Bride of the Ruthless Emperor

Episode Seven

There was little and less Leanna could do about Thalisa Soot. She didn’t want to care about the woman, but she did. She didn’t want to be jealous, but she was.

In the days that followed, Thalisa flounced around the Emperor, wearing garments that displayed her curves and emerging from his quarters with tousled hair and sheer nightgowns. Leanna forced herself to remain detached—after all, Alaric had made it clear he didn’t fancy her as a bride. Yet her irrational feelings lingered, heightened by his indifference. He had been cold previously, but it seemed that after their kiss, he had grown more frigid, more dismissive of her. Whenever she attempted to speak to him, he stiffened and his responses arrived without emotional inflection.

Compounding her misery was the recurring dream that haunted her sleep—a faceless woman echoing a dire warning: You are the only one who can help him.

Driven by the dream, Leanna had sought out Alaric outside his chambers a week to their arrival at Vilaris, the port city. Her fears remained, but she pushed them aside.

“Your Majesty,” she called softly, stepping into the torchlight. “I must speak with you. It is about a dream I had. It was about —”

Alaric paused, his dark eyes lingering on her face before hardening into stone. “I have no time for maidens’ nightmares, Princess.”

“It concerns your life —”

“Go back to your quarters, Leanna,” he interrupted, his voice dropping to a icy register. He turned his back on her to address Lord Gerwulf, leaving her standing in the cold.

Within a few days, they arrived at the Port of Vilaris to cross the Gray Sea. A boisterous city famous for mining and manufacture, Vilaris smelled heavily of brine, roasted spices, and wet iron.

They secured boarding at a grand inn reserved specially for nobility, where they were to stay two days while Alaric conducted business with the mayor. The room was large, with a cheery fire crackling in the grate and furs on the bed. After days of sleeping in cold and damp inns that smelled of horse dung and stale sweat, Leanna was pleased to finally see bedding befitting of her station. She rushed into the chamber and flopped on the bed with a sigh.

“Would you like to explore the city, your grace?” Alia asked once they settled in. “Lord Gerwulf offered to accompany us around.”

Though she was more predisposed to remaining beneath the covers, Leanna agreed, eager to see the city she had read about since childhood.

Alia bounced with glee. “He brought us new clothes!”

“New clothes?”

Alia scurried to her room and returned with a bundle. “Our current clothes will make us too conspicuous as nobility. This will help us blend in.”

She opened the bundle to reveal simple, dull-colored linen garments and thick brown woolen cloaks. Alia dressed quickly, then brushed out Leanna’s hair, braiding it down her back.

“We look so regular,” she declared with a grin. “We’ll blend right in!”

Lord Gerwulf met them in the courtyard where a marble sea nymph spat water into the basin beneath her. Gerwulf was a tall man with curly fair hair and a full beard. Together, they stepped out into the bustling, sea-salty markets. Merchants shouted over squawking sea birds, and crates of foreign spices scraped across slick cobblestones. For the first time in weeks, Leanna felt a flicker of intrigue.

“Look at these, your grace,” Alia whispered, stopping before a covered stall overflowing with imported herbs and pungent powders.

Leanna stepped closer, examining a tray of silver-leafed tea while Gerwulf stood a few paces back, his sharp eyes scanning the crowd.

Without warning, a sharp whistle pierced the air.

From the shadow of a nearby alley, four men in iron masks surged into the market square. They deliberately slammed into a heavy fruit vendor’s cart, sending wooden crates crashing onto the cobblestones. Chaos erupted.

“Stampede! Move!” someone screamed.

Panicked shoppers shrieked and pushed backward. A burly porter shoved hard into Lord Gerwulf, throwing the knight off balance.

“Princess! Stay back!” Gerwulf roared, drawing his broadsword, but a surging wave of civilians forced a wedge between them.

“Alia!” Leanna cried out, grabbing her handmaid’s arm as two masked sellswords rounded the herbal stall, their cold eyes locked directly on her.

“This way!” Alia gasped, dragging Leanna into a dark, narrow alleyway. They ran frantically through the labyrinthine streets, their heavy cloaks flapping as the heavy boots of the sellswords gave chase close behind. The narrow alleyways of Vilaris swallowed the sounds of the chaotic market, replacing them with the hollow echo of frantic footfalls.

Alia kept a tight grip on Leanna’s wrist, pulling her deeper into the maze of soot-stained brick structures and damp cobblestones.

