Chapter 2: The Last Good Night
The solar was a cavern of faded grandeur. Its once-gilded ceiling peeled like old skin, and the murals of laughing nobles and sunlit feasts had been clawed into obscurity by restless, anxious fingers. The air clung thick with the scent of damp stone and the faint, acrid tang of candle wax—always burning, never extinguished, as if the very walls were afraid of the dark.
Isabelle had gathered her sisters close by the meager fire. The flames did little to push back the chill, but they drew the three of them into a small, private world of flickering light. Marguerite worked a piece of embroidery, her motions automatic, her eyes distant. Anne paced, a caged fox wearing a path into the worn rug.
“Sit, Anne. You’re making me nervous,” Marguerite murmured, not looking up.
“We’re all nervous,” Anne shot back, not stopping. “Aren’t we? Or are you both just resigned to it? To everything?”
Isabelle watched them, the cold weight of the agreement she’d made settling deeper into her bones. She took a breath. “I’ve spoken to him. To King Henry.”
Both sisters froze. Anne stopped pacing. Marguerite’s needle hovered mid-stitch.
“When?” Anne demanded, her voice tight.
“Last night. He came to my chamber.”
Marguerite’s face paled. Anne’s flushed with fury. “He what?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Isabelle said, her voice a low, steady force. She leaned forward, the firelight carving shadows under her cheekbones. “Listen to me. We have one card left to play, and I have played it.” She looked from one face to the other, anchoring them with her gaze. “I marry him. Tomorrow.”
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the hiss and pop of a log settling in the grate.
Anne exploded. “No! You can’t! He’s a usurper, a brute, he—"
Isabelle reached out and pressed a finger to Anne’s lips, silencing her. The gesture was firm, final. She then turned to Marguerite, whose silent tears had begun to trace shiny paths down her cheeks. Isabelle wiped them away with the sleeve of her gown, her touch surprisingly tender against the stark action.
“You will live,” Isabelle said, her voice a blade wrapped in velvet. “That is the only victory left to us. Everything else is gone. Our home, our father’s throne, our future as we imagined it. Gone. But you will live. He has promised me that.”
“What promise?” Marguerite whispered, her voice barely audible. “What could his word possibly be worth?”
“It is worth your lives. He has agreed that I decide your futures. Not him. Not his council. Me.” Isabelle sat back, pulling her sisters’ hands into her lap. “So I have decided. You will not be pawns. You will not be hostages shuffled into some distant tower. You will be wives. You will be safe.”
Anne wrenched her hand back. “Sold off, you mean. Like cattle at a market.”
“No,” Isabelle said sharply. “Placed. Strategically. Cherished, if I have any say in it.” She turned to Marguerite first. “You will marry the Duke of Valois. I’ve met him, years ago. He’s quiet. He loves music and gardens. He writes poetry, terrible poetry, but he writes it. He won’t crush your spirit. He’ll give you a studio with northern light for your painting and never disturb you. You’ll have peace.”
Marguerite stared, her tears slowing. The description was so specific, so incongruously gentle in this grim room, that it seemed to carve out a small space of possibility in the dread.
Isabelle then looked at Anne, who was scowling but listening, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. “And you, my fiery girl, will go to the Duke of Milan.”
Anne blinked. “Milan? He’s… what, sixty?”
“Forty-two,” Isabelle corrected, a ghost of a smile touching her lips. “And he’s drowning in a court of soft-handed sycophants. He needs someone with a spine. Someone who isn’t afraid to make a hard decision, to tell him when he’s being a fool. He needs your nerve, Anne. He’ll respect it. You won’t be a decoration. You’ll be a partner. You’ll have a purpose.”
The logic of it, cold and pragmatic, began to seep through Anne’s anger. Her shoulders loosened slightly. “And you?” she asked, her voice losing its heat, gaining a hollow tone. “What do you get, Isabelle? A crown stained with our father’s blood? A bed with the man who took it?”
The question hung in the smoky air. Isabelle looked into the fire, the flames reflected in her hazel eyes. “I get to know you are both alive. I get to see you sent to places where you are valued, not feared. Where you can breathe without listening for footsteps outside the door.” She finally met Anne’s gaze. “That is what I get.”
Marguerite sniffled, then straightened, a new resolve squaring her delicate frame. “Tomorrow? It’s so soon.”
“He is a man who acts,” Isabelle said. “Delay serves no one. The ceremony will be small. In the chapel. There will be no feasting. It is a political transaction, and he wants it seen as done.”
Anne sank onto a footstool, her energy spent. “What do we do?”
“You stand with me. You smile. You curtsy to your new king. And then, within the week, you pack your things and you go to your new lives.” Isabelle’s voice cracked, just once. “And you live them. Fully. That is your only task. Live them.”
A servant entered then, a young girl with downcast eyes, carrying an armful of fabric. She laid it carefully on a table: a gown of deep emerald silk, intricate but severe in its cut. A queen’s dress, not a princess’s. “For tomorrow, my lady,” the girl whispered before scurrying out.
The three sisters looked at the dress. It shimmered in the firelight, a final, unspoken sentence.
Marguerite stood and walked to it. She touched the sleeve with her painter’s fingers. “The color will suit your hair,” she said softly, practically, an artist assessing a subject. It was an act of breathtaking courage, a decision to face what came next with grace.
Anne let out a long, shaky breath. She walked over and took Isabelle’s hand again, her grip firm. No words were needed. The pact was sealed.
Outside the solar, the castle readied itself for a wedding. The sound of hurried preparations was a faint drumbeat through the stone. Inside, by the dying fire, three sisters held onto each other, building a fortress from the ruins of what was, and from the terrifying, fragile blueprint of what would be.