Sworn to War

by Terah Edun

  “Mother?” she said faintly, a question in her voice.

  “Daughter?” Lillian said sweetly as she put a restraining hand on the Emperor’s left shoulder and started to smile.

  Ciardis felt her eye begin to twitch. Her mother had always known how to make an entrance.

  13

  The ceiling opened up above the palace and hail as big as dogs fell from the sky. Big enough to knock Ciardis Weathervane and her companions to the ground. Or at least…that is what this felt like.

  She couldn’t really fathom this new reality, though. In fact, she far preferred the made-up one in her head where they were all dead and her mother wasn’t standing next to the murderous Emperor as close as two peas in a pod.

  Ciardis’s mouth stretched in a grimace as she opened and closed her eyes, trying to understand what she was seeing.

  Prince Heir Sebastian was apparently struck mute as well, but not frozen. He walked forward slowly and gingerly reached up to touch Lillian Weathervane’s face. His fingers barely touched her skin before he turned to Ciardis with a pained expression in his eyes.

  Sebastian only had to say two words, “It’s her,” for Ciardis to not only lose her voice but also her hearing.

  She shook her head in dismay and looked back and forth between the Emperor and the matriarch of the Weathervane family. A family which consisted only of Ciardis and her mother, now that the man standing before them had ordered the death of Ciardis’s twin brother. Ciardis was well aware of this order, and so was her mother. So to see Lillian Weathervane, formerly known as Lady Serena of the Companion’s Guild, standing so…well…companionably beside the man who gave sharks a good name was a bit more than she could take.

  She began shouting at Lillian. “What in the world are you doing here, Mother? Here, with him? He’s the antithesis of everything we stand for, the man who presided over your trial and ruled you—before the entire court—guilty of his crime, the man who has destroyed this palace and set out on a path to destroy his own empire, and that is just the crimes we are sure of. I—”

  Lillian raised her own voice in interruption. “I know who he is, Ciardis Weathervane. Perhaps a bit more respect is necessary.”

  “Respect is earned,” Ciardis spat out, as mad as a hellcat in her fury. “He has none of mine.”

  “That may be,” Lillian said. “But there are things you don’t know.”

  “Caemon’s dead. He may not have killed him, but he certainly didn’t stop his minions from doing it. There is nothing else I need to know,” Ciardis seethed. “The man is a murderer and a megalomaniac, Mother.”

  Lillian’s eyes flashed nervously as she said, “He is your Emperor—show some respect.”

  Ciardis’s jaw dropped. “I can’t believe this. That you would stand beside a man who sanctioned the death of your own flesh and blood.”

  Lillian raised her head proudly. Ciardis thought that she would finally take her side. Instead, the air rang with a slap and it was Ciardis Weathervane who lurched back.

  “I am your mother,” Lillian said viciously. “And you will do as I say.”

  Ciardis was almost too stunned to respond. “But you know what he has done!” she managed. She knew it came out as a partial whine, but circumstances called for action before this hellish reality turned from her living nightmare into her actual life.

  Ciardis had stood by her mother, the woman she barely knew, through her grandiose entrance to court, her return under less than favorable circumstances, a trial in which she was accused of regicide, and in general—the animosity of the entire imperial courts. She was beginning to wonder if she had in fact stood on the wrong side of history.

  What kind of mother stood next to the man who, if he had been anyone else, would be recorded in history as the most evil manipulator this empire had ever seen?

  “He not only killed his own family, he killed yours!” Ciardis said, aghast, wondering if Lillian had somehow lost her memory.

  Lillian looked at her with a small decorous smile. “Perhaps we should retire to more hospitable chambers? You will see, as I have seen, that I was wrong in my estimation of this man.”

  Ciardis could see that she wasn’t getting through to Lillian. Meanwhile, Maradian stood by her mother’s side with a calm expression of ‘I’ve won’ on his face and a bit of boredom in his eyes.

  He said lazily, waving his hand to the side, “By all means.”

