The Unbound Empire

by Melissa Caruso

  Marcello closed his own eyes as if my words hurt him. “I never had a dream like that,” he said hoarsely. “I couldn’t afford one. I couldn’t think of marrying you because I knew it would never happen. I only wanted—” He broke off and shook his head.

  “What?” I asked, my voice husky with tears. “What would you want, if our ranks didn’t matter?”

  He gazed down at our clasped hands. “I want you to be happy.”

  It’s what we all want for those we love. The words lodged in my chest like a broken arrowhead. But that wasn’t what I needed to know. “Not what you want for me,” I said gently. “What you want for yourself.”

  He was quiet a moment. A faint frown creased his forehead. When he lifted his eyes to meet mine, they shone damp but unclouded. “To be with you. To change the world with you. We’re better together than apart, Amalia. You’ve got vision and insight I’ll never have. And I…”

  “You have a truly good heart and an unwavering sense of honor.” I touched his chest; his heartbeat pulsed strong beneath my fingers. “I need you, Marcello. To be my rudder, so I won’t crash on the rocks or lose my way.” My Heartguard.

  “And I need you as my pilot, to show me where to go.” His mouth twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “I’ve been thinking about how to atone for everything I’ve done. To put more good in the world, to balance the harm Ruven made me do. There’s still a lot I want to accomplish to help the Falcons—getting the jesses changed so they won’t kill the mage if their Falconer dies, making sure Colonel Vasante’s successor is a Falcon, reorganizing the Falconers to support and protect the mage-marked living outside the Mews as well as those on active duty. There’s so much left to be done. I want to do it together with you, Amalia.”

  “Yes. I want that, too.” The ache inside me deepened until I felt sure I would crack into pieces. My fingers slipped from Marcello’s chest, and the world seemed cold and empty without his heartbeat. “And that’s why we can never court, no matter how much we want to.”

  His lips pressed together, and his throat jumped.

  “Never,” he whispered.

  Graces help me, this hurt like ripping out my own insides. “If you married me, you couldn’t be a Falconer, Marcello. You’d be a noble. It’s against the law.”

  His eyes went wide. “I can’t quit the Falconers. It’s everything I’ve worked for. It’s my entire life.”

  “You’d have to resign.” It had been hard enough to force the Council and the military to accept me as Zaira’s Falconer when her jess was accidentally fused shut with balefire and none of us had any choice. They’d never make an exception for Marcello if he gained noble status voluntarily by marrying me. “Istrella would need a new Falconer, and you’d have to leave the service. I wish it weren’t true, but the law is crystal clear.”

  “I can’t leave Istrella,” Marcello protested, his face pale with anguish. “I can’t abandon her and all the rest of the Falcons to a command chain that sometimes doesn’t even think of them as people.”

  “I know.” I rubbed my damp cheeks, but the tears kept coming, wearing channels into my face. “And I can’t ask you to, Marcello. No more than I can throw away all the advantages of a political marriage, especially when I can use that power to protect the mage-marked. Everything you just said you wanted—we can do it together. We will. But we can’t do it as a couple.”

  “I see.” He let out a soft sigh, as if he’d cradled that one breath for a very long time. “As friends, then?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Always.”

  “I’ll never stop loving you, Amalia,” he murmured.

  At first, I could only manage a nod. But I forced the words out through my burning throat. “And I’ll never stop loving you, Marcello. I swear it.”

  We folded each other in our arms, then. I held him gently, careful of the wound I’d made in his side, and rested my head on his shoulder to hear the beating of his heart. His arms came around me, warm and supporting, and he leaned his scaly cheek on my head.

  “Just like this,” I whispered, and closed my eyes to stop the tears.

  We held each other that way for a long time, safe from everything the world might send against us. And for the first time in a long while, like the earliest green shoot unfolding from the damp black soil in spring, I felt that everything would be all right.

  I found Kathe out in the back garden with Glass, talking solemnly, their breath making puffs of mist in the winter air. A soft, feather-gray blanket of cloud smothered the sky, and the first light flakes of snow drifted down over the two of them. Pure white fields stretched beyond them, broken only by the meandering line of a low stone wall, and then the gray-green watching presence of the forest.

  Glass spotted me over Kathe’s shoulder and waved, their face breaking into a knowing sort of grin. They bowed to Kathe and took their leave as I approached, slipping me a wink on their way out.

  Kathe turned, his smile of greeting chasing the lingering shadows of his conversation with Glass from his face. “Hello, Lady Amalia. I hope all is well?”

  “Yes.” I pulled my coat tighter around me as I approached, my boots crunching shallow footprints into the snow. “How are you? We haven’t really spoken since… since yesterday.”

  His smile faded. He stood still as a deer pausing at the edge of a wood for a moment, snowflakes gathering one by one on the puff of black feathers around his shoulders. The muted light softened his fine features, lending depth to the gleaming gold and gray of his eyes.

  “Do you want a true answer,” he asked at last, “or a flippant one? I’m better at flippant, but for you, my lady, I could consider honesty.”

  “A true one,” I said.

