Luckily, the castle’s doctor didn’t need to set the bone in my arm, so she only wrapped it in a plaster cast after the swelling had gone down. She said I’d need it for a few weeks, but I knew from experience it would be more like a week and a half. But that was a week and a half that I was supposed to keep my hands off my blades. My fingers weren’t restricted, so I could still grip my sword hilt, but I’d have a limited range of motion. I’d be useless and helpless.

I draped my jacket over my good arm, found the stairs leading up to the third floor, and followed Gasni’s directions. I tensed every time I passed someone, but not one of them knew my face. Logically, I knew that, but I couldn’t help feeling like someone might pounce on me at any second. I never thought I’d be walking down these hallways like I belonged here. Not after everything I’d done.

I passed a few offices with brass nameplates on the doors, one for each of the master generals. The Warmaster General, the Coinmaster, the Fieldmaster, and so on, ending with the Spymaster’s office. I knocked at the door, but no one answered, so I leaned against the wall. My arm already itched under the cast, so I tapped on the hard shell, the best I could do. It didn’t help much.

The door finally opened and a woman in a black uniform stepped out. Shit. The woman who’d interrogated me. I pressed back into the wall, but she just gave me a quick glare before walking away. I took a deep breath and tried to relax. I guessed we were coworkers now, after all.

Gasni appeared at the door and held it open for me. “Have a seat.”

I sat in one of the chairs in front of his desk. It wasn’t all that comfortable, but that was probably intentional.

Gasni slumped into his own chair, which looked much more cushioned. He tapped on his armrest for several seconds, just watching me, and I couldn’t tell if he was angry or something else. “So, things have gone to shit.”

And I still couldn’t tell. I just waited without saying anything.

“The Council is scrambling to choose a new emperor, again. My agents who were trailing Yesida’s killer have gone silent. And Eujia… You’ll see for yourself. I told the Council you’ve been one of my agents for years and recommended you as Eujia’s personal guard captain. You’ll start immediately.”

“Her guard captain?” I lifted my casted arm. “I won’t be much good for a while.”

“You have a mind for stealth and matters of security, not to mention you were able to get through to Eujia when no one else could. You’d be able to break her out of that… spell, should the killer show his face again. For that reason, you’ve been assigned the quarters directly across from hers. You’ll find your new uniform there.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

A room in the castle. Fucking hell, what kinds of turns would my life take next?

“But before that, there are some things you should know.” He explained how the Council was holding Eujia’s family, how they were keeping her prisoner in this place, how they’d abused her. The more he talked, the harder it was to hold down my Rage. I’d figured she was just a spoiled princess with a rebellious streak. I couldn’t believe how wrong I’d been. “That’s the short of it, anyway,” Gasni said.

I was lost for words. Eujia was supposed to be their Chosen. How could they treat her, or anyone, like this?

Gasni gave me directions to my room, and I hurried off to change into my uniform. It was a black suit, like the other agents’, but came with a small royal blue capelet that hung off one shoulder. It fit my new job, since I was something between an agent, a castle guard, and an imperial guard. I had to leave the right sleeve of the jacket unbuttoned around my cast, which looked awkward, but otherwise I looked very official. Gods, that was weird.

I crossed the hallway to introduce myself to Eujia’s handful of new guards, doing my best to seem authoritative, but I wondered if they could see right through it. They gave me their names, which I almost immediately forgot, and told me when the shifts changed. They only had two shifts, day and night. I asked how long each of them had been guards, and it ranged from three years to only a few months. I’d keep an eye on the newer ones.

Then I knocked at Eujia’s door. A servant answered, and she gave me a slight bow. So, so strange.

“She says she doesn’t want visitors, Captain,” she whispered. “But maybe you should come in, anyway.” She held the door open.

“Thank you. Could you step out for a little while?”

“Of course.” She closed the door after her.

Eujia was still awake and sat at her desk in a nightgown, staring at a book in her hands. Her eyes were puffy and red, and she didn’t bother looking up even when I slowly walked over. It wasn’t a book, but a sketchbook, opened to a page full of drawings of Yesida from before he was emperor.

“You draw?” I asked. “You’re good.”

“Do you need something?” she asked softly.

“I just wanted to introduce myself properly this time. Gasni’s made me your new guard captain.”

“I know.”

“Right. If you ever need anything, my room is right across the hall.”

“Mm-hm.”

I glanced at the sketches again, but the image of Yesida’s rotten body with vacant eye sockets flashed in my head. Was that why she was staring at her drawings? To try to push that image out?

“I’m sorry,” I said. “For everything. For killing Lenan, for failing to protect you and Yesida. I’ll do anything I can to make it right.”

“Make it right? You can’t make it right. No one can. Whether you’d killed Lenan or I had, it doesn’t matter. It would have ended the same. Now I’ll be expected to marry the next emperor instead. I won’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

She turned her dull, dead eyes to mine and pointed to a large wooden box at the foot of her bed. “Look inside. Then get rid of it.”

Curious, I lifted the lid and immediately gagged at the stench that reminded me of Gradis and Yesida’s rotting corpses. Glass lined the inside of the box, and— Oh, gods. I slammed the lid back down. Her mother’s head.

“That will be Ranine next,” Eujia said. “I can’t allow that.”

I gulped hard and took a few breaths. “Does Gasni know?”

“Take it to him if you want. He can’t do anything, either.”

She was giving up. The fight I’d seen in her eyes when I first met her was gone. But she had something wrong.

There was something I could do. I left with the promise that I would send someone for the box and returned to my room for the night, but my ideas wouldn’t let me sleep.