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.
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