“And I can say I never intended to kill Maradian, but we can argue semantics all day long,” said Thanar. “However, the fact is she is as guilty as a blood-seductress standing over a drained corpse.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Sebastian said with dry humor.
Thanar rolled his eyes. “Fortunately for you, you’ll have to. If you ever see a blood-seductress, by the way, run the other way. Their favorite type of victim is the clueless human male.”
Ciardis interrupted before Sebastian could turn this into a shouting match. “And the Shadow Council?”
Thanar smiled. “I have some ideas about how to deal with them.”
“And I suppose you know where to find them?” Ciardis asked sarcastically.
“Of course,” the daemonic prince said with a casual shrug.
Sebastian and Ciardis exchanged wry glances.
“We’d expect no less,” the Emperor of Algardis said. “After all, keeping secrets and discovering them seems to be what you do best.”
Thanar looked back at him with a smug smile in place. “It’s in my nature as a kith. We are taught to be discerning from birth.”
Sebastian snorted.
Ciardis shook her head. “Just come back to us quickly. Preferably with Seven’s head on a platter while you’re at it.”
She meant that metaphorically but he knew that.
Thanar gave a short bow and said, “But of course. I’d show up with no less of a gift to the wedding of my esteemed bondmates.”
Before anyone could say anything, he spread his wings, knelt down, and then shot up into the skies. Straining for the moonlight in the distance. Reaching it. Cresting and gliding on what she assumed was a strong westerly wind coming up off the ocean. Soon he was but a distant speck in the sky. Leaving behind people in his wake as he did best—astonished and off-set.
* * *
As Thanar flew away and Sebastian signaled to the remaining guards to collect their deposed emperor, she looked back at Maradian on his knees on a windy cliff.
She’d imagined this scenario so many times. Oh, not the precise location or the rocks beneath their feet. But yes, she’d imagined Maradian broken and beaten. Even bloody as they rose to prominence and even placement above him.
But when the emperor who had killed his own brother—and she was as sure of that as she was of anything—walked by her, he gave her a cold smile and despised the numerous chains that bound him hand-to-foot like a mummy, the dirtiness of his hair, the dishevelment of his wardrobe, and his magic that was sealed off once more…it was she who was afraid. Not him.
When he turned away from her and looked straight ahead, off down the road to where they would confront a goddess…again, she got the feeling that he well knew this, too.
Her attention was only pulled from his retreating back when Sebastian physically nudged her by putting a hand on her shoulders while saying, “We should be going now. With the kith’s help, everything will be in place within two days’ time.”
She knew that and she was grateful.
They didn’t just have to get everyone in place at their respective ley line nexus point but also have the spells gathered to set off the Initiate Wars ritual at the proper time. It would take a well-coordinated effort.
Shaking off the malaise of feeling she had surrounding their re-encounter with a perennially unpleasant emperor, quietly Ciardis asked, “What about the others?”
“Others?” said Sebastian in an absent-minded voice.
“The other tributes to the ley lines, I think she means,” said Maradian in a mocking voice from a few feet away where his attendant and guards held him.
Ciardis stiffened.
But she didn’t deny it.
That is what she had meant.
Sebastian gave the redolent emperor a burning look but answered reluctantly, “They’re awake.”
“All of them?” Ciardis confirmed.
“All of them,” Sebastian confirmed.
“Where?” Ciardis said in a voice that was so low it was almost non-existent.
A guard told her and she set off. There were many people she wanted to see, but only one that she felt that she had to explain herself to. And it didn’t take long to find them, either.
Ciardis walked slowly into the room. She had been dreading this moment for so long. Not the space itself, but what lay ahead. Still she noticed the details as she closed the door behind her. It, like many others, was a quintessential palace room. Devoid of life and empty in the darkness. But welcoming all in the same in its cool serenity as the occasional burst of wind flowed through—making the only sound. She watched the gossamer curtains flow with the currents and briefly cover the floor-to-ceiling windows they graced before falling back down toward the ground again.
It was a beautiful scene but Ciardis only had eyes for one point in the room.
Opposite the doors and bracketed by moonlight there was a person standing along the far bank of windows.
A woman.
Her back was to Ciardis Weathervane but Ciardis would know her form anywhere.
Petite with a strong back. Delicate braids drifted down her waist from a crown of individual plaits wrapped atop her head. She looked like a queen. A queen of marble and stone. Encased by moonlight. Unmoved by nature’s touch.
Ciardis paused a bit and wondered if she had heard her open the door.
But if she had, she didn’t turn around. Of course, she wouldn’t according to the ritual’s rules.
So Ciardis swallowed harshly and gathered her courage. She felt as much fear approaching this person as she would facing down a god. She knew exactly why. There were different kinds of fear after all.
The fear of failure.
The fear of rejection.
The fear of failure was what she faced every day when she woke up and thought of the oncoming battle with a god. She would fail her family, her friends, her empire. She wouldn’t save them all.
But today it was the fear of rejection that overwhelmed her. That the face she would see, the face that had welcomed her and embraced her through so many anxious nights, would be the one that rejected her.
