Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Lorenzo
T he scorched skin on my chest still stings, more so when I move. I try to recline in the worn armchair, but with every minute that passes without Aurelia’s arrival, my hands clench tighter against the padded arms. There’s no way I’m actually relaxing.
Raul paces back and forth on the threadbare rug in the sitting room that used to connect the servants’ chambers to the hidden passages within the palace walls. It’s been several days since we last gathered here, and his feet stir up the thin layer of new dust. It tickles my nose.
He doesn’t appear to care if he’s agitating his wound. Every muscle on his massive frame bulges with tension. “Are we sure this is where she wanted us to meet her? She couldn’t have been motioning to the library or the gardens?”
Bastien is poised on the edge of the settee, his lean body braced rigidly as if he thinks he might need to leap up at any second. “She indicated down and enclosed. That eliminates both. And this is the only place in the palace she can meet us without risking being observed. Nothing else would make sense.”
“She might not have been thinking straight after all of Marclinus’s fucking insanity.” Raul sucks a harsh breath through his teeth. “He can’t know anything, can he? If he was even slightly sure, he’d already have chopped off our heads.”
I stay quiet, not knowing what to say. After all the music I enhanced for the court this evening, just the thought of forming my illusionary voice sets off an uncomfortable prickle in my skull.
Bastien swipes his hand over his pale forehead, ruffling his auburn hair and provoking a wince as his shirt must brush the fresh burn. “I can’t even tell whether he truly suspects there’s some fondness between us and her that we’ve been hiding or if he simply enjoys tormenting all of us. We’ve always been easier targets than the rest of the nobles.”
Raul looks toward the spot where the imperial crest is now seared into his brown skin. “As soon as I’m out from under this fucking roof, I’m?—”
A faint creak on the other side of the paneled doorway brings all our heads jerking up, Raul’s voice halting. With a sigh, the panel slides open.
Aurelia steps out, her hair loose and mussed across her shoulders, a glass jar clutched in one hand. Her gaze darts over all of us. Her blue eyes have gone even darker with her urgency.
Her voice quavers. “I’m sorry it took me so long. Marclinus told me to wait for him in my chambers, and then he took until the next bell actually coming, and— It doesn’t matter. This salve should help reduce the pain and make the burns heal faster.”
I get to my feet with a lurch of my heart at the unstated implications of her words, her unpinned hair. Marclinus came to her bed —she had to cater to his advances again.
Fury and jealousy flare together behind the clenching of my jaw.
Raul’s voice comes out in a growl. “If that vicious prick made you?—”
Aurelia lifts her hand to stop him. “I dealt with him the same way I always do. It’s… tolerable.”
Bastien has risen and pushed forward to meet her. Her gaze drops to his shirt. She must be picturing the brand she pressed into his chest, because she flinches. “I’m so sorry.”
He grasps her wrist with an emphatic squeeze. “It wasn’t your fault. You handled the situation perfectly.”
“Marclinus is the only one we’re upset with, ” I add, ignoring the pulse of pain that comes with the illusion and casting it far enough for my foster brothers to hear me too. “Him and his brutal tests.”
Raul scowled. “He’d better get bored of them soon, or…”
He trails off, because really, how can he go on? What can any of us do right now to stop the new emperor from following every horrific whim that strikes him?
Not even his wife is safe.
Aurelia doesn’t look at all reassured by our words. Her gaze slides over all of us, shining with both affection and anguish. “You all held so strong through the whole thing… But you shouldn’t have needed to. Gods, I hate him.”
She opens the jar with a wobble of her hand and dips her fingers into the pearly blue gel inside. “Let me just— I should have enough. I’ll need to brew more when I have the chance, just in case…”
When Bastien raises his shirt at her gesture to reveal the seared flesh, her mouth twists. With delicate movements, she smears the gel over the raw spot.
Bastien stays tensed at first, but his stance softens as the initial soothing effects must sink in. He closes his eyes. “Thank you.”
Aurelia gazes up at him and then, just as gingerly as she treated his burn, touches the side of his jaw and bobs up to kiss him.
Bastien makes a rough sound low in his throat and grasps her waist as he kisses her back. The pang of envy that hits me is much more bittersweet than before.
I haven’t gotten to kiss the woman I love since before her final trial. But Bastien has struggled the most with accepting how his plan was upended. He always takes on so much responsibility for the rest of us.
If anyone needs the reminder of how much she cares in return, it’s him.
Raul’s gaze tracks Aurelia as she moves from our foster brother to him. A predatory glint sparks in his cool eyes.
He watches her apply the salve to his own wound, any discomfort he’s feeling buried deep. “Is the kiss part of the cure, Shepherdess?”
