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.”