Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Aurelia
W ith a reasonable man, my explanation about Neven would be the end of any trouble. With a reasonable man, there wouldn’t be any trouble at all over one of his foster brothers asking me a brief question.
But no one needs to tell me that Marclinus is far from reasonable.
We sit together in the waystation’s dining hall, quite a bit more cramped than the palace dining rooms and with humbler furnishings but still cushioned with velvet and lit with crystal fixtures that mimic splashing water. Jurnus is one of the godlen of the sea as well as overseer of all travelers, after all.
Marclinus grins, guffaws, and hollers to the fellow nobles as if he’s in high spirits. But every lift of his voice and jerk of his knife across his plate makes me tense up.
There’s a frenzied energy beneath his buoyant mood, something darker and more vicious that I can only hope won’t seep through the cheerful facade.
He speaks to me only a little, asking me thoughts on each dish. They’re all pleasant enough, up to imperial standards.
Then, when the servers have cleared dessert dishes, he stands abruptly without giving the nobles any motion of dismissal.
Grasping my elbow, he tugs me to my feet with him. He leans close, grazing his lips and then his teeth along the edge of my jaw.
I will myself to relax into his embrace. I knew where this night was heading, after all.
Except I didn’t really. Because after he mashes his mouth against mine, he grips my waist and heaves me up to sit me on the edge of the table with a thump.
The nobles around us—at the same table and those throughout the room—all glance over if they weren’t watching already. Even the few local courtesans who’ve been circulating the room, seeing if any members of the court want to partake of their services, pause to watch.
Marclinus smirks down at me with an unnervingly chilly glint in his gray eyes. He pitches his voice to carry through the room. “I don’t think I’ve had quite enough dessert yet. I’m going to indulge in my second helping right here.”
As the meaning of his announcement sparks a jolt of horror in me, he slams his lips down on mine in a kiss that feels more like a punch. He grasps the folds of my skirt and jerks at the silk. In a few violent yanks, he’s dragged the fabric up over my ass, pooling it on the table and baring my drawers to anyone at the right angle to see .
My gut lurches. Most of the nobles around me have witnessed me outright naked before, but Marclinus didn’t do more than paw at me a little during that trial.
Does he actually mean to fuck me in front of his entire court as if I’m another dinner course?
Gods help me, I won’t be able to stop him. I can’t drug him into delusions in front of all these witnesses.
My pulse skitters with the first swell of panic. I clutch the front of Marclinus’s shirt, kissing him back with whatever shreds of feigned enthusiasm I can summon, my mind scrambling for a way out.
The men I love are watching this too. Is he trying to provoke them, still testing just how invested they are in me? Is this a punishment to me for some transgression I can’t guess at?
Are they all going to be able to keep their cool while he ravages me here on the table in front of them?
Marclinus leaves off plundering my mouth to flick his gaze toward the noblemen nearest us with narrowed eyes. Perhaps he suspects some marchion or viceroy of having designs on me. This could be a test for his entire court.
He lowers his mouth to suck on the side of my neck hard enough to bruise. His hands fumble with my gown’s lacing at the same time. His hasty fingers rake across my back.
Great God help me, I can’t conceal a flinch.
My husband nips the sensitive skin he’s just mauled and lifts his head to peer down at me with a smile that’s just shy of a sneer. “Do you have some objection to demonstrating our love in front of our friends, wife?”
If he calls this love, I’d shudder to think what he’d consider hate.
I dip my head in what I hope looks like modesty. “I’m sorry. You know how eagerly I welcome your attentions. But there are certain intimacies I thought we’d keep just between us. It feels more special that way.”
At the edge of my vision, I can see Bianca watching us with widened eyes. My gut clenches with the thought that she might provide an alternate explanation—a figure that might have diverted my interest.
Thank all that’s holy, her mouth remains tightly shut.
I know my excuse was flimsy, but something shifts in Marclinus’s expression. If anything, his grin gets sharper. “My poor modest empress. We’ll need to cure you of that bashfulness. But I suppose I could allow you to ease into this sort of fun so it’ll be all the more enjoyable later.”
He glances around the room, his eyes as hard and glittering as the crystal fixtures overhead. “Why don’t we start with just an audience of those who are almost family? Come along, my foster brothers. You can be honored as our first spectators.”
