Page 130 of A Game of Veils

She topples to the ground and doesn’t even bother to lift her head. Her shoulders shake with whimpered sobs.

She left the platform. She already knows what’s coming.

Is she terrified or grateful for the release from this misery?

Hasn’t there already been enough death tonight? I can’t stop a protest from bubbling up my throat. “Don’t?—”

My voice comes out too thin to be heard above the excited roar of our audience. I can’t imagine what difference it would have made even if I’d bellowed from the depths of my lungs.

A guard stoops over Giralda and slices his sword through her throat.

Marclinus stands up in front of his chair, clapping vigorously. At his example, applause breaks out all around us.

His words ring out above the approving thunder. “Congratulations and well done to my three victorious ladies. The medics will see to your feet. Then you may retire and get some rest. The final trial commences the day after tomorrow.”

Chapter Forty

Aurelia

Idon’t remember the walk back to my chambers. I look up, and there’s my bedroom door in front of me, as if someone conjured it there the moment after the medic tended to my feet.

I think the medic must have put my shoes on me as well. Rochelle couldn’t have. Rochelle?—

Images flash through my mind: my friend’s gouged body, the panther tearing into her arm, the bloody spittle flecking her lips.

The life in her eyes going out like a lantern snuffed.

How could it have vanished? She was so happy this morning, knowing her medic was waiting for her back in Garince.

I protected her, I circumvented the rules and prevented her execution—I wanted one person to come out of this charade with more joy than misery.

Maybe that was where I went wrong. I let myself start to hope again. I let myself imagine I could have joy and still do my duty.

I knew how that goes. She isn’t the first person I’ve cared about that the empire ripped from my life.

I thought I’d learned my lesson well enough the first time. Now she’s paid for it too.

I shouldn’t have let myself be tempted. I should have kept all my attention trained on the narrow path ahead of me…

But then she’d have died days ago during the trial when Marclinus declared her a failure, wouldn’t she? Would that really have been better?

My thoughts are too muddled for me to sort them out. The calm inside me has shattered, leaving only jabbing splinters. A dull but emphatic ache radiates from my chest into every other part of me.

I failed. I couldn’t keep even one person safe.

Do I really stand any chance of defending my entire country in the face of these tyrants? Even if I win the trials, even if I stand next to Marclinus through the rest of my days, what are the chances I’ll ever sway his mind so much as an inch?

Emperor Tarquin is a horror, but I’m starting to think his heir is even worse.

I could go through all this and yet accomplish nothing but my own suffering.

Voices farther down the hall prompt me into motion. My hand rises automatically to fish out my key and fit it into the doorknob.

The events of the incident before the trial have faded so far behind my anguish that in the first second, I’m startled by the stink that meets me. Then the rest of my memory clicks into place.

As I step into the defiled room, Melisse spins around where she’s standing in the middle of the mess. She’s lit a lantern that’s sitting haphazardly on the vanity, and the yellowish glow turns her face a sickly shade.

Or maybe that’s her reaction to the disarray, because her voice quavers with similar distress. “Your Highness… I’m so sorry. I thought—she said it would be some small prank—I never should have given her the chance. Please, if you report this to the emperor, I don’t know how he’ll punish me and my family. I’ll do whatever I can to set it right.”

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