My Cruel Boss Laughed At My Scars — Until The Emperor Knelt Before Me
Part 2
The heavy oak hinges groaned a harsh complaint in the dead silence of the ballroom.
Golden light spilled into the cramped room.
It cut across the dusty floorboards and illuminated me entirely.
My worn gray dress absorbed the light rather than reflecting it.
I did not curtsy.
My scarred hands rested loosely at my sides.
For ten agonizing seconds, absolutely nobody breathed.
The entire aristocracy watched the apex predator of their world stare down a lowly servant.
They undoubtedly expected a summary execution.
They expected the Emperor to drag me out by my hair for the perceived insult of my mere presence.
David just stared at me.
The harsh angles of his face softened millisecond by millisecond.
The cold flinty deadness in his eyes melted into something utterly raw.
His chest rose and fell in a ragged uneven breath.
“You changed your name.”
His gravelly voice was a quiet rasp.
“Rachel is my middle name.”
“It drew less attention.”
“You cut your hair.”
He took a slow step closer.
“It kept catching in the bandages.”
“Mud and blood are difficult to wash out of curls.”
The casual mention of blood sent a physical shudder through the lords standing nearest to the door.
They did not speak of it openly.
They certainly did not speak of it with the Emperor.
David took another step closer.
He completely crossed the threshold into the dusty antechamber.
“I looked for you.”
“For five years, I turned the northern provinces inside out.”
“I burned three rebel strongholds to the ground because I thought they had taken you.”
“I was not taken.”
I met his intense gaze.
“I left.”
“The war ended.”
“My contract was fulfilled.”
Greg Harrington watched from behind the crossed halberds of the imperial guards.
“Your Majesty.”
Greg blurted out the words unable to contain his frantic panic.
“She is a servant.”
“She earns four coppers a week.”
“She is a commoner.”
David slowly turned his head.
He looked at Greg not as a duke but as an insect.
“A commoner.”
He tasted the word like pure poison.
David turned back to me.
He unbuttoned his heavy dark military tunic.
He slipped it off his broad shoulders.
He draped the thick warm fabric over my shivering frame.
Then, in front of three hundred of the wealthiest people in the world, Emperor David dropped to one knee.
He took my right hand and turned it over.
He pressed his lips directly to the ruined flesh.
“I told you,” David murmured.
“If I lived to wear the crown, I would tear down the world for you.”
“I am here to fulfill my vow.”
Could I truly go back to the blood and the power, or had the war already broken me too much?
Part 3
The answer to whether Rachel could return to the blood and the power was decided the moment Emperor David kissed her scarred hand.
She could not hide anymore, and she realized the peace of the attic was merely another kind of death.
Silk rustled and gold clinked in the opulent ballroom of the Harrington estate.
High society thrived on cruel hierarchies and shallow whispers.
Greg Harrington built his entire existence on these fragile invisible rules.
It was a bitter jagged sound meant to cut her down.
“She is just a commoner,” Greg had sneered to his fawning peers.
He certainly never expected the Emperor to drop to his knees before her.
Needles do not forgive easily.
Rachel learned this lesson a decade ago, yet the sharp prick on her left index finger still drew a quiet hiss from her lips.
A single bead of crimson welled against her pale calloused skin.
She pressed it hard against her thumb, desperately waiting for the stinging to subside.
She was extremely careful not to let a drop stain the ivory silk pooled in her lap.
Ruining Sarah Harrington’s gown meant immediate dismissal.
Dismissal meant returning to the freezing cobbled streets of the capital, and Rachel was entirely done with freezing.
Rain lashed violently against the small attic window.
Rachel rubbed her aching shoulders and picked up her shears.
Her brown hair was pinned back in a severe practical knot.
She did not look like a woman who harbored dangerous secrets.
She looked exactly like what she was paid to be.
She was invisible.
Below her, the Harrington estate hummed with a frantic and suffocating energy.
The Emperor himself was attending.
They waxed the massive floors until they gleamed like dark still water.
Sudden footsteps echoed loudly on the narrow wooden staircase.
The footfalls were heavy, booted, and extremely deliberate.
Rachel did not look up from the delicate lace she was attaching to the bodice.
Greg Harrington stepped into the cramped sewing room.
He stood tall, handsome in a rather cold and statuesque manner.
His pale eyes seemed to constantly calculate the monetary value of everyone he looked at.
He was dressed in a finely tailored velvet riding coat.
He obviously despised setting foot in the dusty attic.
He hated the dust, the smell of labor, and the proximity to the people who kept his life comfortable.
