Sebastian nodded as he said simply, “But that death is not today.”
Then he dropped her hand with a formal bow of acknowledgement. As if their conversation had never happened, he turned and walked into the corridor behind the guard with the torch lighting the way.
3
“What was that?” Ciardis said as she stumbled out of the maze and tried to catch her breath. It felt like a hundred pounds of dust and damp mold had taken up residence in her lungs in just those few moments. And it wasn’t just her nasal passages that were congested. Her eyes were leaking like a sieve and she couldn’t quite get around the fact that it felt like the group had just done some intense magic. The kind that reminded her of the protection spells surrounding the entire city of Sandrin and warding against outsiders as they spoke.
But no one had spoken a spell.
No one had gathered their magic.
They had merely taken some steps. Granted, those steps had been into a dark corridor but one could hope that every dark corridor in the palace wasn’t randomly influenced by intense and unexpected flashes of magic, couldn’t one?
“Maybe it was just a feeling,” she muttered to herself between hacking coughs.
Or maybe have the confidence to know that you were right. Think, Golden Eyes. What else did that remind you of? she heard Thanar ask dryly in her head.
What? she questioned while thinking hard.
Look, Sebastian said quietly.
She felt his mind link the two scenarios as quickly as hers did as soon as she opened her eyes. She’d been gritting her lids together so hard, that the obviousness of it hit her like a sack of bricks as soon as she saw the solid walls they’d passed through…a corridor created out of magic. That would disappear as quickly as it had before.
Kifar, she said in a voice that was almost horrified in her bondmates’ heads.
Neither responded but she felt them in silent agreement.
Taking some steps forward just to make sure they weren’t back on a side of the empire she’d rather much leave behind, Ciardis peered around.
She knew somehow that they were still inside the palace. Its magic felt stronger, almost as if it had doubled in the few seconds she’d walked between walls. But it was the signature of power unique to the imperial palace grounds. She’d know it anywhere. Her own magic would have known it anywhere. Which is why she wondered why it felt off, itchy even. This was the palace she’d grown to despise, with its manipulations and its lies. And yet it wasn’t. It was altered, altered in a sense that the place felt different. The current of power felt different. Like time had passed and yet this room stood still.
But she couldn’t. Stand still that is.
She had to move, past the itchiness, and so she blinked her eyes slowly and tried to regain her sense of spatial awareness.
The room they had ended up in was as different as night and day from the one they had left behind. The only unifying aspect being the cobwebbed and darkness-filled corridor she had to use to get there. Eyes squinting in the shadows she hesitantly walked toward the light. She noticed right off that there was something both unnaturally expansive about the room and closed off.
It was in an octagonal shape with darkness and it felt like the darkness was moving. Tasting. Feeling. Searching.
It creeped Ciardis out so much that she actually hesitated and waited for Thanar to catch up. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, she felt better. Sebastian, of course, hadn’t waited. But he couldn’t. That was his duty. To be a leader. To push ahead. Besides…it was his coronation ceremony, after all; the darkness wasn’t likely to eat him.
But she did notice that not a few of the courtiers who emerged from the corridor behind her also shied away from the walls. Everyone tried to subtlety make their way toward the large, sumptuous bed in the center in the room. It was awash in the central light of the room.
In its own weird way, the bed was safety, she thought to herself.
Of course, she wasn’t alone in her thoughts, and the daemoni prince took full advantage of that.
Thanar snorted and said with a bit of irony, “Say that aloud.”
Ciardis gave him a side-eye and didn’t bother to give him the satisfaction of responding to her—admittedly—poor taste in words. To cover her embarrassment, she sniffed and moved forward to put a hand on Sebastian’s shoulder, just as any good companion would do to her patron. If she squeezed a little bit too hard, well, that might have been a little bit of the future wife coming out of her. Just as Sebastian seemed torn, so was she. She sympathized with the sense of weight and responsibility that must have been overcoming him in the moment.
The bed might have symbolized safety in the darkness in her head, but it was more than that to him. It was the shining symbol of the next step in his life, the rest of his life. The expectations of an empire on his shoulders. An entire set of peoples he was to care for, to rule over, to judge, and to protect. And heavens help him if he failed, because Sebastian—and only Sebastian—would be responsible in their eyes.
Especially now that the former emperor was gone, and in such an abrupt and rude manner, as well. The peoples hadn’t risen up in objection, partly in fact because Ciardis suspected they didn’t yet know. The fires and destruction throughout the palace and the city itself had kept the mages of Sandrin very busy. Battling fires, shoring up structural walls that threatened to collapse on dozens of houses, healing the injured emotionally and physically, and patching the holes in the empire’s protections without the help of an emperor or the Landwight he was connected to.
Of course it hadn’t helped that Maradian had never had that connection in the first place. It just made the mages work all the harder. So they could be excused for not sending the notice of the emperor’s death far and wide by sealed mage messenger or by flying steed. In fact, Ciardis suspected Sebastian preferred it that way. Suspected, but couldn’t confirm.
