The Second Shore

Lucien Arden took the throne. He crowned Rosalind Hartwell empress. And Evelyn Hartwell—the principal wife who had fought at his side all the way from embattled prince to emperor—was given only the rank of Imperial Consort. The day the decree came down, Silverleaf Palace was completely silent. Every servant kept their head lowered and hardly dared to breathe, afraid that Evelyn would weep, or throw things, or come apart the way any consort does when the emperor's favor leaves her. Evelyn simply accepted the decree, calmly. “I thank His Majesty for his generosity.” There was no movement in her voice and nothing in her face. Even her beautiful eyes held not the slightest trace of grief. She turned, went back into the inner rooms, and picked up her book where she had left it. As though the decree that had just stripped her of her place as his principal wife had nothing whatever to do with her. Chapter 1 Seven days after the coronation, Lucien Arden finally came to Silverleaf Palace. He wore the gold-and-ivory robes of the emperor, tall and immaculate, and he stood in the middle of the hall like a pine on a snowfield—magnificent and entirely removed from everything around him. “Evelyn.” His voice was low. “Do you object to my decision?” Evelyn Hartwell rose at once and bowed. “I wouldn't dare, Your Majesty. Naming my sister empress was a wise decision. I have no objection.” Lucien studied her calm face and frowned. He had assumed her silence over the past week was a tactic. He had expected that the moment he asked, she would cry. That she would tell him how unfair it was. That she would make a scene, and he would let her, and then he would give her something expensive and say, sternly, what he had said to her on the night they married: I told you when I took you to wife that my heart belongs to Rosalind. I can give you wealth and status. I cannot give you love. The place beside me belongs only to the woman I love. A little kindness, a little warning, and the matter would have been finished. But she genuinely didn't care. That should have pleased him. Her attitude was ideal—no trouble, no scenes, proof that she had taken his words to heart and never let herself hope for more. Instead, looking at her, at how little any of it seemed to touch her, something in his chest turned over unpleasantly. “Your Majesty. I've brought the gifts.” Chief Steward Lionel Ashgrove entered with a line of servants behind him, each carrying a lacquered box. The lids came off. Inside lay winter-fox pelts of the highest grade, white as fresh snow, without a single off-colored hair. Lucien had hunted them himself, days ago, with his own hands. He had meant them as compensation. Now, looking at her face, he had no idea what to say. Never mind. Give them to her and go. He had just drawn breath when Evelyn spoke first. “These are beautiful.” She was looking at the pelts with real appreciation and no surprise at all. “These must be the foxes Your Majesty took last week. Have you brought them so I can make my sister a winter cloak?” The unpleasant feeling in his chest sharpened. “Why wouldn't you assume,” he said, “that they were meant for you?” Evelyn dropped to her knees so quickly it looked like alarm. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. I would never flatter myself so far. You've always said your love belongs to my sister alone. You went to considerable trouble for something this rare—it could only have been meant for her. I wouldn't presume to guess at your intentions.” “My lady,” Lionel began, “His Majesty actually—” “Lionel.” One word, and the temperature in the hall dropped. Lionel fell silent immediately. Lucien looked down at the woman kneeling on his floor, and the nameless anger in him burned hotter. “Very well,” he said coldly. “You have one day to finish it. The weather is turning, and the empress feels the cold.” “As Your Majesty commands.” Evelyn lowered her head. Her obedience infuriated him more than defiance would have. He turned on his heel, sleeves snapping, and strode out of Silverleaf Palace. Evelyn stood and watched him go. For a moment she looked faintly puzzled. Then the moment passed and she was calm again. “Maeve,” she said to the maid at her side. “Bring my sewing things.” “Yes, my lady.” Evelyn sat by the window and began working the white fur into a cloak. Afternoon light came through the lattice and fell across her thin fingers, and the needle went in and out, in and out, quick and practiced. “My lady,” Maeve asked quietly, after a while. “Are you truly not upset?” Evelyn's hands paused. Then she smiled. It