“Has my sister’s dress been finished, girl?”
Greg’s flat drawl completely lacked any trace of warmth.
“The hem will require another hour of work, sir.”
Rachel tied a knot with mechanical precision.
It served merely as a necessary tool for her current job.
Greg clicked his tongue, showing profound annoyance.
“An hour? You workers move with the urgency of glaciers.”
He paced the small room, his boots leaving faint tracks on the dusty floorboards.
“Do you comprehend who is stepping foot in my home tonight?”
“The Emperor himself.”
“A ruler who burns cities before breakfast.”
“Sarah needs to be absolutely flawless.”
“If she manages to catch his eye, the Harrington name will never answer to a provincial tax collector again.”
“I am fully aware of the stakes, sir.”
Rachel bit the end of the thread to snap it.
Greg halted in his tracks.
“Stop biting the thread.”
“You resemble a street dog gnawing on a bone.”
“Where exactly did the housekeeper find you?”
“I merely answered an advertisement for a skilled hand, sir.”
“A skilled hand, you say.”
Greg leaned casually against the wooden doorframe with a mocking twist on his lips.
He appeared to take a perverse pleasure in tormenting the servants when his own nerves were frayed.
“You possess the hands of a common field worker.”
“They are entirely covered in ugly scars and calluses.”
“It is a complete miracle you don’t snag the silk every time you touch it.”
Rachel looked down at her hands.
There were thick burn marks on her left wrist.
They were the remnants of a mud-soaked medical tent.
These were memories of holding shattered men together while heavy mortar fire rained down.
Five years ago, Rachel had not been sewing silk.
She had been sewing human flesh.
She offered Greg no explanation whatsoever.
Explanations were a vulnerability in this house.
“I will wash my hands thoroughly before handling the bodice again, sir.”
Greg snorted loudly.
He was clearly disappointed that he had not elicited tears or a stammering apology.
“See that you do.”
“And when the ball begins, you will stay completely out of sight.”
“I don’t want the guests seeing the help loitering in the corridors.”
“We are projecting absolute perfection tonight.”
He gestured vaguely at her worn gray woolen dress.
“Not whatever this is.”
“I have absolutely no desire to attend the ball, sir.”
“Attend?”
Greg barked a harsh abrasive laugh.
“Good God, girl.”
“I didn’t think you were harboring delusions of grandeur.”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself in a room full of actual consequence.”
“You would likely faint if the Emperor merely looked in your general direction.”
He turned on his heel and quickly descended the stairs.
His cruel laughter echoed down the stairwell.
Rachel sat perfectly still until the sound faded completely.
She let out a long slow breath.
She remembered a young man delirious with fever gripping her hand.
He gripped it so hard he nearly broke her fingers.
Rachel picked up her needle and resumed sewing.
She did not care about her boss’s arrogant laughter.
She only cared about finishing the hem.
Music drifted up through the floorboards like thick smoke.
It was a heavy intoxicating waltz played by a massive orchestra.
The Harrington estate was no longer a house.
It was a theater of absolute excess.
Rachel stood quietly in the cramped antechamber just off the main ballroom corridor.
Sarah had insisted Rachel remain on standby.
She was convinced she would burst a seam if she inhaled too deeply.
The heat radiating from the ballroom was incredibly intense.
Rachel stood perfectly still in the shadows.
They moved like exotic birds dripping in rubies and emeralds.
It was a beautiful and terrifying machine.
However, the smiles absolutely did not reach their eyes.
Brian, a young footman balancing an empty tray, leaned close to her.
“He is making them sweat.”
“The Emperor himself.”
“He knows they are all terrified of him.”
Rachel felt a strange tight pulling in her chest.
“He was never one for punctuality.”
Brian looked at her completely sideways.
“You say that like you actually know him.”
“I know the type.”
Rachel kept her expression perfectly smooth.
“Men with power rarely check clocks.”
A sudden, sharp tearing sound echoed near the ballroom entrance.
Sarah had accidentally stepped backward directly onto the train of her own gown.
A two-inch rip opened right at the seam of her hip.
Absolute panic flashed instantly across Greg’s face.
He seized his sister’s arm with a terribly bruising grip.
He dragged her forcefully toward the dark antechamber where Rachel stood.
“Repair it.”
Greg shoved Sarah directly toward Rachel.
“Repair it right this instant.”
“He will be arriving any minute.”
Rachel dropped to her knees without a single word.
She pulled the velvet pouch from her pocket and threaded the needle.