She gives him a wry look. “I suppose we can count it as that. If only to show I belong to you all too, as much as I can.”
The words bring a catch into my breath. No further envy stirs as Aurelia kisses Raul, only a tingle of anticipation.
She comes to me next, gliding across the floor like a figure out of a dream. The salve imparts a comforting coolness into my skin. The sad smile she offers me sends an ache from my throat to my gut.
I touch her cheek. “I meant it. I’m yours.”
She answers with the kiss I’ve spent more than a week imagining. Her lips meld with mine, soft and sweet, while her cool, wild scent fills my lungs.
How could I want anything else when I have her?
When she draws back, my hand trails down her face to tuck the strands of her hair over her shoulder. The gesture reveals a ruddy blotch on the side of her neck.
My fingers jerk away from it.
He marked her. Her wretch of a husband bruised her beautiful skin to stake his claim.
All careful intentions go out the window. I tug her back to me, capturing her mouth for my own, teasing her lower lip with a graze of my teeth before deepening the kiss. As she melts into me, I ease my hand down her side. My palm slides over the tempting swell of her breast?—
Aurelia pulls away with a shaky breath. She clasps my hand so the refusal doesn’t feel so much like a rejection.
“I want to,” she says, the hunger turning her voice raw. “I just don’t think?—”
She already explained this to me. I squeeze her fingers, a shameful flush rising to my face, and flick my other hand through the air. I know. I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have pushed.
Aurelia steps farther back, glancing over all of us. She looks wilder and more gorgeous than ever with a flush of her own darkening her cheeks and her hair flowing unkept about her face.
She screws the lid back onto the jar and lowers her gaze to it for a moment before meeting our eyes again. “With the way Marclinus has been acting and the court setting off for Ubetta tomorrow, I think we should be even more cautious. We won’t have any secret passages or discreet rooms to sneak off into in the waystations. And he seems to be watching us so closely…”
My innards tighten even more at the idea of putting additional distance between us. The cloud of gloom that consumed me a few days ago settles over me, but I force myself to incline my head in agreement. “Whatever you think is safest for you. ”
Protecting her matters more than bodily pleasures, as much happiness as a single touch from her brings me.
Raul grimaces. “I realize I’ve taken chances before, but I don’t want to put you in danger. You know the threats you’re facing better than any of us. You decide whether our combat lessons continue—whether you even want to talk to us—and we’ll follow your lead.”
“But we’ll still be here,” Bastien adds, his face drawn. “If you do need us, in whatever way…”
Aurelia’s mouth twists. “I want all of you to stay safe too. If I could, I’d have you all sent back to your home countries already?—”
No! I interrupt with an overt jerk of my hand. I’m recoiling from the thought too violently to concentrate on my gift.
As Aurelia stares at me, I repeat the same gesture I did in the audience hall. I belong to you. Then I add, We belong here with you. The fight is ours too.
She blinks hard—against tears she’s managed to hold back until now? “I know, but if something happened to you because of me…”
She’s still haunted by the death of that guard she fell for years ago. A duller twinge of jealousy passes through me, but it isn’t as if he’s competition now.
Maybe she needs the confirmation that he’s not a harbinger of our doom either.
I gather my composure enough to conjure my illusionary voice, girding myself against the brief ache of effort. “It wouldn’t be because of you. I don’t think it was the time before either. Why don’t you tell us all exactly what happened, so we can make sure what we have here doesn’t end the same way?”
Aurelia’s gaze darts to my foster brothers. Raul’s expression has turned grimmer; Bastien’s jaw flexes .
“You know the basics,” she surmises. “Lorenzo told you what I told him.”
I start to make a gesture of apology, but she shakes her head. “It’s all right. I assume you share everything you know with each other. There’s nothing I’d tell any of you that I wouldn’t be comfortable with you all knowing. But do you really want to hear about Gavril?”
The name makes the man more real in my mind. I can picture a younger version of Aurelia casting glances across the room, ducking out into the gardens, blushing as he charms her.
Raul answers for me. “Lore’s right. If it’ll help set your mind at ease about our involvement, we should hear it.”
Her arms come up to hug herself. “I don’t know how much there is to say. I never told anyone I was seeing him—I had a lot more freedom in Accasy. My friends suspected I was fond of someone, but I never admitted who. Freedom or not, it isn’t really done for a princess to marry a man who’s only a guard. It wouldn’t have benefitted our kingdom in any way.”
“It would have made you happy,” Bastien says quietly.
“Maybe. Or maybe the guilt would have eaten me up if we’d actually managed to run away.” Aurelia grimaces. “But that isn’t what happened. He always wanted to protect people from Dariu, and when he intervened, the empire’s soldiers cut him down. From what the townspeople told us, they were getting pushy with a girl—they’d torn her shirt—and they started shoving her brother around when he spoke up. Then Gavril stepped in…”
She inhales slowly and meets my eyes again. “He should have stayed out of it, just like he should have stayed away from me. But he didn’t, and they stabbed him to death. You can’t claim you won’t face the same fate if you follow me too closely down the path I’m on.”
