Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Aurelia
C heerful voices warble through the drawing room. The warmth of the hearth wraps around me. When I look up, my mother’s smile reaches me from across the room.
My heart leaps with the most painful sort of joy. I’m home. Somehow, I’m home .
Fiddle music lilts through the air. A few of my friends spring up to dance. My sister catches my hand, tugging me into the whirl of bodies?—
And I find myself spinning past the doorway, all the way through the castle gates. The capital city of Costel sprawls before me, the brightly colored faces of the buildings beaming under the sun.
The music keeps playing, as if it’s a festival day. The city folk are emerging from their homes and businesses to romp together on the streets .
I weave between them, tasting the tang of ale and sweetness of fresh-baked pastries lacing the air. I grin wider at every bob of a head, every merry greeting.
“So happy you could join us, Your Highness.”
“Thank you for the castle’s generosity, Princess Aurelia!”
The celebratory atmosphere pulls me in—but a flicker of shadow snags my attention with a lurch of my heart.
A dark shape lurks at the mouth of an alley. Black uniform painted with white bones as if it’s a living skeleton—a Darium soldier.
I’ve barely noticed him before he’s yanking a little girl off the street into the alley. A yelp breaks from my throat.
I run down the street toward him, and the people around me stumble. More skeletal figures appear everywhere I sweep my gaze. They snarl and snatch at the civilians, wrenching them out of view.
Whipping around, I grasp after their victims, but I can never reach fast enough. They’re always just a little too far away.
A sob builds in the back of my mouth.
Strong arms embrace me with a waft of a cedar-sweet scent. A steady but gentle voice that hits me right in the heart speaks by my ear. “It’ll be all right, Lia. We’ll see this through.”
I choke up so abruptly I can’t breathe.
We won’t see it through. Our story has already ended. Any second now the blades will flash and the blood will spray?—
I jolt out of sleep with my heart pounding and my skin clammy with sweat, my fingers clutching the sheet. The darkness weighs heavy on me with the thick rosy scent of the potpourri the cleaning staff replenishes every day .
I’m not home. I’m still in the imperial palace, trying to see the future I want through all on my own.
The ache of that knowledge barely has time to sink in before a sharp chuckle rings through the air from just beside my bed.
I’m not alone after all.
I jerk upright on the mattress, one hand groping beneath the heap of extra pillows next to me. My fingers close around the handle of the small dagger I decided to keep there after Prince Raul proved he could enter my chambers regardless of locks.
Light flares at the other side of the room. The lit lantern casts an eerie yellowish glow over the three figures arrayed next to my bed.
Raul brought two of his fellow princes this time.
It’s actually Bastien standing closest, as if he’s leading this invasion. He holds the lantern to the side so I can see his striking face.
The wavering light turns his narrow features harsher but blazes off his auburn hair and in his deep green eyes. Which are fixed, with stark intensity, on me.
“Welcome back to the world of the waking, Your Highness,” he says flatly.
My gaze darts from him to Raul standing by his shoulder with a smirk and Lorenzo poised near the end of the bed, his deep brown skin and black hair nearly blending into the shadows beyond. They’re watching me too, Raul looking amused and Lorenzo more pensive but neither of them at all friendly.
I keep my grasp on the hilt of the dagger but don’t draw it out. The moment they see the weapon, I’d lose all benefit of surprise if I need to use it. And they haven’t done anything worthy of outright murder just yet .
Or maybe they have. Bastien adjusts his free hand, and a gleam of gold brings my attention snapping back to him.
He’s holding a thick gold ring. A thick gold ring with a sapphire nestled amid its rippled band?—
My pulse stutters. My gaze plummets to my hand still resting on top of the sheet—to my now ringless forefinger.
In my shock, I hadn’t registered the missing pressure. How in the realms did they manage to pull it off my finger without the movement waking me?
My heart settles into an even but quickened beat, more rapid than when I woke up from the nightmare. A chill winds through my veins.
I keep my voice steady through sheer force of will. “Have you decided to become common thieves now? Breaking and entering wasn’t enough of a crime?”
