The cold wind of an eerie silence was the only thing that met her thoughts that time. And once more she was gripped with a fierce longing for a daemoni prince who was traveling further and further away even as she thought about him. Alone and surrounded by darkness, away from the machinations and frivolity of court life, she thought of him. It was only when she was surrounded by life and laughter that she thought of his polar opposite—Sebastian Athanos Algardis.
Which was just as well. She knew that she had a choice to make, one that would be all the more difficult if the people she had to choose between were more similar than different. For now, though—she longed for the person who didn’t make her feel different being a part of the darkness that was threatening to swallow her whole. In fact, he reveled in it and, in doing so, showed her that there was more depth to darkness than one would first guess.
If he couldn’t be here, I might as well be on the front lines, she thought miserably. I need to be doing something.
“We need to be doing something,” said a voice that was only slightly chastising. Ciardis whirled around to see the new emperor striding into the room. He got close enough to see the tear tracks on her face and silently wiped a tear away with gentle fingers. Sniffling, Ciardis blushed and grabbed her sleeve to do the same. She hadn’t even known that she was crying, and quite frankly she wasn’t sure if she was crying for the friendship she had just lost or the lives that were to become lost.
Either way it was a disconcerting thought. Knowing she was in for more heartbreak and not being able to do a damned thing to stop it from coming.
Ciardis took a steadying breath and asked, “Where’s Vana?”
Sebastian’s lips twitched into a smile. “The place you’d least expect her.”
Curiosity grew to life in her eyes. “And where would that be?”
The emperor shrugged and said quietly, “For some reason unbeknownst to me, she went home.”
“Home?” Ciardis said, flummoxed.
“Home,” Sebastian confirmed.
Ciardis blinked; she didn’t know where Vana’s home was. Where she was from. If she had family. Even whom she lived with.
“Well, this is awkward,” Ciardis said. “We need her. Where was her attendant in all this?”
“By her side the entire time,” Sebastian offered. “Besides, Lord Meres is with her and threatened to eviscerate anyone who got within touching distance if they tried to stop her.”
Ciardis cocked her head. “How odd…”
“That he would defend Vana?” Sebastian asked with raised eyebrows.
Ciardis looked back at him directly in the eyes. “That Vana needed him in the first place.”
Sebastian shrugged. “Well, you know she was unwell after that incident in the underground city. Now I think she’s become fragile.”
If there was one person Ciardis would never describe as fragile it was the assassin who could knife your throat in one second and disembowel you at the same time. It would have been overkill, yes, but not outside of Vana Cloudbreaker’s quite extensive weapons range.
Still, she had to find her. Whatever her state of mind was, Ciardis Weathervane was partially responsible for putting it there.
As she walked away slowly, Ciardis said in a quiet tone, “You know…it will be interesting to see why Vana needed Meres. But there’s another question forefront in my mind.”
“And what is that?” Sebastian asked in a polite tone.
With a fierce look, Ciardis said, “Why he wasn’t with his wife.”
Sebastian blinked and said nothing. It was the only response Ciardis could reasonably expect. You could defend both sides, though she had the feeling that Terris might have been a lot more calm, if not forgiving, if she had Lord Meres KinSight with her to share her burden. Fair or not—it was his duty as husband to wife. And Sebastian well knew it too. Things just got messy because Vana was what they all would consider a prickly friend…if not family, with all that they had gone through. So whatever ailed her had to be worse than waking up to a serious case of undead fever. And Ciardis Weathervane was determined to get to the bottom of what exactly that was. In light of that, she went off in search of another friend and this time a mentor, to whom she also owed an apology.
It didn’t take long to find her, and as soon as Ciardis walked into the room Vana looked at her with angry eyes from the window seat she reclined upon with blanket in her lap.
Those angry eyes told a story. But the words that snarled out of her like an angry dog were even more direct.
“Don’t you dare whine at me,” said Vana before Ciardis could even open her mouth.
“I hadn’t planned on it,” Ciardis said as she hastily clamped her teeth shut over the words forming in her mouth. That was just what she had been about to do.
Vana snorted and closed the short book in her lap before dropping it onto the floor with a heavy groan. A sound laced with pain, it had Ciardis jumping forward to catch her, but it was Lord Meres who got there first. He leapt up from a nearby stool and braced Vana’s shoulders as she hunched over with shudders that wracked her entire body.
“What’s wrong?” Ciardis cried as she ineffectually hovered over Meres’s shoulder trying to look for a wound. There was nothing there. No blood, no cuts. Even though Vana’s hands could have been covering it, Ciardis doubted Meres would have just sat there while Vana bled out through some wound he couldn’t see through clothes. What did stymy Ciardis Weathervane was what she could see. The moonlight shimmer, like a gossamer veil, dotted Vana’s skin. It was similar to the affliction Terris bore, but different in the way it displayed itself. Patterned in a web-like manner, it was present on Vana’s wrists when her arms moved to catch the light, as well as her upper arms and shoulders, which Ciardis could see peeking through holes in the thick cloth she wore. What disturbed Ciardis Weathervane more was that Vana seemed to be in agony, physical agony, and Terris—while emotionally bereft—had shown no such signs.
