Page 147 of A Reign of Embers

I knew all that going into this standoff. It isn’t as if I could have missed the vast sprawl of Valerisse’s forces swarming the terrain ahead of us. But in the first exhilarating phase of the clash, it didn’t seem to matter. I could feel our strength rippling through our ranks, potent enough to overcome any foe.

Apparently that impression was as much an illusion as anything Lorenzo could conjure. We’re battered and broken now—fuck, is that Axius struggling to even sit up?—limping to meet the next charge.

My gaze snaps to Aurelia. I didn’t focus on her closely in my first glance after the onslaught of magic, only making sure she wasn’t injured before I got my own bearings.

Now, I take in the grayed cast of her face, the color leeched from beneath her tanned skin. The whites of her eyes gleam with a panicked glint I’ve seen before… in my opponents before I ran them through.

She’s still standing, but her posture is starting to slump. Only the set of her jaw holds firm against the horrors around us.

My formidable wife with all her stubbornness and sweetness mixed together… Can her determination withstand even this?

Does it matter, if determination isn’t enough to get us through the next ten minutes?

I yank my attention back to the incoming army, to our diminished forces shooting out arrows and tightening ranks at the base of the hill as the remaining officers holler. Valerisse kicks her stallion faster, her sword and armband flashing in the strengthening sunlight.

I haven’t reached to my gift, but as I watch her, a visionunfolds before my eyes. I see myself on horseback, pushing through the enemy soldiers with a prize held high by strings from my hand. The uniformed figures fall back at the sight of whatever my prize is, but my focus is all on Valerisse.

In the haze of the vision, she smiles, triumph dancing in her dark eyes. She holds out her hand to accept my offering?—

And I whip out my sword to plunge it into her neck.

As she crumples, I lift my other hand alongside the first in a pose of victory. “It’s over! I am your emperor, returned! Sabrelle has blessed me above all others on this day!”

My spirits soar at the cheer that rises from the mass of soldiers around me—and I look up at the “prize” I’m holding.

Those aren’t strings. They’re strands of hair. Strands of Aurelia’s thick brown hair, twisted between my fingers above her severed head. Her lovely face has gone blotchy and vacant as gore drips from her ragged neck.

The image smacks me back to reality with a lurch of my stomach. I look to Aurelia again, and the vision surges after me.

Cut down that guard who’s the fastest at blocking and that one who’s deftest with her sword before either can react. Slice the empress’s head right off her body, grab the horse tied by a tent just below…

My gut outright heaves. I double over, sputtering as the little breakfast I forced down surges up my throat. Red tinges the edges of my sight.

Sabrelle. The vision wasn’t brought by my gift but as a divine missive, although it amounts to the same thing.

The godlen of war is showing me how I can win this battle—for myself, no one else. How I could end the conflict and reclaim the throne I lost.

I can almost hear her murmuring in my ear.It would onlybe a small sacrifice, wouldn’t it? Giving up one woman who’s already betrayed you a dozen times over?

Deep down at the bottom of the heart I’m still getting used to feeling, a twinge of temptation tugs at me. To take this chance, to prove Linus wrong, to do my father proud—to rule the empire as I was always meant to.

Aurelia’s voice breaks through the turmoil in my head. “Marc, are you wounded?”

The question rings with both resolve and concern, as if she’d cross oceans to heal me if that’s what it takes.

I straighten up and meet her eyes. The fierceness has come back into her stance and her expression.

For me. For the man who betrayedherover and over in so many ways, who she opened her heart to anyway.

Near my other side, Raul is shoving himself upright, swaying with his arms too limp to help his balance. He peers at me, his teeth baring in a feral grin. “We’ll pay them back for everything. Come on, brother.”

There’s no wariness or animosity in his gaze. All of that has fallen away between us.

Something in me cracks open with an even sharper pang than when Aurelia encouraged me to reveal myself to Axius. It was such a relief to speak to him as who I truly am… but even that wasn’t really myself, was it?

The high commander still thinks of me as Marclinus, as the sum of everything my twin did as well as me. Like everyone did the entire time I was imperial heir and emperor.

But Aurelia and my foster brothers… They seeme. Just Marc, just my own faults—and everything I’ve done to make up for them. They want to stand beside me and have me standing with them as I am.

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