by Terah Edun
“Oh, right. Well, okay,” Terris said, turning to Meres. She looked a little deflated but happy once more to be in her husband’s arms.
“Back to our original reasoning for Lord Meres to stay here,” said Sebastian.
“Right,” Vana said with an irritated shake of her short, bowl-styled cropped hair. It looked like she had cut it again. This time with a knife.
Vana eyed Meres firmly. “It’s as simple as this. We need your expertise here. I need your expertise here. You’re more likely to reason with someone and lead them when I’d rather cut their throats for insubordination and be done with it.”
Meres nodded solemnly with a twinkle in his eyes. “I can’t say that assessment wouldn’t be wrong.”
“So you’ll stay?” Vana asked. Well, asked in Vana’s way. It was still said with a good deal of confidence.
Meres looked down at Terris, whose shoulders he still grasped. “If my wife will let me,” he said softly.
Terris gave him a brilliant smile. “I trust you to keep yourself alive.”
He nodded.
“Great,” said Sebastian. “So Vana, Ciardis, Caemon, and Meres stay here. Thanar, Terris, Christian, and I go.”
Nods confirmed all around.
Ciardis said, “Then let’s get moving. We’ve got less than eight minutes to meet the emperor and Lord Steadfast will be apoplectic if we’re late.”
“Then is this where we part ways?” said Meres.
Sebastian shook his head, “No, Ciardis and I both need to be present before the emperor and I don’t planning on the leaving the city until after the gathering to send off General Barnaren this evening.”
“And if the emperor says you have to leave immediately?” Vana asked.
“We will go,” acceded Sebastian. “We can’t afford to cross him yet. To make sure at least two are here, you and Lord Meres should journey on to your duties.”
Ciardis nodded. “If all goes as planned, I’ll come to you tonight. And if it doesn’t, at least we were prepared.”
Everyone looked uncertain but it was what they had to work with.
Lord Meres raised a hand and sent out a wave of magic.
“What did you do?” asked Sebastian.
“Sent a thought to the four carriage horses waiting outside the gate to wake their masters as we’re ready to leave,” said Meres. True to his word, two carriages pulled by two horses each soon rounded the curve.
Four got in one. Two in another. The carriages split at the path. One ascending the hill to go to the emperor’s audience chamber. The other going downhill into the depths of the city.
Ciardis and the group followed behind a palace servant that appeared immediately at their carriage like a ghost. When he led them off through a double door and she saw the lord chamberlain waiting for them, she wondered what they were in for.
Instead of speaking, Lord Steadfast merely gestured and beckoned for them to follow them.
So to get answers, Ciardis sped up and asked, “Do you know yet what the emperor wants?”
Lord Steadfast spared her a glance before he said, “All I’ve been told is that he wants to meet with you in regards to something about the late princess heir.”
“The princess heir?” murmured Ciardis. Well, that was certainly not what she had expected.
“Yes,” said Lord Steadfast with a distracted look, “although I can’t imagine what he’d want to discuss about her.”
Ciardis remembered that Lord Steadfast hadn’t been made aware of her bargain with the emperor to free her mother. She had been ordered to find out the late princess heir’s secrets and inform the emperor. If she did well, he would consider pardoning Lillian. It hadn’t worked out precisely how Ciardis had planned. She had found out quite a bit about the devious princess heir’s plans but she had been unable to tell the emperor the greatest secret of them all. Because Sebastian had found out that the emperor was an imposter and hadn’t wanted him to have access to something as powerful as a Karde ship. Although she didn’t yet know why. In either case, it wasn’t a thing to be taken lightly.
So now her mother sat imprisoned in a palace apartment. Her every whim taken care of, Ciardis was sure, at least that was what she had been told noble prisoners could expect. They had personal libraries, sparse but whole bedchambers and a servant who cleaned for them.
They may be prisoners, but noble prisoners eat and live better than impoverished and free farmers, Ciardis thought. It was unfair but she was glad her mother was being treated well. She felt guilty for not rescuing her but now that she had time on her hands, as she was not leaving Sandrin like the others, Ciardis was sure she’d find a way to free her.
