Who sighed.
His sire nevertheless gripped the handle with both hands and pulled, throwing his weight into the effort to crack the entrance of the imperial apartment. After decades of neglect and disuse, the doors had swollen shut, but Benjic’s determination won out. Sweat dotting his face, he managed to pry the suite open enough to squeeze through. “These rooms were ruined during the march on the Winter Palace.” He coughed on the cloud of dust he’d dislodged as two guards wriggled inside the suite to confirm no danger before Nick and Arit entered. “The stories are true, Your Majesty. Soldiers, peasants, and nobles alike ripped up the floorboards and tore at the walls searching for hidden treasure. The damage was…extensive.”
“When my tour of the palace after I reached the capitol excluded the place I knew best as a boy, I assumed as much.” Nick curled his lush pink lips in wry acknowledgment. “The tribes are infamously secretive, especially about what happened during the revolution, but humans obtained photographs of the destruction before you sealed the border. You needn’t prepare me for what lies beyond these doors.”
Maybe Nick knew in his head, but anxiety blossomed afresh inside Arit that his mate overestimated the emotional burden of seeing the ruin of his childhood home. He reached for Nick’s hand, threading his fingers through Nick’s. “Let’s get this over with. He needs to rest.”
Benjic gulped, rocking from foot to foot. “A cleaning crew at least—”
“No.” Nick turned his head to affix his stare, resolute and majestic as fuck, on the elder. “I don’t want a single stick of shattered wood cleared or the ruined walls patched and replastered. The suite is a time capsule of the revolution, and as such, its historical significance is incalculable. Arit and I will spend our first night together as Emperor and Imperial Consort in these ruins as a harsh reminder of what befalls a crown who forgets the peoples, but after, the suite will be resealed. Until archivists develop a plan to open it for public viewing, I don’t want a single mote of dust disturbed more than absolutely necessary.”
A guard poked his head through the cracked doors, flashlight shining up to cast his features in eerie shadow. “We’ll need extra men in the cellars to guard this place—there’s a gaping hole in the dining room floor I could march an army through, but other than that, the rooms seem okay. From a security standpoint, I mean.”
Nodding, Nick stepped forward.
Arit pushed him gently aside to squirm through the opening first, and Nick let him, no small wonder since both their alpha instincts to protect and defend their mates had exploded to urgent attention after the bombing. Arit sucked in his breath. Ignored the scrape of something digging into his stomach as he wriggled, but the other soldier the Ural militia had provided aided Arit’s step over a jumble of splintered timber piled in front of the door on the other side. Thanking the soldier for his help, Arit accepted a second flashlight the man passed to him and swept the suite.
The condition of the rooms in which he and Nick would spend the night was worse than Arit had imagined—and Arit had imagined destruction aplenty. Electrical wiring spilled from holes in the walls, one large enough for a man to step through to the room on the other side. More wire dangled from the ceiling, marking where a chandelier had once hung. What hadn’t been ripped away had been covered in graffiti, a portrait in one corner of the entry a skillful rendition of Eton Marisek’s bust. Arit’s gut churned at the sickening talent required to portray the last emperor’s brains spraying from the shot to his skull, and nausea washed over him at the notion Nick would see that.
His nausea intensified as Arit realized Nick had already seen it—decades ago, when the imperial family had been executed. The murder of his father and much, much worse.
He directed the flashlight beam away from pithy rebel slogans scrawled on the ragged walls and spray-painted aspersions against a dead princess’s virtue, sweeping instead the arched doorway to what must have been a sitting room, empty except for stray boards pried from gaps in the floor and trash piled against the pockmarked walls like drifting snow. A door hung crookedly from one hinge, only partially shutting away rooms deeper in the suite. The doors to a room Arit decided must have been a dining room was missing altogether, a two-legged chair leaning precariously on the doorjamb blocking off the space. Which was fortunate because Arit’s flashlight couldn’t penetrate the cavernous maw cut into the flooring.
“The classroom and bedrooms have been torn up, too,” the soldier said and bounced on the balls of his feet to show Arit the ground didn’t rock or sway, “but what’s left seems sturdy enough.” He pointed his beam of light at the cock-eyed door. “Space free of debris to stretch out a sleeping bag is possible in two of the rooms through there and the hallway, if you’re willing to squeeze together.”
Arit nodded. “He’s willing.” He pivoted to shine his flashlight through the door to find Nick. “The damage is terrible, but you knew it would be. Pass me the camping gear.”
The dim light held by the soldier cast spooky shadows as Nick, stony and silent, shoved through the opening a lantern, their hastily packed bag of emergency supplies, and a sleeping bag borrowed from the Goddess knew where. Arit shouldered the backpack, hung the lantern from a carabiner hook dangling from it, and stuffed the sleeping bag under his arm. He steadied Nick when he climbed through to join Arit.
Even Nick, trained since his birth to present a formidably blank mask of calm control, couldn’t hide his flinch or quell the pallid cast of his skin when he directed his own flashlight to sweep the devastation. Arit’s heart twisted at the desolation he sensed in Nick, the hurt old but fresh all at once.
“I’m okay,” Nick said, though anyone could see he lied. Nick turned his head to speak through the stingy opening of the suite’s door. “Send no one for us tomorrow morning. We’ll come when we’re ready.”
Benjic leaned forward, fist braced on the jamb. “If there’s further trouble?”
“The people are drunk on victory.” Nick tipped his chin toward distant music blaring through the streets of the capitol. “They’ll celebrate for days, but if something happens, you’ll know where to find me.”
Leaving their guard at the entrance, Arit and Nick walked around the damage and debris to the cock-eyed door. Arit held it open so Nick could crawl through, and Nick returned the favor. Darkness fell, heavy and evil, once Arit reached the hallway, Nick letting the door swing precariously shut behind them. Nick unlatched the lantern from Arit’s backpack, but the dim glow did little to dispel the gloom.