Chapter 56
Chapter Fifty-Six
Aurelia
A t the sight of Marc’s disheveled form, a cry bursts from my lips. I was so focused on his twin, so lost in terror and pain and the determination to survive, that I didn’t hear the murmur of the hidden panel opening.
Linus jerks around. A smile tugs at the corners of his lips for just an instant before we both realize his brother is charging at him , not me.
Linus throws himself backward. His feet trip over each other, but his clumsy sway may be what saves him from the worst of the swing of Marc’s dagger.
As it is, the blade severs the silk of his shirt across his biceps and one side of his chest. Blood darkens the purple fabric.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Linus demands in a ragged voice. As Marc wheels, his twin scrambles farther away from both of us. “Where have you been? What happened to you?”
Those are all reasonable questions. I don’t have the faintest idea how Marc not only freed himself from the hidden servant room but also found himself a weapon and made his way here.
He’s wearing the same clothes we kidnapped him in: the loose, almost casual tunic and trousers, badly rumpled now. When he shoots a quick glance my way, his face looks sallow other than the dark smudges beneath his eyes.
I think I’ve slept more than he has in the past night.
At the sight of the blood drenching my drawers, a shudder runs through his frame. I’d swear he somehow pales even more.
He swivels back toward Linus with a wave of his dagger, but I can’t help noticing his grip on it looks a little unstable.
When did he last eat? Did my princes ever get some water to him?
Now that he’s lost the element of surprise, the outcome of this fight might not be anything like a sure thing.
Marc’s voice crackles like autumn leaves. “What the fuck are you doing? Trying to kill our wife—are you insane? No, I don’t even have to ask that. Obviously you are. I still didn’t think— This ends here, Linus.”
He takes a couple of steps toward his twin.
Linus waggles the broken wine bottle at him. “You think you can end it, do you? How long have you been scheming with her to put me down? I should have known you were too far gone. That treacherous bitch.”
Marc’s next words come out in a growl. “You will not talk about my wife that way.” He angles his blade with his next step. “You’re the one who’s too far gone. You’re the one spreading misery and doing everything you can to tear apart our empire. If Father had seen what you’d make of it?—”
Linus sputters a laugh. “What? You think he’d have given it all to you? He always knew you don’t have the knack for making people actually happy . You can’t just ride in and wave your sword around to get everything you?—”
With a roar, Marc springs at him. His dagger crashes against Linus’s bottle, completely shattering the glass.
Undeterred, Linus ducks and rams the top of his head into his brother’s gut, hard enough that Marc lets out an oof of breath.
While they grapple with each other, I bend over. Once I’ve tucked my knife beneath my armpit, I manage to scoop Coraya out of the cradle. She nestles into my embrace with a mild grunt of protest.
If I can just make it to the door…
The twins are wrestling several paces from my path there. I don’t know how they’ll react if I move to leave. But I have to try.
My legs tremble under me, more blood pooling between them. For a second, my head swims. I tighten my arms around my daughter to make sure I don’t drop her.
I take a step—and my knees buckle. They jar against the floor.
While I struggle to push upright again, the two men roll over on the rug. Marc is trying to hack at Linus with his dagger, but he can’t get any leverage with his twin so close. Linus keeps wrenching his brother’s arm away, throwing his strikes off balance.
A rough chuckle breaks from Linus’s lips. “You’re scared you’re going to lose, Marc. You know you’re nearly beaten.”
His gift—Marc told me he can pick up on people’s fears.
But the saner twin doesn’t appear fazed by Linus’s claim. He twists away from Linus’s flailing blows. His eyes narrow and then gleam with a knowing light.
Perhaps he’s used his own gift for sensing the weakest point on his twin’s body, because his tone steadies with perfect confidence. “And Aurelia must have given you quite a beating, weak as you like to pretend she is. She almost broke your ribs—did you know that? There’s the tiniest fracture already. Right?—”
He slams the hilt of his dagger down on the exact spot on Linus’s back where I kicked him. The crack that resonates through the air suggests at least one of those ribs is shattered now.
As I finally get my feet under me again, Linus’s body spasms around his groan of pain. He yanks at Marc’s legs, but his movements are shakier now.
Marc heaves himself away from his brother and shoves to his feet. Without hesitation, he drives his blade down into Linus’s side between the ribs he broke.
