Page 57 of Poisoned Empire

“It is my duty to teach you how to behave as a domina. A domina does not associate with fer-”

Iliana put her hand over her half-sister’s mouth.

“Stop! I will not hear another vile word of it.”

As if her task were now complete, Diodora turned away without comment and continued to sew the same, simple pattern on the silk square before her.

Marduk’s arrival couldn’t come soon enough. When he knocked on their door, she was glad to take his arm and be free of the place. It wasn’t until they were walking along a gravel-lined path some distance from the palace proper that the tenseness left her shoulders. Iliana resolved to banish her troubles from her mind. No more of Selene’s hare-brained schemes. No more slander. No more sisters. Just her, the warm sun on her skin and Marduk, a picnic basket in one arm and her on the other.

“How are you faring? I can’t imagine it’s easy being here.” Marduk broke their companionable silence.

Iliana felt herself tense anew, gut churning with anxiety. What a perfectly horrid question, and yet no one had bothered to ask her before now. She’d stood against the unrelenting onslaught of her situation, but now she faltered. Suddenly, the walls she’d built around herself crumbled.

Marduk must have sensed it. He stopped in his tracks.

“Whatever it is, I’ll fix it.”

Tears stung her eyes. How long had she been desperately holding herself together, hoping someone would offer to take all her woes away, soother her hurts, make it better? She was no longer a child, and yet her childhood was the last time she’d felt truly safe. How weak and foolish it was to wish that someone would protect her. And yet it didn’t stop her from wanting it very badly.

“I…I don’t think you can. And besides, you have problems of your own. You don’t need to shoulder mine.” Iliana pulled on his arm, urging him to keep walking, eyes turned from his.

“I can carry more than you think, Iliana. If you need a sympathetic ear, I’m here.”

She took a deep breath. The man at her side twisted her in knots. She wanted him to be her protector, but he had offered her no more than a toss between the sheets.

“Truthfully, so much is awful here. The nobles delight in cruelty and pettiness, the servants are forced to act like furniture, my sisters’ conditions scare me and yet they say the most hateful things. Selene causes mayhem, which I suppose is par for the course, but I worry for her all the same. She’s not nearly as invulnerable as she appears. And every day, I fear my father will try to kill me.”

“Has he threatened you?” Marduk’s brows furrowed as he drew her closer.

They turned off the manicured footpath. A dappled, vibrant canopy stretched overhead, the trail sloping upwards.

“Not…recently.”

What could she really call a lifetime of being terrorized and hunted? She’d had to flee every town she’d settled in the moment he’d tracked her down. Nowhere was far enough for Magister Sapphire to lose sight of the daughter he’d failed to drown.

“Do you not wish to discuss it? We don’t have to, if it’s too difficult.”

The sound of flowing water had her gripping his arm. She held her breath as the trail opened up, a narrow stream intersecting it. Iliana stopped him. Maybe if he saw her as damaged, she could free herself of her illusions about him. The truth was always the best way to have a man running in the opposite direction.

“The creek by my childhood home wasn’t much wider than that, maybe as wide as I am tall. Even in Spring, with heavy rainfall and the snowmelt from the mountains, when it breached its banks, the water never made it to town. But when the magister heard of my neighbours boasting of my skill at my stepfather’s forge, remarking on the similarities in our appearance, he… he destroyed the town. He sent a giant wave and swept it off the map. I survived because I was in the forge that night, and I turned all the metal into a ball and sealed myself in. When I emerged, everyone was dead or gone. And now he tracks me down no matter where I run. He doesn’t need to say anything, but he has always threatened my life.”

Except Marduk didn’t turn away, or make false promises.

“And this is why you wish to leave Lethe.”

“Yes.”

Marduk let go of her and jumped across the stream, basket in hand. He put it down and turned to her.

“You’re right, I can’t fix that.”

Her heart sank. Best to have this part done with now.

“I can’t fix the cruel nature of the world we live in, or change what a monster the magister is, nor can I change what’s happened to you.”

And yet, he leaned across the stream, his hand outstretched, eyes solemn.

“But I can be someone you can lean on, for however long you wish it. I can listen to your worries, and take you away from those cruelties, even if it’s just for a short while. When you need a place of peace and safety, I can be that place for you.”

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