Raul sinks down on the edge of the mattress and lets his gaze travel over my form beneath the sheet. The nights in the palace are warm enough that I can’t bear to keep on a blanket, and the thin fabric shows every slope of my torso and legs.
“Maybe we simply wanted to keep you company,” he purrs. “The lamb must get lonely in this big bed all by herself.”
Bastien flicks an irritated glance toward his foster brother before focusing back on me. He turns the ring between his fingers. “You wear it even to bed. It must be very important to you. Why does it bother you so much to lose it?”
The chill descends straight to my gut. How closely has he been watching me that he realized the ring was more significant than a random piece of jewelry?
Or maybe he’s simply more perceptive than most of the nobles I’ve been surrounded by. I doubt even Marclinus for all his evaluations of his potential brides has given my jewelry a thought.
I swallow thickly. “It’s special to my family. My mother gave it to me just before I left as a parting gift, a connection to home. It’s the only thing I can easily keep with me that I brought from the place where I spent my entire life until now. So yes, it’s rather important.”
Bastien studies me as if searching for a lie. What other significance could he imagine the ring has?
Everything I’ve said to him is true, but he seems set on distrusting me. Despite his brief apology in the library, he’s gone straight back to looking at me like I’m a villain.
I hold out my hand. “So I’d appreciate having it returned to me.”
The prince closes his fingers around the ring. “I don’t know. I think it might be good for you to experience what it’s like having something that matters to you taken away.”
My jaw clenches against a surge of emotion, rawer after the dream I just came out of. “What makes you think I’ve never experienced that before?”
Bastien scoffs as if it’s a ridiculous question, and Lorenzo’s face hardens. Even Raul’s eyes turn flinty despite his seductive airs.
Maybe it does sound absurd when they’ve lost a decade and a half of their lives to the empire. But I’ve had far worse than a ring wrenched from my grasp.
I’m not sure how to play this situation. What can I do that will sway them toward sympathy rather than hostility?
The thought of letting them walk away with the ring makes my chest clench up. Even with the dagger, I’ve got no hope of overpowering all three men. And I doubt I’ll ever turn them into allies after tonight if I attack them that blatantly .
Or if I turn to the imperial justice system. Gods help me, I don’t know if I even believe that Emperor Tarquin would side in my favor rather than declaring it better for me to set behind all traces of my kingdom.
The fatigue of my broken sleep rolls over me alongside a suffocating swell of anguish. Why does every second of every day here have to be some kind of battle? Why can’t I keep one small thing that I care about safe?
Tears prickle behind my eyes, and I instinctively stiffen my resolve against them. Every bone in my body balks at the idea of weeping in front of the princes, letting them see their cruelty has affected me.
But it has. They already think I’m weak. Maybe they’ll find some kind of a conscience if they see how much I’m struggling.
I swipe at my eyes, and the burn intensifies. Moisture gathers with every blink. “Please. I’ve never been this far from home before. I’ve never been separated from my family for so long. I realize it’s nothing like you’ve been through, but I don’t know—if I don’t have even that one thing to hold on to—gods, I miss them so much?—”
My words break off with a hitch of a sob. The tears trickle out, streaking down my cheeks. And I find I can’t stop.
I thought I’d just make a show of a little misery, but the moment I open a crack in the dam holding back the emotions inside me, all the grief and horror and homesickness crash over me in a wave. My tears turn into a torrent.
I clap my hand to my mouth against a wail, not quite muffling it. Shame sears through my despair—that I have so much weakness in me still, that these men are seeing it—but it isn’t potent enough to push back the deluge .
Somewhere inside the maelstrom, I find the wherewithal to at least drive my point home. To prod them for answers of their own.
My voice breaks around the words. “I don’t… know what… you want from me. I’d try. If I knew.”
But maybe all they want is to keep barging into my room, stealing my things, tossing their cutting words in my face.
Another sob tumbles out of me, and Lorenzo makes a rough noise. He stalks around the foot of the bed so stiffly I’d think he’s furious with me.