  “Then I’m well enough.” He sighed, releasing a great cloud of steam. “I’ve got enough experience with grief to know that the beast loosens its teeth over time. I have plenty to keep me busy. You know as well as I do, I expect, how it goes.”

  “I do,” I said softly.

  “I imagine you’ll be heading back to Raverra soon?” he asked, a wistful note in his voice. “To receive your due glory as the savior of the Empire, and plot its course through the changing waters ahead?”

  “I don’t know about glory,” I laughed. “I’ve got so much to do, I’m going to be working before I step out of my boat. I’ll be lucky to see sunlight before spring.”

  “And…” He paused, seeming uncertain. Then he sighed, kicked at a chunk of snow, and stared off over the fields. “You’ve seen Let now, and I suppose you’ve seen me for what I am. I’m neither gentle nor good, Amalia.”

  “Neither am I.” Snow caught in my eyelashes, and I blinked it off. “But we’re both trying, in our own way. That’s got to count for something.”

  “Intent wins you no points in any game,” Kathe said dryly. “It’s your actions that count.”

  I touched his elbow, and my fingertips hummed with the power around him. “I’ve seen your actions, and I’m still standing here beside you.”

  “About that.” He met my gaze then. “You formed a partnership with me to defeat Ruven. Now that he’s dead, well, if you don’t have any further interest in courting, I’ll understand.” His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “I don’t want you to feel trapped because you don’t dare offend the mad Witch Lord who decorates his borders with his enemies’ bones.”

  My stomach dropped as if I’d missed a step. Was this it, then? His polite way of letting me know that with our objective achieved, our courtship was over?

  It was still a highly valuable alliance for the Serene Empire. I was all too aware that marrying Kathe would be a coup for Raverra and for the Cornaro family, and that I was unlikely to find another suitor who could offer so much advantage. But that wasn’t why the idea of breaking off our courtship felt like losing a finger. He was strange and difficult and as hard to hold on to as quicksilver, but if he departed from my life now, he’d leave an odd-shaped hole in it no one else could fill.

&
nbsp; “My lord Kathe,” I said, drawing myself up with great dignity, “you have known me long enough by now that you should realize there is very little I won’t dare, with sufficient motivation.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “And how motivated are you to keep courting? Because I like you a great deal, Amalia Cornaro. I like talking to you. I like conspiring with you. And I rather enjoy kissing you. But for all the wonders we could accomplish together, if you’re only courting me out of some sense of duty, well, I wouldn’t want to waste another minute of your time.”

  Kathe awaited my answer with an air of polite interest, as if he were not particularly invested in the outcome, but I knew him well enough now to spy the tension in the line of his shoulders beneath those feathers, and a trace of anxiousness lurking behind the yellow rings in his eyes.

  He cared. This mattered to him as much as it did to me.

  A surge of affection welled up in me for this complex, contradictory creature, watching me with his head tilted like one of his own crows hoping for a snack. How could I best show him that he was more to me now than a mere political opportunity?

  I felt a smile breaking across my face. “Let’s play a game,” I said.

  His face lit up. “What kind of game?”

  “For every reason you give me why our next visit should be in Let, I’ll give you one why it should be in Raverra. When one of us concedes, the winner gets a prize.”

  “What’s the prize?” Kathe asked, his eyes crinkling.

  “It’s a surprise.” I gestured grandly to him. “Would you like to go first?”

  “All right.” He rubbed his hands together. “You should visit me in Let next, because you haven’t met all my Heartguard. They’ll be most cross with me if I don’t introduce you.”

  “They’re welcome to come to our palace anytime,” I countered. “And you should visit me in Raverra because you have all manner of exciting intelligence collaboration opportunities to discuss with my mother.”

  “True,” Kathe conceded, his eyes sparkling. “But you’ve only seen Let in the winter, when everything is dull and gray. Soon it will be spring, and the starlaces will be blooming in the dappled forest shadows, and the moss will glow with a thousand shades of green.” He leaned in conspiratorially close. “And there will be baby foxes. Have you ever held a baby fox?”

  I laughed. “You’re going to lose your terrifying reputation, Kathe. How can I maintain a proper Raverran dread of Witch Lords if you go about cuddling baby animals?”

  “Foxes are very fierce,” he protested.

  “Hmm. You make a strong argument.” I shivered in the frosty air. “Spring would certainly be better than winter, at least.”

  He offered an arm, and I leaned against his side under the feathered cloak, slipping my own arm around his waist. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to the tingling shock that coursed through me when I touched him. “Do you concede, then?” he asked.

  “Not yet! You need to visit Raverra in the spring for the Festival of Victory. There are all manner of athletic competitions and games and sailing races. It’s quite the spectacle.”

  “Games?” Kathe put a hand to his chest. “You know my weak spots, my lady. But I must hold out for Let, I’m afraid. You haven’t even seen my home, after all. I want to show you the castle I grew up in.”

  “I do want to see that, very much.” I tightened my arm around Kathe’s waist, enjoying the feel of the hard muscles in his back. “But you’re forgetting something very important about Raverra.”

  “Oh?” He angled to face me more directly; we stood nearly eye to eye, with his cloak folded about me like a great black wing.

