The Viking and the Runaway Empress by Sarah Rodi

Author:Sarah Rodi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2023-12-06T15:58:04+00:00

Chapter Seven

When the warning horn sounded out over the city the next morning, Livia’s heart lurched.

The date had been set for her father’s funeral in a week, and for both her and her uncle to petition the Electoral College in just two days, giving Livia what the council deemed enough time for her to deal with her grief and Prince Lothair enough time to travel to Rome. Anger flared at the thought. She couldn’t believe they were allowing Lothair that concession, given all he and his men had done. She was furious with him, and she was determined she would not let him get away with it.

Upon hearing the warning horn, her skin prickled. Had Lothair arrived already, come to try to take her father’s throne? She stepped out of the bath and her maids wrapped her in a huge silk sheet, but she wasn’t interested in getting dressed. She wanted to see what was happening outside. She peered through the small window, trying to see out over the grand courtyard down below, to work out what was happening.

She could see the Royal Guard manning the walls, but scanning their positions, she saw they were opening the gates, letting in a convoy of marching men. And she reeled. They weren’t wearing the Royal uniform of Rome, or the phoenix of her uncle’s banner, but the burgundy cloak and dragon emblem of the Varangian Guard. And then she saw who was leading them. It wasn’t her uncle who had arrived, but Emperor Alexios and a contingent of his army.

No! Had he really come all the way from Constantinople to claim her? And would he use force?

This could not be happening. Not now.

She believed Alexios’s presence here would make the nobles anxious, unsure of what the Byzantine emperor’s arrival meant for their own empire. They would not like the thought of a foreigner ruling over them, and she didn’t want his arrival to ruin her chances of succeeding the throne. Because she had decided now, after speaking with her father, and listening to Destin’s words last night, that she was going to petition to be queen. And her engagement to the emperor might be the very thing putting her crown at risk.

When she had gone to see her father, he had looked so small and frail, lying there in his grand bed. A shadow of his former self. He’d reached out for her and she’d run to him, taking his hand and kneeling beside him. He had spoken slowly, as if he was in a great deal of pain, and he had apologised for putting his wars and greed for glory and more lands before her. He’d said sorry for being a different man since Otto had died, thinking only of warfare and vengeance for his son’s death. He had told her he’d regretted some of the decisions he had made, including how he’d dealt with her mother’s death. And she had squeezed his hand and stroked his brow and told him she forgave him.

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