Chapter Thirty-Three The Maiden and the Undead Rogue
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Maiden and the Undead Rogue
“Could I have saved my sister?” asked Lord Marius.
“You did save her,” answered the Oracle. “In another world. But not this one.”
Excerpt from the Once and Forever Emperor series, now revised, ANONYMOUS
Caracalla worried about what Ink had said for days. They were best friends now. They should trust each other.
But surely, she should trust her betrothed as well.
She tried to find a moment alone with the Cobra, but Lord Lucius lingered near.
“Stop following me around,” the Cobra said sharply one day in the portrait gallery.
Guilt halted Caracalla, until she saw the Cobra’s gaze was trained not on her but on Lucius, fresh from the training grounds, bareheaded but still in his armour. His red hair seemed freshly washed. The dead, it seemed, did not sweat or tire. Lucius could keep up with Marius as nobody else could.
Caracalla was happy to discover she and her betrothed were in complete agreement! Lucius could get lost.
The slanted light of the windows made a line of fire strike as Lucius tilted his head. “I’m only trying to get to know you. As the new friend of my oldest friend.”
The Cobra leaned his hip against a stone windowsill. “All right, let’s get better acquainted. Want to know something?”
“Oh, I do. You seem to know so much.”
“I know this,” said the Cobra. “I know what you did, Lucius. When you were alive, barely more than a boy. You sabotaged the old king and queen’s carriage, thinking you would profit if they died and your childhood friend became king. Octavian killed you for it.”
Lucius hesitated. “A misstep, I admit.”
A misstep? It was regicide and treason!
The Cobra laughed, as if regicide and treason didn’t mean much to him. “You may be dead, but you haven’t changed. Octavian’s gone now, and the gods have risen. You’re up to your old tricks, crawling back to your friend and seeing how you can use him.”
“Me, use him? I’m not the one who manipulated him into swearing the oath of blood and gold.”
Caracalla remembered Marius saying Command me to the Cobra.
“That’s not how it happened,” snapped the Cobra.
Lucius laughed. “How did it happen? Let me take a guess. Poor Marius, he never did make friends easily. I always knew there would be trouble between him and Octavian. They never saw eye to eye, and neither was wise enough to pretend they did, and now Octavian’s dead.
So am I, and there never was any other friend.
Maybe your presence in his life made that certain. ”
Oddly, the Cobra flinched at that, though Caracalla couldn’t see why.
Lucius’s tone grew knowing. “So Marius was lonely unto desperation, and the crisis of war came, and Marius swore his oath to you. I wonder if he regrets it now. Perhaps he can’t even bring himself to regret it.
Perhaps he considers himself simply damned.
He believes being doomed is his fate. Is it?
What does this book, which tells you so much, say about Marius’s fate?
Perhaps you’re the reason Marius is doomed. ”
Another flinch. Caracalla wished she could instruct the Cobra to control his tells in battle. When you flinch, you tell the enemy the blow hurt.
“How dare you speak of Marius so?” Caracalla asked Lucius.
The Cobra moved swiftly to stand between Lucius and Caracalla. It was nice, having her betrothed try to shield her from harm. Nice, but not necessary.
Lucius remained focused on the Cobra. “How did you sneak your way into his acquaintance? I’d bet you took a dishonourable path. Did you intend to ruin his life, or did you simply not care?”
Lucius left a significant pause. The slight cloud almost lifted from his eyes, sparkling with anticipation, as though enjoying yourself made you more alive.
The Cobra waved a languid hand, though his shoulders remained tight. “Go on with your evil speech. I’m not providing you with any cues.”
Lucius obliged. “You told Marius the secret of his divine heritage, but you didn’t tell him how I disposed of the old king and queen.
Why not? Because he won’t believe you. I’ve heard the people talking about you.
You’re the wicked marquis. He and I were squires together, bonded in childhood and honour.
He never thought me anything but good and true.
If I had lived, he would never have sworn to you. ”
“Ah, there it is.” The Cobra smiled, slow and almost sinister. “Sorry you missed your path to power.”
