Chapter 48
Chapter Forty-Eight
Aurelia
I yelp and fling my arm forward, but there’s no catching Fausta now. She plummets out of view with a warble of her billowing gown.
For a fleeting moment, there’s nothing but the distant din of the watching court. Then the meaty crack of flesh and bone shattering dispels any hope I might have that my rival might survive the fall.
I close my eyes, and all I can see is her body slamming into the edge of the wall right beneath us.
My stomach lurches, sending bile up my throat. The wind wrenches at my dress.
The shouts of our audience keep drifting up, even more avid than before.
I’m still not sure I won’t vomit, but I force myself to heave my other leg over the peak. To fumble down the far side of the precipice, sliding from foothold to foothold .
I’m vaguely aware of Leonette descending below me: the rasps of her inhalations, the rustle of her clothes.
We’re the only ones left. I have to catch up with her—I have to pass her.
Why?
The question resounds through my queasy daze so forcefully I almost lose my grip on the knobs I’m clutching.
I keep scrambling downward, flailing out with my feet for the next bit of solid ground, but it’s as if my body is moving of its own accord. My mind is spiraling away.
Why am I putting myself through all this torture? To win a lifetime of more torment at Marclinus’s side?
You have to win , Rochelle said to me. But my friend will still be dead either way. Reaching the finish line won’t resurrect her.
So many women died so that I could still be here, banging my elbows and battering my knees while I clamber across an obstacle course designed for misery. Winning means seeing Leonette—a lady who’s never done anything remotely spiteful to me, who’s handled herself with absolute dignity through the entire competition—slaughtered in my place.
Can I really say I deserve to live more than she does?
Can I really say that I want to live more than I want to never have to look into Marclinus’s maliciously arrogant face again?
Maybe that’s the choice Elox indicated I have. I can escape, if only with my demise.
Gods smite me if that option doesn’t feel awfully appealing in this moment.
Still, I keep moving. I keep stretching one foot beyond the other .
I have to stay in this race. I can’t give up. I made so many promises and plans…
I’m just not sure I’ll be disappointed if I watch Leonette dash to the finish line ahead of me.
The breeze continues lapping at my dress and hair as I skid on down the slope. I don’t realize how close I’ve gotten to the bottom until my feet hit proper ground.
I spin around, reeling from fatigue and the horror welling up inside me, and see Leonette sprinting to the edge of the river.
I lope after her, my breath raw in my throat. A glance across the rippling greenish-gray water shows it’s been divided into four paths, with wooden floats and billows of inflated cloth leading the way across them.
Nobles swarm the opposite bank, where it looks like they were ferried by the boats now docked alongside them. I can’t help briefly searching for any of my princes among the crowd.
No. They’re gone too. I gave them so much and still?—
I yank my attention back to the course, clenching my jaw against a wobble.
Each of the paths looks different, but no features stand out as obviously better or worse. I hurry closer for a better look. Leonette is stalking along the bank, studying each of them in turn.
My gaze sweeps over the buoys again—and a voice, soft but clear, rings through my mind.
“Rell. Don’t react, just listen.”
Surprise jolts through my body. My face twitches, but I catch any larger response that might have been noticed by our audience.
I walk on, my eyes fixed on the lines of floats but my innards tensed with anticipation .
Lorenzo’s conjured voice reaches me again, more urgently. “Do everything exactly as I say. We have a way to get you out.”
The words repeat in my head like an echo, not quite sinking in. My pulse stutters.
What can he possibly mean?
His instructions come faster, with the same air of urgency. “Take the route the farthest to your right. Move quickly so it looks like you’re still completely invested in the trial.”
As I jog toward the path he indicated, the one the farthest along the river’s current, he keeps speaking. “We can take care of almost everything. You see the square raft about halfway across? When you get to that one, make yourself slip and fall into the water on the side away from the other floats. I’ll conjure an illusion that will make everyone watching think you’re struggling and then swept under. While I’m doing that, swim to the shore, aiming for the spot where the two pines stand behind the boulder. Bastien will direct the wind to help push the current that way. We’re waiting for you there.”
They’re waiting for me. They didn’t leave after all.
They just rushed ahead of the main crowd to get themselves in place for this plan. To not just protect me from my rival but rescue me from every bit of my fate.
As I reach the start of my path, a lump fills my throat. I thought they were afraid to risk very much on my behalf, but they’re committed so much more than I could ever have imagined.
Questions ricochet through my scattered mind. After I reach them, then what? How could this gambit possibly succeed? If they vanish from the palace at the same time as my supposed death, won’t Emperor Tarquin realize the two events are connected?
