Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I was finally released from my quarters after days of being locked up there alone. Not even my serving girls had been allowed to attend me and the guards who’d stood outside my room, pushing food through the door twice a day, had not spoken a single word to me when I’d ordered them to release me.
Now, I had woken to find my doors open, the guards standing aside with their heads bowed as I stepped out of my rooms with my veil pulled over my face to protect them from the law.
I’d been tempted to refuse to wear it a single day more, but then I’d thought of Cassius Lazar and my heart had splintered.
By this point, he was surely dead because of me, and I swear he haunted every one of my dreams, his caramel eyes burning into mine as that moment replayed over and over in my head.
He was gone. The only man to look at me outside of my father.
And the one person I’d trusted in this place since Magdor had arrived, though it had taken his death for me to realise how much I’d placed my faith in him.
He had always stood between me and peril, but he had been more than just some shield paid for by the empire.
He was a man beyond the palace walls, he had led a life I had known nothing of.
What if he’d had a family waiting for him to come home?
What if they’d stood and watched him hang in the town square, executed like some common criminal for the crime of simply looking upon my face?
That was perhaps the most unbearable thought of all.
Small children with tearstained faces watching their father die for a crime so pointless it shouldn’t have been a crime at all.
The corridors seemed quieter than usual and the air had shifted in the palace, a threat seeming to hang above my head.
It felt like a blade was carving its way down my spine as I walked with my head held high, passing by guards who didn’t so much as twitch a muscle in response to my presence.
They felt even less human than usual, all of them barely seeming to breathe as I made my way by.
Something was wrong. It felt like a plague had crept into my home, crawling its way deep into the bones of these walls, a whisper of death carrying around me on the cool air.
I headed to my father's throne room where he received requests from the people of Osaria every eighth day, ready to tell him everything, expose his abhorrent wife for what she was and reclaim the man she’d stolen from me.
He still held to the tradition, but his manner had vastly changed since he’d married Magdor, acting dismissively towards our people, or worse, callously.
I was hoping she wouldn't be present when I arrived, but as I stepped into the cavernous hall there she was, wearing a flowing navy grown as she sat beside the emperor's ruby throne, her own throne barely any smaller than his.
Father looked tired. But he’d always looked tired ever since Mother had died when I was just a girl. His eyes were ringed with circles and his greying hair was growing thin. It was still long though, freshly washed and hanging down to his shoulders beneath his fine crown.
His eyes were darkest brown, but they seemed darker than ever these days.
He used to look at me with love in those eyes, now there was something else there in its place.
Something that seemed to shield the love he felt for me, keep it back, out of my reach.
I hoped he still loved me, but with each passing year that hope lessened and left a hole in my chest almost as big as the one my mother’s death had left behind.
Now I knew Magdor could get potions into the palace, it was only logical that some elixir was doing this to him, but I feared how much of him would be intact, even if I could save him from the bane of it.
I still recalled how he'd played with me when I was a girl.
We would roam the palace gardens like we were on an adventure.
He'd made me a wooden sword; he'd been the only person to ever teach me sword fighting.
I still practised every day, but he'd stopped instructing me years ago.
There was a time he'd told me, “Woman are more than men's equals, sweet Austyn. And my time as emperor will see them viewed as such for the first time in The Twelve Kingdoms of the Osarian Empire.”
When I was a girl with hopes and dreams of women rising to greatness, Father had been about to create a world where a princess was allowed to claim the throne for herself.
But that hadn't happened. A woman from some faraway land had shown up in our home and invaded it single-handedly. Somehow, she’d convinced him not to pass those laws. But why?
I couldn’t understand it, surely as a woman herself she would only want to see those changes brought in, yet she seemed to be the reason that they had stalled, never to be mentioned again.
Though my father still sat on the throne, I could almost see the puppet strings she had attached to him. When he spoke, it was her words that rolled from his tongue.
Please still be in there, Father. Please come back to me. Please tell me I don't have to marry Kahn or any of the suitors presented to me.
