by Amy Raby
Marius turned Gambler side-on so that he and the emperor could look each other in the eye.
“My objections are many,” said Lucien. “First, she’s breaking the law, and I don’t reward lawbreakers. Second, she’s far beneath your social class. Did you say she’s the daughter of an apothecary?”
Marius nodded.
“And you are from the imperial family,” said Lucien.
“You married a peasant woman from Riorca,” said Marius.
Lucien snorted. “Vitala is an extraordinary woman, one of a kind. How many peasant women, from anywhere, can beat me at Caturanga? How many noblewomen can do it? None. And Caturanga is just one of her many talents.”
“Isolda is extraordinary too.”
Lucien sighed. “How long have you known her?”
“Two months. I also met her briefly a few years ago.”
“I know this is not something you want to hear,” said Lucien. “But what if she’s interested in you only for your wealth and influence, and especially for the possibility that you could, through your influence, make her a legal citizen?”
“She has no idea that I’m connected to the imperial family,” said Marius.
“She knows you’re connected to wealth,” said Lucien.
“She doesn’t care,” said Marius. “I’m sure of it.”
“Love can make a man blind.”
“Would it help if you met her?”
Lucien frowned. “If she meets me, she learns your secret. What if the marriage falls apart and she tells her Sardossian friends who you are? If she wags her tongue, she could jeopardize everything you’ve built for yourself in Riat.”
“Isolda never wags her tongue,” said Marius.
“You haven’t known her long enough to be sure,” said Lucien.
Marius set his jaw. “I want to tell her.”
“What if I meet her and don’t like her?”
“You’ll like her,” said Marius. He’d better.
Lucien clucked to his horse, sending him into a walk alongside the lake.
Marius steered his horse next to the emperor’s.
“Your mother did this, you know,” said Lucien.
“My mother eloped and ran away,” said Marius. “I’m having a conversation.”
“And do you think a conversation didn’t happen between your mother and Nigellus before everything fell apart? I’m not Nigellus. I’m not going to scare you back to Osler. I don’t like what you’re doing, but you’re right: I married a peasant woman and a bastard besides, and I thank the gods every day that she found me. If you want to marry this woman, and you’re willing to take the risks, talk to her, and then bring her here so I can meet her. All right?”
“Thank you, cousin.” It wasn’t a promise, but it gave him hope. He and Lucien clasped wrists.
Chapter 27
The workday was over, but Isolda couldn’t go home yet. Marius had asked her to wait while he put a few things away in the dispensary. He’d said he needed to talk to her before she left the surgery. Whether it was about business or something personal, she didn’t know.
She ought never to have fallen in love with her boss, and this was why. Her work life and her love life were all muddled up. Being around Marius was shredding her heart one piece at a time, and the only solution she could see was to get out of this situation. Yesterday, she’d spoken with a man at the shipping company where Caz worked, and the fellow had seemed pleased with her. If he offered her the job and it paid well enough to keep her in “bribe money,” as Caz said, she’d take it.
Marius emerged from the dispensary. Her heart leapt at the sight of him, an automatic response, but her momentary joy turned to pain as she reminded herself that he was meant for someone else.
“Isolda, thanks for waiting.” Marius looked tense. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“Your office?” she suggested.
“I was thinking the villa.”
Not a business conversation then, but a personal one. “I can’t keep coming to the villa. We’ve no future together, and much as I enjoyed those nights we shared—”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” said Marius. “Our future together.”
“I think all that can be said on that subject has already been said.”
Marius shook his head. “What I have to say, you’ve not heard yet. If you’re not interested in what I have to offer this evening, I’ll never ask you back to the villa again.”
He’d piqued her curiosity. “What should I do with Rory?”
“Does he want to play stick ball? I can have Aurora pack a dinner for him.”
“He’d like that.” Rory had complained about missing his stick ball games.