Lord Lucius smiled back, as innocent as a boy. “Did I? I see my path very clearly.”
“Then take it, but don’t come for the line of Valerius. I will stand in your way.”
“And who are you to stand in my way?”
“Haven’t you heard?” The Cobra laughed. “I’m the wicked marquis.”
For once, Caracalla wasn’t pleased to see her brother enter the room.
He stood in the doorway of the portrait gallery.
As if looking at the tableau surrounded by a gilt frame, Caracalla saw what he saw.
The wicked marquis, self-confessed out of his own mouth, draped in gold and laughing a dark laugh in Lucius’s face.
Lucius, hair as bright as a helm, his stricken expression making him look a lost young knight, while a little too pale to be a healthy one.
She remembered again her brother’s letters, his eager praise of his new friend. He’d never talked about the Cobra with such open admiration.
“Is there a problem?” asked Marius.
Silence followed as the Cobra considered the question. “No,” he said at last. “We’re just learning to understand each other. Aren’t we, Lord Lucius?”
Lucius nodded, retreating to Marius’s side as if for protection. Frankly, Caracalla had found Lucius and the Cobra’s conversation unsettling on both sides, but it was her duty to support her future husband.
A Valerius always did her duty. She went to the Cobra, took his arm, and tossed her head.
“Lord Popenjoy has been nothing but charming to Lord Lucius.”
“Lady Caracalla is so loyal to her beloved,” Lucius said lightly. “I suppose she would say anything her betrothed wished her to say.”
Caracalla flushed with pride. “Of course I would.”
Only then, the Cobra recoiled, leaving her standing alone with her hand outstretched as he repeated, “Your what?”
He looked so genuinely astonished, as if such an idea had never occurred to him. Even though he’d accepted the betrothal dagger. He’d asked her to call him Eric.
“My – my betrothed,” Caracalla stammered.
“I’m nothing of the sort,” the Cobra declared. In the gallery of her ancestors, her shame witnessed by every Valerius who had ever been.
As always when in trouble, Caracalla looked to Marius, and reeled from betrayal. Unmistakably, the expression her brother wore was relief.
It was suddenly obvious Caracalla had been terribly mistaken. Marius had never searched the court to find his sister the best possible husband.
The final humiliation pressed down on her like the thumb of a giant, squashing Caracalla down to nothing, as the Cobra said with clear disgust, “I would never marry a child.”
He saw her as nothing more than that.
This wicked marquis who used and tossed aside women was all a wicked lie!
Caracalla sobbed wildly, wishing she’d been dallied with and discarded.
It was much worse that he’d never even thought about her that way or suspected the existence of her castles in the air. He’d never taken her seriously at all.
He’d called her a child!
Now all her castles had collapsed. She wouldn’t be taken to the capital by someone bright and charming and kind, Marius’s best friend, which meant she would be with Marius always. She would be trapped in the manor forever, the stone tomb her father haunted worse than any ghost.
When she heard a footstep light on the straw, Caracalla relaxed, thinking it was Ink.
“My lady Caracalla.” Lord Lucius’s voice sounded soft, hesitant to disturb her. “You must forgive the marquis. He’s from strange lands, with no idea how to behave among civilized people.”
Only the dead offered her sympathy on the breaking of her betrothal. Having horror for a houseguest made horror wear thin. She supposed this conversation might as well happen.
Caracalla sniffed. “Must I forgive him?”
“Well, no,” said Lucius. “Don’t forgive him, for all I care.”
Caracalla couldn’t help laughing. With the lamplight gentler than the light of day limning his face, Lucius almost looked handsome. He almost looked alive.
He laid a hand on Caracalla’s arm, over her sleeve as a gentleman should. She couldn’t tell if his hand was cold or not.
“Apologies for causing you pain,” Lucius added. “I thought your betrothal was common knowledge.”
Caracalla sat up straighter. “It was, wasn’t it? Everybody knew! It’s absurd of him to misunderstand.”
