Chapter 5

Elouera's POV

I broke away from Stirling so violently my boots skidded on the damp flagstones. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. The phantom burn of his thumb against my racing pulse pounded in my veins, warring with the sheer, suffocating terror of my slipping mask.

I just needed my quarters. I needed the dark, a basin of cold water, and another dose of the suppressant.

But I didn’t make it to my sanctuary. At the intersection of the west wing, two Imperial Guards wearing the Empress's personal crest of silver and obsidian stepped out of the shadows, blocking the corridor.

"The Empress requires your presence," the larger one grunted. It wasn't a request.

My stomach plummeted, a cold stone dropping into a bottomless well. Every breath I drew scraped agonizingly against my fractured rib, but I forced my chin down, rounded my shoulders into their familiar, pathetic slump, and followed them.

Entering the Empress's private solar was like stepping into the heart of a glacier. The air was kept unnaturally frigid, thick with her suffocating scent the sharp, unforgiving bite of a freezing winter sea. It was an Alpha scent that demanded absolute, crawling obedience.

Empress Matilda Sovereign sat before a towering vanity of frosted glass. Her terrifyingly beautiful face was pale and severe, her immaculate crimson lips pressed into a thin line as three handmaidens wove her pitch black hair into an elaborate, crown like braid.

She didn't turn around. Her cold, winter-sea eyes met mine in the reflection of the glass.

"Get out," she commanded.

The handmaidens dropped their combs and vanished instantly. The heavy double doors clicked shut behind me, the sound echoing through the vast, silent room like the drop of a guillotine blade.

I sank to one knee, bowing my head until my vision was filled only with the intricate white marble of the floor. "Your Imperial Majesty."

"Look at you," my mother murmured. Her voice was silk and arsenic. "Blood on your collar. Dust on your coat. Trembling like a beaten hound. I assume Callan used you to warm up the arena sand again this morning?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Pathetic."

The rustle of heavy silk warned me she was moving. I kept my eyes pinned to the floor as her shadow fell over me. The tip of her sharp, pointed heel entered my field of vision, stopping bare inches from my trembling hands.

"Stand," she ordered.

I pushed myself up, biting the inside of my cheek to bite back a whimper as my rib shifted dangerously. When I was upright, I still kept my eyes downcast, playing the coward perfectly. But Matilda wouldn't allow it. Her hand lashed out, her perfectly manicured, ice-cold fingers digging brutally into my jawline. She forced my face up to meet her furious gaze.

There was no maternal warmth in her eyes. There never had been. To the woman who birthed me, I was not a child; I was a cancerous tumor she was forced to hide so it wouldn't kill the host.

"I did not carve this empire out of bone and blood just for a weak, bleeding girl to ruin it," she hissed, her fingernails biting into my skin until I felt a warm drop of blood trace down my neck. "The vultures are circling, Elian. Callan looks for any excuse to challenge my authority. Stirling's family wants my throne. And that Outback mongrel, Corowa, watches everything."

"I I am careful, Mother," I choked out, my chest heaving against her iron grip.

"Careful?" she scoffed, her gaze dropping to the blood-stained collar of my coat. "You are sweating. Your face is flushed. You look like an animal in heat."

My heart stopped. Complete, terrifying paralysis seized my limbs. The fever from the failing suppressants was spiking again, and my mother, an apex Alpha, was standing close enough to share my breath.

Matilda leaned in, her nose barely an inch from my throat. She took a slow, deliberate inhale.

I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the end. Waiting for the execution order.

Instead, she shoved me backward in disgust. I stumbled, clutching my side as my boot heels scraped against the marble.

"You reek of fear and copper," she sneered, wiping her fingers on a silk handkerchief as if touching my skin had soiled her. "It makes me sick to look at you. If your Beta disguise ever slips if you let even one of those men realize what you are I will not wait for the Senate to pass judgment. I will cut your throat myself and tell the world my disappointing son finally did something right and fell on his own sword. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Mother," I whispered, shaking violently now.

"Good." She turned her back on me, walking toward her heavy mahogany desk. "Because you are out of time to be careless."

She picked up a sealed piece of parchment and tossed it carelessly onto the floor at my feet. The imperial seal of the medical ward glared up at me in dark red wax.

"The High General has formally questioned your physical fitness to maintain your title as Second Prince," she stated coldly, looking at her own reflection in a hand mirror. "I cannot deny the request without looking weak. Tomorrow at dawn, you will report to the Royal Physician for a mandatory, unannounced physical examination."

The air left my lungs in a violent rush.

"A full physical?" I stammered, my voice truly breaking.

"Stripped bare, measured, and blood drawn," the Empress confirmed, a cruel, mocking smile touching her reflection. "Figure out a way to pass it, Elouera. Or figure out a way to die before morning."