was a small smile, barely there, but it was like the first thaw breaking over ice—startling, and unaccountably beautiful. “Upset?” she said softly. “Why would I be?” In five days, the death-draught in her body would take effect. She would leave this palace for good. She would leave Lucien Arden for good. And she would go south, to the man she had actually loved all along. Evelyn and Rosalind Hartwell were both daughters of Chancellor Aldric Hartwell, but Rosalind was born to his principal wife, and Evelyn to a lesser one. Evelyn had been a sickly child, so she had been sent south to be raised by her grandmother. That was where she met Julian Rivers. His father governed one of the southern provinces. Julian was gentle, unhurried, and quicker than anyone she had ever known. They grew up together—read together, walked out to look at the flowering trees together, watched the spring rain come down over the water together. He had held her hand once and said, “Evelyn, when you're old enough, I'll marry you.” She had gone red to the ears. “All right.” But on the very day she came of age, with the Rivers family already preparing the formal offer, her father sent men south to bring her back to the capital. He had a use for her. She was to marry the Third Prince, Lucien Arden. Nine imperial sons were tearing the court apart over the succession, and the old emperor had bound each of them to a great house by marriage. Lucien's allotment was a daughter of the chancellor's household. Lucien wanted Rosalind. But he understood exactly how dangerous that year was. Marrying Rosalind meant setting her down in the middle of a knife fight. So when he learned the Hartwell family had a second daughter, one raised far away in the south, he asked for that one instead. Evelyn refused. Her father put Julian's life on the table. “If you won't marry the prince, I'll see the entire Rivers household executed.” And then, when she had gone white, he offered her the bargain. “When the Third Prince takes the throne, I'll give you a draught that mimics death. You'll 'die,' you'll walk out of that palace, and you'll go back to your boy in the south.” Evelyn agreed. She married Lucien. The years that followed were exactly as dangerous as everyone had promised. Assassins. Poison in the food. Traps laid by men who smiled at him in the morning. She was wounded more times than she cared to count and poisoned more than once. She never complained. She ran the prince's household so smoothly that it never once occurred to him to wonder how. She was, by every measure anyone used, the perfect wife. When he was injured and needed a rare medicine, she nearly died getting it. When his enemies arranged a blade for his back, she put herself in front of it. At some point the rumor started, and after that it never stopped—that the Third Prince's wife was hopelessly, ruinously in love with him. Evelyn never found a good way to explain. The truth was much plainer. She wanted him on the throne so that she could finally leave. And now it was over. Lucien was emperor. Rosalind was empress. Two days ago, Evelyn had swallowed the draught her father had promised her. It took seven days to work. Five were left. Chapter 2 Evelyn spent the entire night on the cloak. White fox fur, lined and edged with fine embroidery—warm enough for the coldest month and handsome enough for an empress. At first light she carried it to Aurelia Palace herself. Rosalind was seated before her mirror while her attendants dressed her hair. When she saw who had come in, her eyes cooled. “What brings you here, Evelyn?” “I've come to pay my respects, Your Majesty.” Evelyn bowed. “His Majesty ordered me to make you a cloak. It's finished. I wanted to bring it myself.” An attendant took the cloak and carried it across. Rosalind ran her fingers over the fur. Then her face changed. “Kneel.” Evelyn didn't move. “I said kneel.” Rosalind's voice went flat and cold. “What is it? A few days as Imperial Consort and you've forgotten how this palace works?” Evelyn was silent for a moment. Then she knelt. Rosalind came and stood over her, looking down. “Evelyn. You made this too well. Was that the idea? That His Majesty would see the stitching, think of your hands, and start finding reasons to visit Silverleaf Palace?” She laughed, without any warmth in it. “Let me tell you something. You're dreaming. Lucien has loved me from the beginning and he loves me now. You know how he was with me—you watched it for years. He married you to keep me out of the line of fire, nothing else. The hour he took the throne, he made me empress and left you