Page 1 of A Reign of Embers

Chapter One

Aurelia

The smell of burnt silk lingers in the hall of the imperial apartments. I pause by one doorway, gazing toward the chambers that until very recently were mine as empress.

No more smoke wafts past the broken door, but scorch marks streak across the frame. Staff hustle out, carrying pieces of charred furniture that’s beyond salvaging.

The fire started by Linus, the more insane of my twin husbands, nearly swallowed up me and my daughter forever.

My arms tighten around Coraya. Dozing against my chest, she seems unaware of all the chaos that’s followed her birth.

The four guards who accompanied me from the meeting room where I was nearly murdered—again—have halted in a ring around me. Two of them shift to admit one of the wetnurses hired to serve the new heir to the Darium empire.

She’s older than me, perhaps ten years more than my twenty-two, but she bows with all due respect for her empress. “Your Imperial Highness, I can take care of the baby while you get your much-needed rest.”

A more familiar face appears just behind her: Kassun, one of my most loyal guards who’s been with me from my earliest days as empress. He bobs his head in turn. “We’ll make sure your daughter returns to you safely. She’ll get full imperial security.”

Instinctively, I tuck Coraya’s tiny body even closer to my own. I’d point out that full imperial security didn’t prevent one of the two men acting as my husband from turning my bedroom into an inferno, but that was only because of the authority Linus enforced, sending the guards farther away.

And he’s dead now. I observed his limp body less than an hour ago, just to be sure.

The thought of letting go of my daughter sends a wrenching sensation down the middle of me, but at the same time, my legs sway. I stiffen them quickly, but my head remains in a partial daze. Despite the recent attentions of the palace medics, dull aches radiate through my pelvis and thighs.

I’ve only slept for a few hours since Coraya’s birth and been through plenty of trauma before and after. Is she really safe withme? What if I sleep through her cries of hunger in my exhaustion?

I have to think of what’s best for her.

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

It still takes significant force of will to ease my arms away from my bosom and place my newborn in the wetnurse’s embrace.

The woman bows to me again, beaming at me and then at Coraya with a gentle warmth that smooths the sharpestedges off my anxiety. “She’ll be treasured as she deserves, Your Imperial Highness.”

She steps across the hall to one of the imperial heir apartments and disappears inside with a full host of guards.

Swallowing my apprehension, I fish in the pouch at my hip for the key to my temporary new chambers, ones also meant to be used by an imperial heir. As my fingers close around the metal surface, urgent footsteps thump down the hall toward me.

“Is the empress uninjured?” a newly roughened voice demands. “It seems assassins are teeming through the palace—what are the lot of you doing about it?”

The other man who acted as emperor barges into our midst—or at least attempts to before my remaining guards move to block him. Marc’s darkened eyes flash, but he draws himself up short with a flex of his jaw. His intense gaze sweeps over me.

The sight of the man who saved me, who I then saved—the man I’ve seen as a monster for most of our engagement and marriage but who proved to at least be less of one than his brother—sends a wobble through my pulse.

Words spill out of me. “I’m fine. The medics couldn’t heal your scars?”

It’s a pointless question—I can see the answer for myself. Most of Marc’s golden curls were scorched steel-gray by the flames and the magical wind and shadows that battered him. A matching blotch discolors more than half of his face, rippling unevenly across the center of his forehead, nose, and chin into the natural pale skin remaining on the right side.

As far as I can tell, the strange effect hasn’t been lightened at all since I first noticed it.

The uneven border of the scar makes even the shapes of his features appear different. Between that and the gravelly warping of his voice, no one in the palace now recognizesMarc as emperor. The fact that another man appearing to be the emperor is lying dead in the palace temple would only make the true story of his identity sound more insane.

My guards have stiffened. “We protected Her Imperial Highness,” one of them snaps. “She came to no harm.”

Marc jerks his hand through the air. “You didn’t catch the would-be murderer.”

Another of the guards bares her teeth. “And you think you’d have managed it if you’d been there instead of seeing about your face? Go chase the tribune now if you’re so sure of your skills. The empress needs her rest.”

Marc’s gaze flicks back to me. I can’t read all the emotions roiling behind his tensed expression.

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