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Chapter Thirty-Eight

Aurelia

A s soft as it is, the whisper of the hidden panel in my bedroom wall opening tugs me from the fathoms of my unsettled sleep. I open my eyes in time to see a familiar lean frame emerging from the wall, shaggy auburn hair falling across his eyes.

My heart leaps. I heave myself right over Lorenzo, who arrived yesterday afternoon and has barely left my side since, and wake him in the process. When he sees the source of my urgency, he only lets out a grunt that sounds amused.

I scramble off the bed and wrap my arms around Bastien. He hugs me back so tightly I can barely breathe.

All the things I wanted to tell him, all the new plans I’ve been making and the hopes I’ve been building, fall away. All that matters is having him safely here against me.

Bastien tips his head to seek out my lips. As we kiss, a snort reverberates from the other side of the bed, where Raul has apparently woken too. I didn’t want to lose any minute I could get with all of my newest husbands.

“You’re all right?” I murmur to Bastien when our lips ease apart. “I got your rainy ‘message’—very clever.”

He smiles crookedly and clasps my hand where I’ve rested it on his chest. It’s hard not to think of him as more breakable than the other princes, even though he’s proven himself hardier than the Darium court has ever seemed to give him credit for.

“I’m perfectly well,” he says, his eyes shining as he holds my gaze. “Just overjoyed to be back here with you. And tired. But there’s so much I need to report on?—”

The urge that stopped me from blurting out everything that’s been on my mind rises up again. I tease my thumb over his mouth. “Not yet. When we’re all properly rested and clearheaded. There’s a lot all of us need to discuss. Right now, I just want to enjoy having you with me again.”

Bastien’s expression softens even more. He kisses me harder, his hands tracing the sides of my body, and glances toward the bed. His tone turns dry. “Is there even room for me?”

Raul scoffs. “We’ve managed three before. Get your ass over here so our wife can have her rest too.”

Lorenzo grins to show his approval. I lead Bastien to the bed, and Raul scoots over so the prince of Cotea can align his body with mine. Raul has nothing to complain about when he had me all to himself the previous night.

My attention slides to the form lying on the sleeping mat in front of the door. If Marc is awake and watching our reunion, he gives no sign.

He’s allowing me this brief span of peace with my other husbands before we go back to preparing for war .

I aim a smile his way, in case he can see it, and pull my princes close around me.

I’m jolted right out of both sleep and peace hours later by a taut voice. “She did what ?”

I flinch, my eyes popping open. When I peer blearily at the figures now sitting tensed on the bed around me, Bastien presses his mouth shut with a guilty expression.

His hair is so adorably rumpled I want to run my fingers through it, but his green eyes look even darker than usual as his gaze sears into mine.

“Have you felt any unfamiliar physical sensations since you were ill?” he asks in an urgent tone. “Even something you might have dismissed as an aftereffect of the sickness or another passing discomfort?”

I knit my brow, sorting through my thoughts with sleep still blurring them.

Whatever my husbands have been talking about while I kept slumbering, it’s clearly riled them up.

Lorenzo is watching me, his face as somber as Bastien’s.

Raul has pushed right to his feet, clutching one bed post as if he thinks he’s going to wrench it off and wield it at an enemy.

Even Marc has approached from the door, his jaw tight.

“I did have some lingering symptoms,” I say carefully, dredging up the memories. “Aches in my joints, sensitivity of my skin. But they passed within a few days.”

Raul’s fingers flex around the bedpost. “You haven’t noticed anything since then?”

I shake my head. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Why? What’s upset you all?”

Bastien tips his head toward the other men. “Marc was just telling us about the camp-pox epidemic and how you concocted the first cure for the new strain. You merged your gift with one of the soldiers?”

Why would he be bothered by that?

I study him as if I’ll find an answer in the set of his features. “Yes. One of the two who carried out the experiment with the rats. It didn’t work perfectly, but it meant we got a lot of people back on their feet faster than otherwise. It might have saved Coraya’s life.”

Bastien’s mouth twists. “And that’s a worthy cause. But—you shouldn’t extend yourself again. None of us should. I think we need to take any strategies focused on the combining of gifts off the table.”