Still Ciardis strode forward as her footsteps echoed in the empty room. She walked across the ballroom to gently grab Terris. The glow was just as had been described and Ciardis had known the truth from the moment she walked into the room. She was her best friend’s minder. It unnerved her that Terris wasn’t speaking, so still, so silent. She had thought that her touch would enliven her, but she had the thought that perhaps only the key to the ley lines, the nexus that is, could have full cognitive abilities. Perhaps the others were as they were originally stipulated to be. Sleepwalkers. Living dolls. Mobile with no responsive abilities.
As she gripped her friend’s shoulder firmly, Ciardis thought, If that’s the case, she should have never been allowed to wander off this far.
To be fair, she didn’t know how a sleepwalker had managed to get so far across the palace and open doors standing in her way to access this lone room, but Ciardis would correct it.
She would take Terris back to the others and it would be fine.
As Ciardis finally reached around her to pull and turn her around, she hesitated.
She wondered what Terris’s face would look like.
Would she be serene—as she slept ignorant to the world and their plans?
Would her eyes be open or would they be closed?
Was her face cleaned of all the sweat and tears from the pain they had endured?
Would Ciardis see hunger on her face from their time imprisoned in the emperor’s dungeon or would she see nothing as a reminder?
She hesitated because this was her friend. Had been her friend.
But Ciardis knew also that it was the ultimate luxury to stand scared of seeing her friend’s face, knowing that if not for the Weathervane and her machinations…perhaps that very same friend would be alive to tell her herself.
So Ciardis Weathervane took a deep shuddering br
eath and steeled herself.
She stopped stalling and took a step herself to look in Terris Kithwalker’s face—her flesh still gripped in the lady companion’s hand.
As she stepped and her hand touched bare flesh, Ciardis was surprised to notice that Terris’s skin was cold as ice. That might not have been out of the ordinary for the ritual they’d cast, though.
Besides, she thought, it’s not like I touched Maradian to see if he was warm to the touch.
The thought that Terris was supposed to be dead didn’t make her feel better either. What did make her feel better, even as it felt like a cruel torture, was the spark of recognition in her friend’s eyes as Ciardis stood in her vision. There could be no doubt about it—Terris was awake.
More specifically, she was alive.
At least that was the first thought that went through Ciardis’s head as her golden eyes met Terris’s dark-brown eyes and recognition flowed through both.
Ciardis dropped her hand as if her touch was fire instead of ice and said in shock, “By the gods.”
Terris said with perfect aplomb, “More like below the gods. That is after all what you called upon to make sure this ritual worked.”
“How? How did you know?” Ciardis asked faintly.
Terris said dryly, “We compared notes. The loyalists that is. Everyone has been informed about the details of this little ritual of yours. I have to say Ciardis Weathervane, I never thought you had it in you. We prefer to be called ‘awoken’ by the way.”
Ciardis shook her head back and forth, wondering if this was another illusion, another dream.
But Terris must have read her mind, or the blanket fear on her face, because she said, “Have no fear, fellow companion, you are as awake as I am and we both stand on firm ground. But that’s where our similarities end.”
Her voice finally found, Ciardis ventured forth a response. “Terris, I—”
Ciardis’s voice broke before she gamely continued on lamely, “—You were supposed to be asleep. At least that was what I thought would happen.”
It was no excuse, nothing could properly justify her actions. She just couldn’t help but parrot what she had been told in a simplistic, automatic defense.
Terris didn’t bat an eye as she lifted a hand and with a bitter look thrust her palm into the open moonlight. “So did I, and trust me—my fellow loyalists awakened to the very same surprised looks of their own minders. We had a bit of a chuckle about that.”
“We?” asked Ciardis.
Terris’s face shifted into a grimace. “We,” she confirmed.
Ciardis sighed. That meant all the minders and all the loyalists were going to be in for a very different journey than first imagined. Raising her hand, almost as if she was in a dream Ciardis traced an almost invisible pattern on Terris’s skin.
Like moonlit frost, she thought.
The delicate spider web of a pattern was only noticeable when she turned her hand from side to side.
Terris noticed her looking and said, “A side effect, it seems. Not an unpleasant one.”
Ciardis nodded.
Terris read the curiosity in her eyes and said impulsively, “Go ahead. Ask. I can see your questions leaping from your eager gaze.”
“What else is there?” Ciardis said hesitantly.
“A union of sorts,” Terris said while twisting her hand back and forth in the light, catching the flash of silver on her wrist and then turning her arm fast so that a long gleaming metallic strip on her inner arm caught the light.
More moonlit frost, Ciardis thought.
It, more than anything else, told Ciardis Weathervane that Terris and the others weren’t full human anymore. Though she had to wonder, why didn’t Maradian too have these markings?
It was a fascinating change but at the moment Ciardis was more focused on the treasure of information coming from Terris’s mouth.
“Between you and the others?” Ciardis said.
“Their thoughts and their visions,” Terris said definitively.
“You can feel them?” Ciardis asked.
Terris shrugged. “Yes. As much as you are aware of your seeleverbindung bondmates, perhaps even more so.”
Ciardis felt horror pool in her chest.
