Beatrice's breath caught in her throat under the Empress's gaze.
Isabella's eyes moved — just slightly, just briefly — toward the thick history book still resting in Beatrice's arms. Her lashes lowered, hiding whatever had just passed through her expression. But Beatrice had seen it. That flicker of something dark and deliberate, there and gone in less than a second.
"History," Isabella repeated softly, almost as if she were speaking to herself rather than to Beatrice. She let the word sit in the air a moment before continuing. "And what exactly did you find so exciting in this old relic?"
Beatrice swallowed.
Her fingers curled tightly around the fabric of her skirt beneath the book.
"It is only natural to be curious, Your Majesty," she said, keeping her voice steady and polite. "I simply wished to expand my understanding of the empire."
Isabella stepped closer.
Her movements were slow and fluid — unhurried in the particular way of someone who has never once needed to rush, because every room they enter already belongs to them. The faint scent of rare incense clung to her silk gown like an invisible cloud, sweet and heavy enough to make Beatrice feel faintly lightheaded.
"I see," Isabella murmured. "And were you able to read it well?"
The question sounded perfectly harmless.
The tone beneath it did not.
There was something woven into her words — quiet and elegant and sharp as a wire drawn taut — that made the back of Beatrice's neck prickle.
"I looked through a few pages," Beatrice said, forcing a light, innocent smile. "But most of it is quite difficult to understand. I fear I would need far more time to make sense of it properly."
A lie. A thin one.
And from the slight curve that appeared at the corner of Isabella's lips — not quite a smile, not quite amusement — Beatrice could tell the Empress already knew it.
Isabella held out her hand.
Beatrice hesitated for only a fraction of a second before handing the book over.
The Empress received it gracefully, her gloved fingers settling along its edges — and that was when Beatrice noticed something that sent a quiet chill through her.
Isabella's fingers carefully, deliberately avoided the ink blot on the open page.
It wasn't accidental.
Her gloved hand shifted around it with the practiced precision of someone who knew exactly where it was and had no intention of touching it. Not even the edge of her glove grazed near it — as though she feared what might happen if it did.
Then the book snapped shut with a soft, firm thud.
"This record," Isabella said, rising to her full height and regarding the book for a moment before setting it aside, "contains stories meant only for those of imperial blood. Many sections are unfinished." She paused. "Others were intentionally removed."
The words landed in the room like stones dropped into still water.
Beatrice felt the ripples move through her chest.
She knew.
The missing pages weren't torn out by time or carelessness or neglect. They had been removed on purpose, by someone with the authority to rewrite — or erase — whatever history they chose. And the Empress had just admitted it as casually as one might comment on the weather.
"Forgive me if I overstepped, Your Majesty," Beatrice said quietly, lowering her head.
Isabella didn't respond immediately.
She simply studied her. The silence stretched out long enough to become uncomfortable, then longer still, until Beatrice could feel each passing second pressing down on her shoulders like added weight.
Then — without any warning at all — Isabella reached out and lifted Beatrice's chin with a single gloved finger.
Beatrice's breath stopped entirely.
The touch was gentle. Light as a feather. The kind of touch that, from anyone else, might have felt almost kind.
But Isabella's eyes — up close, framed by dark lashes and centuries of practiced composure — were absolute ice.
Beatrice felt her blood turn cold in her veins.
Her lips parted. No sound came out. She was completely frozen, like a small animal that has suddenly found itself face to face with something far larger and far more dangerous than it had anticipated. Every instinct she had screamed at her to look away, and she found she couldn't do that either.
"Your Majesty — I — " Her voice came out fractured.
"You are trembling," Isabella observed. Her voice had softened, which somehow made it worse.
"Calm yourself." She tilted her head just slightly. "Did I say anything to frighten you?"
She smiled.
But her eyes didn't move. They remained fixed on Beatrice's face, cold and searching and absolutely still — like two pieces of jade carved into the shape of something warm.
Then she released Beatrice's chin and turned away, drifting toward the ornate window that overlooked the palace grounds. The morning light caught the gold threading of her gown as she moved, making her look almost radiant.
Almost.
"When the palace calls to someone," Isabella said, her back turned, her voice quiet and almost contemplative, "it is rarely without reason."
Beatrice's heart knocked hard against her ribs.She didn't know what that meant. She suspected she wasn't supposed to know — not yet. It was the kind of sentence designed to plant itself in your mind and grow there slowly, roots spreading before you'd even realized something had been planted.
"Your Majesty…" she began carefully.