“Did he misunderstand?”
Caracalla hesitated. “What do you mean?”
“You and your brother are so trusting, and the Cobra is a cunning man,” murmured Lucius. “What if he let the betrothal stand for long enough to get Marius in his power? You do know what the oath of blood and gold means, don’t you? He can make Marius do anything.”
Caracalla shook her head involuntarily. She did not want Marius to be controlled, not by anyone.
But she really did not think the shock on the Cobra’s face earlier could have been feigned.
“If the Cobra’s so cunning, why wasn’t he more tactful about breaking off our betrothal?”
“Because he is a heartless villain,” Lucius answered smoothly.
He seemed to have more to say, but Caracalla interrupted him by throwing a lamp at the stable wall. The lamp shattered, the wooden wall splintered, and the dead man jumped at the force of her throw. Caracalla wished the lamp had been lit. She wished the whole manor would burn.
“So he’s a villain. And you’re a villain.
And I don’t care,” Caracalla raged. “He doesn’t want to marry me, and that means I’ll never get out of the manor!
I’m tall and awkward and men worry I might murder them, even though we pretend the Valerius curse is only for men!
It’s not, obviously. Women get just as angry as men do.
I could chop my husband into little bits! ”
“I think you’re very pretty,” Lucius murmured.
Caracalla didn’t think that was an appropriate response, though it was gratifying to hear.
She swallowed a sob, which made her cough. “Even if I were pretty, I can’t talk like a court lady. I can’t be witty; it is mortifying when several people look at you at once.”
That surprised a laugh out of Lucius. Caracalla was surprised in turn. It was the only sound she’d ever heard from Lucius that seemed genuine.
“You are like your brother,” said Lucius. Caracalla found that highly complimentary, and made her think Lucius might be fond of Marius, after all.
Not that it mattered.
“Marius is a man, he can get out. I cannot. Whenever my mother speaks of going to court, my father threatens to burn the house down, or feigns illness so it’s our duty to stay with him, or… he can still hurt her. I do not go into the east wing, but she still does.”
Caracalla had imagined her mother would come to stay in the Cobra’s bright, beautiful city house. They could all be happy, with no Valerius portraits menacing them from the walls, but her mother would never abandon what she believed to be her duty.
There was no escape. There never had been any escape. She’d only had a dream, and now the dream was over.
“You could,” suggested Lucius. “Go into the east wing.”
“Does being dead make you slow-witted? I don’t wish to go into the east wing.”
She would rather be a thousand miles away.
She would rather be kidnapped by ice raiders.
Sometimes at night, Caracalla remembered the day her father came for them as if she were living it all over again.
The door of her mother’s rooms, splintering under blows from her father’s fists, the roar of his fury beyond words, the glint of sharp metal through the cracking wood.
Her mother would die before she let her father touch Caracalla, so her mother would die first. Caracalla would be all alone with him.
“I understand,” said Lord Lucius, so mild. Even though he was one of the dead, it was a pleasant contrast to the shouts of other men. “Listen, Lady Caracalla. I only wish to help you.”
Caracalla sniffed. “Why?”
“Any true gentleman wishes to help a lady in distress,” Lucius assured her. “All you need to do is this. Go to the east wing, and persuade your father to invite me in. Then I could speak to him of the honour being offered to your family, and the opportunity to invite the Great God into his heart.”
His words wrapped around her, gently persuasive. His smile was sweet by starlight. But he was dead, and she was Valerius. Speak as softly as he might, he couldn’t hide his hunger from her.
“Do you mean my father harm?” Caracalla sat up straight. “Are you going to eat him?”
Lucius scoffed.
Which, Caracalla couldn’t help noticing, wasn’t a “no.”
The Cobra didn’t want her. She would be trapped in the manor forever, unless she did something about it.
“I’ll tell you what.” Caracalla, true daughter of the Valerius line, leaned in close and whispered low to the dead man, “If you want to kill my father, I’ll help you.”