A dribble of blood spurts over Linus’s lips. His body sags against the rug.
Marc drops his dagger and backs up a pace, his chest heaving with the exertion—and maybe with a little lingering anguish over what his brother had become. Over the lengths he had to go to in solving that problem.
He pivots toward me. I freeze with my arms locked around Coraya, but Marc only… smiles.
The crooked angle of his lips and the light dancing in his eyes look as manic as Linus often did in his most dangerous moods. My pulse thunders in my head, dizzying me even more.
Marc’s gaze slides to my vanity, and a croak of a laugh bursts out of him. He snatches up the lantern.
“We’ll burn him right out of existence,” he tells me. “Like he was never here at all. It can be just you and me, like it always should have been.”
It doesn’t feel like an ideal time to point out that Linus isn’t the only obstacle blocking whatever happy ending Marc is imagining. When I attempt another step, a sudden flare of pain sears through my abdomen.
I press my lips together against a gasp. I need to get to the door. I also need to get off my feet before I completely collapse.
Great God help me. As soon as Marc turns his back…
He hurls the lantern to the floor by Linus’s askew legs. My jaw drops.
Gods help us all. He meant a very literal burning.
The flames leap from the broken lantern to lick at Linus’s boots and slacks. But they don’t stop there.
In an instant, they catch a splatter of the wine Linus splashed around before. With a sharper crackling, the fire whips across the rug, sprouting up in a flickering path along all those trails of spilled alcohol.
I barely have time to cry out before the fire has raced all the way to the bed. The flames shoot up the wine-spattered footboard and across the covers, surging higher with an ominous warble.
As heat wafts over me, Coraya’s lips part with a cry of her own. She squirms in my arms.
I stroke her back and let out a shushing sound in an attempt to calm her, stepping to the side to try to find a safe route to the door. My legs wobble in warning.
The fire crawls toward us, expanding by the second. We’re completely cut off.
My gaze darts to the window behind me, but I can picture the three-story drop far too clearly. There’d be no surviving that.
I’ve walked through fire before… but not while already so weakened. Not while carrying a newborn. And my hair and clothes were drenched from the river to ward off the worst of the heat.
Marc’s stance has gone rigid, his eyes wide but dazed. Clearly he hadn’t anticipated the flames spreading so quickly.
He starts toward me, but another stream of fire crackles across the rug between us. Spitting out a curse, he jerks his head around. He lunges back to the vanity to grab the water pitcher.
For a fleeting instant, hope glimmers in my chest.
Then a groan carries from the other side of the room.
To my horror, Linus is moving. Through the wavering flames, I make out his slumped form as he drags himself across the floor by his arms. His legs remain limp behind him. With a cough, more blood sputters from his lips.
He’s crawling toward the other window.
He has to know he wouldn’t survive that fall any more than I would. It’s astonishing he’s alive even now.
But along with the next bloody cough, he grates out a few words. “You won’t burn me away.”
Marc’s stance wavers, his attention veering between his twin and me. Flames are hissing across the rug between the brothers now too—there’s no easy path to stop Linus.
My momentary hope snuffs out.
If Linus manages to escape this room and the fire, everyone will witness his death. Marc won’t be able to claim the throne without revealing the deception they perpetuated for so long.
If he abandons me to ensure Linus dies here, what is he really losing? A faithless wife and an heir who’s not really his own. He’ll keep the throne without controversy, have noblewomen from across the continent volunteering to soothe his loss, get a chance at real heirs and a lover who never schemed to murder him…
It isn’t really a choice, is it? He’d be mad to save me rather than himself.
The fire creeps even closer to me, nipping at the rug just inches from my feet. Smoke prickles into my lungs and draws tears from my eyes.
I clutch Coraya closer, shifting my feet so I can propel myself toward the door as fast as I can—for that one unlikely chance?—
Marc hurls the contents of the pitcher onto the trail of flames between him and me.
I can only gape at him as he sprints across the soggy, blackened rug. He wraps his arms around both me and my daughter with a tug back the way he came.
There’s only a thin line of fire if we head in that direction. Maybe we can all make it safely…
On the other side of the flames behind Marc, Linus pulls himself up to the window ledge. His fingers scrabble at the latch.
