Chapter Eleven The Villainess and the Evil Chancellor
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Villainess and the Evil Chancellor
The Emperor had a hundred torches lit for the ball.
The fires burned so bright and red they gave the jet-black ballroom floor a ruddy hue, like a sea of roses floating on night-time waters.
Overhead, the tongues of the torches reflected in the mirrored ceiling seemed a forest aflame.
It was decreed every minstrel in court must play this night, even Merel the foreigner who disliked being one of a crowd.
The air filled with music and excitement.
The Emperor’s bitter mourning for his late queen was done at last, the new Queen’s Trials were concluded, and the Emperor was holding the grandest ball Eyam had ever seen to celebrate.
He called it the Burning Hearts Ball, and declared at the ball he would reveal his queen.
Everybody knew who the Emperor’s queen would be.
A true noblewoman of Eyam, who bid fair to be a true queen.
The lady who suggested they return to the old ways for the Queen’s Trials, so each potential bride would prove her love for their Emperor.
The lady who won both the first round, to test your heart, and the second round, to reveal your heart, and proved herself twice over.
The lady who made the whole court laugh, as fair as she was clever, and one of the two cleverest ladies at court.
“Let’s call her the cleverest woman at court,” Lady Zenobia was overheard to say dryly at the Burning Hearts Ball. “If she becomes queen.”
Everybody knew who the Emperor’s queen would be, and they were ready to celebrate her.
The ball was so grand, it must mean the Emperor adored his bride-to-be.
The great tables creaked under the weight of their feast. An equally great array of tables glittered with what must be half the Emperor’s treasury, a golden gift for each guest – except for a certain lady, as the Emperor informed them all.
A velvet curtain partitioned one corner of the ballroom, guarded by ghoul guards so none dared look behind the curtain.
The favoured lady’s gift was hidden there. The gift was to be a great surprise.
Once they were married, whispered courtiers grown brave behind gilded masks, all would at last be well.
The Emperor was smiling as he had not in years. Lord Fabianus, who usually kept his gaze upon the floor in the imperial presence and routinely addressed the Emperor as “Your Supreme Majesty Please Don’t Kill Me”, informed Lady Zenobia in shocked tones that the Emperor was handsome.
At the Burning Hearts Ball it seemed the Emperor finally became all that his subjects could desire: handsome, charming and gracious. Love had transformed him, the prime minister told everybody in the room.
The Emperor danced with every maiden who had survived this Queen’s Trials, but his preference was clear. The clever, lovely lady granted the Emperor the honour of her hand for both the first dance.
And the last.
The Once and Forever Emperor series, now revised, ANONYMOUS
As if they were a cluster of blooms on a single scandalized stalk and the wind were blowing Rae’s way, the ministers turned to survey her with horror.
While the Emperor, lounging in careless glory upon his throne, raised his eyebrows and mouthed, “Ferrari of darkness?”
Rae shrugged and grinned. These were the rules of romance.
If the hero had a love interest when he met the heroine, that love interest should be the worst person alive.
“Elsa and I have been dating five years; she shall be a wonderful mother to my children. She’s just reading A List of Orphanages Run by Cannibals for fun. ”
You might question the hero’s romantic judgement, but nobody ever felt bad for that lady. Everybody counted the days until she was gone. The worse she was, the sooner the true heroine would arrive.
Plus, the wrong woman always threw herself at the hero.
Plenty of heroines in books had sex, but they burned with lust in a cool way, to let you know the hero should respect her.
The hero always found the heroine’s effortless natural charms far sexier than the desperate and obvious woman trying too hard to get with him.
So Rae was trying. “Ferrari of darkness” might be a step too far.
The Emperor asked with mild interest, “What’s a Ferrari?”
“Doesn’t matter. How do you feel about ‘chariot of darkness’?”
To her surprise, the Emperor’s mouth briefly wore Key’s old smile, though it was Key’s smile reflected in a shadowed broken glass. Seeing it hurt and pleased Rae in equal measure.
Feeling bad about all the bad things she had done wouldn’t help him. What Key needed was to escape his doom.
Rae began by saying the traditional line uttered by those intending to hideously disrupt a situation. “I do hope I’m not interrupting.”
“You obviously—” began one of the ministers.
The Emperor held up a single claw. “My lady is allowed do whatever she wants.”
He flicked his claws in a gesture of invitation towards the dead queen’s throne. On her way to the dais, Rae couldn’t help but notice Fabianus Nemeth, in chains and the custody of the undead.
