Chapter Two: The Bride Who Should Not Exist

The Emperor of Aurelion was dying, and he wanted everyone to know it was taking too long.

“Again,” Cassius rasped from the depths of his bed. The chamber smelled of medicinal herbs and old fire. “Say it again, boy. I want to hear you refuse me properly.”

Lucien Aurelian stood at the foot of the great bed with his hands clasped behind his back. Twenty-eight years old, tall, black-haired, cold-eyed, he was the crown prince of the mightiest empire the continent had ever known. Tonight he looked like a man being sentenced.

“I will marry the princess,” he said. “You have my word.”

“Your word.” The emperor’s laugh turned into a cough that shook the whole bed. A physician darted forward, and Cassius waved him off with a hand like a bundle of twigs. “You gave it three times before this. And three times a princess suddenly fell ill, or eloped, or discovered a vocation for the temple.”

“Coincidence.”

“I was not born yesterday, Lucien. Nor will I die tomorrow, if I can help it.” The old man’s eyes, still sharp in that wasted face, pinned him. “The council wants an heir before the winter. So do I. The empire needs a future it can see.”

‘The council wants it,’ Lucien thought. ‘You only say you do.’

He said nothing. There was no point. His father had built the Aurelion throne from blood and iron, and the man had never once asked anyone for anything except obedience.

“Veyra’s princess arrives within the week,” Cassius said. “You will receive her graciously. You will wed her in the Sun Cathedral. You will give me a grandson.” His voice dropped. “Do this, and I will die in peace. Refuse, and the council will pick a wife for you, and you will not enjoy her half as much.”

Lucien bowed his head. “As you command, Father.”

It was not agreement, and they both knew it. But it was enough for the emperor to sink back into his pillows, satisfied, and close his eyes.

Lucien walked out.

He did not want this marriage.

He had never wanted it, and the reasons had nothing to do with the girl. Princess Elara of Veyra was a name to him, a portrait too badly painted to tell him anything, a pawn moved onto the board by men who wanted her mother’s harbors and her father’s silence. She was one more piece the council had arranged to tighten its grip on the throne.

Lucien had spent twenty years learning exactly who those men were.

His mother had died when he was nine. The physicians said her heart failed. Lucien had grown up, stopped believing them, and quietly started collecting the names of everyone who had been in the palace the night she died. He had dismantled six council members so far. Three had “retired,” one had drowned, and two were rotting in a cell whose location only he knew. The rest sat around the council table every morning and smiled at him.

They wanted him married and bred, and they wanted the heir raised in their hands. Lucien had no intention of giving them that.

Which was why, eleven days ago, Princess Elara of Veyra had disappeared from her chambers.

It had been simple. A trusted man, a quiet road, and a carriage that had never gone anywhere near the capital. She was being kept in a stone keep in the northern hills, comfortable and heavily guarded, where no one would ever look. He had not hurt her. He had not even spoken to her. He only needed her gone until the council understood that the marriage could not be forced.

A missing princess meant a failed alliance. A failed alliance meant time. And time was the one thing his enemies could not afford.

He had checked every detail. There had been no mistakes.

So when Silas Ward came through the study door at dusk with his coat still dusty from the road, Lucien did not look up from his papers.

“If this is about the flowers for the cathedral, Silas, the answer is no.”

“It isn’t.”

Something in the way he said it made Lucien look up.

Silas Ward had served him for eleven years, first as a bodyguard, then as a friend, then as the only man in the palace Lucien would have trusted with his life. He was broad-shouldered and sandy-haired, with a soldier’s scars and a face that never gave anything away. Right now it was giving away a great deal.

“The Veyran envoy has just crossed the border,” Silas said. “He sent a rider ahead. The princess is with him. Her carriage will reach the capital in two days.”

Lucien set down his pen.

“Say that again.”

“Princess Elara of Veyra is in the envoy’s carriage. Veiled, according to Aurelion custom. She will be presented at the cathedral for the wedding in three days.” Silas’s jaw tightened. “My lord, she cannot be.”

“No,” Lucien said slowly. “She cannot.”

Silence settled over the study. Outside, a bell rang the hour somewhere across the palace.

“You are certain the woman in the keep is the princess?”

“I saw her myself. Same hair, same eyes, the same ring on her hand as the Veyran court portraits. She is still there. I would stake my life on it.”