The sound of Vana’s agony crescendoed and she could do nothing more than wait it out.
Asking helplessly what could she do gave no answer and it was clear in those moments that there was nothing she could do.
And as they rode through the pains and screams, which died down to a whimper as every new minute passed, Ciardis heard a voice behind her say, “It hits her on the hour every hour. Pain that doesn’t dissipate but intensifies. It has no source that we can find, no wound to heal; it’s just there.”
Momentarily released from her watchful stance, as if a spell had been broken and she was free, Ciardis realized that someone else was here. Someone else she knew.
Shocked, she turned around with wide eyes as she stammered out, “C-Christian?”
He stepped out of the corner where he’d been leaning back with one foot resting against the wall in a manner that she would never describe as nonchalant. Instead he looked as tightly wound as a prisoner who didn’t know what to do with his freedom.
The second thing Ciardis said as he stood there silently observing her was, “Where in the gods’ names have you been?”
Christian blinked as if he snapped out of a spell and said, “Did you not get my note?”
“What note?” Ciardis asked disturbed while looking at him suspiciously.
“I had to leave for the grasslands,” Christian said while blinking rapidly. “But I was always coming back.”
Ciardis crossed her hands in irritation. “Well you could have tried harder to let us know. Someone would have told everyone else. We were worried.”
“Were you?” Christian asked with a cool attitude that Ciardis didn’t like but she ignored it for the moment.
Walking forward without thinking or stopping, Ciardis went straight for him. She hadn’t seen the man since, well…Kifar. When he had decided to go to the grasslands and learn about the medicinal herbs which had the potential to heal rifts across their society and not just be used by one immensely lucky section of it.
“What is hap
pening?” Ciardis said ineffectually as she gripped the koreische tight about the waist—almost as if he was a buoy and she was lost at sea.
“Pain that doesn’t dissipate but intensifies,” he said while slowly hugging her back. “It has no source that we can find, no wound to heal, it’s just there.”
He sounded exhausted. She would be too if she’d been forced to listen to a dear friend’s screams for hours with no end in sight.
“Oh, there is an end in sight,” Christian said roughly.
Ciardis jumped guilty. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud. Of course, we’ll do everything we can —”
Christian waved an abrupt hand as he moved away from her and said, “Please, Lady Companion, spare me your platitudes. I’m not some courtier you need on your side or friend to be abandoned in the darkness.”
The ugly look he gave her when he said that would stay with her soul. She was quite sure of that.
15
“We never abandoned you!” Ciardis said, shocked.
Christian gave her a deep look. “Me? No. Because I walked away from you. You and your triumvirate never had the chance to do the same to me.”
Ciardis was numb. “How could you say that to me?”
“How?” Christian said with a maniac laugh. He began to pace around her, invading her space but not touching. It was like being circled by a shark and not knowing when, not if, it would bite you.
As Christian kept circling, Ciardis went over and over in her mind his last few words. But those were overlapped with memories from before. Conversations from the past. Actions taken in concert and decisions made without consultation. She tried to separate all of those out and instead her mind became a buzzing maze of accusations. Like a bear trapped in a cage and poked from all sides, she kept backing away from one truth only to be faced with the next. Trying to escape her mind and cruel haunts of memories, she focused outward. On the goings-on in the room around her and to her relief—she heard nothing. Silence. Golden silence. If nothing else was going right, at least that meant Vana was no longer being ripped apart by pain. When she turned to look, Ciardis saw Meres slowly lowering the pain-stricken companion back so that Vana reclined rather than sat up in the window seat.
Her face at least looks peaceful, Ciardis thought miserably as Christian once more circled into her line of sight and she caught herself gathering the courage to say something she was quite sure she’d later regret.
Without even a pause, Meres however stood up from his perch over a comatose-looking Vana and came straight to Ciardis. Gripping her shoulder tightly, he dragged her away. Christian started to intervene with a harsh, “I’m not done with her yet!” but even he froze at the look that Meres turned back on him.
Grateful, Ciardis let herself be manhandled into a corner. It gave her time and space away from the recriminations that stood in the center of the room. As she tried to gather her wits about her and Meres flexed tense fingers, Ciardis saw that a haggard-looking Christian was watching them with wary eyes as he gnawed the nails on his fingers.
Not done indeed, she thought sadly.
It wasn’t a pretty sight and nothing like the Christian she knew. He looked like an angry, nervous wreck. But that still didn’t give an excuse for the way he had just treated her. His friend. She hadn’t even revived him after all. What did he have to be upset about?
Tears in her eyes and overwhelmed at the hatred, the accusations and the pain in Christian’s voice, she looked up at Meres and pleaded, “Do you feel this way too? Tell me all of my friends don’t hate me.”
Meres looked down at her with what she thought was understanding in his eyes, not kindness.
“You have to understand the position he’s in, Ciardis,” Lord KinSight said gently. “He’s under a lot of pressure and his friend is here in the worst pain she’s ever had in her life. But there’s nothing he can do.”
“I know that,” Ciardis said while throwing her hand out to ineffectually point at Vana. “Don’t you think I can see that? It’s painful to watch a good friend, a mentor, go through that. To be helpless to stop it.”
