“It is,” I bit back, fully aligned with his pent-up fury. “And you were right—even a child could have divined it.”
His hand flew out to strike me. I raised my arm to protect myself, but the force of his blow made my head lash to the side. White stars popped in my vision. My forged bond to him severed.
“You forgot to mention my aura regarding you.” His hot breath stung my eyes.
I straightened and met his gaze squarely, despite the pain bursting in my head, the fear swarming inside me that crowded my chest for breath. I refused to give power to the emperor’s favorite trick for belittling me. “Utter disappointment,” I answered him. “Hatred. Made worse by shame because you thought you loved me.”
Valko inhaled with approval, then moved to an ebony lacquered dresser opposite his bed. He opened a small drawer. From within, two metal objects gleamed in the candlelight: a brass key and a thin dagger with a carved bone hilt. He removed the latter.
“Do you know how my father died?” He turned the dagger over in his hand, his rage tamped to a silent storm of darkness brewing inside him.
My heart was in my throat. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the deadly point of the blade. “The black fever,” I replied, recalling what every Riaznian knew.
Valko ambled back to me. “In actuality, my father survived the illness.” He spoke like a tutor giving a history lesson, as if gunfire wasn’t railing on our ears from the massacre below. How many guards were already dead? How many peasants? “However,” he continued, “it left him disfigured, his face covered in pox scars and one of his legs amputated at the thigh. No one but his physicians and my family knows this, of course, but I see no qualms in telling you. Not now, anyway. Open your hand,” he commanded me.
The screams outside grew louder, filled more with terror than scornful curses. I swallowed and darted my eyes to the balcony as I struggled to keep the people’s auras blocked.
“Don’t worry about them,” Valko said. “My guards have things well in hand. It seems no matter the number of peasants, they have a limited supply of ammunition while my men share my plentiful stores.”
Panic assaulted me. My defenses against the myriad auras weakened. But I couldn’t let them inside me. Fear locked my muscles at the vivid remembrance of what I became when I gave myself over to the feelings of so many. I’d made a mistake by placing so much faith in the peasants. I’d thought with their multitudes and righteous zeal they would be invincible as a whole. But Valko had spoken accurately. I felt the dire truth of it by the horror clawing its way to my heart, the desperation cutting the air from my lungs with every musket blast.
“Open your hand,” Valko repeated.
I hesitated a moment, then cupped it before him with trembling fingers. Find a common ground with him. Build a bridge between our auras. Truly feel what he is feeling. Then end this. Make him call off the guards.
“The blade was never washed.” Valko lifted a brow. “An emperor’s blood, blessed by the gods, becomes something of a relic.” He took hold of my wrist. “If you can feel the aura of the dead, perhaps you can tell me the truth of how my father died.”
My eyes widened with dread. “No, please—”
He set the blade in my palm. A flood of dark misery ripped a cry from my throat. “He was lost,” I gasped. My hand quivered as Valko held it fast. “More lost than you. Alone. More than you can imagine.” Empathy. Connection. I had to delve deeper within Emperor Izia’s aura and discover the linking chain to Valko. “Your father was terrified—of rejection.” His disfigurement would have made him insecure and apprehensive. “Terrified of losing his dynasty, even if saving it meant separating himself from his only children.”
I had no gift for reading Emperor Izia’s thoughts, but I filled in the spaces between what his agonizing emotions could tell me and what I knew of Valko’s experience. From everything I’d learned about Izia and the upbringing of his children, it wasn’t difficult to place the logic behind his suffering.
My skin grew clammy with trepidation. I needed to scratch it, needed to do worse. With a whimper, I watched my palm tremor and bend around the dagger blade. The sharp edges suddenly felt like a pathway of release. My body shook with that longing. Dizziness assaulted me. My heartbeat thundered in my ears. The downward spiral of Izia’s desolation threatened to suck me into a mad corner of my mind. How could anyone live in this much pain?
I struggled to open my palm and slightly break the unendurable connection. “Did your father take his own life?” I asked.
Valko’s aura seemed to fall. It plunged through the floor of my stomach and sunk its weight into my legs. “Very observant. A child could not have divined that.”