by Terah Edun
She looked at him. “For a walk. I want to gather my thoughts.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Have you had breakfast?”
“No,” she said, her voice breaking off in weariness. “It hadn’t really crossed my mind.”
He nodded. “How about we grab some fresh fruit and take a walk in the imperial gardens?”
“Really?” she said in surprise.
“Really,” he said, “And before you ask ... yes, I’m up to it. Besides, this will probably be the last time we get to have fresh fruit for quite a while.”
He raised up an arm and crooked his elbow out.
She slipped her arm into his companionably and asked, “What do you mean the last time?”
As they walked away, Christian said, “Didn’t anyone tell you?”
“Tell me what?” Ciardis asked in irritation as they walked down the steps and took a right toward the kitchens.
Christian whistled as they transitioned from the marble stone steps to a cobblestone pathway lined with hedges on both sides and orange trees every few feet along the path.
“The western lands are arid ... very arid. Kifar itself is in the middle of the desert.”
Ciardis paused and looked up at him with her jaw dropped. “You’re kidding, right?”
He smiled down at her. “I’m afraid not. You should see the look on your face. You look a fright.”
Ciardis wrinkled her nose and started forward again, pulling him with her. “You would too if you had just found out you’re voluntarily journeying into a desert.”
“With brigands,” Christian said helpfully.
“With brigands and outlaws,” Ciardis echoed with decidedly less cheer.
They walked into the kitchens and were soon loaded down with pears and scones. They didn’t stay long, however, because the kitchen attendant promptly shooed them out of his domain while exclaiming that all of his people had to make final preparations with the stored goods for their trip.
With few protests, Ciardis and Christian left quickly, but he managed to snag a jug of wine on the way out the door.
When she saw the rough-hewn jug the size of a toddler’s head in his hands, she smiled and said, “Planning on getting drunk?”
“Just to take the edge off,” he grunted.
“We haven’t even left the city yet and we’re both in a mood worse than a two-year-old with a tantrum,” Ciardis said wryly as he passed her a cup.
“With good reason,” Christian said darkly.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “What’s mine? Because as far as I can tell, I’ve woken up in night sweats and a bad mood for no reason other than contrariness.”
“Don’t make light of the situation,” said Christian.
“Then don’t baby me,” she snapped. “I’m tired of being talked to as if I’m a child. Ignored when people find it convenient. Threatened and then forgotten until I become an asset again.”
Christian grabbed her arm and turned her toward the spiral gardens with the mazelike hedges, which would give them privacy.
“There’s not much I can do about the night sweats,” he said softly, “but the bad mood ... we can talk about.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said in a huff as she sipped slowly on her wine and gagged at the bitter taste. “What is this?” she cried as she tossed the last of the foul drink into the hedges.
Christian glanced over at her and took a sip directly from the jug itself. Even he grimaced at the bitter taste and almost gritty nature of the drink.
Coughing, Christian said, “Acorn wine. Awful stuff the soldiers are fond of.”
Ciardis ran her tongue over the roof of her mouth and grimaced. “The taste won’t go away!”
“I guess that’ll teach me to grab something from the kitchen without asking,” Christian said.
Ciardis snorted as she said, “I hear water.”
Without waiting for Christian, she turned several corners and followed the sound until they found a quiet spot inside a square, closed-off section of hedges. Her eyes lit on a splash of water in a recessed nook along the side. Leaning down, she could see it was an open pipe sheltered by a large half-shell.
The water looked pure enough to drink.
“Good enough,” Ciardis announced as she cupped her hands and brought the crystal-clear water up to her mouth to gargle, and repeated the process until she couldn’t taste the bitter acorn wine anymore.
Stepping back, Ciardis gestured at the fountain. “It’s all yours.”
Christian raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. She walked over to the lone stone bench in the private section of the maze and waited for him to give in. It didn’t take very long. The wine was among the foulest stuff she had ever tasted, after all, and that included the time she had eaten pig intestines on a dare.
They munched on their food in silence, and Ciardis let the quiet fill her with calm.
When she had had quite enough to eat, Ciardis stretched her arms up to the sky and smiled as she dusted crumbs off her hands.
“Feeling better?” Christian asked.
She turned to him. “A bit, yes.”
“I figured,” he said.
As she turned back to take in the lush garden, she tried to imprint the scene in her mind. The tall garden walls made of overlaid stone blocks, the sun that rose just above the top of the brick ledge, the shaped orange and lemon trees that filled the garden with a heavenly smell, the green grass beneath her feet, the blue birds flittering back and forth with chatter in the air, and the sense of quiet solitude that she felt. Even though she wasn’t alone. She was never alone.
“Ciardis?” Christian asked.
“Yes?” she replied as they sat side by side without looking at each other.
“Do you remember how you felt just before we started walking?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me what that was like?”
She didn’t blink. She felt tranquil. Almost calm. In the back of her mind, she was thinking that she didn’t want to relive that, but, curiously, she’d didn’t feel like protesting either.
So she spoke: “Anger. Despair. Loneliness.”
