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.”