Page 50 of A Pact of Blood

“Well, the empress’s rooms are nearly as fancy as His Imperial Majesty’s. You are looked after well.”

“I earned my place,” I say mildly, which she knows as well as anyone, and retrieve my tea box and brewing apparatus from my trunk.

Bianca watches with undisguised interest as I pick out a few more ingredients. Right on time for my morning preparations, Eusette’s voice carries through the door. “Your Imperial Highness, are you already up? I’ve brought the water for your morning tea.”

I hustle over to the door and take the small pot from my maid, blocking her way in. “Thank you. I’m having a private conversation with a friend, and as you can see, I’ve dressed myself. Could you come back just before breakfast to give me a hand taming my hair better?”

Eusette’s eyes widen with a curious glint, but she bobs her head and departs.

I turn around to find Bianca staring at me more incredulously than before. “Why are you doing this?” she blurts out.

I don’t know if it’s my calling her a friend or the fact that I’m protecting her secret at all that’s bewildered her, but the answer would be the same regardless. “You’ve been hurt. I can help heal you. We may not exactly be friends, but we aren’t enemies anymore, are we?”

She ducks her head with a wince. “No, I wouldn’t say we are. But I wouldn’t have blamed you for considering me one.”

I grope for the right words to encompass all that’s happened between us. “I don’t think any of us were behaving at our best during the trials.”

Bianca sits in silence as I prepare my miniature cauldron over its burner. A weariness comes over her pretty face that unsettles me nearly as much as her difficulty walking.

When she speaks again, her voice is quiet. “You were. No matter what anyone did to you, you played a fair game.”

“I can’t claim that wasn’t strategic in its own way. It’s the approach that’s always worked best for me.”

“Fausta’s approach obviously didn’t work for her.” Bianca rubs a gleam of tears from her eyes. “I won’t make excuses for her. She did what she felt she had to do too. It’s an honor being part of the court, but it also comes with certain… restrictions. She finally had the opportunity to be something more, something more powerful.”

“And you helped her,” I say evenly.

“She was like a little sister to me. Of course I wanted to see her elevated as far as she could be. And any threat to her winning would mean herdyinginstead. That was all I was thinking about. It was nothing to do with you personally.”

She pauses. “I suppose you were an easier target becausewe didn’t know you, and a more important one because you’d already won Marclinus’s attention once. But in the end, you tried to look out for her too, even though your life was on the line. I never properly thanked you for that.”

The way she’s laid it out so plainly reminds me of conversations with Nica back home. My friend could sometimes be too blunt for politeness, but she knew how to cut to the heart of the matter when it was important.

Perhaps if Bianca and I had been able to talk this way to begin with, we might have forged something like an actual friendship.

Shrugging off the pang of homesickness, I stir the potion that’s now coming to a simmer. “My attempt didn’t do much good for her in the end.” Lady Fausta still plummeted to a painful but hopefully brief death during the final trial.

“Perhaps not. But the trying matters to the rest of us still here. It matters to me, anyway. I’m sorry for how we hurt you that one night. You didn’t deserve that.”

She sounds resigned, as if she doesn’t expect me to accept the apology, but I think she means it.

I retrieve my ointment for soothing wounds and glance up at her. “I expect you’ll forgive me for not wanting to take any midnight walks in the woods with you going forward, but I have no interest in punishing you for the past. I’d rather we move forward with respect and mutual understanding. This needs to go directly on your injuries. Where are you hurt?”

A flicker of panic passes through Bianca’s expression. She draws her posture more upright on the sofa, her legs tucking together. “I’d rather see to the application myself, on my own. If you’d allow me the use of your bathing room?”

I would, but her immediate refusal to reveal the location combined with the shifting of her stance sends a jolt of ice through my veins. How many places could she be injuredthe way my gift suggests without my having noticed her favoring a specific limb or the bulge of a bandage beneath her dress?

My hand tightens around the pot. “Did Marclinus do this? Is he the one who hurt you?”

He’s been domineering but never brutally rough when he’s taken me to bed—but I’ve never let him carry out the full act. Who knows what violent intimacies he might be imagining in the grips of the hallucinations?

Bianca’s cheeks flare ruddy as she must realize I’ve caught on despite her attempt at avoiding the subject. “No. I wasn’t with him last night. I…”

Her fingers curl into the folds of her skirt. She looks down at her lap and back at me. After a tense moment, she must decide there’s no point in making up a story.

“My husband would rather not share my affections,” she says tersely. “But of course he would never deny His Imperial Majesty. Mostly he tolerates it, but every now and then he lets out some of his frustration on me. He’s never been quite this rough before.”

My stomach sinks. How badly must Viceroy Ennius have manhandled her for her to be not just bruised but torn and fighting off an infection?

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