a consort. If that hasn't told you what you are, I'll tell you myself.” Evelyn kept her head down. “I wouldn't presume, Your Majesty.” “Wouldn't you?” Rosalind caught her chin and tilted her face up. “I think you presume constantly.” She let go and turned to the room. “Guards. The Imperial Consort has shown contempt for her empress. She is resentful, and her intentions are not good. Hold her down. Twenty strokes—let it be an example.” The servants glanced at one another and didn't move. His Majesty had crowned the empress, yes. But whatever he felt toward the Imperial Consort, it clearly wasn't nothing, and if they actually laid hands on her— “What is this?” Rosalind's voice cut through the room. “Does the word of your empress mean nothing now? Think very carefully about who His Majesty loves. Are you certain you want to cross me for her sake?” The threat sat in the air where everyone could see it. The servants went cold, stopped hesitating, and came forward to take hold of Evelyn. “My lady!” Maeve cried out and tried to reach her, but two of the other maids caught her and held on. They forced Evelyn facedown against the cold floor tiles. The rod came down, and the dull heavy sound of it landing on flesh carried clearly through the wide, empty hall. The first strike drove the breath out of her. She bit down on her lip. The second. The third. The pain stacked on itself, and sweat broke out along her hairline, and the color went out of her face. She stared at the grain of the stone under her cheek and held on to one thought. Five more days. Just endure five more days. Julian—five more days, and I'm coming. Her vision started to go. The sound of the rod and the sound of Maeve screaming both began to slide away from her. She was nearly gone when a voice cracked across the hall from the doorway. “Stop!” Fast footsteps followed it. A sweep of imperial gold came into the blur at the edge of her sight. Lucien. He crossed the hall in a few strides, took in what was happening, and went white with fury. “What is going on here?” He shoved the man with the rod out of the way and bent to lift her—and his hand came away warm and slick. Blood. It had already soaked through the thin silk of her robe. “Evelyn!” There was something in his voice he didn't hear himself. “Who gave you leave to touch her? Who?” Evelyn couldn't answer. She managed to lift her eyelids and that was all. And then Rosalind covered her face and began to sob. “Your Majesty! It was my order!” Lucien's head came up sharply. Rosalind's eyes were streaming. She pointed at the cloak lying on the floor. “My sister—my sister couldn't bear that I'd been made empress. She sewed needles into the lining. She meant to hurt me. My maid was careful enough to find them first, or by now I'd—” Her voice broke and she pushed on. “I didn't want to make anything of it. But I'm the empress. I answer for the whole inner court. If I let something like this pass without consequence, who will ever obey me again? How am I supposed to govern anything?” Needles in the lining? Lucien's brows drew together. He looked at the beautiful cloak on the floor. Then his expression darkened, and he looked down at the woman in his arms. “Is that true?” Maeve finally tore free of the maids holding her and threw herself down beside her mistress. “Your Majesty, no! It isn't true! My lady sat up the whole night making that cloak—we checked every seam twice, there couldn't have been a needle in it! The empress wanted a reason. She wanted to find something wrong with my lady, that's all—” “Maeve, stop.” Evelyn tried to say it. She was too late. Lucien looked at Rosalind's wet, ruined face. He looked at the bloodless one in his arms. Something moved behind his eyes, several times over. In the end, he let go of Evelyn. “A servant dares to accuse the empress of conspiracy?” His voice had ice in it now. “Take her out. “Beat her to death.” Chapter 3 Evelyn's eyes flew open. “Your Majesty—” She struggled up onto one arm and caught the hem of his robe with cold, shaking fingers. “Maeve was only—she was only trying to protect me. Please. Spare her.” Lucien looked down at her. Her face was the color of paper. There was blood at the corner of her mouth. Loose strands of hair were stuck to her forehead with cold sweat, and she looked wrecked and breakable in a way he had never once seen. She had never asked him for anything. Not even the year she took a sword for him and nearly didn't wake up—when she did wake, all she'd said was that she was glad he was unhurt. This was the first time she had ever looked at him like this, with something