Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Lorenzo
A s the servers bring around our second course of breakfast, a creamy sweet smell reaches my nose. A sudden pang of loss hits me alongside memories of the terrace outside my family’s main palace, the view of the ocean to one side and the sprawl of white-washed city buildings to the other.
Then my plate is set in front of me, and I understand my reaction with a punch of recognition.
Next to the fresh-baked pastries sits a pot of a flecked jelly as white as the walls back home.
Coconut jam. It was almost always on the breakfast table when I was a little kid, but I haven’t gotten to taste it in years.
Marclinus lifts his voice from where he’s lounging at the head of the table. “I hope you all enjoy the treat we ordered in from Rione. My wife had a craving for coconut. ”
He shoots one of his cocky grins at Aurelia, who dips her head modestly. “Thank you for indulging me.”
The morning sunlight streaming through the windows lights up her walnut-brown hair and gleams in her dark blue eyes. At the small smile that crosses her lips, my heart hitches in my chest.
I realize I’m staring at her and yank my gaze back to my own meal.
She didn’t so much as glance my way. She hasn’t said a word to me since her wedding ceremony.
But she told me out in the woods weeks ago that she’d never tasted coconut before. After I told her that coconut jam was one of the things I missed most about my early childhood in Rione, before Emperor Tarquin claimed me as a hostage.
She asked for this treat for my benefit, not hers.
A lump rises in my throat. If my hand wobbles a little when I dip my spoon into the pot of jam and swirl it on the flaky pastry, I hope no one notices.
She also intervened when Marclinus was going to order me to play for the court a couple of days ago. Has she really pretended to enjoy my music in the past, or was she asking for the court musicians to spare me the strain she knows comes with using my gift?
The emotions that’ve been roiling inside me for the past few days churn even harder. A swell of affection clashes with the lingering pain of watching her rush into Marclinus’s arms and a sharp prickle of uncertainty.
She could have been with me rather than him. With all of us, away from here, never worrying about catering to our tyrants’ whims again. I called out to her the way only I could, laid out the whole plan to reassure her, promised her the entire blasted world?—
And she signed her refusal to me with a jerk of her hand and careened on into a marriage to a psychopath.
I loved her. I don’t know whether I should still think about that emotion in the present tense. I don’t know whether the woman I fell for even existed, or if she was as imaginary as the illusions my gift can conjure.
The creamy sweetness floods my mouth with each tiny bite I push between my teeth. Thank all that’s holy that some capacity for taste remains in the stump of my tongue and the flesh around it.
I do my best to drift away from my turmoil into recollections of careless days roaming through the city streets or exploring the mountain slopes with my older sister and cousins, but the gloom that’s shrouded me since the end of the final trial follows me even into my memories.
I polish off every bit of the pot’s contents all the same.
Should I say something to Aurelia? Indicate that I recognize the gift—that I’m grateful for it?
Or would doing that only make me more of an idiot?
It’s hard not to feel like an idiot when we move to the gardens and I have to watch Aurelia sashay between the flower beds and around the fountains with her hand tucked around Marclinus’s elbow. She beams up at him and laughs at his jokes, the perfect picture of a devoted wife.
I don’t think her offering at breakfast was intended as an invitation. Maybe it was an apology. A consolation prize.
He got the woman I adore, and I got a pot of jam. Am I supposed to be grateful for that?
Now that we’re well into summer, it’s a hot day even in the late morning with the sun glaring down from a stark blue sky. I wander through the shadows, watching Aurelia as surreptitiously as I can manage.
I shouldn’t pay attention to her at all. I should pretend her existence means nothing to me. But her presence tugs at me as if she’s snagged a fishhook right through the chambers of my heart.
She brought a light into my life like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Now that I’ve tasted that kind of joy, I can’t help craving it, more than I crave even my old home.
This isn’t healthy. I can’t chase after what might only have been an illusion.
Except it might have been real. I can’t shake the gloom or the craving while that possibility lingers in my head.
I’m not sure what signs I’m watching for now. Raul insists that she murdered Tarquin, that she had to stay so she could end our foster father’s brutal reign—the way we meant to end it ourselves, as hopeless as those plans turned out to be. Could the gentle, compassionate woman I thought I knew really have schemed to end a man’s life, no matter how awful he was?
She could be fierce and determined too. Who knows what other dimensions she had to her?
It’s only… If she’s capable of murder, then I can’t say I really knew her regardless of the rest.
Bastien crosses my path, takes one look at my face, and catches my arm to drag me over to one of the lawn games that’s just started up.
“I know you’re mourning,” he says under his breath. “But you’ve got to try not to look like you’ve just been gutted. Distract yourself.”
Is that what he’s doing? It’s always seemed easier for the others to harden themselves to our losses and failures than it is for me.
And I have been gutted, in one smooth stroke with the flick of a hand, and over and over every time I miss her secret smiles, the knowing glint in her eyes, the heat of her caress.
The balls we lob at the hoops feel heavier than usual on my hand. The sport strikes me as even more pointless than usual. My frustration seeps into my throws: one and then another flies wide.
After I’ve knocked one of the hoops—not the one I was supposed to be aiming at—right over, I pull back toward the hedges to leave the game to the other players. Counsel Etta drifts over to join me, her pale forehead furrowed.
“Prince Lorenzo,” she says in her dry voice. “You’ve seemed rather out of sorts lately. Is there anything in particular bothering you?”
A chill runs down my spine. Etta is one of Tarquin’s—and now Marclinus’s—chief advisors. Which means she’s wise enough to potentially put the pieces together if the source of my tangled emotions has been too obvious, and close enough to him to easily share any suspicions she has.
