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Chapter One

Aurelia

T he smell of burnt silk lingers in the hall of the imperial apartments. I pause by one doorway, gazing toward the chambers that until very recently were mine as empress.

No more smoke wafts past the broken door, but scorch marks streak across the frame. Staff hustle out, carrying pieces of charred furniture that’s beyond salvaging.

The fire started by Linus, the more insane of my twin husbands, nearly swallowed up me and my daughter forever.

My arms tighten around Coraya. Dozing against my chest, she seems unaware of all the chaos that’s followed her birth.

The four guards who accompanied me from the meeting room where I was nearly murdered— again —have halted in a ring around me. Two of them shift to admit one of the wetnurses hired to serve the new heir to the Darium empire .

She’s older than me, perhaps ten years more than my twenty-two, but she bows with all due respect for her empress. “Your Imperial Highness, I can take care of the baby while you get your much-needed rest.”

A more familiar face appears just behind her: Kassun, one of my most loyal guards who’s been with me from my earliest days as empress. He bobs his head in turn. “We’ll make sure your daughter returns to you safely. She’ll get full imperial security.”

Instinctively, I tuck Coraya’s tiny body even closer to my own. I’d point out that full imperial security didn’t prevent one of the two men acting as my husband from turning my bedroom into an inferno, but that was only because of the authority Linus enforced, sending the guards farther away.

And he’s dead now. I observed his limp body less than an hour ago, just to be sure.

The thought of letting go of my daughter sends a wrenching sensation down the middle of me, but at the same time, my legs sway. I stiffen them quickly, but my head remains in a partial daze. Despite the recent attentions of the palace medics, dull aches radiate through my pelvis and thighs.

I’ve only slept for a few hours since Coraya’s birth and been through plenty of trauma before and after. Is she really safe with me ? What if I sleep through her cries of hunger in my exhaustion?

I have to think of what’s best for her.

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

It still takes significant force of will to ease my arms away from my bosom and place my newborn in the wetnurse’s embrace.

The woman bows to me again, beaming at me and then at Coraya with a gentle warmth that smooths the sharpest edges off my anxiety. “She’ll be treasured as she deserves, Your Imperial Highness.”

She steps across the hall to one of the imperial heir apartments and disappears inside with a full host of guards.

Swallowing my apprehension, I fish in the pouch at my hip for the key to my temporary new chambers, ones also meant to be used by an imperial heir. As my fingers close around the metal surface, urgent footsteps thump down the hall toward me.

“Is the empress uninjured?” a newly roughened voice demands. “It seems assassins are teeming through the palace—what are the lot of you doing about it?”

The other man who acted as emperor barges into our midst—or at least attempts to before my remaining guards move to block him. Marc’s darkened eyes flash, but he draws himself up short with a flex of his jaw. His intense gaze sweeps over me.

The sight of the man who saved me, who I then saved—the man I’ve seen as a monster for most of our engagement and marriage but who proved to at least be less of one than his brother—sends a wobble through my pulse.

Words spill out of me. “I’m fine. The medics couldn’t heal your scars?”

It’s a pointless question—I can see the answer for myself.

Most of Marc’s golden curls were scorched steel-gray by the flames and the magical wind and shadows that battered him.

A matching blotch discolors more than half of his face, rippling unevenly across the center of his forehead, nose, and chin into the natural pale skin remaining on the right side.

As far as I can tell, the strange effect hasn’t been lightened at all since I first noticed it.

The uneven border of the scar makes even the shapes of his features appear different.

Between that and the gravelly warping of his voice, no one in the palace now recognizes Marc as emperor.

The fact that another man appearing to be the emperor is lying dead in the palace temple would only make the true story of his identity sound more insane.

My guards have stiffened. “We protected Her Imperial Highness,” one of them snaps. “She came to no harm.”

Marc jerks his hand through the air. “You didn’t catch the would-be murderer.”

Another of the guards bares her teeth. “And you think you’d have managed it if you’d been there instead of seeing about your face? Go chase the tribune now if you’re so sure of your skills. The empress needs her rest.”