“And now?” Christian asked.
She noticed in that moment that he was touching her skin with the barest of touches. The edge of his right pinkie finger brushed hers, and that was it. She didn’t think much of it. It just felt curious.
“Peace. Calm. Solitude.”
Christian nodded and turned to her. She pushed her hair out of her eyes in order to stare into his strange face.
“Why? Why do I feel like this?” she asked.
“It’s not natural,” he said, almost as a question, but with too much surety in his tone for him to be asking.
“No, it’s not,” she said while really analyzing what she felt. “It’s almost like what Thanar does when he wants me to feel a certain way about him.”
She frowned while Christian nodded encouragingly.
Dread clouded her mind. “He’s not doing this is, is he? He’s not controlling me?” Panic edged into her tone.
“No, no he’s not,” Christian said in a soothing tone. “My people are more than just physical healers and killers, Ciardis. We can also affect someone’s mental state.”
She shrank back from him, inadvertently breaking the connection between the two of them when their flesh stopped touching. She immediately felt the effects. The dark thoughts and despair that had been crowding her mind the whole morning came roaring back like a storm.
She began to take deep breaths. It didn’t help. She still felt like the world was ending and she was the cause of it.
“What’s going on?” she cried. “Why do I suddenly feel so much more awful?”
“Relax,” said Christian. “Just relax.”
“I can’t,” she cried. “I feel like I’m drowning.”
“Here,” he said while grabbing her hand. “Better?”
Ciardis turned to him with fear and confusi
on, but she didn’t pull away. Because the darkness had receded like a storm breaking.
“These are your gifts,” she said in a tremulous voice. “Like Thomas?”
“No,” Christian said. “At least, my natural purpose isn’t instability. The point is, you were in a dark and depressive state—”
When she opened her mouth to speak, he held up a halting hand. The connection broke again, but this time she was more prepared for the rush of sensations. Of darkness. Still she struggled to hold on to an equilibrium.
“No, just listen to me. Please,” he said.
She closed her mouth and crossed her arms defensively. But she let him speak.
“It’s not something that’s natural to you. I’ve known you for far too long to think that. That’s why I intervened,” he said. “Ciardis, seeleverbindung are complicated bonds which bind one soul to another. They’re not well understood, and even worse, it’s known that they can affect the emotions of the bonded pair and their personalities. Now, what you’re experiencing with one seeleverbindung, you’re experiencing with both.”
She unfolded her arms. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that just as it amplifies the love and rage you feel for your bond mates, it can also amplify your own personal feelings of despair, despondence, and even depression,” he said while looking into her eyes seriously.
She reared back. She didn’t like that ugly term. “I’m not depressed,” she said quickly. The entire scenario just felt improbable to her. She wasn’t alone and despondent. She didn’t feel like crying every day ... just the days when the emperor was trying to kill her friends and family.
Christian didn’t roll his eyes. He just looked at her calmly and said, “Don’t bother denying it. I’ve been watching you for more than a day now. You’ve managed to hold it together, but whatever you were feeling before, it’s spilling over now. Almost like a geyser that can’t be capped.”
She couldn’t deny it. She’d been awake all night. Unable to sleep. Unable to stop doubting herself.
“What do I do about it?” she asked in a scared tone.
“Don’t bottle it in,” he said. “Talk to people.”
“Everyone I’ve spoken to today has made it quite clear how they feel about me,” she said sullenly. “I’m either too stupid or too untrustworthy to be confided in.”
He shook his head. “I’m sure they didn’t say that.”
It sure felt like it, she thought while wondering if this was her or the depressive qualities of the bond talking.
It’s both, she decided with a dark laugh in her mind. The problem was that she had no idea what to do it about it.
Christian reached forward and hugged her. “Don’t do that.”
She took a shuddering breath. “Do what?”
“Hold it all in. Shut down.”
“I don’t know anymore what’s me, Christian. I don’t what’s the bond. I don’t know what Thanar is. I don’t know what Sebastian is, and what’s more, I hate how this is making me feel,” she said.
“How?” he said softly.
She stood and threw up her hands. “Needy. Achy. Weepy. Angry.”
He nodded. “That’s the bond dependence you’re feeling.”
“Bond dependence?” she said.
He pursed his lips and then said, “You’ll feel a need to be close to Sebastian and Thanar as the seeleverbindung settles into a routine. Physically and mentally. When they shut you out, it’ll feel like you’re in a spiral. A spiral of pain and anger.”
She looked at him and shook her head helplessly. “I never felt like this when Sebastian and I first bonded in the Cold Ones’ cave. I even left him behind for a week and was as right as rain.”
“One normal bond doesn’t equal two,” Christian said smoothly. “You disrupted your link to Sebastian when you added in Thanar.”
“I didn’t add him,” she said bitterly.
Christian ignored her. “Not only was the link disrupted, but, if possible, your mage core has become strained trying to accommodate two very different power sources that are intertwined with it, for lack of a better word. For a Weathervane, the normal course of action is to give power. Not to receive. So it also goes against your very nature.”