But if he’s annoyed by my outburst, I must have tugged at some compassion in him as well. He sits on the bed an arm’s length away and rests his hand on my shoulder.
His touch is nothing but gentle. When I glance at him through my tears, he squeezes my shoulder and looks past me to the other two princes.
His expression still looks gloomy. He motions to his foster brothers with sharp twists of his free hand.
I can’t follow the entirety of his message through my blurred vision and with my limited knowledge of his self-made vocabulary, but it’s clear he’s saying something about me. One hasty gesture he repeats a couple of times makes me think of an exchange, an item passed between two sides.
Bastien exhales with a disgruntled sigh and appears to answer with a few skeptical twitches of his own hand around my ring. Whatever Lorenzo answers, the other prince’s mouth sets in a flat line.
Raul watches the silent conversation, his smirk returning. I don’t trust the gleam in his eyes when he returns his attention to me.
“He has a point,” he says to Bastien.
The unexpected support from Lorenzo has taken the edge off my despair, even if I’m not sure exactly what they’re discussing now. I brush aside the last lingering tears, gathering my self-control.
Bastien turns to me. “Perhaps we could make a trade of it.”
The exchange I thought Lorenzo was indicating. I offer him a grim smile. “You want me to barter for what’s already mine?”
My voice comes out a little too watery to be convincingly incredulous.
The corner of Bastien’s mouth ticks upward just slightly. He rotates the ring between his fingers so the sapphire flashes with lantern light. “It appears to be mine at the moment. Do you want it back or not?”
A very small part of me is tempted to yank my dagger out from beneath the pillow and see how he likes having the blade shoved right through his thieving hand. A much larger part of me recognizes that the offer of a deal is some kind of victory. And that a moment’s revenge isn’t going to benefit me in the long run.
I leave the dagger where it is. “What payment are you looking for?”
Raul’s smirk grows, and for a second I’m afraid he’s going to leverage the situation into a much more violating proposition than he’s suggested before. “I have a thought.”
Bastien grimaces at him. “Of course you do.”
For all they’ve coordinated their animosity toward me, the two of them don’t actually get along that well, do they? A fact I’m filing away for future reference.
Lorenzo makes a circling gesture I can tell means, Get on with it.
Raul leans back on his hands as if he’s perfectly at ease lounging on my bed. “Let the princess spend a whole day constantly reminded of how exposed she is, no matter what locked doors she hides behind. You wear no undergarments under your gown from first dressing in the morning through turning in for the night, and you get back your ring the next day.”
Bastien’s jaw works, but it doesn’t appear he has a proposal he likes better. “That will do.”
Walk around the palace with whatever trials tomorrow might bring—perhaps quite literally—with nothing on beneath my dress? My skin crawls at the thought.
But it isn’t as if anyone would know . My skirts barely lift above my ankles even when I’m seated.
Well, Raul would know, with his penetrating gift. No doubt he’s looking forward to confirming my compliance.
It’s not as if he hasn’t invaded my privacy before. I survived.
I fix Bastien with a firm look. “I’ll accept the deal— if you swear to your godlen that you’ll fulfill your end and not make any new demands. And that you won’t give the ring back only to steal it again later.”
It’s a bit of a gamble. Some people don’t worry all that much about what the god they dedicated themselves to thinks of them. But for Bastien to have offered such an immense sacrifice to his, it seems likely he’d rather not risk divine wrath.
I don’t think he’ll accept my condition unless he actually means to follow through.
He glowers at me, but he sets the lantern on the bedside table so he can press that hand to his chest over his godlen mark. “I swear to Jurnus that if Princess Aurelia carries out her side of the deal in full, I’ll return her ring for her to keep, as soon as I’m safely able to. ”
Conviction resonates through his words, sending a tingle over my skin. I believe him.
“Then it’s settled,” I say. “Perhaps you’ll let me finish my sleep now?”
Lorenzo pulls away from me. Raul gets up with a jaunty tip of his head. “Sweet dreams, Princess.”
I don’t release the hilt of the dagger until my bedroom door has closed behind them.