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Chapter Eleven

Marc

W hat exactly has this woman reduced me to?

She’s standing there amid three men she lets paw her with abandon, her skin still flushed from the way one of them pleasured her just moments ago.

And I can’t tear my gaze away, even as my hands clench at my sides and my jaw aches with the gritting of my teeth.

I want to rip their heads from their bodies and wallop them across the room in a bloody game of croquet. I want to stomp their fucking corpses to pulp.

But I won’t, because she would hate me. Because I’d lose any chance of her warm, sparkling gaze ever being aimed at me with the same kind of affection, and that thought agonizes me even more than the sharp sear of my jealousy.

So I’m left here seething as ineffectually as a toddler who’s had his favorite toy snatched, biting back the complaints even I know would sound pathetic.

She was mine first. She was mine more than yours.

Can I really say that’s true? Aurelia’s certainly not mine now. I’m only in the room because of the barest thread of fidelity I earned by stopping Linus’s final madness.

I saved her life, and I get to sleep by her door while they share her bed.

As with every time my mind veers so far into resentment, an image rises up of her face bent close to mine in the dimness of that secret basement room. The eyes now sparkling then hard with pain and fury. The matching emotions rippling through her taut voice.

Who hurled knives at my head? Who burned my hands raw?

You played along with his games. Even when you finally ‘let me into the family,’ it was all another test designed to crush me.

I doubt you’d have done much different in my position, whether you believe it or not.

The rage that was swelling inside me deflates.

In her eyes, I deserved much worse. And in her position, I doubt I could have found even the shred of compassion that led her to keep me alive.

She beat me in both might and kindness. I’ve never encountered a force as formidable as this astonishing woman. How the fuck can I be angry with her?

My foster brothers are another matter.

They hover around her, all smug eagerness, relishing their proximity to her even more while I have to watch from afar. Prince Bastien and Prince Lorenzo don’t bother to disguise their disdain when they glance at me. Prince Raul likes to outright smirk when Aurelia won’t notice.

He isn’t smirking at the moment, though. They’re all completely fixated on her—on the urgent tone her voice has taken that yanks my attention back to her too .

“Sabrelle’s been working against me for months ,” she’s saying. “Almost the entire time I’ve been in Dariu. Neven started getting those dreams not long after I was crowned empress.”

“She didn’t like you offing the emperor she put on the throne,” Raul suggests, speaking of my father’s murder so casually I have to restrain myself from throwing him out the window.

If I even could. I’ve seen the prince of Lavira win enough arena battles to know he’s no slouch in a fight.

Aurelia waves her hand as if dismissing the details. “Whatever the initial reasons, she’s only continued to like me less. It wasn’t until the coronation tour that she ramped up her efforts to encouraging assassination.”

Yes. Through that wretch Valerisse, who deserves my wrath more than any of the traitors in front of me. If I have the chance to get my hands on her , there won’t be any hesitating.

Lorenzo’s illusionary baritone, a voice I’m not yet used to him wielding, carries through my skull. “I’d have expected her to soften at least a little after seeing you display your might openly. What could she want from you?”

Aurelia’s mouth twists. “I don’t know. It’s possible… there isn’t anything I could do. That’s my point.”

Bastien is studying her with a gaze more incisive than I remember recognizing before. Did he play a dope around me in the past, or did I never bother to consider him properly?

“Where are you going with this, Aurelia?” he asks.

Her gaze darts to me. My heart leaps at the momentary attention and then sinks at the tightening of her expression.

She aims a wry smile at the princes. “I’m thinking about the strategies that have served me best in the past. When I couldn’t win over my husband even a little, instead of continuing to throw myself into a hopeless cause, I found other allies to turn to.”

My teeth grit, but I manage to keep my mouth shut. What could I say that wouldn’t add to her point?

Raul shoots me a cocky glance. “So if Marclinus is Sabrelle in this comparison, then we are…”

“The other godlen. They must have their own opinions about what happens in the empire’s half of this world they watch over. There are eight of them—surely if they were all on my side, they could overcome whatever animosity Sabrelle is holding on to.”

A wobble runs through my gut. Does she really think?—

Before I can put my apprehension into words, Bastien is diving into the idea. “You can already count on Elox. I can’t imagine any of the other gods would harbor ill-will against you.”

