Imperator’s Hart’s aura blasted through the threshold. All at once, all the fear and trepidation I’d felt the first time I was there returned.
But unlike last time, the Seating Room was full. The entire Glemarian Council was in attendance, filling the plain wooden benches that Devon favored. The only opulence in the room was him, his golden Laurel of the Arkasva. The golden border on his black robes that marked him as Imperator. And the shining silver of the weapons slung through his belt.
He sat on his Seat now, on the raised dais, his face stern, his eyes blazing with triumph.
My stomach clenched as he stood, and the auras of his nobility blasted against me. Anger and hatred and disgust.
I searched desperately, looking for a familiar face. I landed first on Lady Amalthea, the fucking woman that had taken advantage of Rhyan when he was drunk. The one his father had tried to force him into an engagement with. I looked ahead at the dais. Kenna stood behind him, even more pregnant than before. Her stomach had been huge the last time I’d seen her, and I could have sworn based on its size that she’d have given birth by now. But her belly had only swollen more. And as I moved closer, my feet still dragging, my pulse racing, she looked down, refusing to meet my gaze. My heart sank.
“Lady Lyriana Batavia,” Imperator Hart said in his deep and hateful voice. “It wasn’t enough for you to kill His Majesty, Emperor Theotis.”
“I didn’t do that,” I cried out.
“No? You still want to lie? Even with all the evidence stacked against you? Enough of this. Your men have been captured.” Gone was any trace of the smirk I’d seen him wear when I’d dealt with him in the past. This wasn’t Imperator Hart anymore. This was Rhyan’s father. The vengeful, cruel man who had no shred of humanity left. I realized now that as dangerous as he had seemed before, it was nothing compared to the hatred burning in his eyes now. Nothing compared to the man he’d become to Rhyan. Sending him to his death.
I looked desperately around the room, my heart stopping when I didn’t see any sign of Meera or Jules.
“Where’s Dario?” I asked. “And Aiden?”
“Where they belong,” he said and snapped his fingers. A door behind the dais opened, and Dario and Aiden both walked out, smiling viciously at me.
Dario laughed. “It was only too easy to bring you back here.”
Aiden shrugged. “Sorry, Lyriana. But my loyalties will always lie with my Imperator.” He placed a hand over his heart. “With my country.”
“Bind her,” Imperator Hart ordered.
“No. No!” I screamed, but Aiden unleashed the rope from his stave. It shot at me, coiling around my body like a nahashim, burning against my clothing.
“I trusted you,” I cried.
Aiden only shrugged, and looked away, his face stern, without any hint of warmth.
My chest heaved.
“Dario,” he said. “Give this to her. Now.”
Dario retrieved a scroll from his hand and walked it over to me, unraveling it before my eyes. It was another blood contract.
I’d broken free of mine when I’d last seen him in the arena. At Rhyan’s stripping. MyRakashonimhad burned through it.
There was another unspoken signal from His Highness and Dario held a knife to my throat.
“Now, Lyriana,” the Imperator drawled. “You can sign this, and I may pardon you for your attempted crimes, speak on your behalf to the Emperor. Though, considering you have been named a traitor of the Empire, and wanted dead, I can have Dario execute you now, save you from further torment and torture. But you’ll choose, and do it before all these witnesses.”
I searched the depths of Dario’s dark eyes, pleading. We’d become friends. I’d trusted him. Left him to protect my family. But he remained cold and unmoved, the way he’d been when I first met him, completely under the thrall of Imperator Hart.
A tear rolled down my cheek, and I looked up again, trying to catch Kenna’s gaze. We’d been allies. Friends. But she continued to stare at the ground.
Where the hell were Meera and Jules? What had happened to them?
“Sign,” the Imperator commanded.
“No,” I yelled. Just another Godsdamned manipulation. If I signed, I signed my life away. My freedom. And in the end, he was likely to kill me anyway. “Fuck you! You lying, murderous, piece of shit.”
“Dario,” he commanded. “She had her chance. I sentence her to death.”
My stomach clenched, sweat breaking out on my forehead.
