Page 163 of A Game of Veils

I draw up short before I reach Tarquin and hold up my hands to the guards appeasingly. “The medics aren’t here yet. Let me see if my gift can find a way to help him?”

They know I deal in potions for healing. One of them accepts my offer with a jerk of his hand.

I drop to my knees beside the emperor’s prone body. His eyelids are frozen at half-mast, his pale gray eyes staring straight at me from beneath them, but there’s still a glimmer of life in their helpless depths.

Good. I want him to know who dealt his final blow.

Let him die regretting every vicious choice he’s made in the past two weeks.

I lower my head. “I think he’s trying to say something!”

Leaning my ear close to Emperor Tarquin’s mouth, I aim a whisper at the floor that only he will be able to decipher. “It’s too bad you won’t get to see what I do with your empire.”

As I straighten up, the slightest tic quivers through the emperor’s face, as if he’s attempting one last struggle to break through the bonds of the drug. A thin breath rattles from his throat.

His eyes dim.

Two medics fling themselves through the crowd toward us. I scramble backward to give them room, pulling myself up onto legs I don’t have to pretend are wobbly. Adrenaline races through my veins and churns in my gut.

One of the principles that I used to guide my gift was that the potion should leave no unnatural trace. If Elox’s blessing failed me…

The medics press their hands to Tarquin’s body, their voices frantic. “His heart’s stopped.”

“The other organs— I’ll try, but I’m not sure?—”

My jangling nerves settle into a clammy queasiness.

It’s done. I really did it.

I killed a man. But gods smite me, if any man deserved it, it was this one.

Sometimes blood must be spilled to prepare the ground for peace.

Marclinus comes to a halt beside me, gaping down at his father with utter shock. His hands flex at his sides as if searching for something to grasp hold of.

I reach out and twine my fingers with his as a devoted wife should, just as the head medic raises his head toward us with a grim expression.

“I’m sorry, Your Imperial Eminences. There’s nothing we can do. It must have been a sudden fit, a severe one… He’s gone to his godlen.”

The imperial heir stands nearly as rigid as his father’s corpse. He draws his chin up, but a tiny tremor passes from his hand into mine.

He’s Emperor Marclinus now.

And I’m his empress.

If I can sway him toward compassion and peace, there’s no one left to stand in our way.

No one with authority over us, at least.

I lift my eyes from Tarquin’s body, and my gaze collides with an icy blue one just across from me. Raul’s searing stare chills me straight through to my bones.

He’s looking at me as if he’s just seen me for the very first time. As if he knows exactly what I did.

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