He sweeps me off the table into his arms without missing a beat. I spot Bastien by the end of the table, frozen in a rigid stance. When Marclinus jerks his head toward the doorway, the prince of Cotea shoves to his feet.
My husband strides out the doorway with only a brusque, “You too. All of you.” My stomach sinks farther at the glimpse of white-blond hair as another figure springs up.
He’s dragging even Neven into this horrible spectacle.
Marclinus carries me down the hall. I tuck my head against his chest as if out of shyness, but mostly it’s an attempt to steady myself.
Nausea bubbles at the base of my throat. Where is he going to conduct this “fun”?
I don’t dare say a word to try to guide him. It seems more likely he’ll do the opposite of what I suggest than listen.
The princes tramp along behind us, silent other than the creak of the floor beneath their feet .
Imagining what they must be thinking floods me with a sickly heat, shame and fear mixed together in a noxious stew.
I don’t know whether it’ll be easier or harder for them to control their instinctive protectiveness when we’re away from the rest of the court. They still can’t attack Marclinus without the worst of consequences. His guards and mine are trailing farther behind our entourage.
When Marclinus pushes through another doorway, my glance around brings the first whisper of relief.
He’s taken us into his own bedroom in the waystation. A couple of his trunks sit at the foot of the four-poster bed.
The guards will wait outside the door like they always do. We have no witnesses except the princes he’s forced to observe.
Marclinus glances over his shoulder. “Enjoy the show, brothers. ” The sneer in his voice makes a mockery of the last word.
He all but tosses me onto the bed. I flick my thumb across my ring as I reach for him and brush my fingers against the side of his neck.
As Marclinus clambers over me, he hauls my dress right off. The princes remain four motionless figures by the wall at the edge of my vision, but even there, I can see Raul’s hands ball into fists, Bastien’s shoulders stiffen.
They don’t know exactly how I’ve handled my husband in the past. They don’t know for sure that I’m already handling him now. If they leap to my defense…
I flick my fingers by Marclinus’s side in a couple of hasty gestures. I’m okay. Wait.
I don’t dare look at my lovers. I try not to even think of them as more shame curdles in my gut.
Marclinus paws his hand down my side. “You are mine,” he says, just shy of a snarl. “Everyone should know it. Everyone should see it. You don’t get to say when or how I take you.”
The lies scrape across my tongue like dull blades. “I’m yours. I’ll keep doing my best to serve you however you need.”
“That’s right.” He wrenches off my chemise and bites the tip of my breast harshly enough that I gasp in pain.
Either he takes the sound as pleasure instead, or he was going for pain in the first place. He mouths my other breast just as roughly and shoves his hand between my legs over my drawers.
I suppress a wince and grope at his shirt in the hopes of covering my reaction. Marclinus gives a harsh laugh and tosses the shirt aside.
As he lunges at me again, Raul stirs as if on the verge of springing forward despite my cautioning. I wrench my hand in another urgent gesture to stand back.
And mercy of all mercy, Marclinus’s fervor slows. He gazes down at me, the familiar drugged stupor coming over his face.
My breath spills out of me in a rush of relief, but I don’t love that the princes will have to see even this part of our typical interludes.
It won’t do for them to come into his view or for him to see me talking to them. I don’t know how those factors would merge with the hallucinations I need to provoke.
Smiling up at my husband, I repeat the sign for Wait as emphatically as I can.
Then I roll Marclinus over so I’m poised above him. Yank down his trousers just far enough that he won’t make a mess of them. Linger in his view while his mind conjures lascivious images of our encounter all the way through to his spurt of his release .
If I thought my cheeks burned before, they’re scalding now.
As Marclinus’s eyelids start to fall, I speak up softly in the hopes of directing the end of his hallucination. “Now that they’re gone, I can have you all to myself.”
Let him imagine that he’s dismissed the princes and decided to doze with me.
I wait until his eyes drift completely shut before hastily wiping him off with my chemise. As I yank my dress back over my head to cover myself, footsteps creak across the floor behind me.
“He’s out now?” Bastien murmurs.
