Chapter 12: The Empress's Summons
The knock came just before dawn, a soft, insistent rap that sliced through the fragile peace of Marisa’s chamber. We were tangled in silks and each other, my head pillowed on her stomach, the scent of our night clinging to us like a second skin. I felt her muscles contract beneath my cheek.
“Enter,” Marisa called, her voice sleep-rough and unconcerned.
A young servant girl slid in, eyes fixed on the mosaic floor. “The Divine Empress summons her ancells,” she whispered, her words a rehearsed tremor. “Immediately.”
Then she was gone, the door whispering shut on its hinges.
The words hung in the jasmine-thick air. Immediately. It was not a request. In the silence that followed, I could hear the rapid drum of my own heart. Marisa’s hand, which had been idly stroking my hair, stilled.
“Well,” she said finally, a slow smile in her voice. “Someone’s eager.”
She untangled herself from me and rose, a lithe silhouette against the brazier’s dying glow. There was no hesitation in her movements, only a fluid certainty. I moved more slowly, my limbs heavy with spent passion and sudden dread. The leather collar Marisa had fastened around my throat last night—a plain, supple band—felt suddenly less like a secret treasure and more like a brand. It was cool against my flushed skin.
I pulled on the simple linen shift left for me, its fabric whisper-soft and cut disgracefully low. Marisa wrapped herself in a tighter, more provocative length of linen, her every motion emphasizing the slender lines of her body. She caught me watching her in the obsidian mirror.
“Nervous?” she asked, meeting my gaze in the dark glass.
“Yes.”
“Don’t be.” She turned and approached me, adjusting the fall of my shift over my hip with a proprietary touch. Her fingers brushed the collar. “She already knows. This just makes it official.”
Her assurance did little to settle the storm in my gut. We walked the empty corridors in silence. The palace was a gray vault, cold stone waiting for the sun. Our bare feet made no sound on the polished floors. The only warmth was the memory of her skin under my mouth.
Angela’s private chambers glowed with the first true fingers of dawn. Light, honeyed and pale, streamed through the high clerestory windows, cutting through the incense-heavy air. The scent here was richer, deeper—myrrh and crushed lotus petals spilling from obsidian censers. Crimson silk draped the walls, pooling on a floor of lapis lazuli and gold mosaic. It was a space of absolute power, and at its center, reclining on a divan piled with furs, was the source of it all.
Empress Angela.
Her fiery hair was loose, a river of copper over her shoulders and the deep emerald silk of her robe. A scroll lay half-unrolled in her lap, but her piercing green eyes were on us, tracking our progress from the doorway. Her expression was unreadable, a calm mask that could hide either amusement or wrath.
We stopped at the prescribed distance and sank into deep, synchronized bows, our foreheads nearly touching the cool, intricate mosaic.
“Rise.”
Her voice was like smoothed stone, effortless and absolute. We straightened. I kept my eyes lowered, focused on the glint of gold thread in her slippers.
“Come closer. Let me look at you.”
We obeyed. I could feel Marisa’s energy beside me, a poised and waiting thing. My own felt shaky, laid bare.
Angela’s gaze was a physical weight. It traveled over Marisa, a flicker of appreciation in its depths. Then it settled on me, moving from my face, down the exposed line of my throat, pausing at the leather collar, then lower, over the curves my shift did little to conceal. The silence stretched, thick enough to choke on.
“You’ve been busy,” she said at last, a thread of dry amusement weaving through the words.
Marisa let out a soft, knowing laugh. “The night was full, Divine One.”
“So I perceive.” Angela set the scroll aside. She patted the silk-covered space on the divan beside her hip. “Marisa. Kneel here.”
With the grace of a predator, Marisa moved to the divan and sank onto the cushions, close enough for Angela to touch, which she did, her fingers combing through Marisa’s sleek brunette hair with casual ownership. The command in the gesture was unmistakable. This was her favored one, her playful counterpart.
Then those green eyes pinned me where I stood.
“Benedetta. You will remain there.”
I stood alone on the vast expanse of lapis and gold, feeling more exposed than I had in Marisa’s bed. The arrangement was a living portrait: the Empress and her chosen, and me, the separate, waiting thing.
“The dynamics of my household must reflect reality,” Angela began, her voice filling the spacious chamber. “Whispered rumors and spilled bathwater are for servants. We deal in symbols. In truth.”
She let the statement hang. My mouth was dry.
“At the next full moon, before the court and the gods, we will formalize this new… understanding.” A smile, thin and sharp, touched her lips. “Marisa will be formally invested as my First Hand. My will made flesh in certain matters. A just reward for her… persuasive instincts.”
Marisa leaned into Angela’s touch, her expression one of victorious contentment. She did not look at me.
“And you, my gentle Benedetta.” Angela’s tone softened, but it was the softness of a velvet glove over iron. “Your devotion has taken on a new and fascinating shape. One that requires recognition.”
I swallowed, waiting.
“You will be bound to Marisa, publicly, as her personal attendant. Your service to her will be an extension of your service to me. The collar you wear in private will be replaced with one of silver, inscribed with her mark. The court will see you kneel to her, and in that kneel, they will see the absolute nature of my order. They will understand your defeat.” She paused, her eyes gleaming like fractured glass in the dawn light. “And they will witness your devotion.”
The flush that heated my skin was twofold: a cresting wave of shame at the thought of the entire court—the sly viziers, the jealous lesser consorts, the stern generals—watching me kneel and be collared by my former rival. And beneath it, coiling deep in my belly, a darker, more potent thrill. It was the thrill of the night before, magnified a thousand times, made permanent and sacred. My place, defined. My surrender, etched in silver.
I must have made some small sound, because Angela’s eyebrow arched. “You have something to say?”
I found my voice, though it was barely a whisper. “No, Divine Empress. It is… a great honor to serve in whatever capacity pleases you.”
“A diplomatic answer,” Angela murmured, though she didn’t look displeased. Her gaze shifted between us, a conductor admiring her instruments. “This pleases me. Clarity pleases me. The heat of a rivalry was entertaining, but it was a wasted energy. This…” She gestured, her rings flashing. “This has purpose. This has use.”
She dismissed us with a faint wave. “Go. The day will be long with preparations.”
We bowed again. As I turned to leave, my eyes finally lifted and met Marisa’s. She was still kneeling beside Angela, but her sharp, clever eyes were on me. In them, I saw no pity, no gloating. I saw possession, bright and fierce. And a promise.
The walk back was quieter than the walk there. The palace was waking, sounds of life filtering through the stone. Sunlight now fully illuminated the corridors, banishing the night’s secrets.
At the junction that led to our separate chambers, Marisa stopped. She reached out, not with the bold ownership of the night before, but with a simple, definitive touch. Her fingers hooked under my leather collar and pulled me gently to her. She kissed me, there in the bright, public hallway where any early-rising courtier could see.
It was not a kiss of passion, but of sealing.
When she pulled away, her smirk was back, softened by something else. “A silver collar,” she said, her thumb stroking the pulse point in my throat. “It will suit you better than envy ever did.”
She left me standing there, the taste of her and the imprint of Angela’s decree mixing on my tongue. The shame was a pale ghost already fading. The thrill was a living wire, humming in my veins, mapping the path to the coming moon. I touched the simple leather around my neck. It was only a placeholder now. A promise of what was to be bound to me, and what I was to be bound to.