Her hands were completely steady despite the poor lighting.
“Hurry it up, you useless creature.”
Greg drew out a pocket watch and stared at it in a frantic manner.
Rachel tied off the thread and bit the end.
“The seam is secure, sir.”
Before she could even rise from the floor, a profound earth-shattering silence fell over the ballroom.
The music stopped abruptly.
The low hum of a hundred ongoing conversations died in an instant.
“He has arrived.”
Greg’s usual arrogance momentarily vanished.
He pushed Sarah back into the bright light of the ballroom.
Rachel stayed on her knees for a moment.
She moved slightly to the left so she could see through the gap in the doors.
A full squad of Imperial guards marched in first.
They were dressed in pitch-black uniforms entirely devoid of decorative fluff.
They all carried live steel.
Then the man himself finally walked in.
Emperor David entered.
He was taller than Rachel remembered.
He was significantly broader across the shoulders.
He wore a dark military tunic unadorned except for a single silver star.
His visage was a harsh landscape of cold, absolute authority.
It was a scar Rachel had stitched in the dark with freezing numb fingers.
His dark, flinty eyes methodically swept the room.
It resembled the look of a wolf entering a pen of extremely nervous sheep.
Greg stepped forward and bowed so deeply he almost scraped his nose on the marble floor.
“Your Gracious Imperial Majesty.”
Greg attempted to project a false, overwhelming confidence.
“The House of Harrington is most profoundly honored.”
David refused to look at Greg.
He was gazing entirely past them.
He stared directly at the narrow crack in the antechamber doors.
Greg quickly noticed the direction of the Emperor’s gaze.
His face flushed crimson when he realized Rachel was still visible in the shadows.
He forced a strained apologetic laugh.
“Please forgive the intrusion of the staff, Your Majesty.”
Greg practically sneered those words.
“She is merely a commoner, a clumsy seamstress who lost her way.”
“I shall have her removed immediately.”
David finally turned to look at Greg.
His expression was so intensely dangerous that Greg physically stepped back.
Then the most ruthless man on the continent reached out and pushed open the closet door.
The heavy oak hinges groaned a harsh complaint into the dead silence of the ballroom.
Bright golden light spilled into the cramped room.
It cut across the dusty floorboards and illuminated Rachel entirely.
Her worn gray dress absorbed the light rather than reflecting it.
She did not bow.
She stood with her shoulders squared and her chin level.
Her scarred hands rested loosely at her sides.
For ten agonizing seconds, absolutely no one breathed.
They expected the Emperor to drag her out by her hair for the perceived insult of her mere presence.
David just stared at her.
His broad chest rose and fell in a ragged, uneven breath.
“You have changed your name.”
His deep gravelly voice was a quiet rasp.
“Rachel happens to be my middle name.”
She kept her posture rigid.
“It attracted less attention.”
“You have cut your hair.”
“It constantly kept catching in the bandages.”
“Mud and dried blood are difficult to wash out of curls.”
That casual mention of blood sent a physical shudder through the lords standing nearest to the door.
They lived in a world where war was a concept negotiated over brandy and cigars.
They certainly never spoke of such things with the Emperor.
David took one more step closer.
He finally crossed the threshold into the dusty antechamber.
“I searched for you.”
“For five long years, I turned the northern provinces inside out.”
“I burned three entire rebel strongholds to the ground because I thought they had taken you.”
“I was definitely not taken.”
“I simply left.”
“The long war ended.”
“My original contract was fulfilled.”
“You left in the middle of the night.”
A flash of old desperate anger broke through his calm facade.
“You left while I was still bedridden with a bullet in my ribs.”
“You left a note written on the back of a rationing card.”
“You were recovering.”
She refused to look away.
“You had your generals.”
“You had your crown waiting.”
“You did not need a field nurse.”
“I did not need a nurse.”
He stepped so close to her that the gold braiding on his uniform brushed the coarse wool of her dress.
“I needed you.”
Greg Harrington watched in silence from behind the crossed halberds of the imperial guards.
He felt his pristine calculated mind violently reject what he was hearing.
“But Your Majesty.”
Greg blurted out the words, unable to contain his frantic panic.
“She is merely a servant.”
“She earns a pathetic four coppers a week.”
“She is just a commoner.”
David very slowly turned his head.
The raw vulnerability vanished completely.
He looked at Greg not as a noble duke but as an insect.
“Just a commoner.”
He tasted the word as if it were pure poison.
David turned back to Rachel.
He gently slipped it off his broad shoulders.