Finally they came to two small doors. Nothing like the grand entrance to the imperial audience chamber, but still an entrance fit for an emperor, Ciardis thought as she reached up to traced the life-sized golden lions embossed on the door.
They were the symbols of the imperial crown: two rampant lions facing each other, perhaps preparing for battle.
Sebastian came to stand on her right and Lord Steadfast on her left. When the doors opened to reveal the interior of the medium-sized room and Ciardis’s eyes took in the spectacle, they hastily reached out a hand and grabbed both of her arms.
Her face blanched with horror and shock, Ciardis nearly collapsed.
Lord Steadfast and the Prince Heir Sebastian’s grips were the only thing holding her up.
Chapter 26
As she stared at her mother with trembling hands, Ciardis shook off both of the men at her side. When she felt Thanar approaching her from behind, she said harshly, “Don’t touch me.”
Body vibrating internally with an awareness of her surroundings and feelings that she didn’t know she was capable of, Ciardis walked forward.
It was a simple box-like room with blue wallpaper that had detailed scrollwork inlaid along intervals. On the left and right walls sat four chairs, evenly spaced apart at parallel intervals along the way between the only door and the throne. To Ciardis’s eyes, the chairs looked stiff and uncomfortable, because of rather than despite of the plush pinned cushions that rested at the base and back. The cushions were too regal to be anything but butt-hurters trapped between ornately carved wooden arms.
On the floor was a thick antique carpet that spread across the entire windowless room except for a thin border on the edges. Two guards stood at the door as Ciardis and her group passed them by with slow steps. As if the slower they walked, the longer it gave them a chance to realize it was all a mirage and would disappear like the illusion it was. But it didn’t, and Ciardis forced her gaze to travel to the far end of the room. No more than twenty feet away stood a throne. Not a large one like those the emperor used for his audience chamber and formal throne room. No, this one was small. Almost petite. But there was nothing delicate about it. It was made of solid, heavy gold.
And in its seat sat the emperor in ornate robes embroidered with silk weave and costly jewels. He leaned on one arm, in his trademark pose, while his other hand gripped a chain that occasionally jangled with the rustle of metal links in his fist. Two more guards stood at the foot of the emperor’s personal throne. They looked mean and well trained. That didn’t stop her from wanting to fall on them with all of her might with knife in hand.
No, what stopped her was the look on her mother’s face.
Lillian Weathervane’s eyes pleaded with Ciardis not to take a step farther. With eyes brimming with tears and small shakes of her head, she said without words, Turn around, go home.
Fury entered every line in Ciardis’s body as she took in her mother’s frail form. Her magic felt like it was exploding as it flared out of her again and gain. She barely noticed. She didn’t care when the Lord Chamberlain was forced to fall back and the imperial guard standing next to him had to raise his arms to shield his eyes. She didn’t care when she heard the shocked cries and forced fallback of all of her compatriots except Sebastian and Thanar. She didn’t care that her magi
c was flaring so powerfully that it lit the room in visible waves so bright that even Lillian winced in the glare.
All Ciardis could do was stare at the bruises that marred Lilian’s skin outside the thin fabric—a linen sack, really—that served as her clothes. Lillian’s hair was filthy and a gag ball was stuffed in her mouth. But that’s not what shocked Ciardis the most. What threw her into pure shock rather than just rage was the chain on the collar that led from Lillian’s throat to the emperor’s right hand.
With Thanar on her left and Sebastian on her right, Ciardis screamed. But not a scream of pain or fear. It was a primal scream of power, of magic and of deadliness. Her powers erupted, all of her friends were thrown back down the hallway as the door to the room banged shut behind them trapping Ciardis in the room with her seeleverbindung mates, her beaten mother, four of the emperor’s fiercest guards, and the emperor himself.