Not at the connection that Terris was talking about, but at the thought that all of the loyalists had awakened with the same sentience that the one standing before her had.
She asked a simple question fraught with tension, “Maradian?”
Terris shot her a dark glance but still she answered, “Ever the dutiful one, are you, Ciardis? Yes, the emperor is bound and chained. He, out of us all, was expected to rise with his competencies at least intact. It makes sense, sense they need to prepare for his awakening. The fact that all of us came back is, well…a fluke.”
Finally Ciardis took a step back. She looked away and she looked back.
“You’re still the same person,” the Weathervane said with a glimmer of hope yet in her eyes.
Terris laughed coldly. “I’m a completely different person. An aberration.”
Distressed, Ciardis lowered her head.
Gently, Terris reached out and raised her chin with a touch. “Why do you look away, Ciardis Weathervane? Isn’t this what you wanted?”
Ciardis stumbled back, away from the cold, clammy fingers of Terris’s light touch.
She shook her head fiercely. “I never wanted this. Never.”
Standing there shivering, it was as if Ciardis’s worst nightmare had come back to haunt her. She had missed her friends so much, but never wished for this. In confronting Maradian she had thought the worst was over, but now that their journey to the center of the empire was starting, she was learning that the worst was yet to come.
14
Ciardis felt like hours had passed. She would have given her entire world to take back her actions in that moment, to wipe away the look of bleak disgust on her friend’s face. It was hard to look her in the eye, the person she’d started her new life’s journey with, and know that by justifying the actions that had resulted in her re-animation, Ciardis had also sealed her fate. She felt disgust with herself. But she had never let self-recrimination stand in her way before, and she wasn’t about to now. She couldn’t let it break her. So Ciardis told herself to snap out of it. She tried to shake the dread off and focus on the tasks to come. But it was an almost impossible feeling to dismiss. As impossible as it was improbable that her friend would have ever come back from the dead in the first place, or been murdered, if she hadn’t known Ciardis Weathervane.
“I’m trying,” Ciardis said in a pleading voice. “I’m just trying to do what is right.”
Terris snorted and said, “For a long time you’ve put your ghosts behind you, buried in your wake. Tonight you face one standing physically before you and you quake. You can’t look away anymore, Ciardis. This isn’t just a simple matter of ‘Oh, something I did negatively affected a citizen of society that I’ll never see again.’ No, this time it’s me. Face what you’ve done like a woman.”
“I’m trying!” Ciardis practically shouted. “I didn’t want this. You have to know that.”
She may have been distraught by the entire scenario, but Ciardis Weathervane was pushing herself to stand her ground. She couldn’t do any less as Terris Kithwalker looked back at her with steady eyes.
“Neither did I,” Ciardis’s best friend replied back in a voice of recrimination.
Ciardis said quietly, “Would you have chosen to sacrifice an empire in my position?”
Terris gave a bright smile that was as cold as ice and said, “No, but then again, if I was in your position I would have burned the bodies and left town. Not resurrected everyone I knew.”
Ciardis swallowed harshly. “Will you ever be able to forgive me?”
Terris snorted. “Forgiveness is for the merciful. Just put me back to rest and we’ll call this even.”
Ciardis said with a stumble in her voice, “I plan to. I always di
d.”
Terris walked toward a long window, away from Ciardis. “You always do.”
Defensively, Ciardis said, “You know why we did this. Why we’ve done everything we have. War calls for unconventional methods.”
“Some things are too unconventional,” Terris said quietly. “Even for me. Especially this.”
Ciardis shrugged in dismay. “Aren’t you happy to be alive?”
“But that’s just it,” Terris said. “I’m not alive and neither is my husband.”
Ciardis turned toward her friend with pain in her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak but Terris held up a cautioning hand.
“I didn’t awaken to chastise you,” Terris said gently. “Just warn you. I’ll do what we set out to do. What this plan calls for. Then I’m going to find my peace.”
As Terris stepped back and the warm breeze of the air came between her and Ciardis, Ciardis felt lonelier than ever. She watched silently as her closest friend turned away and went back to the doorway that would take her down the tower steps.
There was nothing Ciardis could say.
She wished there was another way.
As the echo of Terris’s footsteps disappeared and she walked across the empty ballroom, Ciardis Weathervane was once more left alone with her thoughts. Hugging herself tightly with her arms wrapped around her waist in the cold, dark room, she wished the daemoni prince was here to comfort her. Take her away from this misery. Or at the very least distract her. He was quite good at that.
Her eyes distant, Ciardis shook her head sharply and looked at, really looked at, the room around her. Specifically the wall in front of her that had garnered the attention of an awoken anchor, so much so that she had been immobile even as she was approached from behind. Now as she stood staring at the vast mural that had so fascinated Terris as she walked into the room, she saw a fresco of a countryside at war. A group of battle-furious pegasus flying alongside griffins of old. Riders on both aiming with cocked arrows for dark creatures rising up to meet them in hails of claw and teeth.
The Initiate Wars, Ciardis thought miserably. Now there was a battle. People didn’t question the tactics then. They came together as never before…and never will again.
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