Chapter 11
CHAPTER
Sabine
The clock in Lady Delarine’s morning room ticked with inexorable precision, eager to witness the collision of two people who would’ve rather been anywhere else in the Empire.
Sabine sat rigid on the settee, adjusting the neckline of her gown for the fourth time in as many minutes.
Indigo silk today, with silver threading that caught the light when she moved.
Beautiful, and impossible to hide within.
“Do cease fidgeting, Miss Almarien,” Lady Delarine said from her armchair. “One would think you awaited an executioner rather than a gentleman caller.”
Ellie hovered behind Sabine’s settee, straightening objects that needed no straightening, plumping cushions that required no plumping. The formal tea service remained untouched on the low table.
Sabine folded her hands in her lap, holding them still. “I find little distinction between the two, Your Grace. Both occasions end with one’s future irrevocably altered.”
A hint of a smile touched the Duchess’s mouth.
“Perhaps. Though executions are considerably gorier than strategic marriages.” She adjusted her amber gloves with practiced precision.
“Remember that, however you feel about Lord Vaelros, appearances remain your greatest shield. The Registry observes even when no officials are present. You cannot let your feelings have the best of you.”
Sabine didn’t have a good response. Instead, she reached for the teapot. She didn’t expect it to be scalding and pulled away with a hiss. The skin of her finger puckered, red and angry.
Ellie rushed to her side. “Allow me, my lady.”
She cradled Sabine’s hand, her own fingers moving deftly. Threads of gleaming crystals wove around her injured finger, forming diagonal interlocking patterns. They turned the puckered skin frosty blue before the soothing relief of Ellie’s affinity seeped into the ache. Sabine smiled in gratitude.
“It will likely still scar,” Ellie said. “But less badly.”
“You are a blessing. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
The maid squirmed at the compliment. A knock broke the fragile calm of the room. Ellie stepped back, and Lady Delarine’s butler appeared, his posture rigid and precise. “Lord Azrian Vaelros, Your Grace.”
Recognizing him before even she could, Sabine’s mark warmed against her skin when Lord Vaelros entered. He bowed with the exactness of a blade being tested against stone.
“Miss Almarien,” he acknowledged.
“Good day, my lord.”
Lady Delarine rose, looking between them with the careful assessment of a jeweler examining potentially flawed gems. “Lord Vaelros, how good of you to call. I trust the Emperor can spare you for tea?”
“His Majesty understands the necessities of the Season,” Lord Vaelros replied, his gaze never leaving Sabine. “Particularly when Registry matters are involved.”
It was only Sabine’s professional inclination as a governess that brought her to catalogue his appearance with unwilling precision.
The control in his movements, the way the light carved shadows along his cheekbones and jaw, the severe set of his mouth.
His hair was pulled back in its customary knot, revealing features that might have been handsome, had they not been so utterly devoid of warmth.
The Duchess looked between them. “Well, then. Pressing household matters require my attention. I shall return shortly.”
The closing door shattered the pretense of civility like fine porcelain dropped on marble. Lord Vaelros shifted, a soldier moving from parade rest to combat stance. He claimed the armchair Lady Delarine had vacated, crossing one leg over the other.
“Let us be perfectly clear,” he said, abandoning courtesy entirely. “You’ve made your disdain admirably transparent. I can appreciate the lack of artifice, but it makes this match no less of a burden to me.”
His words should have been expected. They matched her own thoughts, the same ones she’d shared with Lady Delarine. But hearing them from him sent a flare of heat through her chest. Color rose to her cheeks, and her hands clenched the settee cushion. She squared her shoulders, preparing for a duel.
“My lack of artifice,” she repeated. “While your own rigid control is clearly your most cherished quality. Tell me, my lord, does the Emperor keep you in a case between assignments, or merely on a shortened leash?”
A savage satisfaction bloomed in her chest when her words cracked his perfect composure.
Strange, how his anger felt more honest than any courtesy ever had.
Stranger still was the clawing need to feel it more, like the pain it inflicted could wake her from the numbness of the empty pleasantries she’d endured from the Gilt these past weeks.
At least when they fought, she saw glimpses of the man beneath the Emperor’s weapon.
“You’ve formed quite the assessment of my character based on Gilt gossip,” he observed, voice deceptively mild while his eyes hardened to pale stone. “I wonder what other delusions you’ve embraced with such charming certainty.”
“I form assessments based on observable evidence.” She pressed her fingers to her palm, enumerating his offenses.
“Your reputation precedes you. The Emperor’s perfect weapon, ruthlessly efficient.
” She tilted her head. “Though efficiency often requires... sacrifices. How many have been executed by your hands, I wonder?”
Behind her, Ellie made a small, distressed sound, like a mouse sensing an approaching predator.
Lord Vaelros’s gaze burned, gold flecks in his eyes catching fire in the morning sunlight. He leaned forward. “What would a governess understand of necessary sacrifice?”
The dismissal in his tone ignited something molten in Sabine’s chest. She rose in a single motion, abandoning the pretense of ladylike composure.
“I know more than you could possibly imagine. Have you ever known what it’s like to feel your spirit chipped away, piece by agonizing piece, for someone else’s future?
” Her fists clenched at her sides. “What have you ever sacrificed that was yours to give in the first place?”
His perfect mask fractured briefly. He stood too, rising with the predatory grace of a panther, shoulders broad and imposing. His presence pressed against her skin, and someone might as well have released a shock of Lighting affinity for the way the air charged between them.
“You know nothing of what service to empire truly demands.” His voice dropped low, vibrating through the floorboards.
“I know enough,” Sabine shot back. She had to tilt her chin to keep their gaze level. “The Gilt speaks volumes of the Emperor’s Hand and his unfailing loyalty. Do you find fulfillment in being the perfect instrument of another’s will? Or have you simply forgotten how to exist beyond your function?”