His statement kicks me into sharper alertness. “What? Why? It’s the one definite advantage?—”

“It might not only be an advantage,” Bastien interrupts in a lower voice. “Aurelia… I spoke with the cleric who leads the School of Entwined Magics in Delphine. Most of their work, including the accounts in that book I found for you, focus on minor effects. I didn’t know there’s a reason for that.”

Raul breaks in, sinking back onto the bed so he can grip my shoulder. “It could have hurt you. Sacrificed some part of your body at random. The magic you worked with the soldier might have done that already in some way you haven’t noticed yet.”

A chill ripples through my veins. I glance down at myself as if I might notice that I’ve lost a foot or a hipbone that somehow escaped my attention before now.

My sense of practicality steadies me. “If it did, it can’t be anything very important, or I’d have felt the loss by now.”

“You got lucky, then,” Marc says, cool and even, but his gaze sears into mine almost as intensely as Raul’s. “I agree with Bastien—it isn’t a risk you should take again. ”

Lorenzo reaches over to give my ankle a gentle caress. “Having you here and well is more important than anything your magic could offer.”

Their concern wraps around me, but it feels more suffocating than comforting.

Annoyance prickles through my belly. “I just told you that for all I know, Coraya might have died if I hadn’t attempted it. Would you have preferred that outcome? What if there’s another situation in the future where I might not continue to be here if I don’t act?”

“Aurelia…” Bastien lets out a strangled sound and moves to slide his arm around my waist. He tips his head against my shoulder.

I can’t suppress the ache of longing that wakes up at the touch of my lover who’s been apart from me for so long, the last of my husbands to return. My throat chokes up.

He strokes his hand up and down the side of my arm and kisses my cheek. “We’ll do whatever we can to make sure it doesn’t come to that. Unless you’re absolutely sure… What the magic sacrifices in you could be a death sentence in itself. It does you no good if you trade one awful fate for another.”

“We have no reason to think it’s even likely to be that bad,” I have to point out, though my voice has softened. “You and Raul combined your powers in an enormous blast, and you’re both still perfectly fine.”

“It seems the length of the effect as well as its potency play a role. We weren’t working together for more than a minute, if that. And it was only enough to sweep through one room. Once we start talking about tackling entire armies…”

I fold my arms over my chest. “And are you all going to avoid any further experimenting? Do you really think you’d be willing to stand back and not make an attempt if my life was in danger? ”

Marc grimaces. “That’s different. The empire depends on you, not the rest of us.”

“ I depend on you,” I can’t help saying.

Heat flickers in his gaze at the recognition that my statement includes him. Lorenzo runs his thumb over my calf again. “We’ll all go forward with caution. But it sounds as though it wouldn’t be wise to experiment unnecessarily, at least.”

A sudden, horrible thought hits me. “Not just for me. We were talking about the soldiers combining their gifts more—even civilians, if it came to that. I can’t ask them to take risks I wouldn’t take myself.”

Raul gives a dismissive grunt. “Of course you can. That’s what being the empress means. If someone has to act and it could be anyone other than you, they’re the better choice. That’s how it works, Shepherdess.”

He might be right, but my stomach has balled tight all the same. This mission was supposed to only be mine. It was hard enough even involving the three princes around me. It’s gotten harder with every new request I need to make of the empire’s people to reach the future I want to give them.

“We’ll see what we face and how great the risks appear in the moment,” I say eventually.

Bastien frowns. “Aurelia, you shouldn’t?—”

I rest my hand on his lean chest to stop him. “I know you don’t want me to consider it at all. Your opinions on the matter will be taken into consideration. I just… don’t think it’s wise to make promises at this point.”

A growl escapes Raul. Marc’s jaw works, but he mostly looks resigned.

In some ways, my first husband is more familiar with my capacity for stubbornness than my princes are.

I shove myself toward the edge of the bed, doing my best to leave the weight dragging at my gut behind. “If we can’t rely too heavily on that strategy, then we’d better move quickly on our other possible tactics. I have a bunch of governors to order around today.”

The logistics I worked out in bits and pieces come back to me, and my innards knot up all over again.

I glance at Raul with a wrench in my heart. “And I’m going to need to ask something else of you.”