like pleading in it. Something in him gave, unaccountably. He frowned, and drew breath to say enough—she'll live, but she won't get off lightly— And Rosalind tugged at his sleeve, crying. “If you spare her today, how am I ever supposed to hold any authority in this palace? Everyone will say the empress is soft, that she can be walked on, that even a maid can talk back to her and nothing happens. I might as well be dead. I might as well just be dead!” And then she turned and threw herself at the stone pillar. “Rosalind!” Lucien caught her around the waist and hauled her back against him. “Don't be absurd.” He looked at the woman sobbing herself breathless in his arms. He looked at the one on the floor, barely holding on. He closed his eyes. And he made himself do it. “Take her out,” he said. “Beat her to death.” The cold words went into Evelyn like a poisoned knife. “No—don't—” She got the words out somehow and tried to drag herself forward, and Lucien held her where she was. “Evelyn.” There was a warning in it, and under the warning, something that sounded almost like irritation. “She is one maid. I'll assign you a better one.” “No. Your Majesty—I don't want another one. I want Maeve—” “Please. I'm begging you. Please.” She was knocking her forehead against the floor now, over and over, and his expression never changed. He had decided, and what he had decided was Rosalind. Then a scream came from the courtyard. Evelyn's whole body went rigid. Something hot and metallic rose in her throat. Fury and grief and the wound across her back all closed on her at once, and she coughed a mouthful of blood across the stone and went out completely. When she woke, she was in her own bed in Silverleaf Palace. Lionel was standing beside it. When he saw her eyes open, his shoulders came down. “My lady. Thank heaven.” Evelyn said nothing. “His Majesty sent medicine, and instructed me to deliver a message.” Lionel picked his words carefully. “My lady is to keep to herself from now on and cause no further trouble, and is on no account to harbor any further ill will toward the empress. My lady should rest and recover here.” He hesitated. “As for your maid Maeve—the sentence has been carried out and she has been buried. His Majesty was generous. Compensation has already been sent to her family. New attendants will be assigned to you shortly.” Every phrase went in like a cold nail. Evelyn lay there and looked up at the embroidered canopy over her bed and didn't say anything at all. Lionel waited a while. When it became clear nothing was coming, he set the medicine bowl on the little table by her pillow, bowed, and withdrew. The room went quiet again. Only then did Evelyn close her eyes, and let one tear slide down past her temple into her hair. For the next several days she moved through the hours like something wooden. Medicine at the right time. Dressings changed at the right time. Food. Sleep. Under the physicians' care the wounds on her back scabbed and began to close. The other wound didn't. It sat there and rotted where no light reached it. She healed quietly, and waited quietly. For the day the draught would do its work. Then Lionel came again, unannounced. “My lady. His Majesty asks that you come to Aurelia Palace.” Evelyn got up and went with him. On the way, Lionel told her, quietly, what she had missed. “Someone's been putting it about outside the palace that the empress is arrogant and cruel—that she has commoners beaten to death for nothing and isn't fit for the position. Several ministers have submitted memorials these last few days. They're asking His Majesty to depose her. “When the empress heard, she couldn't bear it. She tried to hang herself. The physicians worked all night to bring her back. “His Majesty is beyond furious. He's called every soul in this palace to Aurelia and sworn he'll find whoever started it and have them killed.” Evelyn listened, and felt nothing at all. At Aurelia Palace the courtyard and the hall were black with kneeling servants. Lucien sat at the head of the room. Rosalind was leaning against him, weeping prettily. “Your Majesty—I've been wronged—I never did any of those things—” “I know,” Lucien said, gentling her. “I'll get to the bottom of it. I'll clear your name.” He looked up, and his eyes met Evelyn's just as she came through the door. His hand, wiping Rosalind's tears, stopped. Evelyn lowered her eyes and knelt. She knew what he was thinking. In all the years of their marriage she had been cut and poisoned and pulled out of water half-drowned. Every time, the pain had gone through to the bone, and every