Oh, they were on cordial terms, yes. Even…loving ones. But he still attended and presided over more meetings than she could count on her hand alone. As heir apparent, it was his right and duty. Someone had to step forward in the vacuum of power. Which was another reason Ciardis suspected the courts had coalesced around him almost naturally. He was a born ruler. But that rulership was one she didn’t yet have equal access to. So for now she watched as Sebastian made his moves, shored up his allies, and carefully manipulated his enemies—most of whom he’d somehow convinced to lead the fight against the blutgott alongside him on the front lines.
Thanar leaned over her shoulder and whispered, “I know where your thoughts are going. I can see that as clear as magical whispers in this room. And he might win his empire’s loyalty this way, in fact I highly suspect he is already well on his way to this outcome once the rumors about his strength and courage in re-building the city sweeps across the empire, but it’s not the empire he needs to be worried about.”
Ciardis dropped her hand from Sebastian shoulder, worried all of a sudden. Turning slightly and covering her face with her hand, she said, “What are you talking about?”
She heard a smile of satisfaction in Thanar’s voice and even a whisper of the emotions behind that satisfaction before he swiftly tamped them down. He was happy that she needed him. Ciardis didn’t allow herself to think about the swirl of emotion in her belly when she realized that.
Instead she poked him and said in a voice that rose in angry warning, “Thanar?”
She wanted answers and she wanted them now.
Fortunately Thanar was in a gracious mood and chose to give them.
“The conclave and its members form some of the most powerful upper-class members of this empire. They are also some of his greatest enemies at present,” he replied with a slight chill in his voice. “One misstep at the courts is a reason for error in the field. A dagger in the back, perhaps. A mage spell just a little misspoken…backfired into his power loop. Any small thing, really, is enough to kill an emperor in the ascendancy of his reign.”
> Ciardis stilled. She wasn’t foolish enough to deny Thanar’s words. All he had said was true. And the courts wouldn’t hesitate to take out Sebastian if it benefited them. On a policy and personal level, she could even see how it could. But their lives and their livelihoods depended on a living descendant of the Algardis line ruling over the empire. It kept them protected. It kept the entire empire running. She knew that. So did they.
She reminded Thanar of as much with no little rancor in her words.
When he replied, he drifted a single finger down her spine where none of the rest of the attending coronation officials could see. Between them and covered by her cloth. But she could feel it through her entire body like live fire. It was too bad his words that followed chilled her to the bone instead.
“He won’t be the only member of his family alive after this day, though, now will he?” Thanar asked.
Ciardis stilled. “No,” she said in a voice that was almost a moan. “Tell me you did not do this on purpose.”
“Double-cross your precious prince heir?” Thanar crossed while moving out from behind her to stand by her side. “Of course not. But I am practical. We need Maradian to defeat an even greater threat to the empire than seeing its boy emperor deposed.”
Ciardis’s fist clenched in anger. She may have had awkward, swelling feelings for the daemoni prince that would make her flush at all the wrong times, but she absolutely despised him when he mocked Sebastian.
Still she didn’t hit him on the back of the head with her fist like she wanted to. Not that she could have reached that high up if he hadn’t been inclined to stand perfectly still anyway.
So instead she listened silently, fuming and terrified as Thanar laid out his plan.
When he ended he spoke and said, “You keep the prince heir alive and on the throne, Golden Eyes. I’ll keep this empire in one piece. Deal?”
There was so much she wanted to say, but couldn’t. The coronation members had apparently decided to move forward with the secondary ceremony at that moment. They swept forward in even steps surrounding the bed, and she and Thanar had no choice but to do so with him.
She whispered silently to Thanar as they went with the group, “Deal.”
Then she turned all her focus on the young man who held no small part of her heart and was the reason she felt so fiercely protective all of a sudden. Sebastian had stopped at the foot of the bed and didn’t seem inclined to move or speak. Which was strange. Sebastian was always ready for the next step with a plan and a confidence that spoke of the emperor he was becoming.
Still she watched him. This uncertainty was quite unlike him and she wouldn’t precisely call this the greatest time for contemplation. They had things to do and war actions to put in place. In the scheme of things, this ceremony was just that…a ceremony. And the longer they took to complete it, the more time away from the ley lines and tripping the ancient empress’s trap they were.
Finally, disturbed by the silence and wanting to get on with whatever had brought them into this strange room in the first place, Ciardis cleared her throat and spoke, “What was that corridor? Where are we?”
She could have been talking to the entire room, but her eyes and voice were very much directed at Sebastian—she was trying to break him out of his stupor.
And she was glad to say it worked. He took a sharp breath and spoke solemnly with his hands behind his back, “The secret entrance to the emperor’s bedchambers.”
Ciardis gave him a look of pure disbelief.
“That?” she asked in a tone that she didn’t bother to moderate from skepticism.
He nodded.
She looked around and back then asked, "Why is it so different from the empress's chambers?"
She hadn't actually been in the empress's bedchambers, but she remembered the very vivid relocation brought about by her mother Lillian's magic. It had been a humongous room, sumptuously decorated with marble columns and heavy drapery. This in comparison was almost...Spartan.
No decorative vases or lounge chaises.