Behind them, heavy boots slammed against the stone in relentless rhythm.

“They’re closing in, your grace!” Alia’s breath bloomed in white puffs in the chill sea air.

“Keep moving!” Leanna gritted out, her heavy woolen cloak catching against the wet stone wall as they rounded a sharp corner. She stalled for a moment, as she tugged it free, her heart beating in time to the sound of the approaching footfalls.

Suddenly, her body went rigid.

A sharp, electric heat ignited at the base of her skull, shooting a violent tingle down her spine. The sensation vibrated straight to her core, an undeniable, phantom pull that made her gasping lungs stall mid-breath.

Alaric.

The sensation flamed briefly, echoing a sudden spike of distant, furious energy, before settling back into a low, thrumming hum beneath her skin. She tried not to worry if he was in danger, if the demise the faceless woman had warned her of had finally arrived. She was in enough trouble already.

A dead end blocked their path—a high stone wall towering over a pile of rotting wooden crates.

“No, no, no!” Alia gasped, clawing frantically at the stone wall.

Leanna turned just as two figures emerged from the alley shadow, cutting off their escape. The men wore iron masks, their rough linen clothes reeking of stale fish and cheap wine. Steel blades gleamed in their hands.

“Well, now,” the taller one said, his voice muffled by the metal plate over his face. “The little birds ran right into a cage.”

Leanna stepped in front of Alia, forcing her chin high despite her racing heart. “We have no gold on us. Let us pass, or you will answer to the Kadrian Empire.”

The man spat onto the wet cobblestones. “We aren’t after your purse, Princess. There’s a ship waiting at the eastern docks, and a lord who’ll pay handsomely to see you aboard it.”

He called her Princess. He knew who she was. She had no time to register that when he lunged forward, reaching out a calloused hand to snatch her cloak.

A blinding flash of steel severed the space between them.

A wet, sickening crunch echoed through the narrow passage as Lord Gerwulf materialized from the shadows behind the attackers. His broadsword buried itself deep into the first man’s shoulder before dragging downward in a brutal, practiced arc. Blood sprayed across the damp stone wall. Alia shrieked as the blood splashed on their faces. And though Leanna wasn’t aware of it, the rawness in her throat let her know she had let out a shriek of her own.

The second sellsword barely had time to raise his blade before Gerwulf slammed the pommel of his sword across the man’s iron mask. Bone shattered beneath metal, and the sellsword collapsed to his knees, senseless.

Gerwulf stood over the fallen men, his chest heaving, his blade dripping dark crimson onto the cobblestones.

“Are you harmed, my lady?” Gerwulf asked, his rough voice tight as he scanned the alleyways for secondary threats.

“We… we are unhurt,” Leanna breathed, clutching her trembling hands into the folds of her skirt.

“We must return to the inn immediately,” Gerwulf commanded, stepping past the immobile men and ushering the women ahead of him. “The city isn’t safe.”

They moved back through the labyrinthine streets in tense silence. The walk felt like an eternity, but soon the familiar timbered facade of the noble inn rose before them. As they crossed under the stone archway into the courtyard, the temperature in the air seemed to plummet.

Standing by the central fountain was Emperor Alaric.

He was stripped of his heavy traveling furs, wearing only a black tunic and dark trousers, but his presence dominated the entire courtyard.

The moment his dark eyes swept over Leanna — taking in her wind-disheveled hair, the smudge of alley soot on her jaw, and her torn linen hem — a terrifying shift took hold of him. The air around him vibrated with a dangerous, draconic wrath. A low rumble seemed to echo from the absolute depths of his chest, thick with a dark, suffocating power.

His eyes, usually dark as midnight, flared with a faint, unnatural green hue.

Clang!

Before anyone could blink, Alaric crossed the courtyard in a blur of movement. The rasp of steel filled the air as he drew his blade, stopping the razor-sharp edge mere millimeters from Lord Gerwulf’s exposed throat.

Gerwulf froze instantly, his hand hovering over his own bloody sheath, his eyes wide.

“You had one task, Gerwulf,” Alaric purred softly, his voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register that made the hair on Leanna’s arms stand on end. “Keep her safe. And yet she returns to me looking as though she barely escaped a slaughterhouse.”

“Your Majesty—” Gerwulf began, keeping perfectly still against the cold steel pressed into his skin.

“Give me one reason,” Alaric growled, his jaw clenching as the golden fire in his eyes burned hotter, “why I shouldn’t take your head right here?”