I Married the Emperor to Kill Him novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: Now, or Ask
Cassien burned the note in the stair lamp.
Then he went to Isandor's chamber, because the whole court had heard where he was sleeping.
The servants had already moved his things.
His Lisvaine coats hung in the wardrobe beside Isandor's black ones.
His brother's dagger was in the sleeve of his night robe, where it always was.
Isandor was in bed when he came in, propped on pillows with his arm strapped across his bare chest, reading by one candle.
He looked up.
"You came."
"You ordered me to. In front of everyone."
"I have ordered you to do plenty of things. You usually ignore them."
Cassien walked past the bed to the garden door at the far end of the room.
It opened onto the walled garden, black and silver under the moon.
A heavy iron bar lay across it on the inside, and the bar was down.
Whoever the friend was, he would come through at midnight and find it open, walk to the bed, and finish it.
Cassien would only have to lie still.
He put both hands on the bar.
It was cold.
He looked back at the bed, at the candle, at the bandage on Isandor's shoulder where he had dug out a bolt that afternoon.
No.
If anyone killed Isandor, it would be Cassien himself.
The knife was his, and the vow was his, and so was his brother.
He left the bar down and checked it twice.
"Something wrong with the door?" Isandor asked behind him.
"A draft."
He came back to the bed, and Isandor watched him the whole way.
Cassien had worked out a plan on the stairs.
Isandor was hurt, and tired, and slow, and he wanted Cassien.
Cassien could use that.
He would get Isandor on his back with his eyes shut, then put the dagger under his ribs, the way his fencing master had shown him on a straw man at sixteen.
He untied his robe and let it hang open over his shirt.
Isandor's eyes went down and stayed there.
"Cassien," he said, and his voice was not steady.
Cassien climbed onto the bed with a knee on either side of Isandor's hips, the way Isandor had pinned him in the sand.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of I Married the Emperor to Kill Him are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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