They left the surgery together. While Marius turned to lock up the building, she collected Rory from where he waited at the corner. “I need to speak with Marius at the villa. You can go straight out to play stick ball. Aurora’s going to bring you dinner.”
With a whoop of joy, Rory ran for the cross street.
Marius took her arm. “He sounds happy.”
Watching Rory pelt down the alleyway, she felt wistful. “He’s always liked it here.”
“I like his being here,” said Marius, leading her to the villa.
Delicious aromas enveloped her as she walked inside. “What’s for dinner?”
“I asked Aurora to make something special,” said Marius. “Roast pella—it’s a Sardossian fish, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Pella is delicious. And bread?”
“Herbed bread, peas with onions, figs, and lemonade.”
It sounded heavenly. Far better than the mystery meat stew she and Rory would have had at some dingy tavern in the harbor district.
At the table, Aurora served all the courses at once and left them alone. It occurred to Isolda that even Drusus wasn’t about. At least, she didn’t see him. But he had to be somewhere.
Marius looked nervous. He sipped his lemonade but did not touch his food. “I’ve thought a lot about that evening when my cousin came by the villa and you spoke to Kolta in the surgery.”
Isolda nodded. The memory of that evening still stung. It had driven home the reality that she did not really belong with Marius.
“I’m not going to insult your intelligence,” said Marius. “You read the situation exactly as it was. My cousin brought a young woman along—her name was Gratiana—because he hoped I would court her. If I married her, it would have helped him politically. But I declined.”
She refused to be distracted by the fact that he had not liked this particular woman. It changed nothing on the grander scale. “Someday he’ll bring a woman you’ll be more interested in.”
Marius shook his head. “He could bring a hundred women and it would make no difference. He and my sister have been trying this for years now, presenting me with marriageable women and hoping I’ll fall in love with one of them. It hasn’t worked, and now I understand why. It’s because none of those women were you.”
Isolda swallowed.
“Every time I visit my family, I count the minutes until I can come back home to you. You’re the one I want, Isolda. There is no other woman. There will be no other woman. Will you marry me?”
A sob erupted from her throat.
Marius’s brows shot up. “Three gods. Please tell me those are happy tears.”
“Marius,” she choked. Then she leapt from her chair and flung herself into his arms. “Yes. Of course, yes.”
He wrapped his arms around her, stroking her back and hair. “Yes to what? Happy tears, or you’ll marry me?”
“Both.” She buried her face in his chest, trying to stop crying. Her face felt hot and swollen—what an awful state to be in! This wasn’t how she’d meant to respond to such a proposal, but then she had never expected to receive one. All the emotion inside of her, pent up not just from the months she’d spent desiring Marius but from the years of her terrible loveless marriage with Jauld, spilled out of her like poison flushed from a
wound.
“I brought you a gift,” said Marius.
She hiccupped, laughing through her tears. “You don’t need to buy me gifts. Do you think I want anything besides you?”
“You’ll like this. Sit down.”
She took her place at the table, wiping her eyes.
He held out a tiny box.
A box that size couldn’t hold anything large. Jewelry, perhaps? A ring or necklace? She didn’t think of Marius as the sort to buy jewelry, but perhaps for a special occasion, it made sense. She took the box and opened it. Inside was an unmounted stone about the size of her thumbnail, round and polished and black. Bits of bright color winked through its inky surface: reds and yellows and blues. “How extraordinary. What is it?”
“A riftstone,” said Marius.
She gasped.
“Black opal,” he said. “It’s a pyrotechnic’s riftstone. I know you wanted a wardstone for Rory, but since the university fees are the same regardless of the quality of the stone, I thought I’d get you a nicer one. If Rory desires a different type of magic than pyrotechnics, we can exchange it for whatever he prefers.”