He draped the thick warm fabric over her shivering frame.
Then, in front of three hundred of the wealthiest people in the entire world, Emperor David dropped to one knee.
He took her right hand and turned it over.
He pressed his lips gently to the ruined flesh.
“I told you,” David quietly murmured.
“If I lived to wear the crown, I swore I would tear down the world for you.”
“I stand here to fulfill my vow.”
Gasps rippled through the ballroom.
It was a collective intake of breath from three hundred aristocrats.
A few ladies raised feathered fans to their mouths in genuine shock.
The Emperor of the continent was kneeling in the dust.
Rachel looked down at the dark hair of the man kneeling before her.
She had chosen a life of quiet invisibility, trading the trauma of survival for the numbness of poverty.
Now, the past was kneeling on her floor kissing her hand.
“Get up, David.”
David lifted his head.
“Command me and I will.”
“I am commanding you.”
“You are making a spectacle.”
“I am making a point.”
He slowly rose to his feet.
He kept a firm gentle grip on her scarred hand, refusing to let her pull away.
He turned to face the ballroom, dragging Rachel slightly out of the shadows.
Greg Harrington looked like he was going to vomit.
His pristine highly calculated world had just been violently inverted.
They stepped back to flank the Emperor, leaving Greg completely exposed.
“Lord Harrington.”
David’s voice resonated through the room.
It was flat, carrying the cold authority of a military tribunal.
Greg flinched.
“Majesty, please.”
“I did not know.”
“The girl never spoke of her past.”
“You called her a commoner.”
David wasn’t yelling.
“You laughed.”
“I heard it from the corridor.”
“A misunderstanding, Your Majesty.”
Greg babbled, his eyes darting frantically toward Rachel.
He begged her with a pathetic wide-eyed stare to say something.
“She was hired through an agency.”
“She is merely my sister’s seamstress.”
David’s jaw tightened.
“Her name is Rachel Evans.”
“Former chief surgical officer of the fourth northern infantry.”
“During the siege, when the aristocracy refused to send reinforcements, she ran an underground triage for forty-two days without sleep.”
“She pulled shrapnel from my chest with a pair of rusted forceps while mortar fire leveled the building around us.”
The ballroom was entirely silent.
The name Rachel Evans was a ghost story among the military class.
To the powdered, perfumed lords and ladies, the war was a distant inconvenience.
To hear that the architect of their current safety was living in an attic mending their dresses was a profound shock.
David took a step toward Greg.
“You trust her to hem silk, Harrington, but you are entirely unworthy to breathe the same air she exhales.”
David’s voice dropped to a lethal murmur.
“She is not a servant in your house.”
“She is the only reason you have a house left to stand in.”
Greg swallowed hard.
“I will compensate her.”
“Your Majesty, doubly, triply.”
“I will provide an estate.”
“You will provide nothing.”
Rachel spoke up.
Her voice was completely calm.
She looked at Greg with absolute clinical indifference.
“I do not want your money, sir.”
“I earned my wages, four coppers a week.”
“You owe me exactly two coppers for the last three days of work.”
“Pay it, and my contract is concluded.”
Greg stared at her utterly baffled.
He looked at the Emperor expecting him to order an execution.
Instead, David reached into his own pocket, pulled out two copper coins, and tossed them at Greg’s feet.
They clattered loudly against the marble.
“Her contract is concluded,” David echoed.
He turned back to Rachel.
The fury evaporated instantly.
He gently adjusted the collar of his heavy military coat around her neck.
“I have a carriage waiting in the courtyard.”
“The heat in this room is entirely insufferable.”
Rachel looked at the terrified faces of the nobility.
She was deeply tired of running.
“I have a trunk upstairs.”
“It has my medical journals.”
“I will not leave them.”
“I will send a detachment of guards to retrieve it.”
David offered her his arm.
“Let us leave this place, Rachel.”
She did not take his arm.
Instead, she slipped her scarred hand into his.
His fingers curled around hers tight and secure.
The lords and ladies parted like water.
They pressed themselves against the walls, bowing their heads deeply.
They bowed not just to the Emperor, but to the woman beside him.
They walked out the grand doors leaving Greg staring blankly at two copper coins on the floor.
His entire life’s ambition was reduced to ash in a matter of minutes.
Rain battered the roof of the imperial carriage like a barrage of tiny distant bullets.
It was a heavy rhythmic sound that instantly dragged Rachel back to the canvas tents of the northern front.
Inside the carriage, however, there was absolutely no mud.
