by M. Dalto
Let them bicker and argue over her future, she decided as she sat back in her chair. She could feel Jared’s stare burning into her, but she couldn’t—wouldn’t—acknowledge him. Not now. Not when she was so tired and all she wanted to do was crawl back into her bed, with or without her future intended, and sleep for days.
She thought she was imagining it, the commotion that sounded from beyond the council chamber doors. At first, she wondered if it was an echo of the chaos that surrounded her, but then it seemed to grow louder and draw closer. No one else seemed to be paying attention to the noise. Reylor and her mother were in deep conversation, while Jamison and Jared whispered to one another as the other three Council members continued their own deliberations about the future of the Empire and what the lack of a wedding would mean to the Borderlands. Nonetheless, Sara focused on the door.
The shouting got her out of her chair, and only then did those around her realize something else was going on outside those doors.
Sara made to move, to open to door, to find out what was happening, when the very door she was about to open flung inward. If her reflexes were any slower, she would have been hit by it. It took her a minute to steady herself, straightening as she prepared to reprimand whoever it was that almost knocked her unconscious.
She stopped before a single word escaped her lips.
In fact, the whole room fell silent around her.
Even though his hair was somewhat shorter, and he appeared to have lost some weight, there was no mistake to be made as he stood there, panting in the doorway.
Only then was the silence of the council room disrupted as screams from the Queen Empress resounded throughout the palace.
The Crown Prince had returned to the Empire.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Alex immediately dismissed everyone in the room, including Reylor. He hesitated when she sounded the order but was the last one to leave with a passing glance at his brother, his eyes on the Empress as he closed the door behind him.
Treyan didn’t give his brother a second thought. His attention was completely on her, and that unnerved her more than his surprise arrival.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she saw Treyan standing before her, and even when the room was empty, she couldn’t find the strength to stand from her chair without feeling as though she would faint.
Treyan was alive.
“How?” she heard herself whisper after what felt like an eternity of staring at each other in silence.
“Alex,” he started with a step forward.
“Don’t,” she ordered, a hand up to keep him at a distance. Gratefully, he acquiesced.
“How?” Alex asked again.
Treyan looked at her a moment longer and swallowed. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” she asked incredulously. “How do you not know?”
Letting out a sigh, he took a step back, walking around the council table slowly as though he was trying to sort through his own thoughts. Alex had enough of her own to sift through so she appreciated the reprieve.
“I can only assume it was similar magics to those that were cast upon my mother when she was sent back to the Otherrealm, when we thought she was dead.”
Alex watched him, but her mind was whirling.
Saratanya, former Queen Empress of the Empire, was believed to have been dead for years, passing on when Treyan and Reylor were young due to what they assumed was a broken heart. As it turned out, she had been living in the Otherrealm since her supposed death with limited access to the magics that had once been bestowed upon her. It wasn’t until Treyan had found her by chance that everything started to come together, and they eventually discovered that it had been Razen who sent her away, keeping the knowledge that she was alive and well a secret.
“Sara said they buried you. Reylor oversaw the preparations—”
“You’re trusting Reylor’s word now?” he asked sharply.
Alex was taken aback by his hostility. “I don’t know why Reylor would ever lie about something like that...”
“Really, Alex?” Treyan scoffed. “Since when have you known Reylor to be a man of his word?”
After a moment’s hesitation, she carefully informed him, “There’s no reason not to.”
“No?” he questioned, standing straight again, crossing his arms over his chest as his blue eyes bore into hers. “I noticed he seemed quite comfortable sitting in the Councillor’s chair.”
She blinked. “Reylor was reinstated as Lord Steward.”
Treyan’s brows shot up. “Whose idea was that?”
She held his gaze.“Mine.”
“Are you out of your mind, Alex?”
“We needed to show the Borderlands that the Empire was as strong as ever,” she countered, feeling defensive. “It was the only way we could continue to prove that we were still a force to be reckoned with.”
“Have you any idea what you’ve done?” he practically shouted at her.
It took everything within Alex’s power to not flinch. “I did what I thought was right.”
“What you thought, or what he instilled into your brain?”
“He would never—”
“Has he tried to sleep with you?”
Alex stammered as her eyes grew wide. “How dare you.”
“How dare I?” Treyan repeated incredulously.
The Crown Prince stormed around the table towards her, and Alex immediately stood to face him as he approached. “Do you have any idea what could have happened? If the Empire believed me dead, and he was reinstated as Lord Steward, then according to the Annals—”
“—he would have every right to my hand and to continue the Empire’s royal line with me,” she replied, maintaining a sense of calm. “I am well aware.”
He looked at her for a moment, tilting his head to the side as if it would give him a better angle to see straight through her.
“Has he tried to sleep with you?” he asked again.
