CHAPTER FIVE
C’Tan stood in her bedroom, bare stone walls surrounding her. Only the luxury of a large feather bed with red silk sheets made it look at all like a place to sleep. The room was round and gleamed with shiny black stone, a lair she had created for herself out of a lone mountain jutting from the midst of a dead lake, a dwelling that was not and never had been a home. An unfamiliar sense of wistful longing sneaked into her heart. The last place she remembered as home was a little shack in western Nifan, a place with a mother who loved her and a brother she adored . . . but that was before, in her previous life, when she had been young and innocent and beautiful, before her brother had become another enemy eliminated by her hand.
“Jarin.” She spoke his name aloud. Even after all these years, it was beyond her understanding how she could love and hate someone so much, like the love she’d held for her mother and the hate for her father burned into one.
Ever uncomfortable with the memories of her past, she waved her hand in a plucking motion and pulled a brass mirror from thin air. It appeared before her as if it stood upon a stand, and yet it hovered, unsupported and unmoving in the center of her room. The mirror never lied, and each time she summoned it, the hate in her heart knifed a little deeper. For a moment she stood within the illusion of what she had once been—tall, beautiful, with a lush figure, hair the color of golden apples, and a face so beautiful, it was as if the Guardians had molded a masterpiece in her.
And then Jarin had created the monster behind the mask.
Her eyes narrowed as she let go of the magic that hid the truth from the world. The blonde brows and pale locks that flowed to her shoulders disappeared, and in their place was a reddened scar. Somehow in the inferno that claimed Jarin’s life, S’Kotos had used fire to carve his mark upon her, the symbol for fire starting at the end of her chin and rippling upward to the crest of her head. It mattered not that he wasn’t present during the battle. He was the Guardian and master of fire. It did his bidding and marked his servant as his own. She had truly been her master’s creature since that moment.
There was something about destroying the person you loved most in the world that killed the heart. What was left of Celena Tan still ached for what had been, for the innocence she held before, and not the monster she had become. Her thoughts circled back to the same place they ended every morning of every day since that dreadful fire—back to the one person who could have ended her torment and freed her from S’Kotos—the child of her brother.
The Chosen One.
Her teeth ground in frustration. For fifteen years she had been searching for that child. For fifteen years she had failed. Without Shandae, she could never be free. Without Shandae, S’Kotos could not be destroyed, for it was she who must bring the keystones together and banish The Destroyer. Only with that act would C’Tan be free.
C’Tan could bear the sight of her scarred and fallen state no longer. She was hideous and it shredded her soul a bit more each day to witness it. She bent and gathered up the red robe, pulling the silk around her and belting it at the waist.
A light tap sounded at her door. She waved her hand at the mirror, sending it back to its home until she had need of it again.
She gathered illusion around her once more: the blonde locks, the slightly over-ripe figure, the perfect face. None saw her in her true state. None but the mirror saw her emaciation, her scarred body, and hairless features. Only she and S’Kotos knew the truth behind the mirror.
Armored in illusion once more, she gestured at the door, opening it to the man who had once been her master, but now served her unquestioningly. C’Tan turned her back on him and sat on the end of the bed, legs curved beneath her and a single arm supporting her body as she listened to Kardon’s daily report. She interrupted him almost immediately, as she always did.
“Have you found her?”
His eyes hardened. His opinion of C’Tan’s obsession with the wolfchild had been expressed often enough that C’Tan knew what the look meant. “Nay, mistress. Jarin has hidden her well. We can only wait until the power takes her and hope that the strength of her magic will overwhelm that which hides her from us.”
“That is too long!” she spat. It was the same every day.
“Not so long now, mistress. Fifteen years have passed. Most children have reached their power by her age. Any day now, a year at most, we shall find her.”
“You base a lot upon that hope, Kardon. I hope for your sake that you are right.”
Kardon did not even blanch. The morning report continued, but C’Tan’s mind was elsewhere. It wouldn’t be long, and the child would be within her power.
“Soon, now, and you will be mine, Shandae. Hear me and fear,” she called into the echoes of her mind.
There was no answer. There never was.
The Sapphire Flute: Book 1 of The Wolfchild Saga Page 9