Sordid Empire
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Sordid Empire
The Forbidden Royals Trilogy, #3
Julie Johnson
Copyright © 2020 Julie Johnson
All Rights Reserved.
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No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations included in critical articles and reviews.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, product names, or named features are only used for reference, and are assumed to be property of their respective owners.
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Cover design by: ONE CLICK COVERS
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Contents
The Forbidden Royals Trilogy
Foreword
Preface
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Playlist
About the Author
Also by Julie Johnson
The Forbidden Royals Trilogy
DIRTY HALO
Book One
TORRID THRONE
Book Two
SORDID EMPIRE
Book Three
For T.S.
“Long live the walls we crashed through
All the kingdom lights shined just for me and you.”
* * *
Long Live, Taylor Swift
My dear reader,
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All good things must come to and end.
(Or, so they say.)
I’d rather believe that nothing ever truly ends. Not really. We may turn a page to a new chapter, we may close the book altogether, but the story itself lives on.
With that said… I hope even after you have finished reading this final installment of Emilia’s epic journey, you will carry a piece of it with you. This series has ingrained itself deeply inside my heart. I will always look back on writing it with joy and immense gratitude.
It’s no great secret that, about a year ago, this story popped into my brain and would not shake loose, no matter how I tried to focus on other projects or write the books I’d previously planned. I fought against it for a while, afraid this dirty fairy tale was far too different from my so-called brand; too big a step outside my normal genre to ever resonate with my readers.
After many considerations — Publish under a pen name? Write the books but don’t publish them at all?— I decided to emulate this new character I’d come to love. To be like Emilia: brave in the face of uncertainty, fearless when confronted with an undecided future.
I wrote the damn trilogy.
Now, standing on the other side of that fear, I can genuinely say I’m so very happy I did. I am so, so grateful that you’ve followed me on this unexpected trip to Germania.
Before we dive back in for one last installment, I just want to say thank you. Thank you so very much for supporting my dreams, for allowing me to do what I love for a living, for leaving lovely reviews and telling your friends about my books.
This world is large and life is short, so we may never have a chance to meet in person… but I hope you know how very thankful I am for each and every one of you.
You have changed my life.
(Perhaps not quite so drastically as Emilia’s is about to, though… )
Oh.
Didn’t I mention?
That new crown she’s wearing comes at a heavy cost.
The drama and danger isn’t over.
It’s only just begun.
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Non sibi sed patriae,
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Julie
Prologue
I stare at the imposter on the throne.
Her ankles crossed with practiced poise.
Her hands clasped in casual elegance.
Buried beneath, a betrayed heart stutters.
Hidden deep, tarnished hopes fray.
She does not look backward at a broken past.
She stares unflinching at an uncompromising future.
A stolen destiny.
A sordid empire.
Halfway through my fourth year of primary school, my class took a field trip to the medieval ruins at Easterly. There’s a castle there — what remains of one, anyway. Turns out, after fifteen-hundred years of decay, what remains is not much. It looked more like a grassy mound of mossy stones to my nine-year-old eyes. Only one wall still stood upright; the rest of them had long ago tumbled down, crude puzzle pieces from a game played by the ghosts of Germania’s past.
Underwhelming, to say the least.
Perhaps if I’d paid attention to our history teacher’s hour-long lecture on the bus ride to our destination, I would’ve been better prepared for what awaited us. But instead of listening to Mrs. Fiero drone on, I’d spent that vital hour conspiring with Owen over our weekend plans for adventure in his tree house. Of utmost importance: the development of a secret knock to bar any undesirables from entering via the trap-door. (Namely his meddlesome little sisters, who made a habit of injecting themselves into our every Saturday afternoon, whether we wanted them there or not.)
My class poured out of the bus onto a gravel road and made a slow trek up the dirt path to the historical site. But as I took in the view that lay ahead of me… my excitement fizzled into vapor and fled on the crisp mountain winds. After all, Mrs. Fiero had promised a fortress. I’d been anticipating majesty. Some royal flair. A bonafide castle, with gold-paneled ballrooms and stained-glass secrets glittering in the early-spring light.
I’d been expecting… Well…
A fairy tale.
How utterly disappointing to come all this way to see a bit of real, honest-to-god history up close, only to be met with this pile of inconsequential rubble.
It sounded more exciting in the textbook, I thought somewhat bitterly, kicking dandelions with my shiny patent shoes. Can this really be all that’s left?
