“Your Grace?”
The Overseer arched a brow at her chancellor. “Yes?”
“I have a petition that came in an hour ago from the Triosan emperor for clemency in sentencing. Would you care to read it?”
Alia grimaced before she gave a curt nod.
The bailiff came forward with an e-tablet.
Bastien’s scowl matched hers as he tried to understand why his uncle would speak up on his behalf now when Aros had refused to take any of his calls. Had refused to have any contact with him whatsoever. It seemed incongruous that he’d have sent the letter over while not being here for the hearing.
But after a few minutes, the Overseer took a deep breath. “It appears your uncle still loves you, but I’m disinclined to give you the simple exile for your crimes that he requests. However, I do believe in compromising where I can, and I’ve no wish to alienate the Triosans. Therefore, I shall commute your sentence from death to make you a Ravin for The League. Should you survive as such for fifteen years, you’ll earn a pardon.”
He gaped at her ludicrous verdict. Seriously? Ravins were the sentient targets League assassins were given as training assignments to hone their skills. They were implanted with a tracking device and then set free to be hunted down and killed like prey.
Any humanitarian group worth its salt had protested the existence and practice—until their leaders ended up as Ravins themselves for treason against The League.
Bastien scoffed at her kindness given the fact that the average life expectancy for a Ravin was six to eight weeks.
For the humanitarian protesters, it’d been a few hours.
But then he wasn’t most.
He was a captain first rank, Gyron Force trained, and motivated by a blood lust that ought to terrify everyone in this room.
His fury rising with a heated need for vengeance, Bastien met her gaze. “Oh, I’ll survive, my lady. And when I come back, I’ll rain down a hell-wrath the likes of which you’ve never seen, and I promise you that the next time you look upon me, it’ll be for the murder of the real killer of my family. And I won’t be innocent then as I am today. I will come to you soaked and baptized in the blood of my enemies. You can bank on that.”
“Get him out of my court!”
The guards jerked him toward the side door, where, to his instant shock, Ember waited.
Time hung still as he felt a need to embrace her. As all his regret rose to choke him. And hatred, too, if the truth was known.
I wish I’d never met you!
When their gazes met, he saw sympathy. For the merest heartbeat, he thought she’d say something.
But his captors didn’t give her the chance. They rushed him past her and threw him into an armored transport, leaving him there to damn her and himself with every breath he took.
*
Ember started after Bastien, desperate to comfort him and tell him what was going on. But her father caught her arm and kept her by his side.
“You say one word to him and they’re liable to indict you as an accomplice.”
Grinding her teeth, she wanted to weep in frustration and pain. What had been done to him was all kinds of wrong and she knew it. “He didn’t murder his family, Sa. You know that as well as I do. Bastien could never hurt them.”
“I know.”
She met her father’s gaze as she sought some kind of sanity in this madness. “Why did Alura lie like that?”
“To protect us from his uncle. You know as well as I do who the real killer was. We have Alura to thank for the fact that we’re still standing when so many others have fallen. Don’t you dare criticize her.”
Ember let out a bitter laugh. The concept of thanking her sister stuck hard in her craw. Unlike her father, she couldn’t imagine Alura as an altruist. Not in this.
This bloody coup had torn a hole through their empire. Worse? It’d indicted and torn apart so many of their noble and military families that Ember was terrified to think just how deep the conspiracy against Bastien’s family ran. But the one thing she knew for certain, her sister was neck deep in it.
And Alura had worked hard to set Bastien up for his fall.
Tears filled her eyes as bitter anger choked her. Alura had robbed her of her future and then, not content to see her and Bastien suffer, she’d done this.
Damn her to hell for it.