She shrugs. “I don’t know whether they’d have any feelings about me at all right now. I need to find ways of showing I’ll honor each of them in the way I rule the empire. Give them a reason to stand up to Sabrelle and her dedicats on my behalf.”

I can’t keep quiet. “To focus on eight instead of one?—”

Lorenzo’s voice overwhelms mine. “After those sick challenges Linus demanded while trying to put himself on their divine level, it shouldn’t be hard for you to look pious in contrast.”

Aurelia gives a soft laugh. “I hope not. You may be able to help with that. If you can meditate with your own godlen on what they’d most want to see from the empire—or consider from your past experiences… I can use all the guidance I can get.”

But not mine. I open my mouth again, and Raul glares at me before a sound can slip past my throat.

Fine. I’ll just wait until they’re not hovering around her. I still have the one advantage of being able to openly walk at her side, if in a much-diminished role.

After a brief negotiation, it’s decided that Raul will be spending the night. While Aurelia vanishes behind her dressing screen to change into her night garments and he sprawls out on the bed, I force myself to lie down on the now-familiar sleeping roll.

The rustle of his caress and the murmur of their kiss lance through my awareness. It’s a small blessing that I don’t have to endure any more gasps or moans.

I’ve become accustomed enough to my new position to fall asleep once Aurelia’s breaths have evened out. My instincts jerk me awake at the first purposeful stirrings on the bed come morning.

In the thin dawn light, Raul leans over to give Aurelia another kiss and pads over to the hidden panel in the wall. As he disappears behind it, Aurelia sits up on the bed with a swipe of her eyes.

I gather myself onto my feet. I have a short opening before her maids arrive to ready her for the day.

“I don’t think dismissing Sabrelle is the wisest idea,” I say.

Aurelia blinks at me. She slides out from beneath the covers and pushes her rumpled hair back from her face. The nightgown is chaste enough, but seeing it summons images from all the times I thought we came together in one bed or another.

Mostly hallucination, she said. And every bit of affection she actually offered me was feigned.

She folds her arms over her chest, which only emphasizes the curve of her breasts. “Is there any particular reason, or do you simply not like me ignoring your chosen godlen?”

I grimace. How long will it take before she knows I want to advise her properly, not based on petty concerns? “It’s a simple matter of practicality. It should be far easier to sway one godlen than seven—with the assumption that Elox already favors you.”

“If everything were equal, I’d agree. But Sabrelle has already proven particularly vengeful and resistant to my appeals. If she’s ten times as unyielding as any of her fellow divinities, I’m better off focusing on them.”

There’s logic to that statement. The idea still twists me up inside in a way I can’t quite pin down.

Perhaps it’s this. “Don’t you think it’s possible that catering to all the other godlen ahead of her will only turn her more against you? You can’t win a war against a god.”

Aurelia turns her back on me to head to the bathing room. “I’m trying to avoid any war at all. She’s the one turning this situation into a catastrophe.”

“It’s not that simple. Aurelia?—”

When she keeps walking, a noise of frustration escapes me. I stride after her. “You don’t know the sway Sabrelle can impose. She was a driving force in the creation of this entire empire. You have to listen to me.”

As I catch up with her by the bathing room doorway, Aurelia whirls on me. “No, I don’t. Not when you have a personal stake in appeasing her. I have plenty of other people to advise me.”

My temper slips its reins. I snatch at her wrist where the gold band still gleams, my voice coming out harsher than I’d have intended. “I have a personal stake in you. I’m still your husband.”

Aurelia wrenches her arm back. The wedding band flashes in the wan light.

Her gaze turns to steel. “You’re no longer my emperor. I’ll listen to you and consider what you have to say, which is more than you or your brother offered me most of the time you held the throne. But I don’t have to agree.”

My frustration curdles in my gut. “I didn’t mean?— ”

“You did,” she says, quiet but firm. “You still think you can order me around if it’s important enough to you. I know I can benefit from your understanding of the empire, but you need to remember that I make the final decisions now. I earned that right. Or do you no longer believe that?”

Heat flares across my face, pricking hotter beneath the strange scarring that covers so much of it. Reminding me that I don’t even look like the man she strove to marry, the emperor who reigned over half the continent.