by Terah Edun
A dangerous glittering set forth from Vana’s eyes. “And why is that? You aren’t a member of the imperial family, and you aren’t a particularly perceptive mage either ... no offense.”
Ciardis looked at her and said dryly, “None taken. I’ll answer with a question. Why could Thanar and I create the net of Sauras together but not apart? Perhaps my magic awakens something in both of them. Something that was previously hidden.”
Vana raised cautious eyebrows but didn’t discount Ciardis’s theories. Finally she nodded. “And you believe him?”
Ciardis licked her dry lips. “I’m convinced he’s convinced. And he’s not the only one who is.”
“Jason SaAlgardis,” Vana said coldly.
“Jason SaAlgardis,” confirmed Ciardis.
“What do you make of him?” Vana asked.
“I don’t know,” Ciardis said. “I’m not sure if we can trust him. But I do know that he is the only one to come forward with independent proof that the emperor is an imposter.”
“Claims, not proof,” Vana said. “He would need evidence for proof, and so far he has proffered none that I’ve seen.”
“Correct,” Ciardis said, “so right now Jason is immaterial to our cause, and I’d actually prefer to keep him out of direct contact with our group while Sebastian, Thanar, and I are gone. At least until we figure him out. He’s less likely to rouse suspicion from the court or the emperor’s spies if no one knows he’s even tangentially tied to us.”
Vana nodded. “Agreed. I’ll keep an eye on them but keep my distance.”
Ciardis flashed a grin. “Not like I don’t know you prefer it that way. You despise his band of merry fools, as you’d probably call them.”
Vana flashed an amused smile back. “Not like I care that you know, but yes, I don’t care for him or his unprofessional hooligans.”
“Only assassins get to stage coup d’états, Vana?” Ciardis said.
“Assassins or at least someone competent enough not to get their heads put on a spike at the first chance they get,” Vana shot back.
Ciardis shrugged. “They’re still alive.”
“For now,” deadpanned Vana.
Ciardis shook her head, and her attention caught on the ship that rested in the shadows of the warehouse.
“So what now?” she asked.
“Now we plan,” Vana said. “Now you go to Kifar. When you return to Sandrin, the chips will fall where they may.”
Resting on the balcony by Vana’s side, Ciardis asked, “What if they don’t fall in our favor?”
“Then we’ll have some hard choices to make, won’t we?” Vana said.
Ciardis nodded and twisted the necklace in her grip hard.
A few moments later, she rose. “We’d better get back.”
Vana stood up from her lean against the railing and headed for the door. Before she disappeared into the darkness of the stairwell going down, she said over her shoulder, “Ciardis?”
“Yes?” Ciardis said while staring at the assassin half in and half out of the cobwebbed and gloomy doorway.
“Thank you,” Vana said as she began to walk down.
Ciardis hurried to catch up with Vana. “For what?”
She heard a voice ascend toward her as she followed behind. “For trusting me.”
Surprise flowed through Ciardis. She’d never thought she’d see the day when Lady Vana Cloudbreaker had anything but recriminations to speak to her.
Well, thought Ciardis, there’s a time and place for everything.
The fast-paced run back to the palace was a silent one. It took all of Ciardis’s energy just to keep up with Vana as she dashed around corners, through alleys, and swerved around men carrying huge sacks of grain who didn’t hesitate to yell at the two women who swiftly passed them by.
When they got back to the entrance, Ciardis didn’t bother hiding her exhaustion. She collapsed on the steps with heaving breaths and lay flat on her back so that her head rested on the cool marble of the entranceway and she could watch the sun rising in the sky above her.
The light streaming down on her felt pleasant as servants hurried up and down the stairs to her left, and she took deep breaths to calm her racing heart. Her pulse was up. Her lungs felt almost on fire.
“I really need to get in better shape,” she grumbled as her back began to ache from the marble steps grinding into her back. When a servant actually stepped over her reclining body, she decided it would be best if she got out of the way.