time, she had not shed a single tear in front of him. Because he had told her once that he had no patience for women who wept. That tears didn't move him. That he would only ever dry the tears of the woman he loved. So however badly it hurt, she'd held it, and swallowed every soft and breakable thing she had. Until the assassination attempt, and the blade she'd taken instead of him. That one had been bad. When the physician drew the steel out, the pain turned the room white at the edges and soaked her underclothes through with cold sweat, and she hadn't been able to stop it—the tears came, silently, before she could catch them. He had been at her bedside for three days and nights by then. His eyes were sunk in his head. He saw her crying, and he didn't say a word about it. He reached out instead and wiped the tear away with his thumb. “Does it hurt that much?” he'd asked, hoarse. She had frozen. And so, it seemed, had he—probably remembering exactly what he'd once said about women who cried. But he didn't take his hand back. He wiped away another one. Stiffly, awkwardly, with something in it she had never felt from him before. After that, something between them changed. He started to notice things. Which sweets she liked. He came when she was ill. It set off every alarm she had. She had wanted, badly, to explain—that she hadn't stepped in front of that blade because she loved him. She'd done it because if he died he'd never take the throne, and if he never took the throne she would never be free, never get south, never see Julian again. Thank God that after the coronation Rosalind had come to him in tears and he had made her empress anyway. Everything went back where it belonged. As if his kindness had only ever been something Evelyn imagined. She knelt among the rest of them and waited, quietly, until the sky went pale. Then someone came in and laid the evidence in front of Lucien. “Your Majesty. We have it. The one behind the rumors—” The hall went still. He looked at her. “—is the Imperial Consort.” Chapter 4 Every head in the hall turned. Evelyn was as stunned as any of them. Lucien took the evidence, glanced through it, and his face darkened. Then he threw it in hers. “Evelyn.” His voice was ice. “You disappoint me. That you would dare go after the empress again, and again, and again—” He stopped, and made himself finish it. “Guards—” And then the rest wouldn't come. He looked at her pale, expressionless face, and the order to take her out and behead her sat in his throat and would not move. Rosalind saw the hesitation, and hatred flickered through her eyes. She sank to her knees and begged, weeping. “Your Majesty—she's still my sister. Please. Don't kill her. Send her down to the imperial dungeon for a few days instead. Let that stand as her punishment.” The dungeon. Lucien's brows drew tight, and the hesitation came back into his eyes. He knew what the imperial dungeon was. Dark, wet, instruments in every corner. Men went in and came out dead or crippled, and nothing in between. Her back hadn't healed. If she went down there— Rosalind read every part of that struggle on his face, and the hatred in her burned higher. She had not known. She had not known that Evelyn had come to occupy this much room in him—that he couldn't even stand to send her to a cell. She set her teeth and spoke again, weaker this time, with a catch in it. “The truth is, I don't want to punish my sister at all. But if someone can frame the empress and nothing happens to them—what authority will I have left? How will I ever hold the inner court?” Her voice thinned. “Never mind. Never mind. She's my own blood, after all. Let His Majesty simply pretend none of it ever happened.” And then she began to cough—hard, doubled over—and brought up a small mouthful of blood that spread red across her white handkerchief. “Rosalind!” Lucien had her before she hit the floor. “A physician! Get a physician!” He looked down at the woman still kneeling straight-backed and blank-faced below him, and then at the one gone limp and shallow-breathing in his arms. The last of his hesitation burned off. “Take the Imperial Consort to the imperial dungeon. She will await judgment there.” The guards hauled Evelyn up off the floor without any care at all. She didn't struggle. She didn't try to explain. She had seen Rosalind's hand in it from the beginning. Explaining would change nothing. The dungeon was everything it was said to be. Cold, wet, and full of a smell like something rotting behind the walls. They threw her into a cell and the iron door slammed, cutting off the last of the weak