I don’t know how well the waystation’s walls will muffle our voices. I scoot to the edge of the bed and keep my own at a whisper. “Yes. For a couple of hours. I’m sorry you all had to see that.”
Raul doesn’t waste another second in striding right over to me, his teeth bared. “It isn’t your fault. That spiteful asshole…”
He cuts himself off with a strangled growl, fighting to keep his own voice quiet, and slides his arms around me more carefully than I suspect he’d like to. I know it’s a miracle he managed to keep his cool as well as he did.
Because he wanted to protect me more than he wanted vengeance. Because he trusted me when I told him I could handle it best alone.
Lorenzo pushes in to offer his own embrace, pressing a tender kiss to my temple as if it can erase all the brutal affection my husband just inflicted on me. He won’t dare to conjure his illusionary voice while Marclinus’s guards are monitoring the room, but his message is clear enough.
Neven has hung back, the color drained from his face. When I meet his eyes, he drops his gaze. “I… Is that what you always have to do? ”
I don’t know what he thought, but I suppose none of his foster brothers mentioned that I was knocking the emperor out on a regular basis. Even they couldn’t have been prepared for what an encounter like this would look like.
I lift my shoulders in a slight shrug. “It works. It’s better than the alternative. He isn’t normally quite so… aggressive beforehand.”
The young prince’s jaw works, and he raises his head again. “He shouldn’t— Treating you like that— It isn’t right .”
I have to stop myself from laughing. Of course it isn’t. Why should that surprise him after everything else he’s seen?
But he is only seventeen years old. Young enough to have a little faith left in humanity.
My own faith feels as if it’s drained away even more in the past hour. A wave of despair washes over me.
This is why the moments of gentleness Marclinus showed me in Rexoran couldn’t matter. This is why I can’t let the fleeting moments of guilt or sympathy shake me from my cause.
No matter how much my husband appears to soften, he always swerves straight back into awfulness before too long. We can never be even wary companions.
He’ll always be my enemy. And I’m stuck with him until I can fight my way out of this tangled trap.
“It is what it is,” I say, tugging my unlaced dress tighter around me. “I suppose you’d better stay a little longer until the guards won’t think it’s odd that he’d have drifted off.” Time passes faster in the drug’s hallucinations than in reality.
Neven’s hands clench, but he sits down on the floor by the wall. Lorenzo eases over to perch on the bed next to me and grips my hand.
Raul takes the spot by my other side, and Bastien hunkers down by my feet to lean his head against my knee, tucking his arm around my calf. My breath evens out in the joint embrace, but my heart thuds on.
How much more will I have to survive before I can reclaim my life as my own?
Neven’s head slumps, distracting me from my own misery. The comments he made about wanting to do something, to make a difference, come back to me.
He’s felt shut out from his foster brothers’ plans. Maybe they’ve protected him more than is truly safe.
I speak up again, equally quiet. “Neven’s seen a lot now. I’m not sure it does us any good to keep secrets from him.”
As the prince of Goric shifts straighter, Raul glances from me to him with a grimace. But he takes my suggestion to heart.
“We’re working on making the situation better,” he says in a firm undertone. “Stay away from Marclinus when you can—nothing to provoke him. Lorenzo and I have been nudging as many people as we can in Aurelia’s favor.”
Bastien nods. “I’ve been looking into the confirmation rites so she can be as prepared as possible.” He meets my eyes. “It’s no surprise, but I’ve been able to determine that the Sabrellian confirmation rite will definitely involve some kind of physical combat. Raul should give you more lessons. I’ll see if I can find any more details.”
Neven’s face brightens. “I’ll help with the lessons again. Any way that’ll be useful.”
Raul chuckles softly. “I’m sure we can find something for you to do. And believe me, when everything’s in place…” He tips his head toward my unconscious husband and jerks a finger across his throat.
Neven’s lips part in shock, but then the corners lift with a trace of a smile.
Lorenzo squeezes my hand as if to confirm he’s here with me just as much. He lifts his other hand in the air to form a few gestures. Not like this forever.
An ache swells inside my chest, but it’s bittersweet rather than fully painful now.
I’m not alone. We’ve made our own kind of family, stronger than the bonds of blood or marriage.
I will get through this as I have so much else, with these men who match my determination around me.