My grandfather’s voice echoes up from the past—his stern words while he shook his finger at my six-year-old self while tears streaked down my cheeks. You’re a prince. You feel what you feel, but you can’t let everyone see it. No one wants a ruler who bawls in front of them every time he’s disappointed.
Bastien’s right. I have to get a better grip on myself.
I thought I’d gotten better at bottling up my negative emotions as I grew into a man, but obviously my control is still wobbly. Aurelia’s desertion shattered it like a vase knocked to the floor.
With conscious effort, I turn toward Etta and force a smile onto my face. I’ve spent the past fifteen years here pretending obedience and passivity. That’s what everyone expects from me.
I just don’t know how to find my way back to that state of “normal” when I’ve been thrown so off-balance.
Pulling a scrap of paper and a pencil out of the pouch at my hip, I scrawl a quick message. Stayed up too late practicing a new instrument. Too tired to be at my best.
It’s a plausible excuse. I have traded music for sleep in the past, although the weariness has never left me quite as off-kilter as I am at the moment.
Etta purses her lips, but she inclines her head as if she accepts my answer. “If anything does trouble you, especially if it would affect others’ well-being too, I hope you’ll share your concerns.”
I nod, my supposed agreement a bald lie that doesn’t give me so much as a twinge of guilt. The advisors are the imperial family’s creatures—they serve Marclinus’s interests, not anyone else’s.
I pull myself away from the game completely, figuring I’m less likely to show distress if I stick to admiring bright blossoms and enjoying the whiffs of floral-scented breeze. Naturally, my feet end up leading me straight into Aurelia’s vicinity.
She’s standing with several of the court nobles near one of the marble fountains. I sit on a bench on the opposite side, where I can’t see her or make out her voice over the warble of the water.
I’m simply enjoying the cool spray. Nothing strange about that.
I close my eyes for a few minutes, focusing on the patter of droplets as well as I can. The scrape of footsteps over the gravel that surrounds the fountain snaps me back to alertness.
It’s only one of the imperial guards. He stands stiffly by the fountain, watching the empress with a somber expression beneath his curly hair. His hand rests on the hilt of the sword at his hip. The broad scar by the corner of his eye suggests any fight today wouldn’t be his first.
His presence is to be expected. No doubt there’s at least one other guard monitoring Aurelia from a discreet distance. But something about the tension in his stance niggles at me.
Does he think there’s a threat nearby ?
While he stands sentinel, I study him and the area around us as surreptitiously as I can. What reason has he seen to worry?
Then his mouth moves, a low mutter that’s meant only for himself. Any sound to the words is so quiet it’s lost to the warble of the fountain.
But I’ve spent years interpreting hasty gestures and mouthed words from across the room when my foster brothers and I need to communicate stealthily. I’ve developed a decent skill at reading lips.
And the words I think I saw the man’s lips form are ones I might have seen just a few weeks ago, when Aurelia first arrived, from my own foster brothers.
“Pathetic Accasian tramp.”
My back stiffens in an instant with a lurch of my gut.
If I caught that right, he isn’t tense because of a threat he wants to protect Aurelia from. He doesn’t want to protect her— he’s the threat.
Did I misinterpret? Lip reading is hardly an exact science, and some of the syllables of the words I thought I made out are awfully subtle. He could have been grumbling to himself about something else altogether.
As I watch him longer, though, I become increasingly sure. When he scans the garden, his eyes always narrow slightly as they pass over Aurelia’s position beyond the fountain. His hand flexes against his sword hilt as if he’d like to draw the blade and use it right now, even though I haven’t seen any cause for violence.
Unless he sees the foreign princess-turned-empress as a malicious entity.
I knew some of the common people had hostile feelings toward her—I saw what happened in the square after the funeral speeches. The current palace guards were all hired before they had any idea they’d be serving an empress from the wild north as well as the current imperial family. It isn’t totally unexpected that one or two might have a negative attitude.
Gods above, what if he decides to act on his disdain?
Abruptly, he swivels and strides past my bench toward the other side of the fountain. His mouth is set in a grim line.
Panic overrides most of my good sense. I push myself to my feet as if I have somewhere else to be and fling a concentrated illusion straight at his face with the force of my will.
My scrap of magic smacks over his eyes, making him think he can see nothing but darkness. The guard yelps, stumbles, and whirls around—and the effect has already wisped away.
I peer at him as if startled, my pulse thudding fast. There shouldn’t be any need to fear consequences for using my powers. Raul told us he’d heard from Aurelia that her guards can’t detect magic, and that’s obviously held true, or he’d have deflected my trick before it reached him.
Then I look past him and realize the true reason he was moving this way.
He wasn’t going on the attack. He was simply following Aurelia as she meandered over to rejoin her husband.
Both she and Marclinus frown at the guard before their gazes slide to me, standing nearby. My heart stutters again.
I give a twitch of my mouth I hope looks bemused and hustle off between the beds of flowers.
Fuck. What did I even accomplish? I could have exposed my powers and gotten myself into a total catastrophe if any of the emperor’s guards with a magic-sensing gift had come closer without me noticing.
I’ve veered off between the taller hedges when a familiar broad hand falls on my shoulder .
I glance over to see Raul has followed me. He offers a sympathetic smile that’s really closer to a grimace.
“Getting a little jumpy, huh?” he says.
I twist my hands in the air. It was a stupid move. I know.
He pitches his voice even lower. “You’re too messed up about her. You need to believe what I told you, and you’ll be able to simmer down.”
Not that easy.
He squeezes my shoulder and cocks his head pensively. Maybe I should be worried when that sly gleam comes into his eyes. But when he leans close with a conspiratorial lilt to his voice, I can’t pull away.
“You need to talk to her yourself. I think I can distract the imperial prick for long enough tonight to give you an opening.”