Chapter 24: The First Night Under the Collar
The taste of wine was still on my tongue, sweet and slightly resinous from the myrrh. The collar felt heavier now, or perhaps I was just more aware of it. Its presence was a low, constant hum against my skin, a second pulse below my own. I set the empty cup down on the obsidian table with a definitive click.
“This changes nothing,” I said. My voice was steadier than I expected it to be. It was my throne-room voice, smooth and impervious. I turned from the mirrors, my silhouette cutting through the candlelight. “The court assembles at dawn. The Nubian emissaries expect an audience. Life proceeds.”
I meant it. I had to mean it. This was a private moment, a secret ritual behind locked doors. It existed in its own sacred bubble, but outside, the sun would rise on the same empire. I was still its heart. Its mind. Its will.
Benedetta’s hand found the small of my back, a gentle, circular pressure. Her touch said she understood the necessity of the lie.
Marisa did not. She laughed, a single, bright sound that seemed to startle the shadows. She drained her own cup and placed it beside mine. “Oh, Angela,” she sighed, stepping so close I could see the flecks of amber in her dark eyes. “It changes everything.” Her finger traced the line of the leather, following it around the side of my neck. A shiver trailed in its wake. “You don’t get to hide in your crown now. Not from us. That,” she tapped the collar, “is a truth you wear. You can’t take it off.”
“I could order it removed,” I said, the Empress rising to the surface, cold and absolute.
“You could,” Marisa agreed, her head tilting. Her expression was infuriatingly knowing. “You could scream for the guards. You could have me flogged for insolence. You could banish Benedetta to the desert temples. You are the Empress. Your word is law.” She paused, letting the images hang in the lotus-scented air. “But you won’t.”
The certainty in her voice was a brand.
“You want to know how everything changes?” she continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “It changes because now you have two choices. Only two. Every moment, from now on.”
I stood silent, my jaw tight. Benedetta’s hand stilled on my back.
“The first choice,” Marisa said, holding up a slender finger. “You can wear this as a chain. You can let it be a weight. You can fight against it in your heart while it sits on your skin. You can be the Empress in the streets and a prisoner in these rooms. You can let it split you in two.” She leaned in. “It will eat you alive. I’ve seen that hollow look in your eyes after a month of petitions. This will make it worse. A slow poison.”
The truth of it was a cold stone in my gut. I had felt that fracture for years—the woman apart from the ruler. The collar could formalize the divide.
“And the second?” I asked, the words barely audible.
A brilliant, daring smile broke across Marisa’s face. It was the smile she wore before winning a dice game, before proposing some decadent, irresistible scheme. “You wear it as a key.” Her hands came up, framing my face, thumbs brushing my cheekbones. Her touch was shockingly tender. “You let it remind you that here, in this labyrinth, you are not alone. You are known. You are not shouldering the sky by yourself. You have surrendered the right to that particular misery.” Her gaze flicked to the collar. “That is our trophy. Your burden, shared. Your glory, shared. Your silence, broken.”
Benedetta moved then, wrapping her arms around me from behind, her body a soft, warm shield against my back. “Let it be a key, Angela,” she whispered into my hair. “Please. We are not taking your strength. We are giving you a place to lay it down.”
The conflict was a physical ache. The imperial conditioning screamed at me to reject this, to re-establish the hierarchy, to be the untouchable monarch. But underneath that, a deeper, more exhausted part of me wept at the offer. To lay it down. To not be alone.
I closed my eyes. The scent of them—Benedetta’s soothing lavender, Marisa’s sharp citrus and spice—wrapped around me as surely as their arms.
“The Nubian emissaries,” I began, my eyes still shut.
“Will see a radiant Empress, serene and formidable,” Marisa finished smoothly. “Because she will have slept, truly slept, wrapped between her ancells. Because she will have left her secret fears here, on these silk sheets, and walked out wearing only her power.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do,” Benedetta murmured against my skin. “Every day. Choosing to trust it.”
I opened my eyes. I looked at Marisa’s defiant hope, at Benedetta’s earnest love reflected in the bronze behind us. I felt the unyielding leather around my throat. Not a chain. Not yet.
A choice.
I brought my hands up, covering Marisa’s where they held my face. My fingers laced with Benedetta’s where they rested over my stomach.
“Then we should sleep,” I said, the command still in my tone, but its edge was softened, worn smooth. “The dawn comes regardless.”
It was not a declaration of which choice I’d made. But it was a step. A truce.
Marisa’s smile softened into something genuine, triumphant. She kissed my forehead. “We should.”
The journey to the great bed was slow. We were a three-bodied creature, moving through the dim light. They helped me out of the remaining silks, their hands practical and gentle. The cool air touched my skin, but the memory of warmth from their touch lingered everywhere. The sting of my punishment was a fading echo, a testament to a bridge crossed.
I lay between them on cushions that smelled of cedar and saffron. Benedetta curled into my right side, her head on my shoulder, her arm a comforting weight across my waist. Marisa settled on my left, propped on an elbow, her free hand tracing idle, possessive patterns on my stomach, just above the linen sheet.
The collar pressed into the pillow.
“Does it feel strange?” Benedetta asked sleepily.
“Yes,” I answered honestly.
“Good,” Marisa whispered. Her fingers stilled. “Remember the feeling. That’s the change starting.”
I stared at the canopy above, woven with threads of gold to form the constellations. The weight on my throat was foreign. Inescapable. A chain or a key.
Outside, a guard changed shift, the muted clink of armor echoing in the vast palace corridor. The world continued. The Empress remained.
But here, in the dark, Angela breathed. And the choice, terrifying and bright, hung in the air with the smoke of the dying candles, waiting for the sun.