The four guards wasted no time in unsheathing their swords and coming for Ciardis. Sebastian and Thanar didn’t move. Not because they were paralyzed by fear or inaction, but because Ciardis had called in soul winds. A dense layer of magical winds, summoned from the cores of the three seeleverbindung. A heady mixture of gold, silver, and onyx, the winds raged around the three like a familiar lover until Ciardis could barely see the emperor calmly sitting on his throne with her mother enchained at his feet.
That was all right, because even though she couldn’t see out physically, she could see through her soul winds with her magic. And the guards didn’t have that particular gift. Without pause, Ciardis raised a hand slowly and in her palm formed an ordinary mage orb with an extraordinary pulse of power inside.
She knew instinctively that instead of the mages around her drawing power from her as usual, she was now drawing power from them. Tripling her gift in one fold with the dark magic of Thanar and the land bond of Sebastian.
As if she had done so a millions times before, she instinctively closed her open hand in a fist. The power merged into a new shape—lightning bolts. Four crossed lightning bolts sizzled and jumped between the flesh of her closed knuckles. They extended far outside of her hand, but couldn’t move until she gave them freedom.
She opened her hand and when she did the bolts flew from her grasp like lit missiles straight for the chests of the four guards. They felt to the floor dead in mid-fall.
Ciardis let the soul winds die as she eyed the source of her rage. And then the emperor laughed and clapped together his hands with a rustle of the chain. With clap of his hand, the true illusion dissipated and Ciardis was left staring at the end steps of the throne at Maradian’s feet.
Her mother was gone. As if she had never been there.
The dead bodies, however, stayed.
Confused, she snapped her gaze up. She tried to speak once but couldn’t do so and hold on to her rage at the same time. It seemed impossible. Out of the two Ciardis would rather hold on to the rage. But her bond mates seemed to think otherwise. One grabbed her left hand. The other her right. Then they spoke the same words to her: “Ciardis, let it go.”
Breathing hard, she emerged from her fury. The winds around them died. And Ciardis heard a voice called out to her.
“Ciardis, Ciardis!” Lillian called frantically.
Ciardis turned to see Lillian Weathervane held in the corner with two tightly-muscled guards gripping each arm tightly.
“Let me go to my daughter, you fools!” shouted Lillian. She looked furious. Ciardis couldn’t believe it as her eyes traveled up and down the body of the woman who had given birth to her. Lillian was dressed in the latest fashion of the courts—a loose flowing dress with a tie at the waist and keyhole neckline just above her breasts. As she twisted and turned in her guards arm, her hair loosed from her exertions, and a sheen of sweat exhibited on her bare arms. She had clearly been struggling for a while, but to no avail.
Ciardis couldn’t take her eyes off of her. She couldn’t believe that not a mark marred her body.
“Bastien, please!” shrieked Lillian. Her fear reached new levels. Whatever she saw in Ciardis’s eyes made her almost mad with fear. Ciardis had no idea what it was. She couldn’t see her own eyes and she wasn’t going to communicate with either of the males that hovered to either side of her, their own anger palpable in the small room with four dead bodies and an assessing emperor.
Then he waved his hand with a flicker of his fingers. “Release her.”
The guards let go of Lillian Weathervane so fast that she fell to the floor on her hands and knees. But that didn’t stop her; without hesitation she rose and ran to Ciardis with a frantic look in her eyes. When Lillian ran to her and clutched her in her arms, Ciardis stiffened at first. Wondering if this, too, was an illusion. Wondering if anything was reveal. But then Lillian’s signature scent enveloped her, the tactical touch of skin-on-skin reverberated through Ciardis and most of all—the unique feel of a Weathervane’s magic sparked along Ciardis’s aura as she felt Lillian’s power like two songs meeting in mid-air. With a raw, pain-filled sob, she collapsed forward into Lillian’s arms, letting the woman bear her weight, letting Sebastian and Thanar close in behind her to touch her back through the cloak.
