A Dance of Shadows (The Royal Spares #3)

Chapter 55

Chapter Fifty-Five

Aurelia

A n insistent grunting breaks through my sleep. I open my eyes just as Coraya lets out a more drawn out if delicate wail.

Exhaustion still hazes my mind, but I don’t need more than instinct to realize she’s hungry. I yank up my blouse and the steel-woven undershirt currently over it to offer my breast to my daughter.

She latches on eagerly. As she suckles, her tiny hand drifts against my chest. Looking down at her, my heart swells all over again with this love I expected but somehow wasn’t prepared for.

The flame is still flickering in the lantern the maids left on my vanity, but there’s plenty of light seeping past the curtains too. I’ve slept well past dawn.

At the sight of my usual pitcher of water at the other end of the vanity, a pang of thirst fills my throat. I have a vague memory of one of my maids scurrying in with a fresh one toward the end of my labor.

I can’t remember the last time I had a drink, but the thought of getting out of bed makes me want to groan. My head is foggy and most of the rest of me aches.

How am I supposed to make what might be the most important decisions of my life—the decisions I was supposed to think through before I drifted off? I still don’t know how my princes and I are going to stop Linus from ruining everything we’ve fought for.

And is there anything we can do with Marc other than murdering him in cold blood?

I swallow past the dryness in my mouth. My princes will find another moment to check in on me—they can tell me how the saner twin is behaving now that he’s had more time to stew on the many offenses I admitted to. It’s very possible I won’t want to do anything other than murder him after that.

I have no hesitations at all about seeing Linus’s blood spilled. The real question there is how to topple him without any of us taking the blame.

Where is he likely to go now that we’re back in Vivencia? What will his first acts be? When will his guards be the least, well, on guard, so a sudden fatal accident might befall him?

If I’d laced the lip paint I gave Bianca yesterday with poison rather than a sedative …

No, I already knew that wasn’t the right course of action. If he died in her bed after she openly seduced him, with the medics unable to determine the cause or detecting the toxin, she’d be accused of the murder. The recent banishment of her husband from court would even serve as cause to anyone unaware of her true feelings about Ennius.

And I couldn’t expect her to keep her loyalties to me when faced with execution, especially if I betrayed her so badly first.

I need a ploy that doesn’t put anyone’s head on the chopping block—except my husband’s.

Coraya’s mouth slips away from my breast as she lapses back into sleep. I gaze at her, momentarily forgetting my purpose, and then force myself to ease upright.

It only takes a few halting footsteps to get from my bedside to the cradle. Aches spread through my pelvis with the movement. I tuck the blanket tight around her tiny body and hobble back to the bed.

Putting a little distance between me and my daughter doesn’t open up my mind the way I hoped. As I sprawl on the bed, my thoughts still float off on currents of fatigue when I try to concentrate.

Is there anyplace Linus might go—or could be prodded to go—where a rock or some other heavy object could plummet at his head from above? Is there an “accident” we could arrange in his bedroom that his guards wouldn’t sense?

Perhaps if he could be encouraged to drink some wine laced with a subtle sedative and then take a bath? One deep enough that he could slip down into it with the water closing over his head?

Would the guards pick up on a non-violent drowning? I don’t know exactly how attuned they are to his physical state. They’ve never raised the alarm about him being drugged to unconsciousness before, but I’d imagine that wouldn’t come across any different from an exhausted or drunken stupor.

Outright organ failure is another matter entirely.

We’re going to have to take some kind of chance. He wants to destroy me, and he knows I know that now. We don’t have time to meticulously plan every?—

A harshly exuberant voice carries from just beyond my door. “All right, off with you all!”

I can’t make out the words of the response, only a muffled murmur presumably from the guards.

Linus lets out an even harsher laugh. “We don’t need the lot of you hovering around. I know what you’re like. It’s the first day of my daughter’s birth. Can’t I have a visit with my beloved wife with a little privacy for once?”

Whatever the guards say to that, he lets out a huff. “You already know that no one else has come this way. Our apartments are the only ones in this hall. What could harm us? Go stand at the entrance to the imperial wing and make sure no maids or medics disturb us.”

A chill seeps into my bones. He’s sending the guards—both his and mine, from the sound of it—far enough away that they won’t be able to sense what happens in this room, while still ensuring everyone else leaves us alone too.

I can’t think of any good reason Linus would have to prevent their monitoring. It’s certainly not because he wants to adore me without being spied on.

I slide my hand under the other pillow and close my fingers around the hilt of my knife. Tugging the blankets up to my shoulder, I tuck the weapon close to my chest beneath them.

Linus must convince the guards to abandon their post. He nudges the door open without further argument.

I’m lying facing him, with my eyelids almost shut so I look as if I’m sleeping. As I watch him through my eyelashes, he glances toward me. He steps slowly inside and shuts the door with only a soft click.

He’d prefer that I stay asleep, but not, I think, because he cares about the healing necessity of my rest.

The emperor has already gotten started on his celebration of his heir’s birth. He holds both the stem of a goblet and the neck of a wine bottle between his fingers. The goblet sloshes dark liquid over its lip as he passes it to his other hand before tossing back a gulp.

He takes several steps toward my bed, topping up the glass as he comes. With his careless swing of the bottle, more wine patters across the rug.