Alex held his gaze, her heart pounding in her chest, but she was silent.
“Alex...” Treyan took a step closer. “Have you slept with Reylor?”
Her throat felt dry, and she doubted she would have been able to get the words out if she wanted to.
His eyes told a million tales as they darkened.
“Have you fallen in love him?” he growled.
“It’s not like that,” she countered defensively.
“Then you’ll just bed anyone who comes into your rooms?”
Alex felt her temper rise. “You were dead, Treyan!”
“How long did he wait before he approached you? Did he at least wait until I was buried? Was my body even cold?”
“He was there for me.”
“Of course he was—he orchestrated this!”
“You don’t know that—”
“After everything that he’s done...everything he’s done to you—”
“He’s changed, Treyan,” she insisted. “For the better. You yourself said to give him a chance!”
“I didn’t say to fuck him.”
Her hand flew before she realized it, and the sound of her palm colliding with his cheek echoed off the empty walls of the council room.
“You know what?” Alexstrayna seethed. “Yes. You’re right. Maybe I do love him. Maybe he proved himself to me, which is a hell of a lot more than you’re doing right now.”
Treyan’s eyes—those blue eyes that had drawn her in so long ago—drilled into her, and the look on his face was of a rage and fury like none she had seen before.
“Treyan, I—” Alex started, but he had already turned on his heel, slamming the door of the room against the wall as he swept it open and exited as quickly as he had entered.
Reylor was pacing the hallway as Treyan and Alexstrayna carried on within the Council chambers, the doors closed to anyone else who would be curious as to what was being said between the newly reunited Crown Prince and Queen Empress. His mind was racing but he couldn’t bring
himself to do or say anything. Instead, he paced the length of the wall.
The council members were dismissed, murmuring about Crown Prince’s return with the former Queen Empress in tow as they did so. The Captain avoided his glares as he leaned against the nearby wall, staying behind when the rest of the Council had been dismissed. Reylor wondered if he had any knowledge about the Crown Prince’s return or if this was as much new information to him as it was for the rest of the Empire.
The look on the princess’ face, however, was enough to make Reylor want to cause her bodily harm, and she hadn’t stopped watching him since they entered the hallway. The young Emperor stood by her side, whispering quietly with the princess and Saratanya, but it seemed as though the princess barely heard him.
And there was his mother.
He wasn’t expecting her either.
It appeared as though she was in league with this scheme as well, so he made no attempt to reunite with her, even when he wanted nothing more than to embrace the mother he lost so long ago.
There would be time for that later.
Now, he needed to focus on his brother, and the conversation he was undoubtedly having with the Empress, and where they would all go from here.
As though summoned, the door to the council chambers opened with an echoing thud, and out stormed Treyan with murder in his eyes. He marched right up to Reylor, and the Lord Steward held his determination as he met his brother’s eye. Treyan all but growled at him, baring his teeth before he turned and retreated down the nearby hallway.
Their mother called out to him, and when he didn’t answer she followed. Sarayna and Jared trailed behind them, but not before the princess gave Reylor one final knowing smirk before she scampered after her father. Even Jamison, his expression stoic, followed the Crown Prince, completely ignoring Reylor’s presence.
Soon he was alone, left by himself as he watched the Crown Prince depart with his entourage behind him.
It was only a moment later until he sensed her presence.
Alex walked up next to him. Her features were set in a neutral expression as though she was trying her best to withhold any emotion.
Reylor merely glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”
“No. Not yet,” she informed him as she continued to watch down the hallway where the others had departed. “We’ve had enough heartache for one day.”
She gave him a single glance but soon she, too, retreated down the hallway.
Reylor remained where he stood, and once again he was alone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Reylor didn’t come to Alex’s room that night.
In truth, she hadn’t expected him to.
Nor would she expect Treyan to join her, especially after all that transpired during their conversation earlier that day.
Alex had to admit to herself she didn’t know what she would have done if Treyan tried to visit her rooms, not after believing he was dead...not after allowing herself to move on.
It was the first night in a while she was in bed alone, and she was restless.
She didn’t know how much time had passed since she doused her candles, but she tossed and turned and inevitably realized sleep was not going to come. Getting out of bed, she wrapped herself in her robe and wandered through the quiet halls of the palace.
In preparation for the coronation, the palace had been in a constant state of motion between servants and visitors in addition to the daily routine of running an Empire. For some reason on that night, as the palace slept, even with the return of their Crown Prince, the palace felt empty. Foreign.
Feeling the sudden need to escape its suffocating confines, she left through an exit on the lower level of the palace, and the crisp night air immediately permeated her thin robe.
She forgot her shoes, which became painfully obvious as made her way to the rose garden as her bare feet stepped onto the gravel pathway that led through the center. The rocks poked at the soles of her feet, but she continued, allowing the torches staked along the path to light her way through the topiary maze.
