For the Sake of an Empire Ch. 01

A mere servant had murdered the king and now with him dead, only his daughter stood in line to take over the throne. Marcus trusted Portia with this task no more than he have trusted a child. Celaenia was his country and he owed it allegiance. His loyalty by default belonged to Portia. These were dark days indeed.

His cousin was a beautiful woman. Her skin was like silk, her eyes a luminous gray. She was a beauty, more fair than the Goddess of Love, her movements graceful and almost serpentine when she danced. Even at age twenty, when he had last seen her, she had been able to command men to their knees with just the promise of a smile. Her seeming innocence made men wish to protect her, but they would have been better off defending themselves. Portia needed no man to protect the interests that she would always look after herself.

Marcus rubbed one hand over his face, feeling several days' worth of stubble and dirt sunk deep into his flesh. Yet for all of that physical filth, he still felt cleaner now than he would in his lady cousin's presence. The soils of the earth were ones that he understood. They were clean in their simplicity. There were no lies and false smiles to be wary of from the earth. While he was out here with the sky above him and the ground beneath, he was free. Those same freedoms were curtailed within the Empire's golden walls where the snakes truly lay.

The loveliest of them would await his arrival with a smile in her voice and flowers in her hair.

"Ready the men, Felix. Tomorrow we journey home..."