Renouncing the Emperor's Heart

Three Days

Jovine woke with a frown.

Snapping her head to the side, she half-expected to find him laying beside her, spent and sweaty from the images still trapped in her mind. To her great relief, all she found was Erin sprawled out on her back, softly snoring and drooling away in her sleep.

Dragging a hand down her haggard face, she cursed her dreams. For the past three days, her nights were haunted with memories. Whenever sleep had claimed her, she found herself back in love and in bliss with the husband she now hated. The worst part was waking up with the echos of happiness, only to remember the reality of her scorn.

"Look at me. Just look at me, and I'll lead you."

"You only see me. You have always only looked at me."

Richard's words rang in her mind. Two different times. Two different men who spoke to her — a husband she loved and an enemy she loathed.

It was hard to admit, but he was right. She had only ever looked at him. Stars, yellow roses, chocolate sweets, warm candlelight, marble fountains, steel domes. So many aspects of her memories and paths were intertwined with the very man who formed and broke her heart.

Why do you have to haunt me, even in my dreams?

She needed to get out.

Jovine tucked the thrown blankets around Erin. The last couple nights, she had insisted on staying, and although Jovine despised becoming a burden, she was grateful for the company. Falling asleep to the familiar tone of her snores and the haphazard way she always took up all the space on the bed reminded Jovine of their childhood. They had often stayed up, giggling through the night when they were younger, and it eased the weight of her heavy heart to recover a piece of the simplicity and innocence she had felt back then. She brushed away the hairs stuck to Erin's drooling mouth, grateful and full of guilt.

Wrapping herself in a velvet coat, Jovine ventured out of the Palace. As soon as the icy air burst into her face, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The feeling of suffocation soon departed and her head cleared from the remnants of the dream she was eager to forget. Jovine burrowed her hands into the fur-lined pockets of her coat and mindlessly walked through the Palace grounds.

Life had changed since she awakened in the past. Her duties remained as an Empress, but she was no longer a heartbroken wife who desperately sought her husband's attention. She no longer lingered by his offices, sent requests for his audience, or matched his daily schedules to run into him by chance. She no longer waited in the Dining Halls at every meal, hoping he would show up at least once to dine with her. In fact, she hadn't faced him or Emilia since their last encounter. It should have brought her some semblance of peace, but Jovine was as restless as ever.

She filled her days poring over historical texts or the hidden map she still couldn't decipher. And nothing was brought to light. This maddening chase the late Empress seemed to be sending her on had no end, and Jovine sometimes feared she'd lose her mind by the end of it.

And her letter remained unanswered. Three days had come and gone without a single reply and it unsettled her. Perhaps she shouldn't have written it at all. Expecting anything from it was her first mistake.

Jovine sighed, a stream of vapors puffing out into the cold night. She wrapped her arms across her chest to chase away the frosted chill and when she finally realized the trail of her path, her feet had already taken her to a spot she had been frequenting more often than not. She stared up at the quaint little chapel. It was an old stone building with wooden fixtures and kaleidoscopic murals etched into the glass windows. Built hundreds of years ago by Emperor Thomas de Tristaine, it was meant to offer a space for those who searched for peace and prayer. Things Jovine looked for these days.

As the years passed, not as many members of the Imperial Family or even the Palace servants came around the area. It was settled on the outskirts of the Palace and shrouded by a path of overgrown willow trees and a running pond, so the space was always quiet and empty enough for Jovine to rest in the silence. She found it comforting, sitting on the hardwood pews as she closed her eyes and basked in the fractured, colored sunlight streaming through the vibrant windows. She would sometimes try praying, speaking to a divine God she believed existed but never truly pursued.

When her father brought her along to a church in their town as a young girl, she had once heard the minister speak of a love that never faded. In the face of her brokenness, the idea was as appealing as ever. A higher being who was above the corruption humans always fell for and one who would be steadfast in love and forgiveness. It was healing thinking something like that could exist.

So Jovine whispered the truth of her broken heart in the secrecy of the empty chapel and prayed her quest for vengeance wouldn't cost her a soul she didn't want to lose. If she was already without a heart, she couldn't bear to forfeit anything else.

Jovine briskly walked through the path of willows, yearning for the heat she'd find indoors and a moment to recollect her scattered thoughts. Just as she ascended the stone steps, a harsh gust of wind almost knocked her back and a piercing whistle from the breeze rang in her ears. Jovine's heart picked up, startled from her near fall, but it was also from a strange sense of something unknown that sank the pit of her stomach.

When she reached out to open the doors, a voice in her head told her to turn back.

Unease bled into her senses but so did a dangerous dose of reckless bravery.

She opened the door and stepped through the threshold.

Zing.

The glint of a blurred knife flew through the air, whisking so close to her skin she felt the cold steel. In one blink, it was embedded right by her ear and into the doorsill.

The moment came and passed so abruptly she barely had a chance to flinch. Instead, her body locked up until every muscle was strained and the breath she was holding choked her airway. All was frozen except her eyes, which traveled up to the parchment stabbed into the knife. Her letter.

A dark, hooded figure emerged from the standing columns. The glint of a scarred, hidden face and his light hair briefly appeared under the moonlight shining through the open doorway but then he was back in the shadows again. His height was small and a few inches shorter than where she stood, but the magnitude of his aura overwhelmed his small stature.

The man himself was fear incarnate.

One flick of his wrist and a match sparked in the dark. He whipped his hood off, and Jovine met his green eyes.

"Hello, Vinnie," he smirked.

"Hello, brother."