It took Ciardis several minutes to collect herself, both her physical appearance and the ever-present leak of magic from her new-found abilities. She took an unconscious step back into the protective arms of both males, Ciardis looked up at Lillian. “I thought it was real. I thought I had abandoned you to a fate I could have never imagined. I thought—”
Lillian pressed a firm finger to her daughter’s lips. “I know, my darling daughter. I know. I saw. I wanted to dispel the vision. I wanted to take your shaking form into my arms and tell you it wasn’t real...but the beasts the emperor assigned to guard me are also mages. I had no choice. I am so sorry.”
Ciardis trembled and shook her head. “It’s not your fault. But I would have killed him, Mother. I really would have, to avenge you.”
Lillian’s eyes widened in shock as she visibly flinched and moved her body just enough that Ciardis could see the emperor had stood and was looking at them with visible interest. The guards who had held Lillian back had assumed new places by his side.
“Never say that, Ciardis, never!” Lillian said while griping her arms firmly. “That could earn you a death sentence.”
“Death would have been better than what I thought he did to you,” Ciardis whispered to gritted teeth.
Lillian swallowed and looked around nervously. “Well, you certainly took care of everyone else who stood in your way.”
For the first time Ciardis focused on the four dead bodies in the room. They all lay where they had fallen with massive charred holes in their chests.
“If I had known you had ascended to the next level of Weathervane,” said Lillian with a touch of disapproval, “I would have given you our ancestors journals.”
Ciardis had the grace to flush. “It was a recent development, Mother.”
Lillian took in Sebastian and Thanar flanking her daughter to either side. “So I can see from the frantic and slightly disbelieving looks on either of the males’ faces who you used in a reverse-power drain.”
Ciardis blinked and looked over Sebastian and Thanar in turn. They did look a bit...frazzled. But they both flashed her relieved grins.
“Are you both all right?” she had the grace to ask in concern.
Thanar snorted. “You drained half of my magic, little mage. I feel like a husk emptied of power.”
Sebastian admitted, “I feel a little similar, but I’m more worried about you.”
Ciardis said, uncomfortable, “I don’t feel so different.”
Then she looked at Thanar, flummoxed. “Half your power, really?”
“The emperor’s private chambers have wards much like those used by ancient mages, Golden Eyes,” said Thanar with a wrinkle in his brow. “Were you really not aware? You didn’t just use your power to char some holes and call wind. You unlocked and blasted through those prot
ective spells.”
Ciardis said uncertainly, “I wasn’t aware of much. Of anything, really. I just let the power do as it willed. I was the vessel, the conduit. You were the sources. That’s about what I know.”
Then a voice interrupted them. “As touching as this little reunion is, I called you here for a reason, Ciardis Weathervane.”
Ciardis looked up into her mother’s eyes. Lillian Weathervane hadn’t moved or turn around. She kept her back deliberately to the emperor. Protecting her daughter in her deliberate refusal to move.
Ciardis licked her dry lips and said, “It’s all right, Mother.”
Lillian’s mouth thinned in a silent refusal.
Ciardis put her hands on Lillian’s shoulders. “Please, Mother, move aside. I can handle myself.”
Lillian looked deep in Ciardis’s eyes. Whatever she saw must have convinced her because she stepped aside to let Ciardis face him. Then, side-by-side, the four of them faced the most powerful man in their empire. And Ciardis knew she couldn’t be the only one wondering if now was the time, the time to strike and remove Maradian from power for good.
Then he spoke again and the moment passed. His face like stone except for his eyes glittering with excitement, the emperor said, “Do you want to know what reason that was, Ciardis?”
Ciardis lifted her chin as thoughts flashed through her head. What had he wanted to know—if they knew who he truly was, if she had the power to protect her mother or if the men surrounding her had the power to take him down?
“If I would collapse in a weeping ball of pain at my mother’s debasement?” Ciardis said with a snarl.
He threw back his head and laughed. “No, that wasn’t it.”
Beside Ciardis, Sebastian slipped his hand in hers and squeezed tightly as he said, “To mercilessly push her through a level of pain I didn’t think you were capable of...Father?”
The pause was deliberate. The emperor flicked curious eyes to his son but he didn’t take the bait.
“To see,” the emperor said with delish slowness. “If the change I felt was true.”