Chapter 8

The Shattered Crown




Dawn broke in a tarnished gold, the kind that made the palace roofs look burnished and the courtyards look colder than they were. The peace did not last. By the time the first bell tolled, the corridors were a ribbon of hurried boots and hushed voices.

“Make way—physician to the East Cloister!”


“Double the watch—no one in or out without writ!”


Elisana woke to the tremor of panic more than the noise itself. Mariette slipped into the bedchamber, cheeks pale, hands tight around a folded shawl.

“Milady,” she whispered. “There’s been… an incident. In the east garden.”


Elisana sat up, the sheets falling like spilled moonlight. “An incident?”


Mariette swallowed. “Lady Alessandra was found on the gravel walk beneath the cypresses. A cut on her arm. They say she was… attacked.”

The words landed with an unnatural softness, like feathers hiding a blade. Elisana rose, the room suddenly too small.

“Send for my steward,” she said calmly. “And have my attendants give their names to the guard. No one from my household was scheduled near the east garden before dawn.”

“Yes, milady.” Mariette hesitated. “The guard captain is already taking statements. From everyone.”


By noon Elisana was summoned.




The Audience Chamber

The Emperor’s audience chamber felt colder than usual, the sun trapped behind clouded glass. Ministers lined the walls, a row of lacquered masks; a courier fidgeted with a sealed scroll; the guard captain—Sir Halden—stood stiff and over-eager at the center.

Marcus stood beside the dais, hands clenched at his sides. He wore no crown—only the strain of a sleepless night and the imprint of the court upon his shoulders.

Alessandra reclined on a low divan off to the right, her arm wrapped in linen as white as her face. A faint smear of blood marked the bandage—too neat, too visible. She glanced up when Elisana entered, then lowered her gaze like a saint in a painting.

“Your Majesty the Empress,” Marcus said at once, and the formality in his voice was ice. “You’ve been accused of ordering an attack on Lady Alessandra.”

A murmur rippled through the chamber. Elisana stopped three paces from him, her hands loosely folded, her expression even.

“What?” The word was gentle, almost curious.


“The witnesses claim they saw one of your attendants near the scene.” Sir Halden stepped forward, overly grateful to be necessary. “A handmaiden in a gray fichu with De Claire stitchwork.”

Elisana thought of the lace patterns her mother taught her to identify—their family’s signature—caught in her chest like a thorn.

“My attendants wear sky-blue at dawn rounds,” she answered, looking to Marcus, not the captain. “I changed the rotation last month. The household ledger will show it.”

“Then the witness lied?” Sir Halden pressed.


Elisana’s gaze never wavered. “Or they were led to speak what they believed would be heard.”


Marcus’s jaw tightened. “Elisana,” he said softly, warning threaded into the syllables of her name.


She took a breath. “If you believe I had any hand in this, then you no longer know me at all.”


Silence fell—heavy, ceremonial.


Marcus’s hand struck the table. “Don’t call me Marcus right now.” The words were raw, louder than he intended, and the court drank them like wine. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat—regret or frustration, Elisana could not tell.

Alessandra’s lashes fluttered; the linen creaked beneath her fingers. “Your Majesty,” she said faintly, directing her voice to the room, not to Elisana, “I cannot imagine the Empress capable of cruelty. I only… I only heard steps behind me. And then someone pulled at my sleeve—there was a glint, perhaps a blade—” She faltered exquisitely. “I must have startled them.”

Sir Halden cleared his throat. “A gardener found this by the cypress walk.” He unfurled a handkerchief, revealing a slim hairpin of silver set with a tiny crescent moon.

A De Claire crescent.


A small, collective inhale moved through the chamber.


Elisana looked at the pin, then back to Marcus. “That is a common trinket from the North Bazaar,” she said quietly. “Every vendor sells copies of our sigil for girls who dream of titles.” She let the smallest, saddest smile touch her mouth. “Dreams are easy to buy.”

The Dowager Empress, Marianne, spoke for the first time from the shadowed seat near the colonnade. “Captain, has the garden path been measured? Were there signs of a struggle consistent with an attack from behind? And who among the staff knew Lady Alessandra would walk there at dawn?”

Sir Halden colored. “Your Majesty, we—ah—we are still collecting statements.”


“Collect them,” the Dowager said mildly, “without putting answers in their mouths.”


Marcus rubbed his brow. He looked at Elisana and for a throb of a moment the boy he’d been—the boy who had once cleaned mud from her shoes with his own handkerchief—stood there naked in his eyes. Then the Emperor returned.

“Until this is resolved,” he said, voice re-hardened, “Lady Alessandra is to be guarded, and the east quarter patrolled. The Empress’s household will remain available for questioning.”

Elisana bowed her head. “Of course.”


Their gazes touched and slid apart, like two mirrors unwilling to face each other.