Ciardis crossed her arms and glared. “Anything else I need to know about?”
Christian shrugged. “Simply put, the mental side effects of having two other souls of disparate natures in your head is causing a problem.”
“What am I supposed to do now?” Ciardis cried. “One of those souls hates the other passionately and wants them gone.”
“Seeleverbindung don’t work like that,” said Christian.
“Tell him that.”
Christian shook his head with a sigh. “You’ll just have to find a way to get the two of them to work together.”
Ciardis growled.
“I’m serious, Ciardis,” said Christian. “Ignoring the fact that the three of you are the leaders of some very powerful factions in our empire, you’re also a triumvirate. If you don’t work together as one, you’re vulnerable. Right now, I bet you couldn’t call on your full powers if you tried, and I know you feel a void where the two of them are supposed to be. You need them. You need to be whole.”
Ciardis shook her head. “How can I be whole with only these options laid before me?”
Christian shook his head. “I don’t know the answer to that. But I do know you, Ciardis Weathervane. You’re a strong person. You’ll get through this. But just know that you can’t do this alone.”
“What are you saying?” she said with a catch in her voice.
Christian sighed. “That you need to talk to your bond mates. Get them to understand.”
“How?” she asked in a small voice. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to face either of them right now.
“Only you can answer that,” responded Christian.
“Does it need to be now?”
A voice called to them in the distance. Christian shouted back, “Coming!
“No, not now,” he said while staring at her as he stood. “There will be plenty of time for that on the road to Kifar. Now we have a meeting.”
He angled out his arm once more.
And once again she laid her arm in the crook of his and they walked back into the palace in silence, thoughts whirling through Ciardis’s head.
Chapter 15
They walked into the atrium arm in arm to see a surprise visitor waiting for them.
Shock and then elation ran through Ciardis like lightning bolts. She hadn’t even thought it was possible, and had convinced herself she’d never get a chance to say any more goodbyes, beyond the distraught ones she’d uttered yesterday. To keep her mind focused on what was coming, she had deliberately stripped the woman standing in front of her from her mind.
For her sake and Ciardis’s own. But now the emotions that she had locked away came rushing back.
The feelings of despair. The feelings of horror. The feelings of rage.
Walking forward, Ciardis searched the face of the woman who stood across the room from her, as if she could read the very thoughts of her mother’s mind just by staring at her and not letting go.
And perhaps she could, because what she saw in her mother’s eyes calmed her.
Stress. Worry. But no pain. No fear.
Stepping into the pool of light in the center of the room, Ciardis said, “You’re here.”
It was more of a question than a statement. Because Ciardis wasn’t sure. What if it was another illusion, designed to trick and confuse her? What if she was here, but she was in chains? What if Lillian really was cold and naked in a pit somewhere and the mirage that stood before Ciardis was just that? A mirage.
But all of Ciardis’s fears dissipated like vapors on the wind when the woman in front of her, her mother, opened her mouth and spoke.
“I’m here,” answered Lillian Weathervane as she took two small steps away from the half-circle of people who stood
arranged around her like an entourage at court.
And Ciardis Weathervane knew that no matter what illusion the emperor was capable of fabricating, he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t mimic the warm cadences of her mother’s voice. He couldn’t trick Ciardis’s heart and her brain. Not now. Not now when she knew what to look for. She trained her eyes for the visual and audible clues that told her what she should have known all along.
“Ciardis,” said Lillian in surprise, “will you not greet your mother?”
Ciardis relaxed, and the knots in her shoulders eased away as if they were never there. The emperor could do many things, but he couldn’t embody the personality of cool censure and aloof vanity that was Lillian Weathervane to the core.
He couldn’t imitate who her mother was, and for Ciardis those melodic tones that came to her ears were enough.
Lillian Weathervane was home.
Ciardis began walking forward, with a grimace at the direction of her own thoughts.
Home.
It was such a loaded word, and at the moment it didn’t have a concrete meaning to her. Home didn’t mean a palace in the city center or a small manor in the nobles’ quarter. Not to Ciardis. But for now she would keep in mind what Vana had said so articulately this week: “Home is where our asses are safe, our allies are numerous, and we can get a decent night’s rest.”
In her thoughts, Ciardis added, Home is where my family is. My true family.
“Ciardis, darling, what is it?” Lillian asked in a puzzled voice while holding out a beckoning hand.
With a weak smile that developed into a full-blown grin, Ciardis shook her head of the cobwebs, forgot her dignity, and rushed forward to give Lillian a hug.
“Mother, it’s been so long,” she cried.
“Only a day,” Lillian said with a hint of surprise in her voice as she returned the hug.
“A day since I saw you broken and bloody at the emperor’s feet. Tortured by his jailers,” Ciardis said as she forced herself to release Lillian from her death grip and get herself under control.
Don’t cry, Ciardis told herself fiercely. Tears won’t help anything.
So she sucked in a deep breath and pasted a wide smile on her face. She knew that she looked like a fool, but better a fool than someone going through histrionics.