He shoves the pane wide, and the fire roars with the sudden gust of fresh air.
More flames rush across the rug in front of the door. I tuck Coraya’s face as close against my chest as I dare to shield her from the smoke, my lungs heaving with a wracking cough.
Linus’s hoarse cackle breaks through the haze. His voice has gone thready, but I make out enough.
“You can’t erase me. Everyone will see!”
He heaves himself over the ledge. Just like that, he’s gone, plummeting away from us into the crisp winter air.
Marc is coughing now too. He manages to rasp out words in between. “We have to run for it. I’ll cover you as well as I can. As soon as we’re in the hall?—”
With a thunderous bang , the door across from us bursts open.
Between my stinging eyes and the mix of flames and smoke, I can’t make out who’s standing beyond it. Curses and shouts mingle with the warbling of the fire.
All the same, something feels familiar about the surge of wind that whips through the center of the room toward us.
The blast of air smacks the flames away on either side—and wallops right into Marc. Its force wrenches at his arms and heaves him away from me.
As he stumbles backward, a surge of filmy darkness rushes into the room alongside the conjured wind, swirling as if merging with the air’s currents.
Swirling and firming. The mix of thickening shadows and concentrated wind presses down on the fire raging in front of me, dampening the flames enough to clear a narrow path. More of the combined magic batters Marc. He staggers farther from me, into the inferno.
I swipe at my eyes and make out all four of the foster princes by the doorway. The door hangs askew on its hinges, as if it was bashed open by a battering ram.
Or perhaps by Neven? The youngest prince stands just inside the doorway, his hands clenched into fists. His gift has to do with incredible strength, doesn’t it?
Bastien and Raul brace themselves on either side of him, their expressions taut with concentration. Lorenzo’s dark face shows just behind them.
His illusionary voice resonates into my head. “We’ve got you.”
He squeezes past his foster brothers and sprints with Neven between the warring currents of magic and flames. As I lurch forward to meet the two princes, a grunt from behind brings my gaze snapping around.
Marc has crouched on the damp span of floor where, just a minute ago, he tossed the water from the pitcher. He’s ducked his head with one arm thrown across it, his back hunched low, but he can’t completely escape the onslaught. Fire, wind, and shadow have all merged together into a raging storm that lashes across the temporary patch of safety to singe his hair and clothes.
In a matter of seconds, the flames will be all over him.
In the back of my adrenaline-and-exhaustion-dazed mind, I understand what Bastien and Raul are doing. We always meant to kill Marclinus. Now they have the perfect means and opportunity.
But they don’t know… They don’t know that he risked his life to protect me. That he killed his twin to guarantee my safety not just now but for the rest of my life.
That when he had the choice between what was best for him and what would keep me alive… he picked me.
I don’t know what consequences the choice I’m about to make will have yet, but I don’t think I could live with any other one.
My voice rips from my throat. “Stop!”
My unsteady feet are already moving as I shout out the protest.
“Aurelia!” Lorenzo cries, but I sway back toward the man without whom I’d be dead already.
A horrified sound carries from the doorway. The wind blasts harder, pushing the flames wider ahead of me—on my path toward Marc.
The farmer in Cotea said the waterways might never go back to the way they were. The land might be ruined forever. But sometimes it’s still worth wiping the slate clean and seeing what you can make of it going forward.
Her voice comes back to me, even and sure: No matter how barren the soil has seemed, the plants still sprout. We just give them time.
I can barely bend with the ache in my abdomen. The best I can manage is to grip Marc’s scorched hair. As I tug him toward me, Lorenzo and Neven grab my arms.
“Him too,” I rasp out. “We bring him too.”
Marc shoves upright. My grasp falls to his arm. I hug Coraya close and tug him with me as we all stagger to the doorway.
Just as we reach Raul and Bastien, a streak of fur shoots past my feet. Sprite dashes into the hall, favoring one leg and dappled with ashes but alive.
Relief stings my raw throat. She must have been hiding under the bed.
All four princes shove us through the gaping doorway and several paces down the hall—until my legs crumple. As I collapse to the floor, Raul is already hollering—“Fire! We need medics too—quickly! The empress is hurt!”
