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“He collected the menstrual blood of female virgins and combined it with mercury, to make a potion he called red lead. Young girls were held captive to brew this potent concoction, fed only mulberry leaves and rainwater to keep his substance pure. Concubines, beaten and starved, tossed away if they became ill. In 1542, the women attempted an assassination, in what history refers to as the Renyin plot.”
“Sounds like the bastard had it coming,” I said.
“It took sixteen women to hold him down,” Nigel continued. “One tried to strangle him with a ribbon from her hair, then a silk curtain cord, but they weren’t able to tighten the noose. Someone reported the attack to Empress Fang, and they were captured. She had them executed with a slow slicing, a death by a thousand cuts, as well as their entire families. Zhu renamed himself Jiajing, oradmirable tranquility, and stopped holding court for two decades. Under him, the Ming dynasty had a long, stable reign, but eventually he fell into decadence and disregard, as his country deteriorated from within, and he succumbed to the toxic mercury in his elixir of immortality.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I snapped.
“Don’t you see?” Nigel asked. “Nothing ever changes, not really. Whether or not King Richard completed his elixir, who’s to say things would ever be different; that they ever could be. Blood, toxins, royal concubines. You think you’re something new, something we haven’t seen before. You think the elite are monsters, but deep down we are humans, just like you. Just like Jiajing. Because the most valuable resource on earth is time, and men will pay anything to have more of it.”
“Hasn’t anyone told you not to play with your food,” Rivka chided him, slapping his shoulder. Then she strode toward me with a pair of handcuffs. “Put these on, if you want your brother to live.”
I glared around at the room, and then back at curate Marcus and my brother, Nigel’s hostages. Could I beat them all, all by myself? With the elixir rushing in my veins, I almost felt like it was possible. But before anybody else killed them? That seemed unlikely. I let her place the cuffs around my wrists. She shook them to make sure they were secure.
“Do you mind if I kiss her goodbye?” Rivka called over her shoulder.
“Knock yourself out,” Nigel replied.
She winked at me slowly, then brought her lips up to my nose, nibbling on the tip, before pushing her tongue into my mouth forcefully. Something hard and metal hit my teeth. I felt the outlines of a small key with my tongue. And there was something else, a spicy scent that lingered in my nostrils. Antidote, I was pretty sure. And she’d just fed Nigel. So she was on our side after all. But was it enough to weaken him?
There was a commotion at the back of the room when the doors burst open. I barely saw Tobias and Penelope, fighting with the other elite in the room. They moved so quickly, just blurs smashing furniture. Camina strode in carrying an unsprung bear trap like shield. She slammed it into one of the guards and promptly cut him in half.
“Are we late?” she asked, stepping to my side.
“Just in time,” I said, spitting the key into my palm and twisting my wrists until I could unlock them. The chosen and the rest of the guards rushed at us, but Tobias grabbed control of them, freezing them in place with his powerful compulsion.
“It’s over Nigel,” I said, pushing my way towards him, raising my sword towards his neck.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he preened, folding his fingers together.
I heard a clatter of weapons behind me, and then a strange silence, as if the room had suddenly been cleared of souls. I turned around slowly to find my allies, holding their weapons against their own throats, their eyes wide with fear. Even Tobias, pale and trembling, was unable to break the spell.
“How are you doing this?” I asked, turning back towards Nigel. “I know you aren’t strong enough to compulse them.”
“I told you earlier,” he smirked. “You just weren’t listening.”
I heard the creak of a side door and then footsteps as someone else stepped into the royal hall. I gasped when I saw his face. A face that had been unchanged my entire life, peering down from portraits and paintings spread throughout Algrave. The face of the king I’d killed. He held up a hand, like a gesture of greeting… and everything disappeared.
An explosion rushed past me, and the floor washed away like water. I felt like I was sinking through darkness, and then… I was in the sunlit room of an old house, and everything else felt like a bad dream. My skin was clean and I felt no pain. The anxiety and fear washed away, leaving a calming joy I had only felt a few times in my life. Nearby was a painted rocking-horse, and a cradle. I looked down at the dappled, golden sunlight around me, my gaze landing on my round belly. I should have been surprised, but somehow I wasn’t.
The cabin was perched in the meadow of a small peninsula of land, surrounded by water and framed by a large waterfall and tall pine trees. Through the open window, I could almost feel the cool mist on my face. The green leaves from a tree outside sparkled like holiday lights.
I felt someone step behind me and turned when they reached for my waist. Damien, his cheeks rosy and his blue eyes vivid.
“Is this real?” I asked. “What happened?”
“Don’t you remember? We won, Emily. We beat them all.”
“But the king—”
“That was weeks ago. We’re safe. I’ve always wanted to come here, I used to dream about this place. I wanted to show it to you, so we came together… for our honeymoon.”
“We’re married?” I asked.
He smiled, nodding to my finger, where I found a gold ring. A new one, not one I recognized, but it looked like an antique. In the center was a large, dazzling diamond. I turned it in the light, marveling at how a simple prism of cut stone, could become so mesmerizing. My brain felt like it was full of sticky cobwebs. The confusion turned to slight annoyance that I couldn’t remember his proposal, or our ceremony. I felt like something had been taken from me. But Damien was just watching me with his large, thoughtful eyes, and I had a feeling we’d had this exact conversation before, more than once.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, which was enough to draw a rewarding smile from his lips.
“Almost as much as you,” he whispered, drawing closer. “Together, honestly, I’m overcome. The effect is quite arresting.”
