But he leans closer, and I smell the spicy wildness of him.

“This is what we discussed,” he whispers. “That night. When I said I could use a friend.”

Our wedding night. Why can’t he say it? But I nod anyway. I’d agree to anything, with his lips so near mine.

He leans back, the intensity gone, replaced by that easy, boyish grin. Now that he no longer hovers next to me, my mind begins to clear.

“The door you came through. Where does it lead?”

If he is taken aback by the change in subject, he does not show it. “My suite. It attaches to this one, of course.”

Of course. These rooms must have belonged to Queen Rosaura. He has given me that, at least.

“You will bring the prince back with you, then?”

“Oh, yes! He’s a bright boy. Already a skilled horseman. I’d like very much for you to meet him.”

“I’d like that too.” But it’s not true. I feel even less ready to be a mother than a wife.

He turns to go. Once in the doorway that connects our suites, he glances over his shoulder and says, “Lord Hector was right. There’s steel in you.”

The days following Alejandro’s departure pass interminably. Though I’ve agreed to be his eyes and ears, I avoid the dining hall and its maneuvering nobility as often as possible, preferring to take my meals alone with the kitchen master. He’s a kind fellow, thin and flour dusted, and he seems glad for the company.

During the afternoons, I seek out Father Nicandro. Together, we pour over the Belleza Guerra, spotting contextual inaccuracies in my own copy. His study is so like Master Geraldo’s, with its haphazard scrolls and dusty vellum and close-in adobe walls. It smells of candles and age and drying ink, and I have but to close my eyes to imagine myself home in Orovalle, in the one place where I don’t feel useless.

Questions tumble around in my head about the Godstone, about its history, about what Nicandro meant when he called Ximena my “guardian.” But my nurse is always hovering about, guarding me from myself, and I’m afraid to ask lest she change her mind about sparing the priest. One morning I rise early and creep from our suite to seek him out, but he is not there. When I return, Ximena scolds me for venturing out without protection, and the fear in her eyes, true and fierce, frightens me.

Cosmé is in constant attendance. Though no one will take Aneaxi’s place, Cosmé is the most efficient maid I’ve ever had. I tell her so, frequently, and it gives me such a twist of pleasure to watch her react to praise from someone she despises. The Scriptura Sancta calls it “the fire of kindness.”

She is cleaning out my fireplace one day, her hands and arms black with soot up to her elbows, when I invite her to move her things into Ximena’s room.

“There is plenty of room,” I assure her. “And I know the servants’ quarters are cramped.”

“Thank you, Highness,” she says without looking up. “But I have my mistress’s suite to myself right now.”

“You do?” I realize I haven’t seen Condesa Ariña in days, maybe weeks.

“She went to Puerto Verde with the king, of course.”

She says it so flippantly, between shovelfuls, but her words are like fists in my stomach.

My voice is tight and wavery. “Does she accompany His Majesty often?”

Cosmé stands, the bucket of soot weighing her shoulder down. A gray-black smear streaks her lovely forehead. “They get away together as often as possible. She accompanies him almost as often as Lord Hector. Would you like a fire tonight, now that it’s all clear?”

“No, thank you,” I whisper. Who would need a fire in this place? I can hardly breathe for the strangulating heat around my neck.

That night, after Ximena has gone to sleep, I sneak down to the kitchens. The kitchen master is there, getting a head start on tomorrow’s batch of bread. He says nothing when he sees my unshed tears, just gestures toward a bench near the round oven and hands me a platter of cheeses. A pungent variety with tiny bits of pepper tingles on my tongue. I eat until my belly aches, until I can no longer distinguish the spice of the peppers. I wash it all down with two glasses of wine and lurch back to my suite.

The next day, General Luz-Manuel, a man I’ve only seen from across a cluster of food platters, calls on me. My head aches from lack of sleep, so I feel justified turning him away with apologies, pleading illness. I know I’ve failed Alejandro by denying a member of his household. Married to him less than a month, and already I’ve failed. But it’s hard to care.

My husband has a mistress. I know it with certainty. “Mistress” has always felt like such a naughty word, but not a serious one. I am a naive child, so out of my depth.

I lie in bed all day. Condesa Ariña’s face flutters in the canopy above me—the coral of her gently flushed cheeks, the softness of her skin. She has a part of my husband that I don’t even begin to understand. I try not to think of them together, but I can’t help it. Then, without meaning to, I start imagining his warm hands on my bare skin. It’s exciting and terrifying, and part of me is glad that I may never know. I’m not sure I could bear to be naked before him.

Late in the afternoon, a pageboy brings a message from the dovecote. Ximena grabs it and sends him away before he can ask questions. She breaks the canister’s seal and hands it to me. I recognize Alodia’s hurried script.

Dearest Elisa,

My condolences regarding Aneaxi.

Your status in Joya d’Arena was not part of our negotiation. He agreed to marry you in the sight of Orovalle’s nobility and take you safely to his country. In return, Papá will commit troops for the upcoming war with Invierne.

Elisa, little sister, if you wish to be Joya’s queen in spirit as well as name, you can make it happen, but you must make your own decisions regarding your place there. I cannot counsel you.

I do believe you have it in you to be a great queen.

Papá sends his love.

Alodia

I read the letter over and over, imagining my sister’s exasperated face. When we were children together, she would huff away, rolling her eyes. The Lucero-Elisa of a month ago would have seen this letter as but a grown-up version of that same contempt, that same frustration at my inability to meet hers and Papá’s expectations. But I feel the truth of it now. Alodia thinks I could play the game if I chose to, and play it well.

She thinks I could be a great queen.

It’s heady stuff. I begin to wonder, hesitantly, if she is right. I’ve never wished to rule. Ruling is tedious and exhausting, but better, perhaps, than being useless. And it might be the only way to make Alejandro mine in some way, to matter to him. I toy with the idea for hours, asking what Alodia would do in my place, remembering applicable passages in the Belleza Guerra.

I make a mental list of my advantages. Alejandro is housing me in the queen’s suite. I’m not sure what it means, but it’s significant enough that his mistress sent her maid to spy on me the day after I arrived. I have Ximena, a woman I don’t begin to understand, but whose loyalty to me is unquestioned. I’ve made a friend in the head priest of the Monastery-at-Brisadulce. I am a princess of Orovalle and therefore outrank everyone save Alejandro and his young son.

But the hugest advantage of all is that I bear the Godstone. A tremendous honor, I’ve always been told, bestowed by God only once every hundred years, a sign that I am destined for greatness.

But I’ve had several perplexing hints that I don’t know much about it at all: Alodia’s warning that I should trust no one. The execution of a man who recognized my Godstone. The way Father Nicandro reverently referred to my nurse as my guardian. And now Alodia’s letter, which says I was to be taken safely away.

The Belleza Guerra says to beware of power, for it is the sparking stone of fear. What is it about my Godstone that sparks so much fear?

I place my fingertips against the smooth surface. Even through my nightgown, it pulses soft and warm. If I decide to play this terrifying game, my first move must be to discover what it truly means to be the bearer. And I will have to sneak around Ximena to do it.

I close my eyes and pray. Did you place your stone inside me to help me become queen? I can’t decide how I want God to answer.

A warm hand presses against my forehead, and I open my eyes. Ximena looks down at me with an affectionate smile. “You look better,” she says. “More color to your cheeks.”

I smile back. “I feel much better.”

“Are you ready to eat more? I could get some pastries for you, some chilled juice?”

“No, thank you.” My mind whirls with planning, for I may have thought up a way to speak with Father Nicandro in secret. “I’m not hungry.”