Page 55

How ironic that Aurelia herself is devoted to the godlen who takes sheep as his symbol. Is that why Raul calls her “Shepherdess”?

The empire is a legacy. A legacy no one I’ve met had all that much to do with. The entire continent was conquered generations upon generations before I was even born.

How many legacies did we break when we stormed into all those capitals and claimed them as our own?

I rub my forehead, but my path isn’t becoming any clearer to me.

Daylight is starting to creep through the small windows near the ceiling. I need to go back on duty soon or Aurelia’s other guards might become suspicious. Especially when there’s been an epidemic not just of camp-pox but of people around her turning traitor.

I gulp down a quick breakfast and make it to her apartment just as she’s emerging for her own morning meal. Her nod of acknowledgment is nothing but professional. It shouldn’t be anything else when we’re in public.

In the dining room, I stand at attention behind her. She laughs with Vicerine Bianca and discusses the architecture of the new visitor palaces with Baron Nisto. Every word, every movement exudes serene certainty.

She conquered me so thoroughly I was ready to give myself completely over to her. Did I miss something I should have seen sooner?

How could every principle I’ve been raised on since birth be that wrong?

After breakfast, the court moves out to the gardens. Aurelia glides among the nobles with her usual encouraging remarks and friendly conversation.

How can Sabrelle see her as such a threat? My wife may exert different kinds of power, but there’s no denying her might.

Or is that exactly why the godlen of war despises Aurelia—because she’s showing that brute force was never the only option?

As my thoughts keep running in circles, one of the nursemaids hands Coraya over to the empress.

Aurelia gathers her daughter in her arms with a kiss of the infant’s forehead that’s all delighted affection.

Coraya leans against her shoulder, peering at her subjects-to-be and shaking a wooden rattle toy in her tiny hand.

Lorenzo ambles by. He only glances at Aurelia with a subdued smile, but his hand moves by his side.

Aurelia brushes her fingers over her hair, curving them in a way I’m suddenly sure is a message.

I’ve seen gestures passed between my foster brothers before, haven’t I? It just hadn’t occurred to me that the mute prince might have a more complicated vocabulary beyond my understanding.

There are things I haven’t seen, but an awful lot of them happened before Aurelia ever walked among us.

Lorenzo walks off with more energy to his strides. A few minutes later, he positions himself near one of the planters and starts playing his vielle with all his usual skill for the entertainment of the court.

He never volunteered his talent under my father. But then, Father called on him often enough that I can’t imagine the prince would have felt inclined to offer more.

How much has my foster brother strained that actual gift of his? He fainted at least once…

I never let myself worry about how any of the princes were faring in the past.

Through the haze in the back of my head, a prickle of apprehension wriggles forward. Something… Something in the garden doesn’t seem quite right.

Tension winds through my limbs. I shove my internal debate aside and scan our surroundings with sharper eyes.

What’s niggling at me?

One of the maintenance staff is perched on a ledge by the roof of a shed we’re walking toward. She looks as if she’s simply checking the tiles—there’s nothing so strange about that, is there?

A man in staff uniform ducks off between the trees in an unnervingly furtive way.

Is that a gleam of metal amid the flowers in the planter just up ahead?

The breeze ruffles through the leaves on the nearby trees, and my ears catch an odd creak.

A page steps out from behind the shed and beckons to Aurelia. “Your Imperial Highness, you should see the roses just starting to bloom over here.”

Does her tone sound a tad too urgent?

I make a swift gesture to my fellow guards to be even more on the alert, just as Aurelia steps forward to follow the page.

“I think you’ll like the roses too,” she’s murmuring to Coraya when the tile beneath her foot gives way .

A small pit must have been dug beneath the tile. Aurelia pitches forward, her leg plunging into the path nearly to her knee. At the same moment, a gardener snatches up a knife that lay among the flowers and hurls it toward her.

A chunk of the shed’s roof snaps off and plummets straight at Aurelia’s head. A branch whips off a tree just a few feet beyond. Three of the palace hounds bay and hurtle along the path.

It's not one attack but several all at once—to try to overwhelm us guards? My colleagues are shouting and flinging out their various gifts.

I throw myself forward, toward the baby slipping from Aurelia’s jostled grasp.

I catch Coraya a second before her head would hit the ground and press her close to my chest, positioning myself so I’m between Aurelia and most of the danger. The hounds have already been diverted, the knife smacked aside. The branch thumps to the ground inches away from us.

Kassun slumps with a grunt where he deflected the broken piece of roof, so close his sleeve brushes mine.

Aurelia scrambles up, blood streaking down her shin from a scrape, the elbow she threw out in an awkward attempt to break her fall bent at an unnatural angle. Even though pain tightens her face, all her attention focuses on me. “Is she all right?”

I look down at the baby I’m clutching. Coraya blinks at me and lets out a brief babble that sounds more startled than frightened.

Then she sticks the rattle she’s still clutching in her mouth to gum its ridged surface.

