Page 129 of A Dance of Shadows

The thought doesn’t actually surprise me. I doubt there’s a person outside Dariu who doesn’t resent those who reside in the honored country at the center of the empire. Of course anyone who’s chafing at the empire’s unfair demands will find whatever ways they can to conduct a quiet protest.

Of course the Darium citizens assume their conquered kingdoms will be obedient and offer up the best of their resources for an insulting price.

Great God smite me, it’s possible the same thing happens in Accasy. Do the workers in the forests send the worst of our bream cedar down the rivers? For all I know, they damage some of the logs purposefully, knowing it’ll be blamed on the jostling of the trip.

How many inferior materials and other goods have the Darium citizens been getting all this time without knowing any better? How many of those people have been harmed because of collapsing buildings and other faulty construction?

The poison of the empire has been hurting everyone, even those who are supposed to be benefitting the most.

The enormity of the realization knocks the breath out of me. I press my hand to my forehead.

Over by the stairs, my guards stir. “Do you need help, Your Imperial Highness?”

I give myself a little shake and stand up. “No, I’m all right. I simply have a lot to think about.”

And I do think—all the way back to the carriage and on the road toward the festivities in the square. With every passing minute, one question looms larger in my mind.

If every part of the empire is broken, if its existence leaves no one except perhaps the emperor himself better off… what is the point in trying to patch all those holes? Is it even possible?

The farmers I spoke to in Cotea talked about how the waterways might never be returned to their natural state now that the empire has altered them. Some things, once ruined, can’t be fixed, no matter how much you might want to.

The empire has perpetuated so much harm across the whole continent and across multiple centuries. Elox sent me a vision before about mending fences and tending to the ground we have, but what if the damage has gone past the point of repair?

What if the only way I can end all this misery… is by bringing the entire damned empire crashing to the ground?

Chapter Forty-Five

Aurelia

The tap of my bedroom door closing yanks me out of slumber. My gaze jerks toward the doorway.

As I blink hard to clear the bleariness from my eyes, a figure comes into hazy focus amid the darkness. At the sight of the imperial purple shirt and golden-blond curls, my body tenses more before I can catch my reaction.

The man has stopped in his tracks. He raises his hand in a calming gesture, speaking in a low but strained voice. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. I only—I needed to see that you’re all right.”

It’s Marc, not Linus returning with some new torment. My muscles sag back into the mattress. “I’m fine,” I mumble. Only too exhausted to have much of a conversation.

Marc shifts his weight on his feet. “I’ll let you get your sleep. Can I stay?”

The question startles me into slightly sharper awareness. My husband is asking mypermissionto share my bed?

He’d rather lie here beside me to do nothing other than sleep than sprawl out with full freedom in his own bedroom?

A strange pang resonates through my heart. I can’t think of any clear reason to deny him.

I press my head deeper into the pillow. “Of course.”

As I drift off again, I’m only vaguely aware of Marc slipping under the covers on the other side of the bed.

When I wake the second time, to morning sunlight spilling through a gap in the curtains, the brief conversation feels like a dream. At least, it does until I move to stretch my arms and register the weight of a tentative hand resting on my side.

Marc stirs at my movement and eases a little closer, the warmth of his body spreading over me beneath the covers through the space he’s still left between us. As if he’s unsure of his welcome.

When is either version of my husband ever uncertain of anything?

His hand remains on my side, with a slow stroke of his thumb across my waist over the silk of my nightgown.

Is he going to pursue a more intimate interlude now that I’m rested? I’m not sure it’s early enough that I could get away with putting him back to sleep for another couple of hours.

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