A peasant was on his knees before the throne, begging the emperor for an extension on his tax payments as he clasped his gnarled fingers together in a prayer.
“I'm just a farmer, Your Highness. My crops haven't yielded well this year and I have failed to meet the quota which could bring me the coin needed to pay the crown.
I beg for a few months more, that's all.”
Father sat up straighter, his eyes swivelling to me as I strode through the huge room, my heels clicking on the ebony tiles as I passed the arching stone pillars that towered above us.
Huge banners hung across the walls in the kingdom's colours of blue and white, with a tree of purest silver growing through the heart of the coat of arms. At its base were two snowy tigers, reaching up towards the songbirds taking flight from its branches.
Three guards flanked me, my veil fluttering in time with my steps and as the peasant turned and spotted me approaching, he flattened himself to the ground.
“ Gracious , Princess, what are you doing here?” Magdor demanded, stroking the chunky golden necklace at her throat which had a large amulet dangling from it, an engraved ring of thorns carved into its face. I hated that ugly thing. But I hated the ugly thing wearing it even more.
I didn't acknowledge her, gazing at my father instead.
“Aren't you going to answer this man's request?” I insisted, moving to the side of Father’s throne and turning to look back at the farmer.
His face was weathered and he was so thin.
They were always thin these days. The people of our city used to look well-fed, some even plump.
But not anymore. Not since Magdor. I hated her so much, my veins burned with it.
I was full to the brim with all the things I wanted to declare to my father to expose her, but I held my tongue in the presence of the farmer.
Magdor looked to the emperor as he contemplated the peasant before him. “I cannot be lenient with one man, or all men will come begging for the same. If you cannot pay the taxes in gold, you will pay it in blood.”
At a gesture from my father, two guards strode forward and hauled the farmer to his feet.
“What are you doing?” I gasped in horror, my heart stumbling into a frantic beat.
“A hand,” Father growled, his eyes lingering on the man, full of some wicked cruelty that didn’t belong in his gaze. “One now, and the other in a week if it's not paid in full.”
“Father, you can't!” I cried, trembling with fury as the guards started dragging the farmer from the hall. He wailed protests and my heart could barely take the sound of such agony. This was wrong, it was no way to treat our people.
“He is the emperor,” Magdor said dismissively, seeming tired of me. “Dear Princess, you are too soft of heart to be here for such dealings. Go back to your quarters.” She ushered me away, but I stood my ground, glaring at her.
I grabbed my veil in my fists and the guards turned sharply around to face the walls the moment I tugged it off.
I sucked in a breath of cooler air, dropping to my knees in front of my father, determined to make him see the truth at last. And I had to look him in the eye to do it, he had to see me, see this desperation in me.
“You can't let them hurt that man,” I insisted.
He frowned as he observed me, but said nothing. I ground my teeth, despising that Magdor had taken him from me, turned him into a cruel ruler who treated his people like dirt. That wasn't him. But why did he let her do this to him?
I gripped his hands, glaring at Magdor. “Get out,” I hissed at her. “I wish to speak with my father alone.”
She stared down her nose at me, a pit of rage opening up in her eyes. “We are in the middle of something, Austyn. I refuse to leave until my duty is done.”
“Whatever you wish to say, you can say to us both,” Father added.
“Get out!” I bellowed at her and she raised her chin, a glimmer of contempt in her eyes as she stared at me. Her little problem.
“I will not,” she snarled, her voice taking on a timbre that sent a tremor down my spine.
Tears swam in my eyes as I had to accept her presence, knowing that my chances of reaching him were even less than I’d hoped. “Don't hurt that man. The taxes are far higher than is fair as it is,” I whispered, speaking just for him.
“You know nothing of politics,” Magdor chimed in.
I shot a glare her way. “I'm not asking you,” I gritted out and she rolled her eyes as if I was just an irritation she had to bear.
And maybe I was, but she was my irritation too and this was my home long before it was hers.
We had been at war a long time, but I was going to find a way to strike the final, killing blow.