My guards and Marclinus’s come charging around the bend in the hall from the more distant post Linus sent them to. At the sight of our jumbled gathering, a couple of them jar in their tracks. They swivel in the opposite direction and shout out, echoing Raul’s call through the palace.
I clutch my daughter to me, mumbling comfort as I rock her, tears trickling from my smoke-seared eyes. The ache in my abdomen consumes almost all of my awareness.
Then there are gentle hands pressing against my belly. A mix of coolness and warmth spreads through the pain like a salve.
Other hands reach to rest on Coraya’s tiny body in my arms.
More bellows ring out nearby. Soldiers rush past us toward the flames licking past the doorway; gifts are hurled into the fire still raging through my apartment. The wafting heat dwindles.
“You’ll both be okay,” a medic murmurs. “It’s going to be okay. What happened?”
The last question she must have directed at the princes.
Bastien answers, his voice ragged. “We heard the fire and did our best to get her out. I don’t know how it started.”
Hasty footsteps thump down the hall. “The emperor—he went out the bedroom window—we found him in the courtyard outside. He’s dead. ”
Through the rush of healing magic, a deeper flutter of relief unfurls in my chest.
No matter what happens now, Linus is really gone. The man who most tormented me, who meant to slaughter me, can never touch me again.
At my side, a figure sways upright. I glance over—and my heart skips a beat.
It’s Marc, clearly intending to put the matter of the emperor’s survival to rest. I can recognize the shape of his body, the curl of his hair, the angle of his jaw, even his clothes, scorched as they are.
But an awful lot of him… doesn’t look like him at all. Something about the princes’ magic merging with the fire imprinted him with a strange sort of burn.
His curls gleam steel gray with only sporadic strands of gold mingled in. An unnaturally smooth blotch of a matching gray covers a swath of his face from forehead to chin, rippling across his nose in a way that makes it look crooked. The eyes he fixes on the palace staff bustling around us have darkened to a shade closer to lead.
The effects have seeped down his throat as well. His voice comes out with a gravelly texture I’ve never heard before, as much as I recognize the forceful tone.
“You still have an emperor,” he says.
The guard who delivered the message blinks at him in confusion. “Who the fuck are you?”
Marc stares back at him, shocked speechless. I can’t imagine any noble has ever spoken to him like that before, let alone a common soldier.
He doesn’t realize—he doesn’t know how he looks.
I grasp his trousers to catch his attention and hold up the knife I’ve kept pinned beneath my arm. When he glances down, his reflection wavers on the polished metal surface.
Marc’s posture goes completely rigid. He snatches the blade from me to peer closer, ignoring a hiss of consternation from one of the medics.
My mind scrambles to provide a story that won’t see all of us in a worse mess. “He’s a soldier who only just joined us at the palace. He saved my life. If he hadn’t burst in when he did…”
My voice wavers. But as much as I’d like to expose Linus’s villainy, it won’t help our cause. I’ll be turning my savior into the murderer of an emperor.
I didn’t haul Marc out of the inferno for that.
“Marclinus and I were attacked,” I go on. “An assassin must have used magic to sneak into my chambers undetected. He stabbed Marclinus, shoved him out the window, and set the fire… But this man felled him and pushed him into the flames. He put his life on the line to save me.”
With the emphasis on that word, I let my gaze dart to the princes who played their own part in that rescue. Willing them to take in everything I’ve said.
I don’t know who the man next to me will be in my life now, but he’s not an enemy.
Raul’s mouth pulls into a slight grimace that tells me he’s caught my meaning. Bastien stares at his imperial foster brother’s marred face, but his shoulders relax just enough to reassure me.
A few of the guards who’ve gathered around us dip their heads to Marc in sudden respect. “Well done,” one says.
Once the confusion of the fire and Linus’s death have abated, someone might think to wonder how my rescuers ended up at my apartment without the guards posted by the hallway seeing them. We’ll need to invent some story. But no one’s thinking that far yet.
A medic grasps my arm. “We’ve healed all we can, Your Imperial Highness. There shouldn’t be any permanent damage to you or your daughter. We’ll find other chambers for you and the baby to rest in while you continue recovering.”
As I let her guide me to my feet, I press a careful kiss to Coraya’s forehead. I want to rest, but I don’t think I can relax until I have confirmation with my own eyes.
“Yes,” I say. “We should rest more. But first I want to see my husband.”