No heavy curtains.
Just marble walls. Light and darkness.
And a bed.
A small smile came across Sebastian's face as he said calmly, "My mother and father always had very different...tastes. It wasn't a reflection of their personal choices, though, but out of necessity for the most part."
"What does that mean?" Ciardis muttered as she eyed the numerous dark corners uneasily and walked into the pool of light that surrounded the bed. The courtiers had already flowed into their seemingly pre-assigned spaces after some jostling. They now formed a loose circle around the bed that reminded Ciardis more of an appropriate gesture for a magical séance than a coronation ceremony, but who was she to direct the ebb and flow of the traditions of a centuries-old ceremony?
So she watched and waited.
"It means," Thanar answered patiently, "that the human emperors and empresses were far less trusting of their counterparts than the spouses they partnered with. Notice that the room has no visible entrances and exits now?"
Ciardis turned around in a hurried circle and noted to her surprise that it was so. Even the corridor that they had emerged from had disappeared. And she didn't think it was just hiding in the shadows. It was just gone.
"Well, I'll be," she said in fascination.
"Precautions, milady," the imperial master of ceremonies said with a disdainful sniff, "are most important."
Ciardis gave him a look that cut him with her eyes; she wasn't quite sure if he wasn't mocking her, but his attention had already turned elsewhere. Flighty like a bird, that man was.
“If we can proceed with the ceremony?” he said in a huffy tone.
To no one’s surprise, not a word of discord rose from the attendees.
They are as ready to get through this and out of this stuffy room as I am, she thought sardonically.
It was Sebastian who responded cheekily in her head this time, though. I think they’re just bored.
She stifled giggles, loud ones at that. But he had always been able to make her laugh, even at the most inappropriate, solemn times.
The master of ceremonies cleared his throat and gestured to the bed. “My liege, if you may?”
Ciardis raised an eyebrow—not exactly surprised but flummoxed. Were they to watch him sleep now? What could the emperor’s bed have anything to do with the coronation?
Was this an elaborate joke? she thought in a huff, almost ready to object.
But without blinking an eye Sebastian climbed up and lay down on top of the fully made-up damask coverlet.
He turned his head to the side to look at his gathered audience. Ciardis couldn’t help but freeze the tableau of the prince heir, dark hair and dark-green eyes, lying on the raised pillows with golden embroidery on the fabric’s edges.
He looked every inch the emperor he was supposed to be. Even reclining.
Perhaps especially so, her traitorous mind said.
You’re drooling, Golden Eyes, Thanar commented dangerously in her head.
Ciardis sniffed loudly to cover her embarrassment and took her place at the head of the bed facing outward toward the crowd at the magistrate’s beckoning wave.
“Please take his hand, Lady Companion,” the magistrate said with a proud look. “This is important for you too.”
“It’s important for us all,” Thanar said in an icy tone.
The magistrate looked over his shoulder with an impetuous look at the hovering daemoni prince.
“I wasn’t aware you were part of the ceremony, Lord Kith,” the man said snidely—every word an insult.
Ciardis stiffened, but she was well aware that Thanar could hold his own just fine.
Thanar simply gave a dark smile. “Why, my lord, I’m the lynchpin to this bond, so I’d say I’m very much a part of what’s about to happen.”
The magistrate stirred uncomfortably, but he couldn’t deny Thanar’s words.
He looked at Sebastian in a
bject plea, but whatever he expected to find wasn’t there.
“Approach, Thanar,” Sebastian said simply.
And to his credit, the daemoni prince did as he was bid.
Which was a miracle in and of itself, as far as Ciardis Weathervane was concerned.
4
For Ciardis, every step Thanar took was like an eternity in her heart.
Her mind was racing with the possibilities of what was to come, and her heart felt like it was stopping every second that the transference of power wasn’t done. It was like being stuck between two streams of thought—one that desperately wanted this to be over with, and one that couldn’t understand why they weren’t questioning what was about to happen.
As Thanar came slowly to the prince heir’s side, another man hurried forward to lower himself to whisper into Sebastian’s ear.
Whatever he said didn’t make the prince heir happy, because Sebastian flicked a glance at him that could sear flesh.
That look was clearly enough to tell the man that the prince heir was unhappy, but he didn’t back down. Instead he doubled down, whispering more urgent secrets in Sebastian’s ear. Finally Sebastian grimaced, then nodded, and waved the man off. Then, without hesitating, Sebastian took Thanar’s hand in his.
“So what's next?” Thanar said with an irrepressible smirk on his face and his hand securely in Sebastian's. If his eyes tracked the man who’d been waved off unhappily and his grip was a little tense, well he could be forgiven for his reticence. It seemed no one was happy about this situation. When Sebastian and Thanar’s gazes finally met after the daemoni prince tried to stare down every person in the room down, it was the reclining young man in the bed who gave a small chuckle.
"I don't know, Thanar, I would think you’re leading seeing as you were very clear that we'd never have skin-to-skin contact again without some dire circumstances happening," Sebastian said wickedly.
"I believe what I said was over someone’s dead body," Thanar replied in quick succession.
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