There was only the overwhelming scent of rich leather and polished oak.
David sat directly across from her.
He looked much older than he had five years ago.
Rachel carefully pulled her hand from his grasp.
She pulled his heavy military coat tighter around her shoulders.
“You made a target of me tonight,” Rachel stated flatly.
She stared at the rain streaking the glass window.
“By tomorrow morning, every spy and social-climbing aristocrat in this city will know my face.”
“They will know I am your weakness.”
David leaned back and rested his head against the wood paneling.
“They already knew I had a weakness.”
“They just didn’t know her name.”
“Now they know she is entirely untouchable.”
He reached across the small space and took her hand once more.
He pressed it flat against his chest right over his heart.
“I survived because of you.”
“My heart beats because your hands refused to let it stop.”
“You do not get to walk away from the life you saved.”
Rachel felt the steady powerful thud of his heart beneath her palm.
“I don’t know how to be an empress,” she whispered.
David smiled.
It was a small dangerous and fiercely possessive thing.
“Good.”
“Because I have absolutely no desire for an empress.”
“I need my surgeon back.”
The next morning broke over the capital with the gray unrelenting chill of early winter.
Rachel did not sleep.
When the sun finally crested the palace walls, she was fully dressed.
It felt like armor.
She walked the corridors entirely alone.
The Imperial Hospital occupied an entire floor of the Eastern Annex.
As Rachel pushed through the heavy brass-handled doors, she immediately stopped.
The ward was pristine.
White linen sheets were pulled extremely tight across fifty iron cots.
Rachel’s stomach twisted into a harsh knot.
A quiet hospital was a morgue.
Rachel walked down the central aisle of the main hospital ward.
The air smelled strongly of bleached cotton and dried lavender, a perfumed mask meant to hide the underlying rot of infection.
In the third bed on the right, a young infantryman lay perfectly still.
His skin was the color of old wax, a stark contrast to the vivid feverish flush of the men in the surrounding beds.
Rachel checked his bandages, her expression hardening when she realized they had not been changed since morning.
She moved swiftly toward the administrative wing, determined to find the attending staff.
As she approached the frosted glass doors of the doctors’ lounge, she heard the unmistakable clinking of fine china.
Through the slight gap in the door, she saw them.
The four senior doctors were comfortably seated around a mahogany table.
They were drinking tea from delicate porcelain cups, laughing happily at a joke she couldn’t hear.
They had completely ignored the overflowing ward outside.
A cold fury settled in Rachel’s chest.
Rachel pushed the glass door open violently.
The heavy door slammed against the wall with a deafening crack.
The four doctors jumped in fright, spilling hot tea onto their pristine coats.
“See here,” Doctor Peterson barked, setting his teacup down with a clatter.
“This is a restricted area.”
“Are you the chief physician?” Rachel asked coldly, stepping fully into the room.
“I am Doctor Peterson, and you are trespassing.”
“Orderly, remove this woman.”
“The boy in bed three is dying of a necrotic infection,” Rachel interrupted.
“His bandages haven’t been changed in at least two days.”
“The man in bed twelve is suffocating on fluid in his lungs, and you have him lying flat.”
“You are running a cemetery, Doctor Peterson, not a hospital.”
“How dare you?”
“I studied at the Royal Academy.”
Rachel reached into the pocket of her navy tunic.
She pulled out a heavy cylinder of black wax stamped deeply with the imperial seal.
It landed with a dull heavy thud right next to Peterson’s teacup.
“I am Rachel Evans.”
“By direct decree of Emperor David, I am the new chief medical officer of the Imperial Vanguard.”
“You are currently drinking tea on my ward.”
The silence in the office was absolute.
“That is impossible,” Peterson stammered in panic.
“The Emperor would never appoint a woman.”
“Now, put down your cup, Doctor Peterson.”
“We are opening the boy’s stump in bed three.”
“If the necrosis has spread to his femoral artery, I will need you to clamp it while I reamputate.”
Peterson recoiled physically in horror.
“Reamputate here outside of the sterile theater?”
“The blood will ruin the floors.”
Rachel stared at him.
She looked at this soft perfumed man, and she felt nothing but profound arctic disgust.
“You care about the floors?”
“You are dismissed, Doctor Peterson.”
“You have exactly two minutes to vacate this hospital before I have the Imperial Guard drag you out.”
Rachel turned to the three younger doctors who were completely frozen in terror.
“You three, boil water.”
“Bring me carbolic acid, a bone saw, and fifty yards of unbleached linen.”
“Move.”