Threads of a Lie

By late afternoon the palace had decided the story it preferred. Servants repeated it in kitchens and stairwells, upholsterers whispered it over tapestry frames, and the rumor shed its inconvenient details like a snake its skin: The Empress knew. The Empress ordered it. The Empress is losing her place.

Mariette returned to Elisana’s apartments with ink-stained fingers and eyes bright with anger.


“I checked the posted rounds,” she said, breathless. “None of our girls were assigned near the east garden. And look—” She set a ledger on the table. “The gardener who supposedly found the hairpin—he was on roof duty this morning. The tool list is signed.”

Elisana rested her palm over Mariette’s hand. “Careful,” she murmured. “Truth will need to be carried gently if it’s to arrive alive.”

Larson arrived at dusk, smelling of cold wind and horse. “There’s a money trail,” he said without preamble, dropping into the chair across from her. “Two kitchen pages paid a month’s wages each, in southern coin. And the guard who swore he saw gray lace? He plays cards with Viscount Torresano’s steward.”

Mariette’s eyes flashed. “Bribed,” she hissed.


“Bought,” Larson corrected grimly, “to say what the court was already hungry to believe.”


Elisana smoothed the corner of her sleeve. “Bring it to the Dowager,” she said. “Not to Marcus. Not yet.”


Larson stared. “Eli—”


“Not yet,” she repeated, and only her brother heard the tremor in her voice.




The Unmasking

Evening pooled into the colonnades like ink. In a smaller council room off the main hall, the Dowager Empress sat with the Chancellor, Sir Halden, and two stewards who had suddenly discovered an urgent respect for record books. Larson stood near the hearth with arms crossed, Mariette at his side like a dagger disguised as kindness.

Coins were laid out. Signatures compared. A page recalled a whispered promise of promotion. The gardener confessed that the hairpin had not been found—merely presented to him to be found later.

The Chancellor, a gaunt man who disliked being wrong, cleared his throat. “So the witnesses were… primed.”


“Paid,” Larson said evenly.


“Primed and paid,” the Dowager concluded. Her eyes—cool, violet-gray—turned to Sir Halden. “You will announce that the testimony is void, the evidence contaminated, and the matter under review. You will do so publicly.”

Sir Halden bowed, mortified. “At once, Your Majesty.”


The Dowager’s gaze gentled as it shifted to Elisana, who had been quietly present at the edge of the room, her hands folded like folded wings.

“My child,” Marianne said softly, “you must allow the court to see you tomorrow at the chapel. Do not hide. Let them see how a true queen bears rumor.”

Elisana inclined her head. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”


Her voice was steady; her heart, less so.





An Apology Meant for No One

Later—long after the announcement was made in the torchlit courtyard that the evidence was compromised; long after the nobles had adjusted their expressions from shock to dignified relief—Marcus came to Elisana’s antechamber.

He did not knock.


She stood at the window, watching the lanterns sway in the night wind, each one a fragile sun trying to hold its little circle of light.

“Elisana,” he began, the word heavy. “The witnesses were bribed. The hairpin was planted. I—” He exhaled. “I am sorry.”

How small the words were. How late.


She turned, the quiet of the room arranging itself around her like a veil. “Thank you for telling me,” she said.


“It was never my intention to doubt you,” he insisted.


She studied his face—the lines the crown had carved there, the boy he had been trapped like a moth behind glass. “Your intention,” she answered, “is not what the court heard.”

He flinched. “Elisana—”


She lifted her hand, not in refusal but in benediction, and it stilled him more than any rebuke. “No more tonight. We have both been dragged enough.”

He stood a long moment, swallowing words that would not help. “Good night,” he said at last, and left like a man walking away from a cliff he had not realized he stood upon.

When the door closed, the room exhaled. Elisana’s shoulders lowered by a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.



The Letter

In the quiet that followed, she lit a single candle at her desk. The wax smelled faintly of honey. She pulled a sheet of thick paper toward her—the kind reserved for state—then changed her mind and took a simple page from the drawer below. She dipped her pen.

Father, she wrote, the letters clean and unshaking,


I have done what a wife does. I have done what an Empress must. But I am living beside a man who no longer sees me and among courtiers who delight in the spectacle of my silence. I do not wish to become what this crown can make of a woman: a vessel of dignity emptied daily to polish the throne. I ask your counsel and your blessing to step away—before the title devours what remains of me.

She signed it with her full name, then paused. The candle guttered and steadied.


She folded the letter and tucked it into her jewelry box beneath the star-and-crescent pendant her mother had fastened on her wedding day. Her fingers lingered on the lid.

One sign, she told herself. Give the world one more chance to be kind.


The palace, outside the windows, breathed and shifted—servants finishing, guards changing, torches lowered by degrees. Somewhere, distant music drifted up from the lower halls and faded like a memory.

No sign came.


The moon cleared the last of the clouds and laid a thin path of silver across the floor to her feet—silent, constant, luminous even in darkness.

Elisana closed the jewelry box.


And the crown, somewhere deep in the quiet palace, felt a little heavier for it.