Marc’s gaze flicks back to me. I can’t read all the emotions roiling behind his tensed expression.

We haven’t had any chance to speak in private since the fire. All the secrets of my crimes hang in the air between us, alongside the ways we protected each other in the end.

I need to know where I stand with him. It feels safer to have him nearby than roaming through the palace that used to be his all day, doing gods know what.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to throw caution to the wind. Just because he saved me a few hours ago doesn’t mean I can count on his continued devotion.

Four more figures followed him down the hall with equal haste if more quietly. I look past my husband to the princes who played an equal part in saving my life. Three of them are the people I trust most in this world, who’ve defended me through so many troubles before this.

I lift my hand as if to brush a stray strand of my hair back behind my ear and make a discreet gesture. Lorenzo catches the message and gives a slight nod in answer. All four of them drift away.

Girding myself, I take on my best imperial tone.

“You’ve all served me admirably, and I’m sure efforts are already underway to bring Tribune Valerisse to justice.

For now… I mu st admit this morning’s havoc has left me shaken.

Marc did see me through the worst of it.

I feel I would sleep better with him guarding my door from the inside as well as the four of you without. ”

Of all the things I could criticize Marc for, he’s never been slow-witted. I’m sure he can realize that I’d like to speak privately.

No doubt he has plenty of things he’d like to say as well. He draws himself straighter with a hint of eager energy. “I would be honored to serve the empress so.”

My other guards exchange looks, but Dariu’s rulers have beaten obedience above all else into their staff. And there’s no denying that I have plenty of reason for rattled nerves and to seek security in the supposed newcomer who rescued me from both a murderer and a deadly blaze.

In the silence of their acceptance, I brush my hands together. “Let us have a pallet brought first in case my rescuer needs to take his own rest. He can lay it by the door and remain on guard.”

A page arrives with the requested pallet a few minutes later—all the delay I needed. I step into the chambers that still hold a trace of my husband’s tart-and-smoky cologne from when these rooms belonged to him, a mere year ago. Marc enters at my heels and shuts the door behind him.

My heart thuds faster, chasing away my exhausted daze. I walk to the foot of the bed where someone has brought my two trunks—scorched but not burnt through—and sit on the lid of one.

A soft mew makes my pulse skip a beat in a much happier fashion. My tabby cat, Sprite, darts out from beneath the bed to bump her head against the side of the trunk in an appeal for a petting.

She’s no longer limping. One of the medics must have healed her from the injury Linus dealt her .

As I rub her chin to her pleased purr, Marc sets down the pallet by the threshold. He approaches me, stopping when he’s a few paces away.

For a moment, we simply hold there, looking at each other.

Abruptly, he reaches into his pocket and extends his hand to me. The hilt of a small knife protrudes from his fingers, held so the blade is toward him rather than pointing at me.

“You should have this back,” he says in that odd combination of familiar cadence but altered timbre.

It’s my knife—the one I tried to defend myself with against Linus, the one I handed Marc so he could see his scar in the reflection. The one he gave to me to begin with, back when we were first married.

The one I braced over his heart last night after I spilled every dark secret I have in an attempt to provoke his rage.

I take it from him, careful not to let my fingers brush his, and set it next to me on the trunk. I’ll need to recover my belt sheath or obtain a new one if the old was consumed by the fire.

I suppose this is as good a starting point for the necessary conversation as any. “After what I told you yesterday, I’m surprised you wouldn’t prefer to stab me with it.”

Sprite leaps up onto the trunk and tucks herself close to me as if she’s preparing for him to try. I stroke her soft fur, but my gut stays twisted.

Marc’s throat bobs. “If that were my intent, I wouldn’t have killed Linus to stop him from doing as much himself.”

My mouth slants into a tight, wry smile. “I’m still not sure why you did that either.”

“Aurelia…” He appears to grope for words, which maybe isn’t surprising. He’s had far more shocking revelations dumped on his head in the past day than I have, and he probably got even less sleep last night, if any at all .

His expression firms. He sinks to his knees and sits back on his heels so he’s looking up at me rather than down.