daylight. She sat back against the cold stone. The wounds across her back had torn open again in the handling, and the blood came through and spread dark across the plain silk, and it hurt, and she had nothing left with which to care about it. She had no idea how long it was before the door opened and a jailer came in with an armful of instruments. “My lady,” he said, with a smile that never got anywhere near his eyes. “Nothing personal. Orders from above. You're to be taught a lesson—something you'll remember. About who a person can afford to offend, and who they can't.” Hot iron. Pins driven under the nails. The wooden press for the fingers. For two full days they worked through it, on a body that was already one wound from shoulder to hip, and she set her teeth and did not make a sound, and her mind went under and surfaced and went under again. "Julian. I'm sorry. I don't think I'm going to make it to you after all." She was almost gone for good when warmth closed around her. Someone lifted her—carefully, with hands that were shaking, in a way she knew. She got her eyes open. Through the blur she made out the hard line of Lucien's jaw. When she woke again she was in her own bed in Silverleaf Palace. Lucien was sitting beside it with a bowl of medicine in his hands. When he saw her eyes open, something in him let go. “You're awake.” He lifted a spoonful and held it to her mouth. “Drink.” Evelyn pushed herself upright and took the bowl out of his hands. “I'll do it myself.” His hand stopped in midair. He watched her manage the bowl, tip her head back, and drink the whole bitter thing down without so much as a flicker—and the feeling he had no name for came over him again, worse than before. “Why do it this way?” His voice had gone rough. “It isn't as though I've never done this for you.” Evelyn set the empty bowl down and wiped her mouth with her sleeve. Her voice was weak but perfectly clear. “That was when it was only the two of us. It's settled now. My sister holds the place beside you. I wouldn't trouble Your Majesty any further.” Lucien's frown deepened. “Are you blaming me for the dungeon?” “I wouldn't dare.” Evelyn lowered her lashes. “I only want to say one thing. The rumors about the empress—I didn't spread them.” Lucien was quiet for a while. In the dim light of the room the line of his profile looked hard and cold. “I know,” he said. Chapter 5 Evelyn's head came up. She stared at him, unable to believe it. Lucien avoided her eyes. His voice dropped. “My intelligence service isn't as useless as all that. I know perfectly well who's been stirring the water.” He knew. He knew Rosalind had staged the whole thing from start to finish. The words hit somewhere under Evelyn's ribs and left behind a sharp, ridiculous, almost unbearable pain. “Then Your Majesty—” Her voice shook. “It's Rosalind.” Something tired came into his tone, and something helpless with it. “I have told her, over and over, that there has never been anything of that kind between you and me. That marrying you was forced on me by circumstance. But she's—she's a woman. She needs to feel safe. She's watched us be married for years. She's seen me look after you, now and then, and it frightens her.” He paused. “This time she simply took an opportunity. She wanted to test where my heart was.” He looked at her, and his eyes were complicated. “I couldn't wound her. And to prove to her where I stand, I had to play the part beside her. I've wronged you.” "I've wronged you." Three light words, and inside them: a fabricated charge, a public beating, a maid dead in a courtyard, flesh opened by irons, and two days at the bottom of a dungeon where she had genuinely expected to die. One of them had staged it to feel secure. The other had watched it happen to prove a point. Between the two of them they had put her in hell, and now she was expected to understand how difficult it had all been for them. Evelyn looked at him, and then, unexpectedly, she smiled. It was a bloodless thing, and there was something in it close to self-mockery. The smile went into him like a splinter, and he felt a confusion he couldn't explain. He took it for grief. For a heart gone cold. “This time the fault was mine.” His voice softened, and there was something in it close to a promise, which was rare enough. “Rest properly and get your strength back. I'll make it up to you. Between Rosalind and you—I give you my word. Next time, I'll choose you. Once.” Next time. Choose her. Once. Evelyn closed her eyes and felt tired all the way through. “There won't be a next time,” she murmured, almost too softly to