Isolda’s hands shook. She could barely breathe. A riftstone for Rory! Not a common jasper, either, but a rare and beautiful black opal. Rory could be a pyrotechnic if they kept this stone, or, if they traded it for another, a Healer, a war mage, a fire mage. A mind mage? No, Kjall limited that form of magic to women. But he could be anything else, anything at all! She pressed a hand over her mouth. She was going to cry all over again.
“I realize it’s more a gift for your son than for you, but—”
Isolda shook her head. “There is nothing in the world I wanted more.”
“I thought that might be the case,” said Marius.
“How is this happening?” asked Isolda. “I thought you couldn’t marry me because of your wealthy cousin. Have you spoken to him yet?”
“I have, and we need to talk about that.”
She set the stone in its box on the table and folded her hands in her lap.
“There are a few obstacles we have to overcome before we can do this.” Marius glanced at her plate. “You’ve barely touched your food. Why don’t you start eating while I explain the family situation?”
How could she eat? Her stomach was in knots. But to satisfy him, she raised a bite of pella to her mouth.
“There’s a secret I’ve kept from you,” said Marius. “It’s a big one, and I hope you’ll forgive me for the longstanding lie of omission. All I can say in my defense is that I’ve been under direct orders not to tell anybody, but if we’re to marry, I must make an exception. My cousin is the emperor of Kjall.”
Isolda choked on the pella. “What?”
“It sounds hard to believe, I know, but I’m Emperor Lucien’s cousin. His father and my mother were brother and sister.”
“You’re the emperor’s blood relative?”
Marius nodded.
“The same emperor who deported my people?”
“Yes.”
Gods, he was probably in the line of succession. What a thought, her Marius a candidate for the imperial throne! It seemed unreal. She’d seen his family the night they’d come to the villa, all those people in the two carriages. “You said your cousin came to the villa that night. Are you saying that the man I saw with you was the emperor?”
“Yes, and the woman you met with, who called herself Kolta, was Empress Vitala.”
Isolda’s spoon clattered to the floor, and she collapsed against the back of her chair. All this seemed impossible, and yet it made perfect sense. It explained everything: Marius’s full-time bodyguard, his villa full of servants, his total lack of anxiety about money. Why had she not questioned his ability to walk into the guardhouse with a writ and free her from the Riat City Guard? No ordinary Kjallan citizen had that authority. The clues had been there all along, and she’d ignored them. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to know. “Gods. It’s true, isn’t it?”
“It’s true,” said Marius softly.
She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “Your emperor hates my people. You really think he’ll let you marry me?”
“Let me be clear: I plan to marry you regardless of what he says. But I’d like his blessing for our union, and he’s asked to meet you.”
“Meet me?” The prospect filled her with terror. An illegal Sardossian refugee, meeting with the emperor of Kjall so that he could judge whether she was good enough for his cousin? Of course she wasn’t good enough. She wasn’t wealthy or connected. She wasn’t a legal citizen. She wasn’t even pretty. “He won’t like me.”
“He will once he gets to know you,” said Marius.
Such confidence, from a man who’d never had to struggle in life. She had a feeling it was not going to be so easy. “What if he hates me? Can he forbid you to marry me?”
“No, but he can deny you citizenship,” said Marius. “That’s the real issue. It’s why we need his blessing for this union.”
“His blessing,” she repeated numbly. Marius had dangled before her everything she wanted: marriage to the man she loved, a riftstone for her son, and Kjallan citizenship. But all of it was contingent upon the emperor approving her as a match for Marius. She could not imagine that happening. This was the man who had deported Emari, along with hundreds of other Sardossians. And speaking of fraudulent, there was a problem with her marital status.
“I need to ask something of you,” said Marius.
“Yes?” Her mind was racing as she thought through all the angles.
“The fact that I’m part of the imperial family is a closely guarded secret. Lucien has enemies who might do me harm if they knew I was here in Riat, so accessible to the public and with only one bodyguard. For safety’s sake, Isolda, you must tell no one who I am.”
“Not even Rory?”