This came as a nasty surprise. Rae had thought Fabianus far away, safe in the icelands with Princess Vasilisa, but she remembered him worrying over leaving his sister when she was sick. He must have stayed after all.
Since he was here, Rae was relieved Fabianus hadn’t been eaten by ghouls.
In the books, the princess became the infamous Ice Queen of Tagar, one of the Emperor’s greatest enemies, but the Ice Queen had been devastated by her brother’s death and her disappointment in love.
In this timeline, Vasilisa and Fabianus seemed very happy together.
Princess Vasilisa was proof the story could change for the better. There would never be a broken-hearted Ice Queen, or an Emperor alone beneath the moon.
Fabianus looked battered and bruised, but he stood upright beneath his chains. Rae knew the tells of unbearable pain. Nothing was broken or badly hurt.
“Are you all right?” she asked under her breath, just in case.
He nodded, but over the gag his eyes blazed. Fabianus was a friend of the Cobra, as well as the princess’s sweetheart. On any ordinary day Rae knew him as a mild-mannered chatterbox.
These were extraordinary times.
“Moon, star and black hole of my life, why is Fabianus in chains? I always liked him.”
“I know you like him,” the Emperor answered. “That’s why he’s still alive.”
General Nemeth made an inarticulate sound of rage. He stilled when the prime minister shot a meaningful look in Fabianus’s direction.
Rae’s eyes met Pio’s with silent mutual understanding. Effectively, they were defenceless in this throne room with a man-eating tiger, a tiger as clever as any man. Panic would be fatal.
She didn’t want to think about the Emperor this way. She didn’t want to be on someone else’s side against him. But even the atmosphere around the Emperor’s throne crackled like air reacting to an oncoming storm, and Rae didn’t want anyone else to die.
“What did Lord Fabianus do?”
The Emperor eyed Fabianus coldly. “Attacked my dead.”
“You’ve fought ghouls yourself,” Rae pointed out. “Last night was a confusing time for everybody. Let him go. I’m sure he won’t do it again.”
Surely he hadn’t done that much damage. Fabianus made his lack of interest in military pursuits as clear as his interest in fashion. Rae pictured Fabianus striking out wildly at ghouls with a large silk fan.
“Is that a command, my lady?”
She thought of the phrase “it sent a shiver down my spine”. Rae’s fear seemed more tangible. The Emperor’s lazy voice didn’t feel like a cold shiver but cold steel. A blade, pressed along Rae’s naked spine.
In the books, the Emperor once said, I will not be commanded. How foolish Rae had been, to command him in front of the whole court last night.
Rae shrugged. “I don’t care enough about his life to command you. Do whatever you want. Kill whoever you want.”
The slight pause lasted an ice age. “Release him.”
As the dead loosed Fabianus’s chains, Rae did another evil thing.
She whispered, “You need to see your sister right away.”
Colour fled, leaving Fabianus’s face pale beneath purple bruises.
As soon as the chains fell, he ran. He thought Hortensia was dying.
Rae had meant him to think so. Now that Rae knew these people were real, hurting them was harder.
She would have strangled anyone who scared Alice that way, but she hadn’t liked the reckless look in Fabianus’s eyes.
She wanted to remove him from the Emperor’s presence as fast as possible.
When he saw Hortensia fully cured by the Flower of Life and Death, Fabianus would be happy.
As the throne room doors closed, Rae sauntered past the Emperor’s advisors, dropping a word in the prime minister’s ear.
“Did he kill somebody this morning?”
Barely moving his lips, Pio murmured, “Yes.”
Without a break in her stride, Rae sashayed up the steps and slid into her place on the throne beside the Emperor’s.
Commander General Nemeth glared at her with venom, which startled Rae until she thought over how it must have looked, the Beauty Dipped In Blood standing beside his helpless son and saying carelessly, I don’t care enough about his life to command you. Kill whoever you want.
General Nemeth had always judged her. The entire court had always judged her. What did it matter?
Rae tossed her midnight hair, reaching out – like the brazen and shameless woman she was – to slide bare fingers between the claws of the Emperor’s orichal steel gauntlets.
Orichal metal cut through anything, and gleamed red as if always freshly dipped in blood.
In one claw the Emperor held a God’s Eye, the large, black gem twin to the jewel in Rae’s necklace and which Rae had last seen set in the royal mask.
The Emperor must have prised the jewel from the mask’s broken pieces.