They scrambled desperately.
Rachel stripped off her tailored navy jacket.
The quiet invisible seamstress was officially dead.
The surgeon had returned to the front.
Cigars smoked heavily in the grand council chamber.
Ten men sat around a massive table carved from a single slab of black ironwood.
At the head of the table sat Emperor David.
“It is an insult to the entire peerage, Your Majesty,” the Chancellor declared.
“Lord Harrington is threatening to withhold his grain shipments from the southern provinces.”
“His sister was utterly humiliated.”
“And now this morning we received word that she has physically expelled Doctor Peterson from the hospital.”
“Doctor Peterson’s mortality rate for lower limb amputations was seventy-four percent,” David stated.
“I should have hanged him three years ago.”
Before the Chancellor could formulate a response, the heavy double doors burst open.
Rachel walked directly into the room.
She was wearing a canvas butcher’s apron saturated with fresh bright red blood.
A streak of crimson was smeared across her cheekbone.
She carried a heavy leather satchel.
She walked directly to the head of the table.
“I need your seal,” Rachel said.
“I reamputated the boy in bed three.”
“He survived the shock, but I need ice to bring down his fever.”
“The palace kitchens refused to give me their supply because they are saving it for a banquet.”
“I also need forty new iron cots, a dozen barrels of carbolic acid, and I am commandeering the south barracks for an isolation ward.”
She slammed a requisition paper onto the table.
It was lightly stained with bloody fingerprints.
The Chancellor sputtered in sheer outrage.
“You cannot commandeer the south barracks.”
“And you cannot burst into a closed council meeting covered in gore.”
Rachel finally turned her head to look at the Chancellor.
“My patient’s fever is at a hundred and four degrees,” Rachel murmured dangerously.
“If I do not get ice in the next twenty minutes, his brain will cook inside his skull.”
“So, unless you want to explain to a dying boy why a banquet is more important than his life, you will sit down and shut your mouth.”
David did not call the guards.
He handed it back to her.
“Take the ice,” David said smoothly.
“The barracks are yours.”
Rachel took the paper without saying thank you.
She left a trail of damp bloody footprints on the immaculate ironwood floor.
Blood dried to a dull rust on the canvas apron by midnight.
Rachel sat beside bed three, holding a damp rag against the infantryman’s forehead.
He was breathing deeply.
Heavy measured footsteps approached.
David stepped into the dim light.
“He is stable,” Rachel whispered.
Suddenly, heavy boots completely shattered the quiet.
Two Imperial Guards dragged a fighting, sputtering man through the double doors.
It was Greg Harrington.
“Unhand me!” Greg shrieked in desperation.
Rachel set her mug down with a sharp clack.
David leaned against an empty cot, watching with detached interest.
“Majesty,” Greg gasped, scrambling forward.
“Your vanguard breached my gates.”
“They seized my granaries.”
“This is tyranny over a slight against a seamstress.”
“I told you exactly what would happen if you threatened my supply lines,” David replied.
Greg’s frantic eyes suddenly landed on Rachel.
“You,” Greg choked.
“Tell him to call off the guard.”
“I paid your wages.”
Rachel looked at him with clinical detachment.
“You are elevating the heart rates of men trying to heal,” she murmured flatly.
“Lower your voice.”
Rachel turned to David.
“I need a secondary location.”
“The barracks are fine for isolation, but amputees need a quiet place to convalesce.”
“Somewhere outside the city’s smog with large gardens.”
David smiled darkly.
“I believe the Harrington estate has extensive gardens.”
“It is currently vacant, as its former owner is guilty of treason and extortion.”
Greg let out a sobbing gasp, collapsing onto his hands.
Rachel looked at David as the guards hauled the weeping man away.
The empire was undeniably brutal.
She had tried to hide, only to realize the only way to survive was to hold the leash of the biggest monster in the room.
David stepped close and wrapped his arms around her waist.
“The Harrington estate will make an excellent recovery ward,” David murmured into her hair.
“Though we must burn the drapes.”
Rachel let out a quiet exhausted laugh.
She was no longer hiding.
She had an empire to fix, and she finally had the power to wield the scalpel.
They stood together in the quiet hospital, looking out toward their future.
THE END
Tell us what you think about this story, and share it with your friends. It might inspire them and brighten their day.
If you enjoyed this story, read this one: My Husband Annulled Our Marriage Because I Couldn’t Give Him An Heir — Then He Found Out I Was Secretly Pregnant
Disclaimer
This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. If you would like to share your story, please send it to [email protected].
