All Chapters of The Second Shore: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Seven days after the coronation, Lucien Arden finally came to Silverleaf Palace.He wore the gold-and-ivory robes of the emperor, tall and immaculate, and he stood in the middle of the hall like a pine on a snowfield—magnificent and entirely removed from everything around him.“Evelyn.” His voice was low. “Do you object to my decision?”Evelyn Hartwell rose at once and bowed.“I wouldn't dare, Your Majesty. Naming my sister empress was a wise decision. I have no objection.”Lucien studied her calm face and frowned.He had assumed her silence over the past week was a tactic. He had expected that the moment he asked, she would cry. That she would tell him how unfair it was. That she would make a scene, and he would let her, and then he would give her something expensive and say, sternly, what he had said to her on the night they married: I told you when I took you to wife that my heart belongs to Rosalind. I can give you wealth and status. I cannot give you love. The place beside m

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 th

Evelyn's head came up. She stared at him, unable to believe it.Lucien avoided her eyes. His voice dropped.“My intelligence service isn't as useless as all that. I know perfectly well who's been stirring the water.”He knew. He knew Rosalind had staged the whole thing from start to finish.The words hit somewhere under Evelyn's ribs and left behind a sharp, ridiculous, almost unbearable pain.“Then Your Majesty—” Her voice shook.“It's Rosalind.” Something tired came into his tone, and something helpless with it. “I have told her, over and over, that there has never been anything of that kind between you and me. That marrying you was forced on me by circumstance. But she's—she's a woman. She needs to feel safe. She's watched us be married for years. She's seen me look after you, now and then, and it frightens her.” He paused. “This time she simply took an opportunity. She wanted to test where my heart was.”He looked at her, and his eyes were complicated.“I couldn't wound her

“Hah! Wonderful! What a devoted man you are!”Cassian threw his head back and howled, then signaled his men. Rosalind's ropes were cut and she was shoved toward the narrow door that led down to safety.She half ran, half fell down the stair, and threw herself into Lucien's arms, sobbing.Cassian turned, grinning, toward the woman who had been left where she was.“Well then. Goodbye, Imperial Consort.”Almost in the same instant, crossbows fired out of the darkness along the battlement. The bolts went through Cassian and three of the men around him, each one exactly where it needed to go.His body jerked and stopped.The mad pleasure was still in his eyes as he went over backward—and with the last strength he had, he twisted and shoved Evelyn hard, and she was already half over the edge.“Evelyn—!”Lucien watched her fall. That thin figure went off the top of the wall like a kite with a cut string.The sound she made when she hit the flagstones below was flat and heavy and fin

Memory came at him the way a flood comes through a broken gate—all at once, carrying an old pain with a fresh edge on it, and it went over his head.He thought of their wedding night.The bridal candles burning tall. Evelyn in white, sitting quietly on the edge of the bed.He had lifted the veil and found her eyes perfectly still. Not the shyness of a bride, not the nervous gratitude of a lesser daughter who had married far above herself. Just that flat, unmoving calm, like a pool with no bottom to it.It had irritated him for no reason he could name, and he had said, coldly:“Evelyn. I'm marrying you to keep Rosalind safe. I can give you the rank of Princess Consort and every luxury that comes with it. I can't give you love. You would do well to remember that—keep to your place, and don't reach for what was never yours.”How had she answered him?She had stood up, unhurried, and given him a bow so correct it was almost stiff, in a voice with nothing in it at all.“I understand