The Executed Empress Proposed to His Scarred Brother novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Proposal at the Hall of Mirrors
Beheaded at twenty-six, Iseult wakes at her betrothal ball at twenty, crosses the ballroom and proposes to the Emperor's scarred bastard brother in front of the court; the Emperor locks them both in the Lantern Tower.
The headsman's axe was notched and dull, and everyone in the Courtyard of Bells knew it.
Iseult knelt on the scaffold boards at dawn and watched him test the edge against his thumb.
She was twenty-six years old, and she had been Empress for six years.
The charge was read aloud by the Chancellor in a flat, bored voice.
Treason against the throne, by her own signature, in the matter of the northern grain levies.
That part was true.
She had signed all three levies without reading them.
Her husband put pages in front of her, and she had always signed what he put in front of her.
The north had starved for two winters because of her name at the bottom of those pages.
Now the northern farmers stood packed in the courtyard below, thin and silent, and watched her kneel.
On the balcony above, Emperor Caelum leaned on the rail with his chin in his hand.
Beside him stood Lady Adelheid in white, her fingers resting on his sleeve.
He did not look at his wife.
He had never once looked at her when it mattered.
The headsman lifted the axe, and Iseult shut her eyes and tried not to count the strokes he would need.
"Stand aside."
The voice was low and rough and it came from behind her.
A tall man in a black hood climbed the scaffold steps and held out his hand to the headsman.
"This is the Emperor's axe," the headsman said.
"This is the Emperor's sword," said the hooded man, and he drew it.
He knelt on the boards beside her, close enough that she smelled cold iron and wet wool.
A bare hand came up under her chin and turned her face toward him.
Behind the slit of the hood she could see only a mouth and the dark.
"Eyes on me," he said. "I've got you."
She looked at him, because there was nothing else in the world to look at.
Then the sword came down.
***
"Lady Iseult?"
Someone was holding a glass of wine against her fingers.
"Lady Iseult, His Majesty is waiting."
She opened her eyes on a thousand candles.
She was standing in the Hall of Mirrors in an ivory gown, with her hair loose down her back and her neck whole.
Her hands were smooth, without the ink stains of six years of signing.
She touched her throat, and it was warm.
Across the hall, on a gilded dais, the young Emperor Caelum was smiling at her with his hand held out.
He was twenty-five and beautiful.
Her father, the Marquess Valcour, stood at his elbow with a ministry hanging out of his smile.
This was the night of the betrothal ball.
She had stood here six years ago and curtsied, and gone home to a palace where nobody ever asked her opinion of anything.
Iseult did not curtsy.
She looked past the dais, down the long room, and thought of the three levies that were not yet written.
Twelve thousand soldiers and a province of farmers would starve in two winters unless somebody changed the page.
In the far corner by the doors, the courtiers had left a clear circle of floor.
A very tall man in a plain dark coat stood in it, eating bread off a plate.
She knew him.
Ilarion Dravenmoor, the late Emperor's bastard, Grand Duke of the Dragon March.
He was the only person in the palace who had warned the throne about the north.
Her husband had sent him home without his sword.
A white scar ran from his left brow across his eye and down his cheek to the jaw.
The ladies in the hall turned their fans toward it and away.
Iseult handed her glass to the footman.
She walked down the length of the Hall of Mirrors, past the dais and her father's raised hand.
The Emperor's smile began to crack as she passed.
"Iseult," Caelum said, in the voice he used for dogs. "Come here."
She kept walking.
The court parted in front of her, because nobody knew what else to do.
The Grand Duke saw her coming and put down his bread.
Up close he was bigger than she remembered, broad through the shoulders, with grey eyes that took in her whole face without any hurry.
"Your Grace," she said.
"Lady Iseult."
"I am Iseult Valcour, and I would like to propose marriage."
The Hall of Mirrors went completely silent.
A fiddle string somewhere let go with a small twang.
The Grand Duke looked at her, and then at the Emperor behind her, and then at her again.
"Tonight is your betrothal," he said quietly.
"Yes."
"To my brother."
"I know whom it was meant to be."
She lifted her gloved hand and laid her palm flat against his scarred cheek.
His skin was warm, and she felt him go still all the way down.
Her hand was shaking, and she let it.
"Say yes in front of all of them," she whispered.
His eyes moved over her face once more, slowly.
"Yes," said Ilarion.
The word went across the hall.
"A proposal made before the court and accepted before the court stands," the Chancellor said weakly. "It is the old law."
Caelum came down off the dais with his smile entirely gone.
"Guards," he said. "Take my brother and the lady to the Lantern Tower."
"Majesty," said the Chancellor.
"They are my guests. They may remain there for ten days, until the Cathedral can have them. Nobody leaves, and nobody visits."
Four soldiers closed in, and one of them took the Grand Duke's arm.
Ilarion removed the hand without looking at it and gave Iseult his elbow.
"Lady," he said under the noise, "I have forty riders outside the walls and no sword. What do you want me to do now?"
Iseult put her hand on his arm, and under the wool it was solid as a beam.
"Walk me up the stairs," she said, "as if you had wanted this for years."
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