Linus stops near the foot of the bed and simply contemplates me for a moment so long my skin starts to itch. He takes another drink. Then he sets the bottle down on the rug to free one hand.

I don’t think I want to let him get any closer if I can help it. I stir beneath the covers as if I’m just waking and blink blearily. Linus freezes again.

Still keeping my knife hidden, I lift my head. I make my words come out sluggish to continue the impression that I’ve only just woken. “Husband. How good to see you. Is it morning?”

Linus chuckles. “It is. Such a wonderful day, isn’t it? I get to welcome ‘my’ child and shower my wife with everything she deserves.”

He waves the goblet, sending more wine flying. Then his gaze hardens. He tosses the goblet right over the footboard, heedless of the liquid splattering the covers there, and strides toward me. “Let me wrap you in the most loving of embraces, wife.”

His demand sounds far more like a threat than an offer of affection. My teeth grit.

Just as he reaches the bedside, I sit up. My knife flashes in the space between us. “I think you’d better stay there and appreciate me from afar, husband.”

Linus glances at the knife and simply laughs again, as if I’m brandishing a child’s toy at him. “Oh, that’s perfect. You’ve even given me a weapon. I thought I’d strangle you, but stabbing might be more fun. Isn’t it horrible that some villain broke into your rooms and savaged you before I could fight him off?”

With those last vicious words, he lunges at me.

I slash at him with the knife, but the benefit of skill isn’t on my side. Other than my few sparring sessions with Raul to prepare for Sabrelle’s confirmation rite, I’ve only learned the basics of self-defense.

Linus might not be the more martially inclined of the twins, but he’s still gone through plenty of the combat training designed to prepare the emperor to “conquer all.” He weaves around my jabbing blade, barely seeming to care that I manage to nick his forearm. His hand clamps around my wrist.

Then he twists my arm so sharply my fingers spasm apart with a lance of pain.

Hissing through my teeth, I snatch after the fallen knife. Linus strikes out with his other arm. His punch slams my head into the headboard.

As my mind spins, I strike out at him with the meager weapons I do still have—fingernails, knuckles, elbows. My legs tangle in the covers as I try to wrench them free to bring them to bear too.

Linus shoves me down on the mattress and grabs the knife. I manage to smack at his arm hard enough to throw off his first stab. The blade scrapes across my reinforced undershirt, splitting strands of the fabric—but I can only imagine how deep it might have dug if not for the reinforcing metal.

I don’t have time to be grateful. Linus pins my arm and raises the knife again, grinning like a maniac.

He’s aiming for my throat this time. I squirm against his hold, but he braces his knee against my abdomen with enough force to send an agonizing throb through my whole torso.

That would have been my final moment if I didn’t have one last ally on my side.

With a yowl, Sprite launches herself from the spot she’d moved to at the corner of the bed. She hurtles into the side of Linus’s face in a flurry of claws and gnashing teeth.

Linus yelps and swats at her, the knife tumbling from his grasp in his surprise. I manage to knee him in the gut. As he teeters off me, I shove away both him and the covers.

My husband gropes at the frantic cat, who’s dug her claws into his cheek, his neck, the collar of his shirt. When she sinks her tiny fangs into his eyebrow, he jerks sideways and slams a fist into her skull.

My heart flips over. I yank back my leg and drive my heel into his back with all the strength I can rally.

Linus lets out an oof and topples off the far side of the bed. Unfortunately, he wrenches Sprite off him as he falls. There’s a feline squawk of pain as he pummels her against the floor.

I paw through the bedcovers and snatch up my knife. Through the panicked thunder of my pulse, my gaze darts to the door. But I’d still have to get past Linus to reach it.

And a burble of sound behind me reminds me of one precious thing I couldn’t possibly leave behind to face his murderous rampage.

I scramble off the far side of the bed and back up to the cradle. Coraya twitches in her blanket, her eyes still closed but her tiny features tensed as if she’s picking up on the fight.

I’m not leaving this room without my daughter.

Linus is just getting to his feet. Thin streaks of blood dribble down his face from Sprite’s scratches, but when he sees me, he chortles. His gaze fixes on my legs.

I’m abruptly aware of the clamminess of damp fabric clinging to my skin. My gaze jerks down just for a second, but that’s enough.

The medics filled my drawers with extra padding to see me through the early hours after the birth. The strain of the fight has overwhelmed their preventative measure.

Blood saturates the fabric all down my inner thighs.

My legs wobble under me. I adjust my grip on the knife, willing my body to stay steady, my mind not to fail me.

As I shield my daughter’s cradle, Linus saunters around the bed toward me. He stops to pick up his wine bottle and smashes it on the floor, sending a burst of the liquid’s sour scent into the air.

Holding the broken bottle by its neck, he points the circle of jagged glass toward me. “I might not even need to stab you at this point. You’re already bleeding out. But I’d much rather take the final honors.”

My lips draw back from my teeth as if I can intimidate him with a snarl. Coraya releases a faint whimper.

As much as I’d like to lie down and echo that sound, I keep my feet planted and my knife raised.

I still have a chance. As long as I’m still breathing, I have a chance.

Linus stalks toward me, his eyes glinting as hard as the shards of glass. Any second now, he’s going to spring again.

One stab in just the right spot. That’s all it’ll take to stop him.

He halts a few paces away from me. His muscles coil in anticipation.

And with a flash of golden curls and curved steel, an identical figure hurtles out of the wall toward us.