  As one, the soldiers all formed a pathway to an open, partially disintegrated doorway. Ciardis looked at Sebastian. Sebastian looked at Thanar. They all shook their heads, exhausted and at a loss for words. They were surrounded in a battle they couldn’t win. Ciardis, for one, was feeling highly demoralized. You expected to be betrayed by people who carried no morals, but your own family? That was something no one wanted to face. Ciardis Weathervane had very little family in the first place.

  As they walked away between silent rows of soldiers, Ciardis had to wonder what could possibly happen next. There was nothing the Emperor could say or do, or that Lillian Weathervane could explain, that would make this nightmare any less ghoulish or ease Ciardis’s sense of growing desperation.

  When she had thought she couldn’t win today, she had accepted it. Gone with a swift and unspoken change of plans—live today to fight the next.

  But this day just wouldn’t end.

  It was one stinging defeat after another.

  Starting with being dragged from a dark, dank pit and thrown into a chamber with a mindless simulacrum of Sebastian Athanos Algardis which had set out to kill her, and ending with her mother doing in spirit what the simulacrum had been unable to accomplish—break Ciardis Weathervane down to her very core.

  It was her own personal hell come to life, and she didn’t like it.

  She took deep gulps of air as they passed through semi-abandoned and still-standing sections of the palace. Servants, who had gone through their own battles with a palace trying to kill them, stood here and there on the edge of her eyesight. Their bodies demoralized and their faces in shock, Ciardis had to wonder what they thought when they saw the Emperor of Algardis walking through his palace with a whistle on his lips and a bleeding, disheveled prince heir stumbling ahead in front of him.

  Were they loyal to Sebastian?

  Were they loyal to Maradian?

  Did they even know what the Emperor was capable of? Did they suspect?

  Ciardis didn’t know, and there was no time to ask.

  She slowed down a bit, letting Sebastian catch up to her.

  They didn’t hold hands. They couldn’t. But that was all right; she could still sense his emotions and his thoughts as they strode alongside each other.

  She knew that the personal guard of the Emperor would be listening to every word.

  And yet, she highly doubted that Maradian would want them discussing anything mind-to-mind. She didn’t think he would necessarily beat them for making the attempt, but then again, she didn’t know what the Emperor was and wasn’t capable of anymore. He was an unknown.

  So Ciardis kept her thoughts to herself, instead reaching out to get a feel for Sebastian’s presence. To see if Maradian, through her, had truly healed him, and if so…what else had he done?

  Sebastian apparently sensed her efforts and opened his aura just a bit.

  A tiny smile crept on his face. She could see it out of the corner of her eye as she stared straight ahead.

  “I’m fine, Ciardis,” he teased.

  “You don’t look fine,” she said.

  Sebastian shrugged. “And you look like a building fell on your head. You’re covered in grey mixed with white, and nice red splashes on your arms to pull it all together.”

  “And you’re limping,” she snapped—a bit miffed at his nonchalance.

  He shook his head, not in denial but in irritation. “Of course I am. We just went up against the man that I was sure we couldn’t and we failed.”

  Ciardis stopped mid-walk. Unspoken but very much present
was the accusation that she had been the driving force behind the assault.

  The soldiers ominously stopped right beside them.

  The hallway echoed with a silence for a minute before she whispered with no little malice, “So this is my fault?”

  “No,” said Sebastian as he began limping forward once more. “This is our fault.”

  She stared at his retreating back, ramrod straight in its intensity to brace its faltering owner’s step.

  Mouth agape, Ciardis didn’t notice when Thanar took his place by her side. He urged her forward with a gentle nudge.

  “He’s hurting,” the daemoni prince said grimly.

  “This is my fault?” Ciardis said incredulously as she stared ahead. “Did you hear what he said?”

  “I did,” Thanar said. “It’s our—”

  “My fault,” she corrected, her very words shaking in anger. “He may have said our, but he meant mine.”