When the rest of my class broke off to eat their paper-bagged lunches at picnic tables in the adjacent field, I remained by the ruins, oddly fixated. As though the stones might offer up an alternative if only I studied them hard enough.
“Let me guess,” Mrs. Fiero murmured, coming up beside me with a knowing smile. “You were hoping for something a bit more impressive?”
I flushed, embarrassed to be caught sulking. “I just thought…”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“I thought there’d be more. More left.”
“Why? Because the people that lived here were royals?”
I nodded.
“Nothing lasts forever, Emilia. Not stone castles. Not the peasants who built them brick by brick. Not the soldiers who defended their walls with spear and arrow. Not even the kings and queens who lived in them. Time erases us all eventually.”
“That’s sad.”
“Is it?” Mrs. Fiero’s lips twisted. “I guess I think it’s sort of beautiful. No matter who you are, no matter what legacy follows you when you leave this earth behind… in the end, all that matters is what you do
while you’re here. You can’t change it after you’re gone. You can’t shape the story others tell in your absence. History belongs to the living; the dead have no use for it anymore.”
My brows furrowed. “So… you’re saying it doesn’t matter?”
“What doesn’t?”
“Any of it.” I shrugged. “Who we are, what we do. Since it all winds up a pile of rocks and moss anyway.”
“Just the opposite, Emilia. It matters a great deal what we do with our lives. It matters more than anything. Because, whether you leave a big imprint on this world or fade without a trace, the passing of time is a great equalizer. It can render empires into ashes, can condense the greatest of legacies into a footnote on a forgotten page in someone else’s history book.”
Mrs. Fiero laughed lightly — not at me, not in a way that made me feel foolish, but in a way that told me she knew something about life I hadn’t learned for myself yet.
“When I worry that I’m not doing enough, that I’m living a small life, that I won’t be remembered by anyone of consequence for achieving anything resembling greatness… I like to remind myself that you don’t have to change the whole world to leave your mark on it. Even the smallest of lives has value. Because it’s how you live that matters. Not the things you leave in your wake. Not what comes after you when you’re gone.”
Of all the lessons Mrs. Fiero ever taught me about great wars and old feuds, ancient cities and long-gone empires… this one, imparted in a whisper on a shivery spring afternoon by a pile of old stones, would wind up being the most important.
Unfortunately for me…
You never seem to realize the most important lessons in your life until after you’ve royally fucked things up.
Emphasis on royally, in my particular case…
Chapter One
“Your Majesty?”
A throat clears gently to my left. I do not turn to acknowledge the sound. I stare up at the Great Hall’s gilded ceiling far overhead, studying the angelic fresco figures painted there through narrowed eyes. The cherubs seem to mock me with their serene expressions, smiling down in perpetuity, strumming their gold harpsichords with stubby fingers.
“Your Majesty… I’m sorry for the intrusion, but it’s quite late…”
I don’t even blink.
He swallows audibly. “What— What are you doing here?”
Boy, if that isn’t the question of the year…
What the actual fuck am I, Emilia Victoria Lancaster, doing here?
In this goddamned castle?
In this goddamned life?
The throat clears again, louder this time. As though the man doing the clearing has somehow managed to convince himself I simply didn’t hear him, rather than the more obvious alternative — that I am doing my damndest to ignore his existence.
“Is there anything I can assist you with, My Queen?”
I don’t answer the quivering question. I don’t even lift my head from where I’m lying on the cold floor, my limbs splayed out like a starfish against the silver-veined marble. My eyes remain fixed upward, toward those mocking painted figures. I squint, struggling to make out their finer details in the faint light cast by the chandeliers.
At this late hour they’ve been dimmed to their lowest setting; the wall sconces doused completely. That’s not a surprise. No one is usually in here at this time of night. Hell, most people aren’t even awake, this time of night.
I hear the servant shifting nervously from one foot to another. I’m sure he’s at a loss for what to do in this scenario. I can’t exactly blame him. It probably came as quite a shock when he rounded the corner on some nightly errand and found me lying here on the floor of the vast Great Hall, clad only in a pair of old yoga pants and a thick cashmere sweater.
A queenly sight, this is not.
My advisors would be utterly aghast at this show of impropriety if they could only see it. But they aren’t here to chide me anymore, I think as the faces of Lady Morrell, my old etiquette instructor, and Gerald Simms, the former Palace Press Secretary, flash through my mind. They lost that right when they stabbed me in the back.
“Y-Your Majesty? Can… can you hear me? Are you all right?”
