Page 38 of Betrothed to the Emperor

“We were attacked.” I looked between them, trying to read whatever was sitting unspoken in the room. This was worse than not being familiar with Imperial hand gestures. This was the language between partners who had known each other for so long that language was unnecessary.

The woman swallowed, then looked at the man.

“Undress him, Liku.”

She turned away, taking a long breath, exhaling sharply before standing. She put a kettle on the stove, and soon, it was boiling. Then, she went to a long wooden box, taking out a roll of fabric.

“Are you sure?” The man’s voice was hoarse. He swallowed. “Are yousure?”

“The emperor cannot die here! Hecannotdie on our floor.” The woman turned to look at him over her shoulder, clutchingwhatever she’d taken out of the box in her hands. “What hell would we bring on ourselves if he died here?”

The man’s shoulders slumped, curling in before he shook his head. Liku stripped Tallu, his hands working efficiently, as though he’d stripped unconscious men before.Or dead men, I thought, and my mind paused there. Tallu didn’t stir.

The electric lights in the cabin flickered, and when Tallu was down to his undergarments, Liku stood and walked over to one of the lights, closing his eyes.

A small bolt of lightning flashed from his hand, hitting the electric lights and causing all four of the lamps to glow a brilliant white.

“You’re an electro mage?” I asked dully.

It made no sense. An electro mage who was military trained was a valuable commodity. My mother didn’t let me go hunting because of my value, and the military would pay handsomely for a man with his skills. So why was he here? In the middle of the forest, wearing the clothes of a peasant?

Liku turned back to the woman, and she carried her small burden over to Tallu. Crouching, she settled on her knees and unrolled the fabric bundle.

“He’s bleeding out. Even if I stop the flow, if he makes it to the capital, his leg will have to be removed. Too much damage, and the wound is already infected.” She looked at me, and in the bright light, I realized that even if she had some imperial blood in her, she was from somewhere else. Her skin didn’t gleam like a full-blood Imperial’s did. Her eyes were slightly too wide, and her ears were hidden by her long, pale silver hair.

She was from the Blood Mountains.

“If he gets back to the capital the way he is.” I nodded. “But there is another option?”

The woman looked down, unrolling her tools. I didn’t recognize any of them. They looked dangerous, like torture devices. These were not the tools of the healer.

“Liku, take the oldest hen,” the woman said.

“Miksha,” Liku said. He looked at her, his eyes wide, his hand moved, palm flat, in a slight up-and-down motion. I recognized the Imperial gesture—supplication, a desperate plea.

“The oldest hen. Kill it and bring it here.” Miksha didn’t look at him, instead going to the table and emptying a large, wide bowl that had fruit stacked in it. One of the round fruits rolled off the edge of the table, and Miksha ignored it, wiping the inside of the bowl with the hem of her shirt.

Shaking his head, Liku left through the front door, not slamming it. Instead, his anger was expressed in the short motions of his arms, the abrupt way he turned away from Miksha.

“Tallu must survive this,” I said. “I didn’t drag him down the mountain for him to die.”

“You’re from the north?” Miksha stared at me, her eyes going from the top of my head down to the expensive imperial clothing I was wearing. “You know what happens if he lives.”

“I also know what happens if he dies now. He must survive this.” It was the closest I had come to admitting my true purpose in the Imperium, and part of my stomach clenched, nearly dropping out with pure terror. The man—Liku—was clearly an imperial soldier. Although whether he was a runaway or had retired from service was unclear.

And she was a— My mind faltered, unable to even think the thought clearly.

The door opened, and Liku brought in a dead bird, its neck cleanly snapped. Miksha took it in her hands, bowing her head and saying a brief prayer of gratitude. Then, she took one of thewicked-looking knives from her supplies and sliced through the hen’s neck. Blood flowed into the large bowl.

Dipping both palms into the liquid, she sat up straight, the blood beginning to glow bright red as though some invisible heart was pumping it through the air. When I saw her eyes, I shivered. They were bloodred, the whites gone.

Miksha was a blood mage.

Eleven

Ihad always imagined that a blood mage would be a filthy, hooded man who lived in a house made of bones. The stories we told around the campfire of blood mages were of the horror of their work.

My mother only said that the Imperium also told stories about us from the Northern Kingdom, how we slept in the snow and were so large because we mated with the animals we hunted.