Chapter 3

Lucien came through the gate of Moonrest Palace and stopped when he saw Harriet Greaves tied to the stump.

His expression darkened.

"Elara. Who gave you permission to touch the Empress's servant?"

I struck Greaves again while he watched.

She screamed.

"Your Majesty, save me!"

Lucien stepped between us and reached for the whip.

"Let go."

I looked at him.

"Elara's been missing for three days.

"Instead of looking for her, you're busy crowning another woman?"

Impatience flashed across his face.

"What are you playing at now?

"Three days ago you hurt your guards and got out of the Winter Wing. Now you come back pretending you were missing, so I'll pity you?"

I almost laughed.

He still hadn't realized I wasn't Elara.

My sister and I had identical faces.

Everything else about us was different.

He said he loved her.

And another woman could stand in front of him wearing her face, and he saw nothing.

Lucien mistook my silence for guilt.

His voice softened.

"Go back to the Winter Wing. Leave Rosalind alone and I'll forgive what happened here today."

"She took Elara's place."

I tilted my head.

"And you're telling me not to hurt her?"

His expression chilled.

"Rosalind never took anything from you. She saved my life once. She carried my child."

His voice sharpened.

"You were jealous enough to push her off a terrace and kill it."

The moment the words left his mouth, pain stabbed through my right arm.

White-hot.

Deep enough that it felt like heated iron being driven into the bone.

Last night it had been both legs.

Now the right arm.

Elara and I had shared pain since birth.

My sister was alive.

And someone was working on her right now.

I turned toward the depths of the palace.

The closer I'd come to the palace, the clearer the pain had grown.

She was still here.

Lucien noticed the movement.

His mouth twisted.

"Pretending to hurt again?

"You cut your wrists once to make me come back to you. You think that still works?"

I turned my head slowly.

"She cut her wrists because of you?"

Before he could answer, a woman's voice came through the gate.

"Your Majesty.

"Please don't say any more."

Rosalind Vale walked in wearing the Empress's ceremonial robes.

The nine-plume phoenix pin in her hair had been Elara's on her wedding day.

The instant Rosalind saw me, alarm flashed across her face.

Then it turned into practiced grief.

"Elara, I know you hate me.

"But feeling can't be forced. Why won't you let me alone?"

I looked at her.

"The wound in my sister's right arm.

"Did you do that?"

Rosalind's face changed for half a heartbeat.

Then her eyes filled.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

She lifted one wrist so I couldn't miss it.

A gold locket hung from the bracelet.

Our grandmother had commissioned two matching lockets when Elara and I were born.

I held out my hand.

"Take it off."

Rosalind slipped behind Lucien.

"Aunt Cordelia gave it to me."

She sounded wounded.

"She said I'd suffered enough growing up, and half of what House Ashbourne owns should be mine too."

I smiled.

"So she split Elara's husband with you as well?"

Rosalind cried harder.

"I lost a child because of you.

"And now you want even the little things your mother gives me?"

Lucien stepped in front of her.

"Mara, touch the Empress again and I'll have the tendons in your hands cut."

Rosalind, with him standing over her, stopped pretending.

"The deposed woman has insulted me."

She pointed at me.

"Twenty across the mouth. Then put her on her knees and make her carry my crown back to Aurelia Palace."

Two maids caught my shoulders.

Rosalind walked over and slapped me herself.

I let the first one land.

Confidence filled her face.

Then she leaned close to my ear.

"Elara, your sister is dead. Even your parents belong to me now."

Her whisper was almost delighted.

"Who exactly do you think is coming for you?"

I turned my face slowly back toward hers.

"Finished?"

She blinked.

I drove my forehead into her nose.

While she screamed and stumbled back, I caught her wrist and pinned the locket and its chain to the table with the broken hairpin.

Blood ran down her arm.

I kicked the maids away.

Then I took Rosalind by the hair and pushed her face into a copper tray of rouge.

"You like Elara's things?"

I forced the phoenix crown onto her head.

"Then wear it properly."

I stepped on her skirt and put her down on her knees in the broken porcelain.

"Let it fall once and I take a fingernail."

Rosalind screamed for Lucien.

I put my boot on the Emperor's hand and dragged his palm back and forth across the barbed whip.

"Don't rush."

I looked at the Emperor and his new Empress.

"Nobody here is being left out."

A furious voice erupted at the palace gate.

"Stop!

"Who gave you leave to touch Rosalind?"