Page 163 of A Dance of Shadows

All four princes shove us through the gaping doorway and several paces down the hall—until my legs crumple. As I collapse to the floor, Raul is already hollering—“Fire! We need medics too—quickly! The empress is hurt!”

My guards and Marclinus’s come charging around the bend in the hall from the more distant post Linus sent them to. At the sight of our jumbled gathering, a couple of them jar in their tracks. They swivel in the opposite direction and shout out, echoing Raul’s call through the palace.

I clutch my daughter to me, mumbling comfort as I rock her, tears trickling from my smoke-seared eyes. The ache in my abdomen consumes almost all of my awareness.

Then there are gentle hands pressing against my belly. A mix of coolness and warmth spreads through the pain like a salve.

Other hands reach to rest on Coraya’s tiny body in my arms.

More bellows ring out nearby. Soldiers rush past us toward the flames licking past the doorway; gifts are hurled into the fire still raging through my apartment. The wafting heat dwindles.

“You’ll both be okay,” a medic murmurs. “It’s going to be okay. What happened?”

The last question she must have directed at the princes.

Bastien answers, his voice ragged. “We heard the fire and did our best to get her out. I don’t know how it started.”

Hasty footsteps thump down the hall. “The emperor—he went out the bedroom window—we found him in the courtyard outside. He’sdead.”

Through the rush of healing magic, a deeper flutter of relief unfurls in my chest.

No matter what happens now, Linus is really gone. The man who most tormented me, who meant to slaughter me, can never touch me again.

At my side, a figure sways upright. I glance over—and my heart skips a beat.

It’s Marc, clearly intending to put the matter of the emperor’s survival to rest. I can recognize the shape of his body, the curl of his hair, the angle of his jaw, even his clothes, scorched as they are.

But an awful lot of him… doesn’t look like him at all. Something about the princes’ magic merging with the fire imprinted him with a strange sort of burn.

His curls gleam steel gray with only sporadic strands of gold mingled in. An unnaturally smooth blotch of a matching gray covers a swath of his face from forehead to chin, rippling across his nose in a way that makes it look crooked. The eyes he fixes on the palace staff bustling around us have darkened to a shade closer to lead.

The effects have seeped down his throat as well. His voice comes out with a gravelly texture I’ve never heard before, as much as I recognize the forceful tone.

“You still have an emperor,” he says.

The guard who delivered the message blinks at him in confusion. “Who the fuck are you?”

Marc stares back at him, shocked speechless. I can’t imagine any noble has ever spoken to him like that before, let alone a common soldier.

He doesn’t realize—he doesn’t know how he looks.

I grasp his trousers to catch his attention and hold up the knife I’ve kept pinned beneath my arm. When he glances down, his reflection wavers on the polished metal surface.

Marc’s posture goes completely rigid. He snatches the blade from me to peer closer, ignoring a hiss of consternation from one of the medics.

My mind scrambles to provide a story that won’t see all of us in a worse mess. “He’s a soldier who only just joined us at the palace. He saved my life. If he hadn’t burst in when he did…”

My voice wavers. But as much as I’d like to expose Linus’s villainy, it won’t help our cause. I’ll be turning my savior into the murderer of an emperor.

I didn’t haul Marc out of the inferno for that.

“Marclinus and I were attacked,” I go on. “An assassin must have used magic to sneak into my chambers undetected. He stabbed Marclinus, shoved him out the window, and set the fire… But this man felled him and pushed him into the flames. He put his life on the line tosaveme.”

With the emphasis on that word, I let my gaze dart to the princes who played their own part in that rescue. Willing them to take in everything I’ve said.

I don’t know who the man next to me will be in my life now, but he’s not an enemy.

Raul’s mouth pulls into a slight grimace that tells me he’s caught my meaning. Bastien stares at his imperial foster brother’s marred face, but his shoulders relax just enough to reassure me.

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