Page 91 of A Reign of Embers

Evando still looks skeptical, which I can’t blame him for. As far as he knows, Marc only joined the imperial military forces very recently.

He has no idea that the man he’s questioning led the march against the Rionian rebellion several years ago.

It seems best to divert attention from any questions of Marc’s history. I stride on to the stairs that’ll take us to the main floor of the palace. “Do we have any idea where this outbreak originated? How the first to catch it were infected?”

I don’t think Sabrelle could have sent the contagionstraight into her victims’ bodies, no matter how sure I am that she’s the ultimate source of this plague.

At the same time as Bianca was fainting at my side, the first few pages collapsed in the palace halls. I can’t imagine who all four of them would have encountered at approximately the same time.

Evando shakes his head with a defeated air. “We’ve had the typical messengers, deliveries, and changing of the guards, but nothing unusual. I don’t believe any of them had interacted with Vicerine Bianca, although perhaps she caught it from one of the staff. There haven’t been any reports of illness from the rest of the city so far… It doesn’t make sense.”

Or maybe it does. As we reach the top of the stairs near the broad windows overlooking the front courtyard, someone down the hall gasps. A crimson light filters through the glass.

With a lurch of my heart, I spin toward the windows.

A glowing image of a vibrantly red stallion gallops past the palace, hovering in mid-air, like some kind of demon horse. As it passes us, it tosses its mane defiantly.

The soldiers on the grounds below stare up at it, several of them flicking their hands through the gesture of the divinities.

I tap my fingers down my front myself, a chill gathering in my chest. “Sabrelle is responsible somehow. She influenced someone, encouraged the disease in whatever ways godlen can…”

I whirl on my feet again, this time toward my own quarters. A hot flush washes away the chill. “I need to make use of my gift now, before?—”

Evando is staring at me, his face paling.

Marc’s expression has gone taut. “Empress…”

The flush flares hotter—more than just determination. It’s the searing of a fever.

A prickling sensation creeps under my skin. Have I already broken out in the ruddy blotches of the pox?

My legs wobble under me with a wave of lightheadedness. Marc catches my elbow, and Evando takes my other arm.

“We’d better get you to your chambers, Your Imperial Highness,” the captain says, and calls to one of the remaining footmen nearby. “Get any medics who can be spared to the empress’s apartment!”

He keeps muttering as they usher me up the stairs to the third floor. “We shouldn’t have let you look in on the patients.”

I keep my head enough to speak dryly. “I hardly think you ‘let’ the empress do anything, captain. And I won’t have caught it from looking through a doorway ten minutes ago. It’s a wonder I hadn’t fallen ill sooner.”

My sacrificed spleen rarely causes problems in my daily life, but it does make me more sensitive to sickness.

Is this Sabrelle’s plan? She wanted to get rid of me, so she had my entire palace infected?

The feverish fog unfurls through my head. As we approach my chambers, all I want to do is lie down and escape the aches starting to wind up my calves.

Then one of the nursemaids bursts past the door to my daughter’s rooms, her eyes wide with panic. A baby’s wail splits the air from behind her.

“Medics!” she cries. “Someone bring the medics!”

I lose my breath as sharply as if I’ve been punched in the chest.

“Coraya?” I manage to croak. “Is she sick too?”

The nursemaid takes in my no-doubt blotchy face and backs up a step. “We’ll do whatever we can for her. The medics have to be able to help her.”

Evando tugs me toward my own rooms. “Come,Empress. There’s nothing you can do for your daughter right now. You both need to rest and listen to the medics.”

Except the medics don’t know how to cure us yet. And there is something I can do—what I was planning to do before the sickness swept over me.

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