My mouth twitches with unexpected amusement. It’s hard to look away. This small life could have so much power in the future… or none at all .

Either way, she’s every bit her mother’s daughter. Cool and composed despite the chaos around her.

She might not actually be my daughter, but I can’t see her as anything but incredible.

As I straighten up and show Coraya’s unharmed form to Aurelia, one of my fellow guards calls for a medic. The others grab the worker who was poised by the roof and the one who hurled the knife.

“There were others!” I call out. “The page who beckoned Her Imperial Highness this way—and there was a man who ran off, I think to loose the hounds.”

A whole conspiracy of staff against our empress. Would any of them have been dedicated to Sabrelle?

How does this latest attack make sense?

“Thank you,” Aurelia says quietly. She takes Coraya from me with her unwounded arm and murmurs to her daughter while the medic sets the broken bone she’s impressively ignoring.

Her gaze falls on Kassun, whom another medic has just bent down beside, and her stance tenses. “Is he badly injured? What happened?”

“I’m fine,” Kassun mutters, but the blood caking his hair where the chunk of roof banged his skull says otherwise. He sways where he’s kneeling.

The medic sets a steadying hand on his shoulder and hovers her hand over his head. “We got to him quickly enough. The damage can be mended.”

Aurelia’s face stays pale. “Go with them to the infirmary, Kassun. You’ll need rest to properly recover.”

More concerned about her guard than her own injuries. Just like our empress.

Axius comes up beside me with a clap of my shoulder, more familiar than he’d ever have allowed himself when I wore imperial purple. “There’ll be more challenges ahead, but if you keep acting that swiftly, the empire has nothing to worry about.”

I hold back a rough chuckle. As his words sink in, they don’t feel quite as absurd after all.

I’ve seen what my wife is capable of. Out of the options I have, it is possible that seeing her remain on the throne is the best thing I could do for the empire.

Over Aurelia’s protests, the medic insists that she should retire to her apartment for some rest herself. “The first few hours after the healing are the most important. Your arm will give you a little pain for a week or two, but more if you don’t take plenty of time to recuperate from the start.”

And so, less than a day after our last argument here, I find myself back in Aurelia’s bedroom.

She frowns at the fabric sling the medic gave her to remind her not to strain the healing limb. I can’t help remembering the morning she came to me with her shoulder dislocated, trusting me to mend what my twin had broken.

“That’s your sword arm,” I find myself saying. “You won’t be able to train with the soldiers for a few days at least.”

Her frown deepens. “It is what it is. Better my arm broken than my head. Or Coraya.” Her gaze returns to me. “I know you’re still upset. But you helped us—you helped her—without hesitation.”

There’s only one way I know how to answer that statement. “She’s my daughter too.”

She is, and she will be, in the ways that matter most.

A trace of a smile softens Aurelia’s expression.

She motions me over to her, farther from the door, and takes my hand in hers.

“I am sorry I kept something so important from you. It’s been a long journey to determining where I stand with you, how much we can rely on each other.

I haven’t always been certain of my way. ”

My throat tightens. “It has.” Mainly because of my and my family’s behavior, not hers. “I can understand that.”

I wish she’d trusted me more… but I can’t say I have a right to be insulted that she didn’t.

Her thumb strokes over my knuckles, sending shivers over my skin. She looks down at our hands and then meets my eyes again. “I’m sorry about your father too, you know.”

The statement knocks the words from my mouth for a few beats of my heart, it’s so unexpected.

“You don’t regret killing him,” I say, with no doubt about that fact.

“No. But I regret that it was necessary to reach my goals. And I regret that losing him hurt you. It was hard for you—I could see that. You’ve had to navigate a lot of things alone that you expected to have more guidance for.”

That sentiment is just like her, isn’t it? She notices every impact her actions make, even when I’d done nothing to deserve her concern back then. Nothing she does is without compassion or consideration.

Even Sabrelle couldn’t honestly claim otherwise, as many bloody visions as the godlen might send into people’s heads.

My voice turns even rougher. “You haven’t had any guidance at all.”

She lifts her shoulder in a slight shrug. “I’ve had my godlen. The princes, once we found our way to each other. And sometimes your advice has been welcome as well.”

“I’ve been grateful for every time you’ve listened.” I grope for the right phrasing. “I suppose you aren’t sorry for giving away my empire.”

A wry glint comes into her eyes. “I believe it’s my and Coraya’s empire at the moment. But no, I’m not sorry about it. It’ll be for the best. We don’t deserve so much of what we’re still demanding from those kingdoms.”

She squeezes my hand. “I’ll promise you this. If after ten years the separation has gone badly instead, I’ll lead the charge to take them all back.”

The promise is equally wry, but I know she means it all the same. The firmness of her grasp travels up my arm in a pulse of warmth to squeeze around my heart.

I don’t know whether this is right. I don’t know just how wrong or not I’ve been. But I’ve never been more sure of how much I love this woman.

May that love prove my salvation and not my undoing.