Lorenzo knows me well enough to guess at my worries. As I leap onto the first float, a triangle of wood that bobs unnervingly under my weight, his voice returns in a more reassuring tone. “We’ve already set the stage here. By the time anyone notices we’re gone and checks the area where we were last seen, they’ll find signs of a struggle and a note indicating that we’ve been kidnapped by a coalition of rebel forces who are upset by our compliance. The distraction of the trial would make strategic sense. Then we simply disappear.”
A giddy laugh tickles at the base of my throat. They’ve set it all up so there’ll be no backlash on our countries.
Tarquin can’t blame my parents if he thinks I died in his own trials. No one knows about Lorenzo’s gift with illusions, so why would they think a drowning they witnessed was anything but real?
It is believable that anti-imperial dissenters would hate and want to punish his foster sons, just like the princes hated me when I first arrived. The emperor has no idea how well they could defend themselves if they needed to either—no reason to question why they didn’t overpower their attackers.
We’ve barely interacted in front of the court. No one would think we’d want to run off together, let alone had a chance to plan it.
Hope flares inside me like a candle wick that’s just caught flame. They care about me—about being with me—so much that they’d risk everything.
Lorenzo said he loved me, but I didn’t quite accept it until this moment. I don’t even know what to call this level of devotion from them.
What we forged together was real after all.
As I sway on the buoy, I suppress the smile that’s tugging at my lips. Steadying myself, I leap to the next with my newfound elation lightening my feet.
This float is made of fabric. It billows around me, my feet sinking into the water. With a hitch of my pulse, I shove through the bulges of airy cloth and fling myself toward the next wooden platform.
Almost there. So close to them.
“It would be a simple life,” Lorenzo says, as if keeping me company through my trek. “But we have our gifts to help us get by and stay unnoticed. And we’d be together, supporting each other… Our families threw us away to appease the empire. We can take our lives back and build a new family that’s our choice. I know we can look after you the way you deserve, no matter where we are.”
As his words sink in, my heart starts to sink too. The flame inside me wavers.
I know why he believes all that—why he believes I’ll want to hear those sentiments. I’ve fed into the idea that I’m here as nothing but a pawn, that I’d want a life of my own.
But my family didn’t throw me away. I came here for so much more than to simply appease the men who hold this half of the continent in their brutal fists.
As I approach a wheel of spinning blades that slice through the water, my chest wrenches. What am I supposed to do?
The viciously gleaming spokes smack the river’s surface. Around and around, from the start through to the end and repeating again.
Like chair legs smashed into puddles of creekvine wine on the tavern floors in Accasy’s cities and towns. Like the breamwood logs tossed into our northern rivers, over and over with more Accasian lives following them.
Like the bloody corpses of our compelled soldiers tumbling into the Seafell Channel in yet another vain battle against the western continent.
A tendril of resolve unfurls through my turmoil .
The men offering to free me did hate me on first sight. In all of two weeks, I’ve won them over so thoroughly that they’re committing to throwing away all they’ve ever known for my sake.
If I could accomplish that… how can I doubt that I might eventually sway Marclinus? How can I abandon my entire kingdom for my own selfishness when there’s still a chance so solid I can taste it?
How can I take a leap that promises only my own happiness when I might be able to bring so much relief to all the people I came here for—not just mine, but Lorenzo’s and Bastien’s, Raul’s and Neven’s too?
I spring between the wheel’s jutting blades and crash onto the platform beyond it on my knees. But not a single sharp edge has nicked my skin.
The boards beneath me immediately dip below the surface and keep dropping. I jump onto a narrow cushioned float that tilts upward as if to throw me off until I scramble into the middle.
I’m strong enough to see my purpose through to the end. All my determination is still there inside me, as much as it’s been buried by grief and doubt.
I’m more than a pawn. I shouldn’t have had to shoulder this burden… but no one else could have done it.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s fair. Even with the choice that’s just been placed in my hands, I know what I have to do.
Not because anyone ordered me to, not because of any divine message, but because I believe I can finally heal the immense wound that’s plagued these realms for centuries.
The square raft Lorenzo mentioned lies right in front of me. I swallow thickly .
The princes are going to hate me again for this. They’re going to think nothing I said meant anything, that I seduced them for their protection until I didn’t need it anymore.
But I’ve endured their hate before. I don’t think I could endure my own shame if I let my spirits crumble the way they almost did minutes ago.
You aren’t the first men I ever loved , I think into the ether, knowing Lorenzo can’t hear me. But the first one died, maybe because of my selfishness. It’s better for you if I don’t drag you down the same way.
I leap onto the raft and catch my balance, my hands splaying at my sides. Then, quickly but deliberately so there can be no doubt about whether I understood their plan, I flick the fingers closest to the two pines in one of the first signs Lorenzo ever taught me. No.
With the finality of that answer, something cracks inside me. The fire of my renewed resolve melds me back together enough for me to gulp down a breath.
I fling myself onto the next float and slide across its slippery surface. Just before I end up toppling into the water, I lunge toward the next.