“Then who is coming to my altar?”

“I don’t know.”

Lucien rose and crossed to the window. The capital spread out below, a sea of lamplight and slate roofs stretching to the harbor, ordered and rich and lit like a jewel. He had been born into it, and he had never once trusted it.

“A decoy,” he said thoughtfully. “Veyra found out and sent a substitute. Or the council found out.” His eyes narrowed. “Or someone else did, and wants me to think it was one of them.”

“A trap?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” He turned back. “A Veyran king desperate enough to send an impostor is a man with nothing left to lose. I want to know who she is, where she came from, and whose idea it was. I want to know who in this palace already knew.”

“You want me to intercept the carriage?”

“No.” Lucien shook his head. “If we stop it, the council will ask why. I would rather they think I suspect nothing.” He met Silas’s eyes. “Ride to the border. Find out everything you can about that envoy and the people traveling with him. Talk to the servants, the drivers, the guards. Someone always talks.”

“And if the wedding cannot wait for my report?”

Lucien’s mouth twisted, not quite a smile.

“Then I will marry a stranger,” he said. “It will hardly be the first time I’ve been lied to.”

The wedding could not wait.

The council had made sure of that. Within an hour of the envoy’s message, the palace was a hive. Chancellor Voss, the head of the royal council, appeared at Lucien’s door with a stack of documents and a smile that never reached his eyes.

“Your Highness will be delighted to hear that the arrangements are proceeding ahead of schedule,” said the chancellor. He was a lean, silver-haired man with the mild, patient manner of a schoolmaster, and Lucien had disliked him since childhood. “The princess is expected within two days. The ceremony will be held on the third.”

“How efficient.”

“The emperor’s health is delicate. We would not wish to delay.”

“No,” Lucien agreed. “We would not.”

Voss bowed and left. He had not asked how the prince felt, and Lucien had not told him.

His uncle came next. Valerion Aurelian, Duke of Ashmere, swept in without knocking, warm as a hearth fire and twice as loud. He was the only member of the family who had ever looked at Lucien as though he were a person instead of a piece in a game.

“There you are! Hiding in your study like a sulking boy.” Valerion clasped him by the shoulders and studied his face. “You look terrible.”

“Thank you, Uncle.”

“You don’t want this.”

“No.”

“Then why do it?”

“Because my father is dying, and he has decided that this is what he wants.” Lucien’s voice was flat. “Because if I refuse, the council chooses for me. Because if I marry her, I’ll at least know which enemy I’m sleeping next to.”

Valerion sighed and squeezed his shoulders once before letting go. “You have always been too clever for your own comfort. I only wish you’d let someone help you carry it.”

“Someone will,” Lucien said. “Eventually.”

He did not mention Silas, or the keep in the northern hills, or the impossible princess in the envoy’s carriage. Even Valerion did not need to know that. Not yet.

Three days later, the Sun Cathedral was so full of light that Lucien felt he was standing inside a furnace.

Gold banners hung from the vaulted ceiling. Ten thousand candles burned along the aisles. The nobility of Aurelion filled every pew in silk and jewels, whispering behind their fans, and the great organ was rolling out a hymn so majestic that it made his teeth ache.

Lucien stood before the altar in black and silver, his hands folded before him, his face a blank.

Silas had not returned.

The rider had left three days ago, and Lucien had heard nothing. No report, no message, no word of what waited inside that veil. He had been forced to smile through rehearsals and dinners and toasts while a stranger’s face stayed hidden behind Aurelion lace. He had not even been permitted to see her. Tradition forbade it.

The emperor’s chair stood empty beside the altar, since Cassius was too weak to leave his bed. Instead, Chancellor Voss sat in the front row with his hands neatly folded, watching Lucien like a cat watching a bird.

‘Smile,’ Lucien told himself. ‘You’ve done harder things.’

The organ swelled. The great doors at the end of the nave began to open.

A hush fell over ten thousand candles. Lucien’s fingers tightened on his sleeve.

‘Whoever you are,’ he thought, staring down the long aisle, ‘I will find out what you want. I will find out who sent you. And if you have come to harm me…’

A herald in gold stepped forward and struck the floor with his staff.

“Her Royal Highness,” he cried, and his voice rang through the cathedral like a bell, “Princess Elara of Veyra!”

The doors swung wide, and a slender figure in white stepped into the light.