hear. “What?” He hadn't caught it. And then Lionel spoke carefully from beyond the doorway. “Your Majesty—you've been here a full day and night. There are several ministers still waiting for an audience, on the matter of the flooding in the south.” Lucien frowned. He looked at the woman in the bed, white-faced, eyes shut, saying nothing. “Tell them to wait a little longer.” “Your Majesty,” Evelyn said, and her voice was perfectly level. “The realm comes first. I'm out of danger. Please go.” He looked at how far away she was, how cold, and the nameless anger flared in him again—but under it there was mostly a kind of stopped-up helplessness he had no idea what to do with. In the end he said nothing at all. He stood, looked at her for a long moment, and left. After that, Lucien did seem to be making good on it. Gifts came into Silverleaf Palace like water. Rare antiques. Bolts of silk. Even a few tribute items that by rights only the emperor and empress were permitted to use. Then he sent word that he meant to take her out to the royal hunting preserve beyond the capital, for a change of air. That ground belonged to the emperor and empress alone. No consort had ever set foot on it. Evelyn was still working out how to decline. Because today was the day the draught was due to act. Inside the palace she could simply drop dead and no one would think about it twice. Dying on the road to a hunting preserve would raise questions she wouldn't be there to answer. She had just called for one of her new attendants to carry the message when a figure in black came through the window. She opened her mouth to shout. Pain exploded at the base of her skull. Everything went dark. Chapter 6 What woke her the second time was the wind—cold, and screaming past her ears. Evelyn got her eyes open with an effort and found herself very high above the ground, her hands lashed behind her with coarse rope, unable to move. Beside her, bound the same way, was Rosalind—in full imperial dress, and so frightened that all the beauty had gone out of her face. They were on top of the city wall. Below, torches burned in long lines, and the Imperial Guard stood in ranks, armed and waiting. At the front of them stood Lucien in plain black, straight-backed, his face grim, his eyes fixed on the two of them and refusing to move. “Lucien Arden!” The voice came from the far end of the battlement, hoarse and delighted and completely unhinged. Evelyn managed to turn her head. There was a man in the ruins of a royal robe, and there was nothing left in his face that made sense. Cassian Arden. The former Crown Prince. He had been held under guard ever since he lost the succession war. How he had gotten out, no one seemed to know. “I never imagined you and I would meet again like this, brother.” Cassian was laughing. “You took everything I had. Tonight I'm going to let you find out what it feels like to lose the thing you love.” He pointed at the two bound women, and the malice in his eyes had gone all the way through into madness. “Look at them. One is the empress you love. The other stood beside you for years, bled for you, went into the fire for you, and put you on that throne. Lucien—when it was my turn, you made me choose between my own mother and my wife. So tonight I'll give you the same gift. “You may save one of them. The other goes off this wall, right now, and breaks on the stones, and you get to live the rest of your life with it. “Choose, little brother. Let's find out which one of them actually matters.” The silence below the wall was absolute. There was only the wind. Lucien's face in the torchlight was terrible. His hands closed into fists and the tendons stood out across the backs of them. His eyes went from one woman to the other, and back. Rosalind had gone completely to pieces. She was weeping and shrieking, her face streaming. “Your Majesty! Save me! Please! I'm so frightened—I can't die, I can't, please!” And Evelyn simply looked down and said nothing. There was nothing in her face. No fear, and no hope either. She was as calm as if none of it had anything to do with her. Only now and then her eyes moved to a particular point below the wall—the road that led out of the palace. The road that led south. Lucien's gaze came to rest, finally, on Evelyn's quiet face. He remembered what he had promised her, not long ago at all.