“Rory can know once we’ve got the details sorted out, but nobody else. The emperor is concerned that you might spread this information to the Sardossian underground—”
“I would never do that,” said Isolda. “Your secret is safe.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Marius.
Isolda licked dry lips. Marius had probably told the emperor that she was a Sardossian war widow, but if the emperor looked into her background, he would discover the lie. She had a recent divorce recorded in the Kjallan public records. Anyone could look it up. She turned to Marius. He’d told her his big secret. Now it was time to tell him hers. “Marius, I’ve something to confess to you as well. But mine, unlike yours, is an ugly secret.”
A line appeared in the middle of his forehead. “What is it?”
She dropped her gaze, unable to meet his eyes. “I told you that my husband in Sardos was dead. But he’s not. He’s still alive. At least, he was when I last saw him.”
Marius gaped. “So you’re still married?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I got a divorce here in Riat.” But even that was tainted. As long as she was confessing, she might as well tell him everything. “The truth is that it may not be entirely legal. The apparitor wouldn’t grant me the divorce without Jauld’s permission. Of course I couldn’t get that with Jauld so far away, so I had a friend stand in and pretend to be him.”
Marius was silent for a moment, as if putting all the pieces together in his head. Then he let out a shaky breath. “I wish you’d told me earlier. This complicates matters.”
“I was afraid you’d hate me if you knew the truth.”
He reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “I’d never hate you.”
“The marriage isn’t going to work, is it?” said Isolda. “I stole from my husband—”
“You stole from him?”
“Yes—the money I’d earned at the store. It was the only way I could buy passage to Kjall. So I stole the money, abandoned my husband, and emigrated illegally to Kjall with his child. There I obtained a fraudulent divorce from an imperial apparitor. I don’t think your cousin the emperor is
going to think highly of me.”
Marius swallowed. “None of this changes my opinion of you, or my desire to marry. We may have to work a little bit harder on Lucien, but—”
“The emperor wants better for you.” Isolda took a deep breath. “I would want better for you, too. Marius, I can’t accept your marriage proposal.”
Marius shot up from his chair. “Now hold on a moment, you already said—”
“I wasn’t thinking.” She stood and backed away, shaking her head. “I got caught up in the fantasy and believed in what I wanted to be true. I thought I could escape who I used to be, but I’ll never escape that, not even by running away to another continent. You needn’t worry about your secret; it will never escape my lips. But I cannot meet with your emperor.”
She didn’t want to put down the box with its black opal. If her life was tainted, Rory’s didn’t need to be; a child should not be punished for the sins of his mother. But the riftstone was a betrothal gift—at least it had been intended as one—and if she could not accept the marriage proposal, she could not keep the stone.
She laid the box on the table and walked out.
Chapter 28
A full week had passed since Marius had proposed to Isolda, and not only had she avoided the villa, she hadn’t even shown up for work. He had to conclude that she’d quit her job as his business manager. But where could she have gone? He hoped it wasn’t to another gunpowder factory
Back at the villa, with only Drusus for company, he’d had ample time to think about their conversation and where it had gone wrong. Her confession that her husband was still alive had shocked him at first, but on reflection he saw her actions as admirable. Rather than sit and suffer in a miserable situation and allow her child to suffer as well, she’d risked everything to seek a better life for both of them. As for stealing money that was supposedly Jauld’s, Isolda had earned the money. Why shouldn’t she benefit from it?
Her divorce and its questionable legality were more troublesome. He understood why she had seen fit to deceive the apparitor. Jauld was not physically present in Kjall to grant her the divorce, so it could not be accomplished any other way. And of course she should divorce Jauld. What justice would there be in her remaining married to a man who’d betrayed and mistreated her, and whom she would never see again? He recalled the “little detail” she’d insisted on taking care of before they slept together. That must have been the divorce. Isolda, despite her checkered past, was a principled woman. She would not sleep with another man while still married.