"You are to dine with the imperial family today," Isabella said, not turning around. "His Majesty insists." She folded her hands neatly behind her back. "Consider it preparation for the role you will eventually take on beside Prince Henry."
Beatrice's stomach twisted. She forced herself to nod. "Yes, Your Majesty."
Isabella turned then — slow, graceful, unhurried — and gave a single elegant nod toward the guards positioned near the door.
"You may escort Lady Laporte to the dining hall." The guards bowed and stepped forward.
Beatrice gathered herself, smoothed her skirts, and had just taken her first step toward the door when —
"BEATRICE."
She stopped.
She turned back to face the empress. Keeping her expression neutral, and dipped into a careful bow so that her face was angled downward.
The sound of her own name — her given name, not her title, not the formal address — spoken in the Empress's voice sent a cold shiver running straight down her spine.
"Yes, Your Majesty?"
A beat of silence.
"Hope You Enjoy Your Meal."
Five words.
Simple.
Pleasant.
The kind of thing one says to a guest without thinking.
Except Isabella had thought about every single word she'd ever said in her life.
Beatrice could feel it — the way the sentence carried more weight than its surface suggested, like looking at a frozen lake and sensing the depth beneath the ice without being able to see it. There was a meaning buried inside those five words that Beatrice couldn't fully reach, and the inability to reach it frightened her more than anything that had been said openly.
"Yes, Your Majesty," she replied. Calm. Controlled. The same two words she seemed to keep returning to in this room, like the only safe ground available.
"Good." Isabella clasped her gloved hands together softly. "See you in the dining hall, then."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Beatrice turned and walked out.
The moment the chamber doors closed behind her, she exhaled — long and slow and shaking — and kept walking.
The guards fell into step around her, armor clinking in their familiar rhythm, leading her down the corridor toward the dining hall. To them, this was another routine escort. Another ordinary morning in the palace.
To Beatrice, every step felt like walking through water.
Her heart hadn't slowed. Her skin still prickled where Isabella's gloved finger had tilted her chin upward, that single point of contact somehow more unsettling than anything sharp or loud could have been. Even now, moving away through a different corridor entirely, she had the distinct and deeply uncomfortable feeling that the Empress's eyes were still on the back of her neck.
She breathed in. Breathed out.
Why did she say my name like that?
Not Lady Laporte. Not the formal address that kept a careful and appropriate distance between them.
Just — Beatrice.
Spoken at the very last moment, when Beatrice had already thought the conversation was over. As if she had been testing something. As if she wanted to see how Beatrice reacted to the sound of her own name in Isabella's mouth.
What had she been looking for?
The corridor ahead curved gently to the right, lit by a long row of golden sconces spaced evenly along the walls. Between them hung the portraits — emperors and empresses and members of the imperial bloodline stretching back generations, all rendered in rich oils and heavy gilded frames. Their painted eyes followed her as she passed, the way painted eyes always seemed to in this palace. Every face was composed, proud, unreadable.
Every face reminded her that she did not belong here.
She was a marquis's daughter who had been selected and positioned and moved — not chosen. There was a difference, even if no one else in her life seemed to notice it or care. She was here because her family needed the alliance, because the Empress had issued the invitation, because the imperial family required a suitable match for their second prince. She was a function wearing a dress.
She had made her peace with that. Mostly.
But something about today felt different.
The book with its missing pages. The ink blot that hadn't been there and then had been, glistening and fresh with no explanation. The voice that had whispered her name from inside empty walls. The floor that had trembled beneath her feet while the guards outside felt nothing at all.
And then Isabella — with her cold eyes and her careful smile and her gloved fingers that would not touch the ink.
She knew about the missing pages.
She put them there — or rather, she took them out.
Beatrice kept her face forward and her steps even, but her mind was moving quickly beneath the surface, turning everything over, looking at it from different angles.
What had been in those pages?
What piece of the empire's history was so dangerous, so disruptive, that the Empress herself had seen fit to quietly cut it out and pretend it had never existed?
And why — of all the questions pressing against the inside of Beatrice's chest — did she have the deeply unsettling feeling that whatever had been erased from that book had something to do with her?
She pressed her fingers lightly to her sternum, feeling her heartbeat moving too fast beneath them.
The dining hall doors appeared at the end of the corridor — tall, gilded, attended by two guards who straightened as she approached. Through them, she could hear the faint clatter of fine china and the murmur of voices being carefully measured before being spoken aloud.
The imperial family.
Waiting.
Beatrice stopped just short of the doors, let herself take one full, quiet breath, and arranged her expression into something calm and pleasant and entirely appropriate.
Then she nodded to the guards.
They pulled the doors open.
And walked inside.