Raul lets out a dismissive sound. “Then we won’t follow too close. Your Accasian guard hadn’t spent fifteen years dodging the empire’s worst. We know when to keep our mouths shut and our tempers cool.” His lips quirk into a smile. “Staying peaceful may not come naturally to me, but all I have to do is think of you for inspiration, and it’s not so hard.”
“And it was his decision to intervene,” I add. “Just like our actions are our own. You didn’t ask him to defend his neighbors any more than you’ve asked us to defend you.”
Bastien eases closer to Aurelia and sets his hand on her arm. “But we want to. I’d rather be stabbed a hundred times than run off like a coward now that we finally have a chance to make a difference. You didn’t run away when you had the chance. Give us the same choice.”
Aurelia manages a shaky laugh. “When you put it that way, it’s hard to argue.”
Raul gives her hair a teasing tug. “Then don’t.”
“All right. No more talk about sending you away. But we do still need to keep our distance.” She looks toward the panel. “And I should probably be getting back before anyone can suspect I’m gone.”
Bastien’s posture pulls a little straighter. “First—I hadn’t found the chance to tell you—this afternoon, I came across some records about Prospira’s confirmation rite. The written accounts are sparse and leaning more toward poetry than facts, but they mention something about watering the plants from the emperor’s body… I think it may require the spilling of your blood.”
I wince. Hasn’t this woman been wounded enough?
Aurelia’s expression barely twitches. “That’s helpful to know. I have ways I can prepare for that.”
She wavers for a moment, her fingers curling toward her palms at her sides. “I’m not sure we should even speak, at least until that rite is over with. I’ll have to judge Marclinus’s moods. Sometimes he has seemed as if he’s starting to trust me. Please remember that I’m doing this for all of our countries. It’s just not always easy to see the best way how.”
I swallow hard. “We know you’re doing your best, Rell.”
She aims her sad smile at me again. “I’d better go. Marclinus might wake soon.”
We all nod. I suspect my foster brothers are restraining themselves from wrapping her in a final embrace as much as I am.
As Aurelia slips away into the passages, a thicker gloom descends over the entire room. Raul glowers at the lantern on the table, as if it’s to blame for our circumstances.
It occurs to me that he has more reasons than just our separation from Aurelia to feel discomforted. Murmurs of rebellious behavior in Lavira have been passing through the court, and Marclinus himself referenced it tonight.
We all know how brutally the empire cracks down on any sign of dissent. My memories of watching Tarquin and his son crush the minor uprising in my own home country summon echoes of that past distress.
I didn’t go back to Rione while the fighting was happening, but Tarquin toured around the country with me at his side shortly afterward to remind the kingdom of his authority. The images of the savaged bodies hung from pikes all around the main city square rise up like ghouls in the back of my head.
“You must be worried about your people back home too,” I venture.
Raul huffs. “If they’re going to be idiots about it, there’s not much anyone can do for them.”
His brow furrows all the same.
Bastien glances toward the wall our empress vanished through. “So far, Marclinus hasn’t taken quite as extreme an approach as I’d have expected. Maybe Aurelia really is already moderating his harsher inclinations.”
All at once, I’m twice as choked up as before.
Every time Aurelia tries to nudge our new emperor away from his initial plans, she’s putting herself at risk of his wrath. But she’s taking that risk for all of us, maybe even more so than herself—for Lavira, for me just tonight when she interrupted my playing.
How much more will she be able to accomplish if she can simply survive long enough to see her hopes through?
Resolve sweeps through me, more potent than the melancholy that gripped my chest just minutes ago. “She can talk about our safety all she wants, but it’s only hers that really matters.”
Bastien studies me. “What do you mean, Lore?”
I ball my hands into fists, speaking through the growing ache in my skull. “We’ve hidden our full gifts all this time in case we get a chance to use them against the empire… She could overturn everything we hate about the tyrants. If there’s a moment when I have to choose between using my power in a way that might expose it and losing her—I don’t care what happens to me. Our old plans, all the secrets, my life —protecting her means more than any of it. I’d rather die knowing she’ll keep fighting for the future we wanted.”
Raul blinks at me as if startled by my vehemence. Then he raises his own fist in the air between us. “I’ll second that vow.”
Bastien’s mouth curves into a crooked smile. “I can’t argue with your logic. To Aurelia and the end of the empire’s tyranny.”
We knock our fists together like we used to, years ago before all our hopes seemed lost.