Page 33 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth

He smiled at her, soft and sad. “I don’t despise you, even though. I know it was Rudion guiding your hand. It’s how he allowed you to take the crown. It’s how he punished the Emperor for his crimes.”

The knot inside her eased, and she found she didn’t feel the heat as much as she had a moment ago.

Once more Ileem’s hand found her face. He stroked her cheek and she shut her eyes, leaning into him. “You kept your promise,” she told him. “Helped me destroy Rescarin. Enabled temple construction to resume.”

“So I did, with the aid of my god.”

“Our god,” she corrected gently.

“Our god.”

She opened her eyes to find Ileem’s face a breath away from hers, his dark gaze piercing through her. “Might I ask for an amendment to the peace treaty between our two nations, Your Imperial Majesty?”

A thrill went through her. She brushed her fingers along the line of his jaw. “You may.”

He cupped both his hands around her face, drawing her close as their mounts shifted underneath them.

The gold specs in his irises seemed to dance; his breath was laced with the scent of cardamom tea.

“Will you be my wife, Eda of Enduena?” he asked.

She closed the remaining distance between them with a kiss, and let that be his answer.

Later, much later, she sat at the window in her bedchamber, staring out at the white stars. She tried to examine her joy about Ileem but she couldn’t quite make sense of it. How could she be happy when Niren lay still as death in her bed?

There had been no change in her when Eda arrived back at the palace—none at all.

“What were you expecting?” the palace physician had asked Eda with a quizzical frown. “A miraculous recovery?”

Beneath her arm cuff, her wound itched and ached. Yes. That’s exactly what she expected.

The night stared back at her, empty, blank. She swore at the stars.

She rose and put on her favorite dressing gown, the deep green one with the white embroidery. If she couldn’t sleep, there was no reason Rescarin should.

She left her rooms by the respectable route, collecting her guard from the corridor. She made her way confidently through the palace, across the courtyard, and down a set of narrow, dirty stairs to the lower level. To the prison.

She hadn’t been down here in over a year, not since she’d paid a similar visit to her erstwhile rival. Even thinking about Talia made Eda’s lip curl in disgust, though she was far away in Ryn and wasn’t Eda’s problem anymore.

Eda came to the first locked gate and barked at the guard who kept it to let her through. He did, bowing hastily, and ordered the guard beyond to escort her to Baron Rescarin’s cell.

Eda was pleased to find that Rescarin had been installed in the darkest, dingiest cell possible at the very back of the prison. She grabbed a torch from the wall and brought it near the cell door, illuminating the interior. She was pretty sure there was a dead rat in one corner. The whole place smelled awful, like human waste and mold and fear.

Rescarin had been curled up on the narrow stone shelf that served as a bed on the back wall, but he scrambled to his feet at her arrival, tripping over himself and landing in a heap on the grimy floor.

Eda sneered down at him, in the safety of her torch and the bars between them. “Oh Rescarin, look at you. You’re not bearing up atallas well as I thought you would.”

He didn’t seem affected by her jibe, a kind of wan humor in his eyes. “I underestimated you, Eda. I hadn’t thought you’d ensnare that Denlahn jackal to do your dirty work for you.”

“I rather like my Denlahn jackal. We’re to be married, you know.”

Rescarin gave a bark of laughter.“Areyou?”

“At the Festival of Uerc.”

His grin stretched to his ears. “I never thought our little Bastard Empress would lose her heart to anyone, let alone a foreigner. An enemy.”

“You’rethe one who wanted peace with them. And he suits me.”

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