Persistent one, isn’t he?
I press my eyes closed, as though that might make him disappear. I don’t possess the energy to deal with him right now. Frankly, I don’t possess the energy to deal with much of anything. These days, I consider it a miracle if I manage to last until the sun sets without crumbling into a ball of despair under the weight of my own exhaustion.
When did simply existing start taking so much energy?
The mere act of dragging my ass out of bed each morning after yet another sleepless night is enough to sap all my strength. And the outside world is even more emotionally taxing. Each time I step so much as a high-heeled toe outside the palace gates, a frozen smile fixed to my lips as the camera lenses click with unflinching regularity, I feel a little more of myself disappear.
Smile, wave, nod.
Show no weakness.
Be the queen your subjects need.
By the time I crawl back beneath the covers each night, I am a hollowed out shell — scoured clean of anything resembling composure, too weak to hold my memories at bay. Even sleep offers no reprieve, for my dreams are haunted by the horrors of my past. They lurk in the dark corners of my subconscious, striking out with razor-sharp talons as soon as my eyes drift closed.
There is no one to soothe my nightmares when I wake to the sound of my own ragged screams. Not anymore.
That person is long gone.
He took my solace with him.
There’s a sudden tightness in my chest that makes my breath catch. I press my shoulders harder against the cool stone floor, hoping it will ground me in the present. Hoping it will drive the vision of cerulean blue eyes to the very depths of my psyche.
“Your Majesty…” The pageboy shuffles a few steps closer. “Should I escort you back to your chambers? Or perhaps call for your personal guard?”
My eyes spring open. The last thing I need is Galizia or Riggs scolding me about my nocturnal wandering again. Pulling a deep breath into my lungs, I force myself to sit up and focus on the young servant. He must be new to the castle staff; I’ve never seen him before and his uniform is so firmly starched, it could probably stand up on its own. When our eyes meet, he looks like he’s about to pee his pants.
“No,” I murmur softly. “Don’t call anyone.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” he bleats, reddening. “I apologize if—”
“There’s no need to apologize. Just go. Leave me be.” Is that truly my voice, so emotionless? So empty? “And, if anyone asks… you never saw me here. Understood?”
“Y-Yes, Your Majesty. I promise. I-I-I won’t tell anyone.”
He lingers, frozen like a deer in headlights. I lift my brows and jerk my chin in the direction of the doorway.
“Go.”
With a start, he gives a shallow bow and practically bolts from the hall. I listen to the patter of his shiny uniform shoes against the stone floors until they fade out of earshot. When silence once again settles over me like a blanket, I lay backward to resume my study of the castle ceiling.
This is the third night in a row I’ve found myself here, gazing upward at the mural. I’m not sure what I’m looking for. Not answers. Perhaps just a momentary distraction from the colorless monotony of my life.
Last week, it was the library — I spent every night walking the rows, skimming my fingers along the spines of books older than most democracies. The week before, it was the armory. Before that, the stables. The hall of royal portraits. The dusty records room.
No rhyme or reason dictates my destination. Any forgotten corner of the castle that no one bothers to visit in the dead of night will suffice. So long as it’s somewhere I won’t be disturbed with those same pesky questions.
Did you eat anything, Your Majesty?
When did you las
t rest, Your Majesty?
Can I call anyone to help, Your Majesty?
Your Majesty?
Your Majesty?
Your Majesty?
Since the truck attack on Vasgaard Square three months ago, these nightly explorations have become commonplace. Instead of sleeping, I pace around the empty halls while my ever-present contingent of guards and castle staff look on with increasing confusion and concern. No one knows what to say to make me snap out of this zombie-like state I’ve descended into, shellshocked from grief and pain and betrayal. No one knows how to help me.
I’m not sure anyone can help me.
I sent away the only person who ever stood a chance.
So, I walk. I pace. From the guest rooms to the indoor glass gardens. Down grand staircases and past suits of armor. From dusk until dawn, my steps echo out into the darkness of the cold stone keep. They do not falter. They do not rush. They are steady. Unhurried.
Why would I hurry?
I have nowhere else to go.
They say convicts fear release more than remaining forever in their prisons; that the world which exists outside their barred windows and locked doors is far more terrifying than the prospect of never stepping out into it again. For there is a certain sort of comfort in seclusion. There is safety in total isolation. Incarcerated, there are no unpredictable variables to contend with, no unexpected wrenches thrown into best-laid plans.