—Next time, I'll choose you. Once. Something in his chest pulled tight for no reason he could name. Rosalind's screaming climbed higher. “You said you loved only me! You said you'd protect me forever! Lucien—!” Lucien shut his eyes. When he opened them, there was nothing in them but the decision of an emperor, and underneath it, so small he never saw it himself, the shape of a man getting out of something. He told himself, "Evelyn is strong. She always endures. Let this be one more thing I owe her." Next time. Next time, without fail— He raised his hand and pointed at the woman in imperial robes, and his voice came out ragged but carried perfectly clear through the wind. “I choose the empress.” Chapter 7 “Hah! Wonderful! What a devoted man you are!” Cassian threw his head back and howled, then signaled his men. Rosalind's ropes were cut and she was shoved toward the narrow door that led down to safety. She half ran, half fell down the stair, and threw herself into Lucien's arms, sobbing. Cassian turned, grinning, toward the woman who had been left where she was. “Well then. Goodbye, Imperial Consort.” Almost in the same instant, crossbows fired out of the darkness along the battlement. The bolts went through Cassian and three of the men around him, each one exactly where it needed to go. His body jerked and stopped. The mad pleasure was still in his eyes as he went over backward—and with the last strength he had, he twisted and shoved Evelyn hard, and she was already half over the edge. “Evelyn—!” Lucien watched her fall. That thin figure went off the top of the wall like a kite with a cut string. The sound she made when she hit the flagstones below was flat and heavy and final. She twitched once. Then she was still. Something closed around Lucien's heart like a hand, and squeezed until he couldn't breathe. He ran. “Evelyn! Evelyn—” He went down on his knees on the stones and gathered her up as carefully as he knew how. Her face was bloodless. There was blood at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were shut. But she was breathing. “A physician!” His voice tore. “Get me a physician!” “Your Majesty—” From a little way off, Rosalind made a small choked sound. A thread of dark blood ran from the corner of her mouth, and she folded to the ground. “Rosalind?” She caught at his sleeve. Her voice was barely there at all. “That traitor—before you came—he forced me to swallow something. A pill. I don't know what it was. Your Majesty, am I dying? Don't—don't mind me. Go and see to my sister first...” Lucien looked down at the woman in his arms, who was still breathing. Then at the one bringing up blood on the stones. The wall wasn't as high as it looked, he told himself. She was breathing. There was nothing obviously broken. She would be all right. Rosalind had swallowed God knew what. He set his teeth. He laid Evelyn down on the stones, gently, and shouted at the guards running toward him. “Move! Get the Imperial Consort back to her palace and summon the physicians at once. I'll follow.” Then he gathered Rosalind up in both arms and went at a near run toward the nearest building, his voice cracking as he went. “Where are the physicians? Where are they?” Evelyn was carried back through the gates at speed. A physician was already waiting. He examined her thoroughly and let out a breath. “Fortunately the wall isn't as high as it appears, and something seems to have broken her fall. Surface injuries, some bruising of the organs—nothing to the bone, nothing life-threatening.” He began cleaning and binding the wounds. The bleeding stopped quickly. He had just opened his mouth to say that her ladyship was out of danger and would only need rest when Evelyn, without any warning at all, brought up a great mouthful of blood. Then a second. Then a third. It soaked through the clean nightclothes they had just put on her and ran red over the physician's hands. “This—this isn't possible.” The color drained out of his face. He got two fingers to her wrist again, and under them the pulse was scattered and thin and going out fast, like something draining away. “Why has it collapsed like this? It was steady a moment ago—it was perfectly steady—” The room came apart. The maids were screaming. The physician's hands flew—needles, decoctions, anything—and none of it did the slightest good. Evelyn's mind was going under, in cold and in pain. She knew what it was. The draught had come. The timing was exactly right. She lay there and looked up at the embroidery on the canopy while it all receded, and the last thing she felt was the physician's hand trembling as it left her wrist. He sank down onto his knees, and his face had gone the color of ash. “Go—go and inform His Majesty. “The Imperial Consort has passed.” Evelyn closed her eyes. There was the faintest smile at the corner of her mouth. Free, at last.