A hundred barbs scratch at the soles of my soaked shoes and dig into my dress. They cling to the damp silk, but I tear it from their grasp and charge onward.
I won’t think about the princes who touched me so passionately watching me hurtle on toward the man they tried to rescue me from. I won’t focus on anything except reaching that end, whatever will come with it.
If there are tears in my eyes, it’s nothing more than the spray of the river.
As I spring onto the last float I can see, the interlocking boards split apart beneath my feet. I assumed there were more floats partly beneath the water, but all I can make out from my fracturing vantage point is an open stretch of water, some thirty feet between me and the patch of sandy shore along the bank.
Nothing for it, then. I plunge into the water in a dive.
It’s been a while since I had to swim. The lessons one of the royal tutors gave me and my sister in the Muran River back in Accasy rise up as if they were only yesterday. My arms sweep through the current; my legs plow through the water with forceful kicks.
I could have made it to the pines farther down even without Bastien’s help, but that’s not where I need to go.
The current drags at my dress, and I’m more grateful than ever for the airiness of the fabric that only weighs down my limbs a little. Strands of something farther below snatch at my ankles, but I kick them away.
My lungs ache, and my muscles throb.
Almost there. Fifteen more feet. Ten.
Five, and my shoes hit the murky bottom.
I shove myself upright and slosh through the shallows to the narrow beach.
I haven’t had any attention to spare my remaining competitor. Now, I notice Leonette surging out of the river just paces away.
I haven’t won yet.
A wider path lies ahead of us, the reddish-brown dirt split by darker lines. Gold gleams at the far end: a dais where Marclinus is standing, watching us approach.
Victory is in sight.
For both of us. Leonette dashes toward the path at the same instant I do—and draws up short at a sudden whoosh of fire.
Very real flames spurt from the lines drawn in the dirt, searing up to lick at the air above our heads. Their scorching heat prickles over my face.
Leonette is closer to the left and notices the gap there first. Yanking up her sopping skirts so they don’t hinder her legs, she dashes around the wall of fire.
I race after her, veering sharply to the right in the face of another crackling wall. The roar fills my ears from all around me.
Leonette has already gotten the lead. If we have to keep weaving back and forth so narrowly to avoid being burned, I can’t see how I’ll pull ahead of her.
With our next sharp turn, a dribble of water from my drenched hair streaks a line across my cheek. It cuts cool through the burning heat.
My breath catches in my throat. If I’m brave enough to walk into the fire…
Certainty condenses around my heart.
I duck my head so the wet strands fall forward to shield my face. My hand sketches hastily down my front in divine appeal.
Elox protect me, so I might do your will when this is done.
Wrapping my hands in the folds of my soaked shirt, I pull deep into the center of calm inside me.
Then I run.
I sprint in a straight line, directly toward my goal. One wall of flame and another hisses with the droplets of water that fly off my clothes and hair.
Searing heat and open air, searing heat and open air. The sweltering warble floods my head.
Patches of my sleeves start to sizzle with a biting sting. I hold myself distant from the pain, pushing my feet harder. The sodden silk slaps against my legs? —
And I burst out of the last wall of fire onto firmer ground.
Marclinus stares down at me from the dais, his lips parted with what looks like shock. As I dash the last few steps to reach him, his eyebrows arch.
A typical chuckle is already tumbling from his lips as I hop onto the platform and grasp his hand.
His fingers tighten their grip as he turns toward me. With my free hand, I rake my still-damp hair away from my face.
The imperial heir’s gray eyes glint down at me. “So you’re willing to set yourself on fire just to have me, Princess Aurelia?”
The scalded spots on my arms throb, but I barely notice over the thrum of my pulse.
I did it. I’m here. I won the man I crossed the empire to marry.
The thought of all the corpses strewn in my wake, the dreams I shattered just minutes ago, turns my smile achingly bittersweet. But Marclinus won’t be able to tell.
I beam up at him with all the resolve I have in me. “I’m willing to do anything for you, Your Imperial Highness.”
Emperor Tarquin begins to clap, his smile nothing but self-satisfaction. The audience I barely noticed around the glade takes up the applause.
Marclinus grins and tugs my chin up to claim a kiss.
The brazen press of his lips leaves me cold, but I kiss him back all the same.
This is what I asked for, what I traded love and freedom for. I’m going to make everything I can of the chance.
As we break apart, Leonette staggers to a halt at the end of the trail of fire. She gapes at me in a daze, despair dawning on her face .
I don’t have time to so much as twitch an apologetic grimace her way before one of the guards plunges his sword through her neck.
Marclinus doesn’t even glance toward his last murdered potential bride. He lifts my hand in the air, his gaze still fixed on me, his grin sharpening into a smirk. “Tell the Cleric Pomia that it’s time I take this besotted woman as my wife.”