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Chapter Fifty-Two

Marc

I heave myself off my knees, my arm aching where I yanked it up to shield my face from the worst of the magical blast—as if a few more scars would really make difference on my already mottled features.

My other hand stings where I scraped it on a rock embedded in the earth.

My ears throb with the sudden shifts in pressure.

Bodies lie strewn across our hillside. Some are still stirring, staggering to their feet, but… Great God help us. Did Valerisse plow over half our entire army in one fell swoop?

A sickly sensation twists through my abdomen like creeping vines. I’ve never fought in a position of such disadvantage before. I’ve never led the charge against anything other than ragtag bands of rebels, easily crushed.

These are our own imperial soldiers we’re battling, chosen for their strengths and trained to greater might. Their leader has ridden into more battles than I ever have.

I knew all that going into this standoff.

It isn’t as if I could have missed the vast sprawl of Valerisse’s forces swarming the terrain ahead of us.

But in the first exhilarating phase of the clash, it didn’t seem to matter.

I could feel our strength rippling through our ranks, potent enough to overcome any foe.

Apparently that impression was as much an illusion as anything Lorenzo could conjure. We’re battered and broken now—fuck, is that Axius struggling to even sit up?—limping to meet the next charge.

My gaze snaps to Aurelia. I didn’t focus on her closely in my first glance after the onslaught of magic, only making sure she wasn’t injured before I got my own bearings.

Now, I take in the grayed cast of her face, the color leeched from beneath her tanned skin. The whites of her eyes gleam with a panicked glint I’ve seen before… in my opponents before I ran them through.

She’s still standing, but her posture is starting to slump. Only the set of her jaw holds firm against the horrors around us.

My formidable wife with all her stubbornness and sweetness mixed together… Can her determination withstand even this?

Does it matter, if determination isn’t enough to get us through the next ten minutes?

I yank my attention back to the incoming army, to our diminished forces shooting out arrows and tightening ranks at the base of the hill as the remaining officers holler. Valerisse kicks her stallion faster, her sword and armband flashing in the strengthening sunlight.

I haven’t reached to my gift, but as I watch her, a vision unfolds before my eyes. I see myself on horseback, pushing through the enemy soldiers with a prize held high by strings from my hand. The uniformed figures fall back at the sight of whatever my prize is, but my focus is all on Valerisse.

In the haze of the vision, she smiles, triumph dancing in her dark eyes. She holds out her hand to accept my offering?—

And I whip out my sword to plunge it into her neck.

As she crumples, I lift my other hand alongside the first in a pose of victory. “It’s over! I am your emperor, returned! Sabrelle has blessed me above all others on this day!”

My spirits soar at the cheer that rises from the mass of soldiers around me—and I look up at the “prize” I’m holding.

Those aren’t strings. They’re strands of hair. Strands of Aurelia’s thick brown hair, twisted between my fingers above her severed head. Her lovely face has gone blotchy and vacant as gore drips from her ragged neck.

The image smacks me back to reality with a lurch of my stomach. I look to Aurelia again, and the vision surges after me.

Cut down that guard who’s the fastest at blocking and that one who’s deftest with her sword before either can react. Slice the empress’s head right off her body, grab the horse tied by a tent just below…

My gut outright heaves. I double over, sputtering as the little breakfast I forced down surges up my throat. Red tinges the edges of my sight.

Sabrelle. The vision wasn’t brought by my gift but as a divine missive, although it amounts to the same thing.

The godlen of war is showing me how I can win this battle—for myself, no one else. How I could end the conflict and reclaim the throne I lost.

I can almost hear her murmuring in my ear. It would only be a small sacrifice, wouldn’t it? Giving up one woman who’s already betrayed you a dozen times over?

Deep down at the bottom of the heart I’m still getting used to feeling, a twinge of temptation tugs at me. To take this chance, to prove Linus wrong, to do my father proud—to rule the empire as I was always meant to.

Aurelia’s voice breaks through the turmoil in my head. “Marc, are you wounded?”

The question rings with both resolve and concern, as if she’d cross oceans to heal me if that’s what it takes.

I straighten up and meet her eyes. The fierceness has come back into her stance and her expression.