Groaning, Ciardis stood and then walked up the stairs back into the palace. She intended to return to her rooms, but when she got to the carved oak door she passed them, going up one hallway and around a corner until she got to a spiral marble staircase that ascended four floors. Almost unconsciously, she climbed those stairs, humming all the way and deep in thought.
When she got to the passageway on the fourth floor and turned right, she smiled. This was the door she wanted to see.
Stepping through, Ciardis breathed in the cool morning air and walked to the edge of the flattened rooftop. Leaning on the gated side, she was silent. Here she could think. Free of noise, free of restrictions.
Almost unbidden, her thoughts turned to the man that sat in the center of it all. Like a spider spinning a web.
With a shiver, Ciardis thought back to the emperor’s words: “I would congratulate you, Lady Companion Weathervane, on successfully forging the most powerful bond in the land and becoming the second-most powerful person in my empire in one fell swoop.”
She remembered every cadence of his voice. Every hesitation. Every emphasis.
Nothing the emperor said could be trusted. Everything had to be parsed.
She knew then as she knew now that there was an unspoken threat in his voice. As she had listened to him speak last night, his eyes coldly calculating, Ciardis could have easily imagined the emperor adding, “But cross me, Ciardis Weathervane, and that will be the last thing you do.”
A touch melodramatic, she thought as she watched the morning sky brighten with each passing minute, but the emperor is nothing if not a dramatic man. We know that just by the way he killed his sister-in-law, the Empress Teresa Athanos Algardis. Dramatic and ruthless.
Mouth clenched in thought, she exhaled sharply and watched her breath frost in front of her for a moment. The vapors came out in white tendrils that condensed in a cloud before being hastily dispersed by the forceful breeze in the air. But for the few seconds she could see them, they were pretty to watch. Easier to think about that than the conniving nature of the emperor who wanted her and all those that she loved dead, or at least ... indisposed. He had already succeeded in sidelining her mother, Lillian Weathervane, with an indefinite imprisonment. But Ciardis knew in her bones that if the emperor had it in his head to remove Sebastian, he wouldn’t be content with locking him away.
“He’s going to kill him, he has no choice,” Ciardis said to herself flatly. “But I do.”
She paused and let out a slow breath. She wanted to stop. She wanted to deny the words forcing their way out of her mouth. But her brain knew the truth. That she had go through with it, even if she was voicing something that she had only dreamed about in nightmares.
Shakily, Ciardis said, “I have a choice to kill him first.”
“Kill who?” said a voice behind her, interrupting her thoughts.
Startled, Ciardis jumped a foot in the air. She turned around to see a familiar body already walking out of the shadows of the numerous trees.
“Thanar?” she said.
As he moved forward, the shadows lost their grip on him and he sauntered closer and closer. Yep, it was definitely him. Twenty feet away. Eighteen feet away. She couldn’t help the shiver that went up her spine as she watched him move. But this time the shiver wasn’t from the cold. She didn’t fear Thanar. Not exactly. She feared for the people and the objects around Thanar.
“Kill who?” he repeated in a low, smooth purr that made other parts of her shiver ..
. just not in fear.
Shaking her head tersely, she said, “Never mind.”
For a moment she saw the brief flash of anger in the daemoni prince’s eyes, and she was sure he would challenge her. Question her about her previous thoughts. But as the light hit his eyes, the anger died. Instead, worry rose.
“Why? Because you don’t trust me?”
“Yes,” she snapped. She was tired of lying. Tired of evading the truth.
She waited in the tense silence for Thanar to respond. To grow angry. Instead, he did something uncharacteristic. He laughed.
“Well, well, well,” he said gently. “The Weathervane finally shows her teeth.”
She rounded away from him with a snarl. “I’m not in the mood, Thanar. Not in the mood to be teased or to be prodded. This is serious. I don’t trust you.”