  Thanar was silent for a moment, and then said again, “He’s hurting, Ciardis Weathervane.”

  She spat out her words so fast she almost stumbled over them. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means,” Thanar said reluctantly, staring straight ahead, “that you should give him some slack.”

  Ciardis eyed him out of the corner of her eye. “Anything else? How about a hot bath and a croissant while I’m at it?”

  Thanar turned a gaze hot with fury down on her. “Let this go, Ciardis Weathervane. We’re all hurting.”

  “Oh, it’s we now, is it?” she sniped.

  Thanar sighed and walked fast to catch up with the prince heir.

  “Fine, leave!” Ciardis fairly shouted as she watched his retreating back.

  14

  The personal guard around them was studiously avoiding any semblance of eye contact by the time that conversation was over. Even the Emperor, the instigator of all of this, was striding behind them, a whistle in his step, not a word the wiser.

  When Lillian strode forward to walk in Thanar’s place, Ciardis groaned aloud.

  “You are the last person I want to talk to,” Ciardis said. “The very last, and that is the honest truth, Mother.”

  Lillian didn’t bother looking over at her. Instead, her perceptive gaze was locked on Ciardis’s two bond mates who were walking ahead, seemingly holding a stiff conversation.

  Lillian cleared her throat. “They’ve lost a lot today, you know. More than just a fight. But their pride as well.”

  “Haven’t we all?” her daughter asked in a simple voice as she fought to keep from lashing out. It would do no good, and this was still her mother.

  “They’re hurting, Ciardis. In different ways, but still…” Lillian said.

  “By the gods,” Ciardis cried out, “if one more person utters that phrase at me I will rip someone to shreds. Not something, someone.”

  Lillian’s mouth twitched into a smile of her own.

  But she did acknowledge her daughter’s anger as she said, “Very well, that is your prerogative. Let’s speak of something else then.”

  Ciardis barely managed to shrug her shoulders in a passable assent before Lillian went on. “You came to court all bright and starry-eyed. I remember, as the person who ‘discovered’ you in that tiny village I left you in all those years before.”

  If Ciardis had thought they would discuss anything, it wasn’t her early years, but she was too tired to tell Lillian to pick something else. This was her conversation. Ciardis would just stand there and take it.

  “I thought to tell you that if it’s a fairytale you’re looking for, you’ve come to the wrong place,” Lillian continued in the face of Ciardis’s silence. The only sound other than her voice was the slap of their shoes on marble and the grunts of soldiers who moved fallen pieces of palace out of their way as they moved closer to whatever private location it was that Lillian had chosen.

  Ciardis wondered why lies, betrayals, and more deceits couldn’t have been very well continued in the ballroom. It wasn’t like there was a more perfect place than the rooms in which the courtiers danced the night away, flirting, spying, and making alliances as convoluted as the day was long.

  But they had no choice. She kept one eye on her path forward, giving the occasional glance over at Sebastian and Thanar’s backs, wondering what they were discussing.

  Lillian, meanwhile, continued on as if she was saying precisely what any daughter wants to hear.

  “The imperial courts that I have left have become even more fractious with the ascendancy of Cymus’s sons,” Lillian divulged. “And you, like a bright meadow flower, fell into this hothouse of exotic plants.”

  Ciardis dared to glance over at her mother’s face. Wondering if this tangent was actually meaningful in some way.

  Lillian continued with a bright, airy grin. “But oh, you bloomed, my daughter. You bloomed in ways that I could not have imagined. Not only outmaneuvering those snotty little brats at court, but ensnaring a prince that no one thought worth anything along the way.”

  Ciardis shrugged uncomfortably.

  But Lillian was not to be dissuaded. “It is that surprising tendency to outmaneuver your opponents which has brought you so highly before the Emperor’s esteemed gaze.”

  “He killed my friends and murdered my brother, Mother,” Ciardis said numbly. “There is nothing esteemed about it. In fact, I wish I had never come to court.”

