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  For a moment I was tempted to leave him there. But my oath came back to haunt me. First, do no harm…

  “You help Prince Morbain,” I told the last guard who was staggering by now. “And then all of you get out and seek medical attention. Now!”

  I rushed out the door as I finished delivering my last order and went to crouch beside Kristoff, who was laid out, still face down, on the ground. Doloroso, his other hand now a pulpy red mess, was being dragged away screaming and swearing and bleeding profusely everywhere.

  I paid him absolutely no attention. Instead I knelt by Kristoff and motioned to the guards, who were at the end of their strength.

  “Turn him over, please.”

  I tried to keep my voice calm and collected but I could hear the edge of hysteria threatening to take over, just under the surface.

  No, I told myself. No, I have to keep control. I have to do this—have to save Kristoff. I can’t do that if I lose my head. Keep it together, Charlotte!

  “I’m here, your Majesty! I brought my kit!”

  I looked up to see the young female Majoran doctor rushing to my side.

  “Oh, thank goodness!” I held out a hand to her—it happened to be the one with Doloroso’s still glued to it.

  She recoiled. “Your Majesty—what—?”

  “It’s glued on,” I said quickly. “It’s not important right now. I mean it’s awful, but what matters is Kristoff. He just fell on a bomb to save me. Help me!”

  “Right away, your Majesty!” She knelt beside me, her long blue hair pulled back in a hasty ponytail at the nape of her neck, her long white robe getting dirty, though she didn’t seem to notice or care.

  At the end of their strength, the guards turned Kristoff over and I saw…nothing.

  His face was slack and unresponsive but though the center of his golden breastplate was splattered with blood, the metal wasn’t broken or corroded in any way.

  “Oh, thank God,” I whispered. “He must just be unconscious.”

  But when I looked at the Majoran doctor, she had a grim expression on her pretty features.

  “You say he fell on a bomb, your Majesty?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was…one of the guards called it some kind of…um…”

  “A nano-lacerater, your Majesty,” one of the guards who had helped drag Kristoff out said in a hoarse voice. “Nasty piece of work, those are.”

  “Help me get his breastplate off,” the Majoran doctor snapped.

  “I know how it works!” I tried to help but Doloroso’s disembodied hand, still glued to mine, impeded my progress.

  “Here, your Majesty.” Reaching into her kit, the doctor took out a small aerosol can, like the one Doloroso had used in the first place, and sprayed it to the place where my hand was gripped by the dead one. It slid off at once, as though she’d greased my hand with baby oil.

  “Thank you!” I shoved the awful thing away and wiped my slippery hand on my rich gold gown, heedless of the bloody smear I left on the priceless fabric. It was good to be free of the damn thing—I felt a momentary sense of relief, quickly quenched when I looked at Kristoff’s slack face.

  “Hurry!” Quickly I helped the doctor lift the heavy top of the golden breastplate. It felt like I was having a flashback to the first time I had ever seen Kristoff, when he lay on the ER gurney, out cold after delivering his strange message. But I hadn’t known then what he would mean to me—hadn’t loved him so much it felt my heart might break trying to contain all the emotion I felt for him.

  “There. That’s their entry point.”

  The Majoran doctor was pointing to a bloody, ragged hole in the white undershirt garment that Kristoff wore under his breastplate.

  “What entry point? What are you talking about? How could anything get in? His breastplate was fine! There wasn’t a crack in it.” I protested, hearing that edge of hysteria in my voice again.

  But I couldn’t help remembering how it had been fine before, too, back on Earth when the nanos had gotten to him. Then he had needed a transfusion of my blood to make it through—here I didn’t have any ready to go. No pre-drawn bags to hang. What was I going to do?

  “A bomb like this is filled with lacerating nanobots,” the doctor explained. “They’re small enough to go through almost any substance without harming it. And they do—because they’re programmed to wait until they find flesh to start doing damage. Once they start, well…” Grabbing the ragged edges of the hole in Kristoff’s blood-splattered white shirt, she ripped it completely apart, baring his chest.

  A sound like a strangled gasp was torn from my throat. There was a hole in Kristoff’s chest—a hole that went all the way down to where his heart should be.

  I say should be because it wasn’t there.

  I’d seen enough patients lying open on the OR table to know what someone’s insides should look like. I knew the cardiac muscle with its elegant, fleshy curves. Your heart is as big as your fist so Kristoff’s should have been large and visible but there was nothing.

  Nothing but a bloody hole and a mass of mangled flesh.

  A blood transfusion wouldn’t save him this time. Not even if I gave him every drop in my body—which I gladly would have done. It was too late.

  “I’m so sorry, your Majesty,” the doctor said in a quiet voice. “But this…is not fixable. Not even with the latest technology. The nanobots must have been programmed to target the heart.”

  “I…I know,” I said numbly. “I can see that.”

  “He performed his duty to the last, your Majesty.” The doctor took my hand and squeezed it hard. I wished absently that I knew her name. “He took the blast that was meant for you. And he probably saved everyone in the palace. If the bomb had gone wild, it could have penetrated the barrier which guards the door to the Garden of Death. The whole palace would have been flooded with poisonous gas—tens of thousands who live and work here would have died.”

  I knew she was trying to make me feel better—to see what a hero Kristoff was. But all I could think was that it was all my fault. That if I hadn’t turned out to be the Goddess-Empress and he hadn’t come to save and protect me, he would still be safe.

  He would still be alive.

  “It should have been me,” I whispered. And then the tears came pouring down my cheeks. Hot and wet and so painful I felt like my own heart was shredding in my chest as they came. Gone, he was gone and it was all because of me!

  “He’s gone,” I heard a familiar voice say, echoing my words.

  “Truly? A pity. He was a good guard. Sundalla the 999th’s favorite, by all accounts.”

  “Well, at least this leaves the True Incarnation free to form another bond,” the first voice said. “It’s all to the best—much less trouble this way.”

  I looked up and saw who was talking. Head Councilor Tannus stood by, watching my agony with smug satisfaction. Beside him was Doctor Churika, a neutral expression on her face. If she was sorry for the awful death Kristoff had suffered on my behalf, her demeanor certainly didn’t show it.

  Rage suddenly filled me at their callus unconcern and at Tannus’s actual enjoyment of my pain. There’s a German word for that—for being made happy when someone else is hurt. I couldn’t think of it then but I could certainly tell he was experiencing it. He thought he would get his own way now with Kristoff out of the picture, that he could pick my consort and rule through him, bypassing me except as a figure head.

  No. Hell, no!

  I stood on trembling legs, my rage so absolute I could barely see.

  “You think you’ve won,” I said to Tannus, my voice shaking with fury. “You think with Kristoff out of the way you can do anything you want.”

  He smirked at me. “Well, the death of Captain Verrai is, of course, most unfortunate. But now that he’s gone, I think it would be best if you allow yourself to be guided by the Council in the matter of choosing a consort—”

  “I don’t want a Consort—Kristoff was my Consort! My fated mate—th