“Newsflash,” Thanar snapped, “I trust you about as much as I trust anyone, which isn’t very much. But I’m trying to help.”
“I never asked for your help or your concern or your powers,” she yelled in frustration. “That was my mother.”
Thanar shrugged. “I never liked her.”
Turning to look at Thanar, she said, “What do you want?”
He shrugged. “Power.”
She glared. Too bad she could tell he was telling the absolute truth.
Ciardis closed her eyes and rubbed her temple in frustration. “Why are we having this conversation? Today of all days.”
He shrugged again. “It was you that wanted honesty.”
“Not this much,” she growled.
“Then perhaps we should take it back a step,” he said. “Even relax a bit?”
She dropped her hand from her brow, shook her head, and wished her problems would disappear from one second to the next.
Just the small ones. It doesn’t have to be the blutgott, just the persistent thorns in my side, like an amorous daemoni that won’t take no for an answer, she grumbled to a bunch of a gods who most likely weren’t listening.
Chapter 11
She wanted him to go away. The problem was that she couldn’t make Thanar do anything he didn’t want to do.
Especially when he’s actually trying to be nice, she thought with faint irritation.
It wasn’t often that a girl complained when one of her suitors was being congenial, but Thanar wasn’t just any suitor and she wasn’t just any girl. He was up to something. He had to be. The very thought made her stomach twist in knots. The wonder of whether he was going to do something new. Something dangerous. Something reckless. This was on top of the confusing swirl of feelings that she couldn’t get out of her head right now.
Feelings I have no time for, Ciardis grumbled to herself.
Just as the emperor was the source of her anger at how the imperial court and empire was run, Thanar was the source of her confusion over her conflicting emotions and desires. Desires that she couldn’t untangle as they wound themselves around her like a cocoon that was threatening to suffocate her before she could cut herself out.
Ciardis sighed. “Any chance I can have this rooftop in peace? It’s been a long day.”
He snorted. “Not a chance.”
“Why not?” she demanded.
“You’re being secretive and it’s barely dawn,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “A long morning, then.”
He shook his head.
I might as well want pigs to fly, she thought as she sighed and turned back to the railing. If she couldn’t get solitude, at least she could enforce her own quiet.
Silently Thanar came up on her right side and leaned casually against the railing. She could tell he was peering down at her with his dark eyes.
But she didn’t turn to meet his gaze. It was just one more trick of a daemoni prince skilled in entrapment. Ciardis had to wonder what she knew about this new male who was tied to her in a seeleverbindung.
Not much, she thought resentfully. But now wasn’t the time or place to get into Thanar’s history. Not when they were surrounded by enemies on all fronts. She had to wonder, though, Would it ever be?
“You make everything complicated, you know,” she said.
“All I asked was who did you want to kill?” he said jauntily.
“Precisely!” she shouted while fisting her hands on her hips. “Not why?”
He smiled. “How about ‘how’?”
She blinked. “I haven’t gotten that far.”
He ruffled his wings gently. “My point exactly, golden eyes. You don’t need to. I will.”
“You don’t even know who it is I want dead,” she said sullenly.
He looked out into the city. “Does it matter?”
Ciardis bit her lip and snorted. “It does to me. I wish it did to you. I’m glad you have my back, Thanar, but I don’t need an assassin. I have Vana for that.”
“Then what do you need?” he asked.
She looked up at him darkly. “I need a friend. One who will help me win against this darkness.”
“Ah,” Thanar said softly, “but you see, little Weathervane, you’ve always had me.”
Ciardis shook her head softly so that her curls beat against the side of her face. “What you don’t see, Thanar, is that I don’t trust you. To have a friend, I need to have trust.”
Thanar cocked his head. “You seem to misconstrue the terms ‘friend’ and ‘ally.’ You must trust an ally. But a friend? A friend is a person whose presence you enjoy.”
“Your definition of friend and mine are worlds apart,” she said dryly. “I confide in my friends. I suppose you don’t in yours?”