  “We have better food,” I said, very seriously.

  Kathe’s chuckle rustled the feathers on his shoulders. “That you do.”

  “Have you a rebuttal for my devastating argument?” I asked archly.

  “No.” Kathe’s tone shifted, becoming serious. “Only that either way, I hope we can see each other again soon, because I’ll miss you, Amalia Cornaro.”

  A warmth stirred within me, and the winter air lost its bite. “I suppose I must concede, then,” I sighed.

  “Really?” Kathe’s pale brows lifted. “Why?”

  “I want to show you the sights of Raverra,” I said simply, “but you want me to meet your friends and see your home.”

  He shook his head. “There I go, ruining my reputation again. You’ll think I’m sentimental.”

  “That’s a very real danger,” I agreed.

  “Now, what’s my prize?” he asked, grinning.

  “This.” I pulled him closer, closing my eyes.

  Our kiss was lightning and sweet thunder, and warm rain melting away the snow. We held each other with the desperation of two people unexpectedly alive in a stark winter world of sorrow and death, on the cusp of turning the page into spring.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  They must have had advance news of our return at the Mews, because a crowd waited in the entrance hall. We had scarcely stepped through the gates when Terika squealed and ran to meet Zaira. She caught her around the waist and spun her in the air; Zaira’s hair whipped behind her like a banner as she laughed.

  “Put me down, you madwoman! What do you think I am, a puppy?”

  Some of the people gathered around Zaira, laughing and talking and welcoming her back. But much of the crowd still stood frozen, staring at Marcello, who hung half a step behind me, head ducked.

  Right at the front of the waiting Falcons and Falconers was Istrella.

  Marcello sucked in an audible breath, lifted his head, and stepped up beside me. The light fell full on his silver scales and his inhuman eye.

  A murmur ran through the crowd. More than a few of them blanched, or stepped back. Istrella winced as if she’d been struck.

  “I’m back,” Marcello announced, his voice faltering. I squeezed his shoulder.

  Istrella stared at him, eyes wide. “Marcello?”

  He nodded. “It’s me, ’Strella.”

  She came forward from the whispering crowd, one step, then another. The clear winter light streaming through the open doors fell on her face; she squinted at Marcello, as if to determine whether he were actually her brother, but she kept approaching.

  Finally, she stood directly before him, her expression torn between doubt and wonder. The hall fell silent, everyone watching, waiting to see what would happen. I frantically searched for something I could say, something that would help; but in the end, this was between the two of them.

  Istrella frowned. Slowly, tentatively, she reached out toward her brother’s face. He swallowed visibly.

  She poked him right in his orange eye.

  “Ow!” Marcello’s hand flew up to cover his eye, and he reeled back a step. “What did you do that for?”

  “I wanted to see if it had feeling,” Istrella said curiously.

  “Yes! Of course it has feeling! It’s my eye!”

  I wasn’t the only one in the hall who smothered a nervous laugh. Istrella tipped her head, considering. “Is your vision different on that side?”

  “I, ah…” Marcello lowered his hand, blinking a watery eye now even redder than usual. “It sees better in the dark. But it can’t see colors very well.”

  “So interesting.” Istrella reached out again, this time toward Marcello’s scales. “What are those for? Are they hard, like armor?”

  “No! Don’t poke me again!” But Marcello was smiling now, and he ruffled her hair.

  “Perhaps they’re for radiating heat when you use unnatural bursts of speed or strength,” Istrella suggested.

  A girl of perhaps ten or eleven with a jess on her wrist sighed and said loudly, “I wish they’d let me make a chimera. Not a human one, of course, but I want a flying bunny.”

  Everyone laughed, and the tension was broken. People came and clustered around Marcello, welcoming him, asking him questions. I heard Namira, Terika’s mentor, inquire whether she might possibly have a blood sample
, “for research purposes only, of course.”

  I stood back and watched, relief washing through me. “He’ll be all right,” I murmured.

  “We’ll take care of him,” Jerith agreed, appearing at my elbow with Balos at his side. “The colonel won’t accept if he tries to resign, or any such foolishness.”

  Balos glanced around, then added, “And we’re going to quietly keep an eye on him, too, to make sure his behavior isn’t too badly affected. If it looks like he’s not fit for certain duties, well, we’ll deal with it then.”

  “Thank you,” I said, with feeling.

  “He may have to give up his ambitions to take over when Colonel Vasante retires, though,” Jerith said, frowning. “Even if he were acting perfectly normal, which I gather from your message he isn’t, it would frankly be hard to get everyone to accept someone with a creepy lizard eye and claws in charge of the most critically important military unit in the Empire.”

  “That’s all right.” I clapped Jerith on the shoulder. “Marcello doesn’t want to command the Falcons anymore. He wants you to do it.”

  Jerith started to laugh, but it died on his lips as he realized I was serious. “He’s gone mad,” he said. “Maybe he shouldn’t be allowed to remain an officer after all, if he thinks I should be in charge.”

  “We talked about it a lot on the journey back,” I told Jerith. “We both believe the next commander of the Falcons should be a Falcon. You’ve got the brains and the seniority, and you’re highly respected.”