Page 72 of A Pact of Blood

“It’s not their opinion that matters.” He waves his hand toward the walls. “They’re all imbeciles. And if you want to impress me, you’d do well to behave less like one yourself.”

“Yes, husband. My apologies for disappointing you.”

“Hmph.” He ambles away from me, running his fingers over the top of a nearby armchair, and then spins back around. “Your presence does remind me—I’ve been thinking we should add to our fleet of ships faster than we have in recent years. I’m going to call for significantly more breamwood from Accasy going forward. They’ll be happy to supply to both their emperor and their formerly Accasian empress, I assume?”

The bottom of my stomach drops right out. More wood from the bream cedars—that’ll require more local workersdoing the dangerous work of felling the trees and conveying them along the precarious route down to Darium. More men and women crushed beneath the trunks and drowning in the rivers, never to return home.

“Of course they will,” I say, steadying my voice as much as I can. “You’ll get the best results if you ramp up production gradually.”

Which might give me time to distract him with some other acquisition?

Marclinus simply laughs. “Why should I wait? I’d like to see twice as much arriving in a matter of months. If they can’t keep up, you’ll need to deal with them like the empress you’re so keen to show you are.”

He stalks out of the room without another word.

It takes all my strength to stop my legs from outright crumpling under me. I wobble over to a chair and sink into it, gazing at the room but not really seeing its contents. Every part of me feels numb except the queasy churning of my gut.

Marclinus is punishing me by lashing out at my country—demanding so much more of my people when they’re already stretching themselves thin to cater to the empire.

He’ll forcemeto impose the demands on them myself if they fail to fulfill his request quickly enough.

All to put me in my place and remind me how little I matter to him.

I bring my hands to my face. I thought I’d started to make a few gains with him. I thought I’d earned some small bit of respect. But it was nothing more than another game.

I came all the way from the wild north to secure a better future for my kingdom, and it turns out I’ve only encouraged the new emperor to make my people a target. How much more will he bully them if I disappoint him again?

No matter how many times I breathe slow and deep, my nerves keep jangling. My store of inner calm has shattered.

No one in the empire will know real peace while that pompous, sadistic asshole still rules.

The thought floats through my head, expanding until I can’t focus on anything else.

It’s true, isn’t it? How many times does Marclinus have to prove that he’d rather ruin lives than raise them up, torment his people rather than cultivate them, crush my spirit rather than celebrate it, before I fully believe him?

He couldn’t rule while his father still lived. I never will while my husband still does.

My throat constricts around my next breath.

I might have brought about Tarquin’s death, but I didn’t relish the act. Every particle of my nature would rather guide those around me toward kinder decisions through sympathy and understanding rather than violence.

Back when my parents, my sister, and I murmured in secret in the private rooms of the palace, obtained my ring and worked out the best ways of using it, we never discussed disposing of anyone other than the old emperor. We assumed Marclinus would be at least a little open to influence, with his youth and his lack of experience.

How could we have imagined just how awful he’d be? That he’d become a terror worse than Tarquin?

HowcouldI get rid of him? I can hardly pass off a sudden death as another bout of illness in a man still in the early years of his prime, especially after his father just passed under similar circumstances in my presence. And even if there was a way to free the empire of his awfulness, his people would hardly accept me as their new ruler in his place.

I’m not even Darium. I’ve only been empress for a matter of weeks. Nothing except a marriage ceremony and the gold band fitted around my wrist tie me to the imperial family.

Perhaps farther down the line, when I’m mother to hisheirs, when I’ve fully established myself in their minds… But, gods help me, the thought of lying with him for real after the insults he just hurled at me makes every particle of my body recoil.

My gaze drifts across the room again. Sunlight beams through the window.

The warm brilliance gleams off the ruddy wallpaper, and a memory of Bastien’s dark green eyes beneath his auburn hair rises in my mind. The shine on the dark wooden cabinet brings Lorenzo’s image swimming up after it. The glint in the bluish crystal of a vase in the corner summons Raul’s pale gaze.

The men I actually want are right here.

My heart skips a beat. I hold perfectly still, unsure whether this is a godlen-driven vision or simply fanciful thoughts.

---