He blinked. “That is not something I do with anyone generally. Not even my blood.”
“Your blood?” she said suspiciously.
“It matters not,” he said with a laugh. “So, Weathervane ... you want a confidant in a friend. Anything else?”
She looked up at him, bemused. But decided to play along. “Someone who shares my passions. Someone who laughs.”
He gave an encouraging murmur, asking her to continue.
She paused a moment and then continued, “Someone who has my back. Who’ll be fighting next to me day after day, not standing on the sidelines.”
Thanar was silent. Ciardis searched his eyes ... looking for something; what, she wasn’t sure.
Finally he spoke. “And have I not proven myself capable of all of those things? You’re passionate about the princess heir’s projects and I have helped you with those. We’ve fought side by side numerous times, and—”
Ciardis held up a hand, stopping him before he continued his long list. “Yes, you’ve done all those things. We’ve done all those things, Thanar. But trust is the key.”
“If flying monkeys descended on the rooftop right now, would you not trust me to fight by your side?” he demanded with a petulant pout.
Ciardis sighed. “This is a game to you, isn’t it?”
“A little bit,” he said as he winked and dipped his head in a short bow, “but, Ciardis Weathervane, I would like to call you friend one day ... and perhaps more.”
“Friend is enough,” she said with a cough.
“Ah, so then you admit—”
“Oh enough, Thanar!” she snapped with a coughing laugh. “You win.”
“I’ve yet to hear sweeter words pass your lips,” he said with smug smile.
“Uh-huh,” she said, not impressed. Ciardis was wondering what had gotten into him overnight. She didn’t know what was making him so ... cheerful, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out either. A happy Thanar was a scary Thanar.
“You know, golden eyes,” he said, “perhaps to find someone you want to confide in ... you need more than trust; you need to have a place for them in your heart.”
Ciardis gasped. “Where did that come from? That’s the most eloquent thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
He rolled his eyes. “If you stuck around more and stopped trying to use me as dragon bait, we might have had an actual conversa
tion before now.”
He glared back down at her with his hands on his hips and a comical look in his eyes, almost threatening to spill over into laughter.
Ciardis realized he was mocking her.
No, not mocking. Teasing, she thought as she tried to keep a straight face.
She glared, but then she couldn’t help it. Ciardis Weathervane broke into laughter.
It took her minutes to calm down. When she looked up from where she had bent over clutching her waist as she giggled helplessly, she said with tears in her eyes, “I think I needed that.”
“I know you did, Weathervane,” Thanar said. “You’ve been in a dark mood since yesterday.”
She blinked, still trying to catch her breath from the laughter. “How did you know that?”
“I can feel you, just as you can feel me,” Thanar said somberly.
Ciardis quickly shook her head. “I can’t hear anything from you. At least not now.”
He looked at her with a serious face. “That’s because you’re not trying.”
Ciardis stared up at him, just as somberly. “I’m not sure I want to.”
“Afraid of what you’d find?” he said in a teasing voice.
“You could say that,” she said.
He didn’t look offended. In fact, his face took on a measured look, as if he were weighing her soul. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to find her wanting ... or just enough.
“One day you’ll have to find out,” Thanar said.
“Today isn’t that day,” Ciardis said while stepping back and clearing her throat.
“No, it is not,” Thanar said.
“Please don’t make me laugh more,” Ciardis said while laughing awkwardly as she dried the tears on her cheeks—a fiery blush underneath making her glad that for once her bronze skin wouldn’t show the red glow.
“For this morning? We’re in agreement.”
She gave him a weak smile. “But thank you for the laughter all the same.”
“So, what else are you doing on this rooftop?” he asked, deftly changing the subject.
Ciardis looked back out on the city that spread out in the distance from the edge of the palace out to the softly lapping waves of the sea that she could barely see. She could still smell the ocean breeze. Or at least she imagined she could as she took a deep breath of the chilled air.