  Lillian clucked her tongue. “That isn’t the bright-eyed doe I met in that nasty village, all eager to shed her humble upbringings and make something of herself.”

  “Maybe that girl you knew couldn’t have ever realized what a snake pit she was being thrown into. If she had, she would have run in the opposite direction,” Ciardis snapped.

  “That is true, there are snakes,” Lillian said softly. “But you merely have to milk their poison, dear. You take what they have and make yourself stronger. You always have.”

  Ciardis wasn’t quite sure if Lillian was talking about herself this time or her.

  She sighed and focused her attention away from her mother’s chatter and to the two men, one young, one ancient, who paced ahead of her. Covered in blood, but backs as straight as swords, they too were once more led from one place to another like sheep being made ready for slaughter.

  She wouldn’t have been surprised if they were going to be slaughtered.

  It might actually be a relief after the weeks she had had, and knowing what was still to come.

  Humming to herself as she watched a crack spread on a marble-veined wall right in front of her, Ciardis tapped into Sebastian’s mental state.

  She took a catalog of his every thought and tested the bonds that tied her to Thanar while she was at it. There was nothing she could do, nothing they could do at the moment, but it was somewhat of a comfort to see and feel the dark blue and onyx links still wrapped around her core.

  Maradian may have taken their freedom, but he couldn’t unravel the connections between them.

  It was far too late for that.

  Their powers both drained her and sustained her. She was sure the same was true for them now.

  Soon enough, they were exiting the interior palace walls. Ciardis wasn’t familiar with this area, but judging by the manicured topiary and the beautifully sculpted paths, they were still near the imperial family’s wings.

  “Is this a shortcut?” she heard Sebastian ask abruptly.

  To where, she didn’t know, but the personal guard’s commander gave a clipped “No” in answer.

  Sebastian looked around with a frown, but Ciardis knew there was nothing to do but follow along like obedient prisoners.

  As they hiked a half a mile away from the gilded and broken hallways and deeper into manicured gardens, the area began to look less disheveled. Closer to the palace, the ground had been broken and fractured as if an earthquake had been let loose.

  But this area was as sedate as it had been before these long days had begun. Even the evidence of people in the area beg
an to dissipate, though Ciardis could still see at a distance the tall palace walls which protected the imperial family from all outsiders.

  They were still inside the palace. Just a very different portion than she was familiar with.

  Finally, they turned a corner, and the maze of topiary that had blocked her view faded away. She saw that they were approaching a massive monastery-like building.

  Devoid of ornamentation except for long, silken banners of fabric floating in the wind, it had two doors which were already swung wide open on the first level. Set back away from the main approach, not even touching the first floor, was a second level which looked just as empty as the first.

  Ciardis looked at the building in confusion. It didn’t look like any chamber she had ever been to in the palace before. In fact, its starkness set it apart in rather startling ways. It was almost…holy. Which was a strange thing to say, when walking about in a palace courtyard of a man who was nothing if not ostentatious.

  “Where are we, Mother?” Ciardis asked in confusion, turning to the Emperor’s guest in fear.

  She wouldn’t put it past Maradian to have another place to torture them behind these floating scraps of fabric on the end.

  Lillian looked at her with a beatific smile on her face and walked ahead into the new building.

  Sebastian was silent as he glared at the building in affront, perhaps not as clueless as Ciardis Weathervane was to where they were.

  As she disappeared into the building, Lillian said over her shoulder, “Why, we’re at the palace healing hall, my dear.”

  “Mother, why are we here?” Ciardis demanded as soon as she walked into the room.

  The doors she had passed through, Ciardis had noted, were more suggestions than anything else. The windows that the frame stood between were big enough to be their own entrances. The glass almost touched the ground, except for a thin metal barrier, and she could easily see that as a way in or out in case of emergencies.

  Which was good. Always better to have a secondary exit in times like these. She just hoped it wouldn’t be her barreling through panes of glass head-first.