It wasn’t a surprise she was no longer alone, either. Of anyone else in the palace, she half-expected him to be there when she arrived. They were his mother’s rose bushes after all, and she made the mental note to be sure Saratanya oversaw the status of their upkeep sooner rather than later.
Treyan sat on a low marble bench with his head in his hands. She was certain he had heard her approach, but she was quiet as she watched him.
“You know, I knew something was wrong...” he said quietly a moment later.
“When?” she asked cautiously, taking a step closer.
“The moment he dreamt about you first.” He looked up to her then, his blue eyes shining in the moonlight. “I was firstborn, but he had already seen you—he already knew your name. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.”
Alex wanted to reach out to him, to touch him, to hold him, but she resisted, standing silent, waiting.
He just shook his head. “I should have known then...”
“You didn’t,” she retorted, standing next to where he sat on the low stone bench. “You can’t blame yourself now.”
“I banished him because I was jealous, Alex,” Treyan confided, his voice quiet. “That he knew about you before I had—it killed me inside. It still does.”
Wringing her hands, she finally let out a sigh and sat on the bench next to him, the cool stone immediately causing goosebumps as she felt it through her nightclothes. He didn’t shy away from her, and a part of her was relieved at his reaction. “It just...happened," she confessed quietly.
Treyan scoffed but didn’t inquire further.
“It took...time, Treyan.” Though she knew nothing she said to him now was going to help.
“What happened to the baby?”
The question caught Alex off-guard. Her hands instinctively went to her abdomen, and the emptiness she had tried to ignore ate away at her once again.
“I lost her...after the battle with Razen.”
Treyan merely nodded, as if he understood. Perhaps he understood more than Alex had.
“How long have you been sleeping with Reylor?”
“Excuse me?” she snapped, ready to stand, to retreat. She was in no mood to be questioned as such. Not again.
“It’s a simple question, Alex.” There was something in his tone that backed up his claim. “A simple question that you continue to refuse to answer.”
She let out a breath, trying to steady herself. “Months,” she replied, finally relenting as she tried to keep the conversation as neutral as possible.
He nodded again, finally turning to face her. His eyes were sad, but his features were set. “Even without the Annals in our possession, the magic of the Prophecy remains. As I truly died, regardless of what was done to bring me back, the power that belonged to me as Crown Prince would have transferred to Reylor. As you said...to carry on the royal line.”
She peered at him in the darkness of the moon. “What does that have to do with anything?”
He let out an exasperated sigh as if he shouldn’t need to explain further, but he ran a hand through his loose dark hair, a nervous reaction, one Alex remembered, and she felt a shiver run down her spine.
“It means, Alex,” he began, his tone cautious, “that if you are not pregnant by now, you are most likely no longer able to have children.”
Alex felt her ears ring and her heart pound as his words washed over her. “What?” she whispered, though she knew full-well what he had said. That didn’t mean she needed to believe him.
Treyan shrugged. “Perhaps I’m wrong—maybe without the Annals in our possession, the magic of the Prophecy is just...off, but...” He looked back to her. “The only way we’ll be able to find out is by bringing the Annals back to the Empire.”
Alex didn’t have time to allow the shock to sink in. “You’ve just returned, and you’re already thinking about leaving again?”
“I’m thinking about the Empire, Alex...as you should be.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?”
The look he gave her implied she did not want to hear his response.
“Tomorrow,” he finally said, standing from the bench. “We should all meet tomorrow. Not the Council—just us.”
Alex swallowed. “You think that’s wise?”
“My brother is sleeping with my wife, my best friend let it happen, and my daughter, along with her Emperor, helped my mother and I return to it all...yes, Alex. I think it extremely wise.”
Alex could only stare at the brazenness of his assumptions.
He let out another sigh, glancing to the palace before turning his face towards the moon in the clear sky. “Will you continue to see him?”
“Treyan...”
“I’m not stupid Alex. I know you thought I was dead—you allowed that part of yourself to die with me. I can see it in how you hold yourself now—like you’re afraid to let your guard down while you’re around me. Just remember,” he said as he turned to face her. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
His footsteps on the gravel echoed in her ears as he walked away, and she lost track of how long she stood alone in the rose garden, staring at her hands as though trying to remember the stains of blood—Treyan’s blood—she thought would never disappear, before returning to the palace.
Chapter Thirty
As requested, the immediate members of the royal family met the following morning in the palace’s library. According to Jamison, the council was insistent on meeting with Treyan as soon as possible, but the Crown Prince needed to deal with personal matters first.
Rumors of Treyan’s return had begun to circulate around the palace, and many attempted to approach him prior to the meeting in the library.