For me. For the man who betrayed her over and over in so many ways, who she opened her heart to anyway.

Near my other side, Raul is shoving himself upright, swaying with his arms too limp to help his balance. He peers at me, his teeth baring in a feral grin. “We’ll pay them back for everything. Come on, brother.”

There’s no wariness or animosity in his gaze. All of that has fallen away between us.

Something in me cracks open with an even sharper pang than when Aurelia encouraged me to reveal myself to Axius. It was such a relief to speak to him as who I truly am… but even that wasn’t really myself, was it?

The high commander still thinks of me as Marclinus, as the sum of everything my twin did as well as me. Like everyone did the entire time I was imperial heir and emperor.

But Aurelia and my foster brothers… They see me . Just Marc, just my own faults—and everything I’ve done to make up for them. They want to stand beside me and have me standing with them as I am.

I’ve heard Aurelia call us a family before, but somehow it never quite hit me until this moment .

What could Sabrelle offer me that’s anything close to this feeling?

The clamor of the battle rushes back through my awareness, reminding me that I’d better get to work if I want to make sure the godlen of war and her dupes don’t steal that family from me.

I swipe my hand across my mouth and stare out at the enemy army, tapping into my gift properly this time.

Where are they weakest—how can we break through their onslaught with what we still have…?

A vision that’s all my own swims up: our people attacking the barrage with all our might, battling so fiercely we draw all the enemy’s focus—until they’re battered from behind and squashed between us.

My pulse stutters. We don’t have enough numbers to send even a small regiment to skirt the battlefield and attempt to carry out that strategy on our own. But my gift has never shown me what’s outright impossible before.

Is it only wishful thinking, or should I trust that the pieces will fall into place?

Just for a moment, my throat chokes up at the thought that I might be calling for our doom. But what else will we face if we don’t give this battle our all right now?

If it’s doom one way or the other, we might as well take as many of the enemy down with us while we can.

“Hit them with everything we’ve got!” I shout. “Hard and fast—don’t give them a moment to breathe.”

A few officers’ heads tick my way, probably puzzled to be getting orders from a supposed imperial guard. That’s fine, because Aurelia trusts my judgment.

She raises the Sabrelle-blessed sword she’s drawn so it flashes in the morning sunlight. “We rally now and strike back with all our strength! Don’t hold back. Every weapon, every gift, every bit of strength—now is the time to use it! ”

Axius teeters to his feet but manages to echo her commands with a hoarse call of his own. “Soldiers, heed your empress!”

Despite the near-catastrophe we faced, despite the bodies still slumped among us, a ripple of dogged energy washes through our forces.

The arrows fly with renewed speed. The catapults hurl projectile after projectile.

Someone takes the initiative to set the sacks of rocks aflame and launches them into the midst of the enemy in streaks of fire.

The front line of Valerisse’s army crashes into ours with a chorus of grunts and gurgles, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen Darium soldiers fight as valiantly as those on our side down the hill. Propelled by the shift in the atmosphere, they stab and slash with the vigor of twice as many.

They’ll do that to defend the ruler who’s won their loyalty over and over again, far more legitimately than I ever did.

The longing grips me to run down among them and add my own blade to the fray. But my duty, as both guard and husband, is to stay here as the final line of defense if they should reach Aurelia.

Instead, I jab my sword toward the sky like she did. “For the true empress! For Empress Aurelia!”

Raul picks up the chant, and Bastien where he’s braced against a nearby tent, and Neven back by the huge catapult he’s manning.

It flows across the hillside through all the soldiers, Darium and Rionian, who haven’t yet reached the thick of the battle, louder with every iteration, vibrating with fervor.

“For the true empress! For Empress Aurelia!”

Let none of us forget why we’re here, why we had the chance to fight for a better world at all.

Aurelia grasps my arm, the urgency in her gaze silencing my own hollers. “Marc, I need you to work with me. It’s going to take more than any regular tactic to hold them back.”

I don’t know exactly what she means yet, but the answer falls from my lips automatically. “Whatever you need.”

No doubts remain, no room for hesitation. I’ll follow this woman to the ends of the earth.

And beneath it, if it turns out my gift has actually paved the way to our destruction.