Their screams brought forth more legionnaires to the bedroom, shouts echoing in the hallway beyond, concern for Vanya in their voices, but he couldn’t trust that.
Soren threw himself out of the bed, yanking his second pistol from its holster on the nightstand. No longer pressed to the bed, Vanya sat up, arm still extended, starfire curling around his fingers. Soren reached the door before anyone else, turning the lock and keeping one pistol aimed at it.
“Raiah,” Vanya bit out around a painful knot in his throat.
Soren’s expression twisted. “I can’t leave you here alone.”
“Then we’ll leave together.”
Someone pounded on the bedroom door, rattling it on its hinges. “Your Imperial Majesty!”
Vanya was in no position to believe the frantic worry in the voices beyond the door. Soren’s pistol never wavered as Vanya hurriedly left the bed. They were both of them naked, but at least they were alive.
“Stay where you are. That’s an order,” Vanya called out.
Soren moved enough to switch on the gas lamp near the door. His attention shifted from Vanya to the writhing bodies on the floor, who were no longer a problem. None of them could hold a pistol or any other sort of weapon with no fingers. Soren’s eyes widened in surprise, and Vanya followed his gaze.
Three of the legionnaires were dead, killed by Soren’s bullets. The other two were still alive, though their arms were being eaten away by starfire. Their uniforms hadn’t survived the attack, and charred fabric curled away from their shoulders and chest, revealing a line of ropy scar tissue Vanya distantly recognized.
“Vanya,” Soren said sharply.
He ignored the warning in his lover’s voice and knelt beside one of the bodies. He ripped the uniform jacket open and then the undershirt beneath, revealing vivisection scars on the legionnaire’s chest.
Vanya touched his fingers to the dip in the sternum and the scars that bisected the skin over the bone there. “Do you think they are powered by a clockwork heart? Do you think it’s a form of control after all?”
The wardens hadn’t been able to completely decipher the spellwork in Soren’s drawings and notes and the remains of the clockwork metal heart taken from the would-be assassin that had attacked during his coronation two years ago.
What the wardens had uncovered was that the device was meant to animate a person, but animating could mean many things. If they had been sent to kill him, the bigger question was who had given the order.
No proof meant no accusation, and rumors wouldn’t hold up in a court of law.
It was a worry that had to be set aside for the moment. Vanya was stuck in his bedroom, not knowing if they were about to be under siege, and Raiah was alone in the nursery down the hall.
Raiah was all that could matter.
He stood, reaching for the clothes he’d discarded mere hours ago. “We’ll need to check everyone in thepraetoria.”
Soren’s pistol never moved from the door. “I remember a time you’d burn them all.”
“Destroying my household will not solve our current problem.”
He was and was not his mother in some ways. When she’d brought Rixham to ruin, she’d held more political clout than he currently had. He could not and would not bring starfire down on Oeiras the same way his mother had done to Rixham. The House of Dayal was not the rot he needed to excise from the country.
“Get dressed,” Vanya ordered. “We’re getting Raiah.”
Soren nodded and dressed in his field leathers at a speed born from habit. The shouting on the other side of the bedroom door hadn’t really subsided, and the tension only got worse when Vanya jerked open the door, filling the archway with an interlocking hexagonal aether shield.
Soren stepped in front of him, both pistols aimed at the crowd of legionnaires standing in their way. “Strip.”
The lieutenant in charge scowled at him from behind her own raised pistol. “I don’t take orders from you.”
“But you take orders from your emperor. Do as the warden says. Remove your shirts,” Vanya snapped.
Vanya desperately wanted to get to his daughter, but Soren’s demand was one he followed, because it only made sense to make sure they didn’t take a bullet to the back.
Thepraetorialegionnaires did as ordered, all of them undoing their uniform jackets and removing their shirts. Vanya peeled the shield apart so Soren could slip through and let his pistols lead him down the hall, getting eyes on every last legionnaire.
“They’re clear,” Soren called back from down the way before disappearing from sight.