His nostrils flared. “And you, Miss Almarien? Have you found fulfillment in rebellion against circumstances you cannot change? How admirably futile.”
“At least I recognize my cage, while you’ve mistaken yours for purpose.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Purpose gives meaning to constraint. Something you might understand if you sought more than mere escape.”
“Escape?” Her laugh held no humor. It made Ellie shift uncomfortably behind them.
“Is that what you imagine I want? Freedom without purpose would be merely another form of confinement.” She stepped closer, eliminating another precious inch of safety between them.
“I don’t seek escape, my lord. I seek choice. ”
“Choice is not afforded to those born of service,” he said, his gaze never leaving hers. This close, she noted the slight shadow of stubble along his jaw, the way his pulse jumped at his throat where the mark thrummed.
“Rich, coming from one of the most powerful men in the Empire.” She didn’t know what came into her when she reached for the pin on his lapel, perfectly straight, and purposely skewed it. “Just because you’re not the one wearing the crown, it doesn’t mean you’re not a part of it.”
“My lady…” Ellie squeaked. But the moment had narrowed to just the two of them, neither able nor willing to look away. If the maid had been in another province, it’d have been just the same.
He erased the remaining distance between them, close enough that she felt the heat of him, the scent of cedar and iron and something darker, caramelized sugar.
His fingers tightened against her wrist to the point of pain, wrenching it away from his pin, but keeping it close to his chest. “You could not begin to comprehend what this position has cost me.”
“I know you’ve bent your considerable talents toward enforcing the very system that now binds us both against our will.” She refused to yield ground despite the thunder of her pulse. “Tell me, my lord, what happened to your first wife? Was she a necessary cost , too?”
The air in the room thinned, particles themselves fleeing their own potential undoing. Lord Vaelros went utterly still, a predator the moment before it strikes. “You tread on dangerous ground.”
“Ground of your making,” she countered, recklessness overtaking caution. Her mark burned against her skin. “Was it a fit of passion, then, or simply a lack of control?”
His pupils darkened, swallowing the hazel.
He let go of her wrist and instead grasped the back of the settee behind her.
So much taller than her, he loomed, cage and shield at once, his breath stirring the loose hair at her temple.
“You would do well to guard your tongue when speaking of matters you cannot possibly understand.”
Ellie squeaked. “My lord, I have to ask you to please step away from my lady, this isn’t proper…”
“Then enlighten me,” Sabine challenged, lifting her chin. “For I find myself in the unenviable position of being bound to a man the Gilt believes capable of destroying what he’s meant to protect.”
“The Gilt,” he spat, each word broken glass, “perpetuates whatever falsehoods serve its appetite for spectacle.”
Up close, she noticed the flaw in his left iris, silver flecks like river stones. Human, despite everything. It made him dangerous in a wholly new way.
Sabine counted ten breaths to steady her racing pulse. “And you would have me enter this union with simply your word on the matter? You cannot believe me to be this vapid, my lord. Not with your reputation.”
He huffed something between a laugh and a mockery, his breath warm against her skin, the faint smell of tea, tannic and sweet, clinging to it.
“I would not have you entering this union at all. Have I not made myself clear? This match is nothing but a burden to me, and I have no intention of submitting myself to another blood vow.”
She scoffed. “A little late for that, don’t you think?”
“Not until your and my blood is spilled in a chalice and smeared on our skins. Until then, I have every intention of delaying, dissuading, and redirecting, until I am finally rid of you.”
Sabine narrowed her eyes. “Should I expect you to murder me, too, if you cannot find any other way to be rid of me ?”
Lord Vaelros’s jaw tightened. He leaned in. “You are, without a doubt, the most maddening creature I’ve ever met.”
His eyes fell to her lips, lingering there a heartbeat too long before snapping back to her gaze. Their marks pulsed in synchrony, gold and obsidian chasing each other across the space between their bodies. The magic in the air twisted, fascinated, unwilling to be ignored.
“And you—” she whispered back, tight with frustration and something deeper she refused to acknowledge, “are the shape of my worst nightmare.”
And yet, the heat between them built. Their marks’ glow outlined their bodies like artists’ renderings. Time distorted, every second stretched and sharpened.
“This—” Lady Delarine cut through their heated exchange like Frosttide wind, “—is precisely what I warned against.”
Sabine broke away. Her heel caught the edge of the carpet. She stumbled. She would’ve tripped had Lord Vaelros not caught her. This time, the grip on her elbow was gentle, steadying, and she leaned into it, just for a moment, before sense returned.
The Duchess closed the door behind her, slow and purposeful.
Her gaze took in everything: their nearness, the charged air, the remains of a glow on their marks.
“The Registry does not require genuine affection. In fact, it does not require any genuine feelings at all. Passion—be it love or hate—is not part of the Registry’s design.
I asked you both to play the part. Those who cannot often find themselves facing severe consequences. ”
Mortification heated Sabine’s cheeks. She had lost herself to anger, forgotten the first rule of survival in the Gilt. And maybe… enjoyed it, somehow, too?
Lord Vaelros’s mask slipped perfectly back into place. “My deepest apologies, Your Grace.”
His tone, once more, was cold and formal. The warmth of their argument had vanished like it’d never been there in the first place. The whiplash left Sabine unsteady, a bitter taste in her mouth.
He bowed, every movement returned to precise control. His fingers brushed against hers in a formal farewell, a touch so brief it might have been accidental were it not for the pulse of their marks. Sabine’s breath caught.
Once he’d left, his lingering presence remained in the room like a scent that refused to fade. Strange, how the room now seemed drained of color, his departure seeping some essential vibrancy. In the heat of their battle, Sabine had felt something she’d almost forgotten existed.
She had felt alive.