Byzantium's Crown Read Online Free

it! You know what her eyes are like—deep green, slow poison. They drink your will." Alexa dropped her head briefly, then forced herself to meet Marric's eyes again. "And I have heard her recite strange words . . . "
    Marric knew such study had always fascinated Alexa. So she might feel that Irene's delving into lost powers made her more dangerous.
    "She uses Ctesiphon to make my life a continual misery. Ever since the harvest failed, they both have been hinting that he and I should appear together in the temples and bless the empire."
    That was Marric's privilege as rightful emperor. He hissed with anger. "The bastard presumes! I am father's eldest son, born in the porphyry chamber while Irene was little more than a concubine. Our mother, not Ctesiphon's, was the tree Isis."
    "I told him, 'Brother, Marric is your elder and my full sibling, Alexander's lawful heir,' but he laughed and warned me that Cherson was full of strange fevers. I was afraid that he might—"
    "I prefer Huns to that kind of game," Marric said slowly. He had resented exile. Now he saw the sense in his father's decision.
    Had Alexander known his second wife's capacity for betrayal? Pray Osiris, Ptah, and all the other gods that he had never guessed bow Irene had caressed his elder son with her eyes. Marric had been in his early twenties then, with a reputation that fully justified her interest, even were he not the royal heir. But perhaps Alexander had known; why else would he send Marric away and die without sending him a word? Or had he feared that Irene would seduce his son only to kill him?"
    "I think," mused Alexa, "that only the fact that Irene has no daughter has kept me alive this long. She needs a daughter . . . now she schemes for a marriage between herself and the Reaver-jarl of Jomsborg—"
    "The city is dying!" Marric interrupted. "I saw. It needs its proper ruler right now. When I came up here, the guards were drunk, and there were corpses in the gutter. That never happened when Father ruled. Alexa, have you told me everything?"
    "I haven't," she whispered. "Ctesiphon sees what you see. That is why he presses me to appear in the temples. I too think, if the harvests continue to fail, that I might have to . . . for the empire's well-being." Then she burst out, "Don't look at me that way! It's my realm too! Father raised me to put it first. Do you think you're the only one who wants power?" Then she covered her face with both hands. He could barely hear her next words.
    "And there's more too. He leeches!" Alexa cried in a low, passionate voice. "Since he came of age, he has lounged about me until I fail to invent ways of dismissing him. Or Irene summons me, and there he is, standing too close, touching me while she smiles. They watch me as if I were a crippled bird and they a cat!"
    Marric slammed a fist down onto the curved arm of his chair. Under his level brows, his dark eyes flashed. Alexa and the empire were his! "If he apes Osiris, then let him look to his dam for an Isis!"
    Alexa gasped. Her hand moved in a sign to avert punishment for blasphemy from Marric. That was where they were unlike. Marric's father had complained that Marric paid the priests too little attention; but the priestesses of Isis had cautioned the emperor that Alexa's interest in ritual seemed overstrong. Magic—Marric remembered the druid's vision and made a sign of his own.
    "Do you remember that Aillel told us that in some lands, brother with sister is a sin? And Ctesiphon is your half-brother—"
    "He sickens me!" Alexa poured more wine and gulped it. "Marric, you are the rightful emperor, and that is the way of things. Before I let him touch me, I will draw a blade across my face or swallow fire!"
    "No need," he soothed her. "By the gods, 'Lexa, he sickens me too. He always has. What do you suggest?"
    Alexa gestured to the mosaic on her chamber wall. Wrought there was the story of how the line of Old Rome had united with that of Alexander's Egypt after