“Damn it, Ciardis Weathervane, see with your eyes for once and not your heart,” Meres said tensely. “We weren’t just your friends, we were powerful individuals in our own right. People with special gifts. People with histories. People with families.”
She was taking a bruising today, from all sides, but she couldn’t blame them. Wouldn’t blame them. This was her fault after all. So Ciardis Weathervane kept herself from lashing out. Instead she tried to be more understanding.
Stiffly, Ciardis said, “I know that too.”
She knew that she was repeating herself but anything else she said seemed to offend someone somehow.
“You know that but you don’t seem to understand,” Meres said. “Imagine if it was you and you couldn’t boost Sebastian’s powers or Thanar’s gifts in a critical moment. A moment in which they needed you most.”
Ciardis shifted uncomfortably as she said, “I’d always find a way.”
“There’s that bravado,” Meres said with a dry laugh. “The lady companion never gives up, does she?”
Ciardis stiffened. She may have been sad, but she wouldn’t take being mocked easily.
Seeing her face change, Meres grimaced. “All I’m trying to say is that it’s about more than you and your actions, your thoughts, your dreams. We have dreams and desires too. Capabilities.”
Looking over at a distraught Christian, Ciardis was starting to see what Lord KinSight had been trying to tell her for the last minutes. It really wasn’t about her.
“He’s hurting,” she said in a startled voice as she dragged her eyes away from Christian. “Not in the same way she is, but hurting nonetheless.”
She stumbled and stopped. Then she decided to hell with her pride. She asked a simple question: “Why?”
Rubbing his tired face, Meres looked up at the ceiling and then back down at her as he said in a gentler voice, “He’s a koreische, Ciardis. It’s in his blood to help her. And he can’t. How do you think that makes him feel?”
For once Ciardis stopped looking at the immediate picture. She stopped visualizing battle plans. And she looked over at the friend who stood tall. Tall and in pain. Emotional pain that had her cringing even from here. Meres was right.
She let out a slow breath and squeezed Meres hand.
“Thank you, Lord KinSight,” she said as her eyes brightened in understanding.
“For what?” he asked in a wary tone.
Ciardis turned to look back up at him. “For showing me to the light.”
Not wanting to but having to, Ciardis walked up to Christian with a firm look in her eye.
She stopped when she was toe-to-toe with him, and she said something she’d been meaning to say for a long time.
“I’m sorry,” Ciardis Weathervane said. “I’m sorry for the sorrow I’ve brought into your life. I’m sorry for the pain. I’m sorry for the danger.”
Christian paused his nail chewing and dropped his hand—his eyes said he was unconvinced.
She persevered on as she continued, “But I’m not sorry for making you feel alive. For taking you from low-level hustles on the street to empire-wide machinations.”
Christian opened his mouth to object and she beat him to it.
“You forget, Christian,” Ciardis said with ire in her eyes and a backbone finally lodged in her spine, “that when I met you, you were doing small street tricks with Stephanie by your side.”
Christian looked affronted. “I was working with the Shadow Council.”
“And doing their minor biddings,” Ciardis continued unconcerned. “Nothing serious. Just looking for a way out of your middle-of-the-road life and some adventure. Well, I gave you that—in spades. So while I expect no thanks, I will accept no recriminations for giving you the life you always dreamed of. It may not have come into exact fruition as you imagined, but nothing does.”
She paused. Ciardis let a
slow breath out and didn’t say another word.
She wondered if she had overstepped her boundaries at that moment. She wondered if she had truly lost another friend. As she waited in uncertainty, she didn’t really regret what she had said. It needed to be spoken after all.
Then Christian spoke, “I’m not sure if I should bow or hug you.”
Voice stuttering, Ciardis said, “Hug…please.”
The koreische snorted. “You’ve got some nerve, Lady Companion.”
His words may have been tough, but the look in his eyes were gentle.
“I have to,” Ciardis said with her hands back on her hips, this time more for her benefit— she was still feeling on shaky ground—than anything else. “I’m the future Empress of Algardis.”
“If you all are through,” said an acerbic voice, “I’d like some water now.”
They all turned to look and see Vana Cloudbreaker sitting half up and looking as irritated as Ciardis had ever seen her. The smile that Ciardis felt blossoming on her face said she’d want it no other way. Vana’s responding grin clearly showed she’d wanted nothing less than the same.
Not knowing what else to say, Ciardis asked hesitantly, “How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been kicked in the head by a cow one too many times,” Vana said dryly.
Then she narrowed her eyes and raised a shaky hand. With a crooked finger, the foremost assassin in the empire demanded Ciardis come over to the window seat. Heart in her throat, Ciardis did as she was bid—without question. When she reached Vana, the woman gently put a hand on her waist and pulled her closer, so that Ciardis’s face was alongside of her own instead of in front of her. As Ciardis tensed, waiting for a death blow that would end the recriminations from her friends and allies once and for all, she imagined all sorts of things in her head. A knife in her back. Maybe a blast of power to her mage core.
Instead Vana leaned over and gave a wicked laugh in her ear as she said in a softly approving voice, “Well done, Weathervane, well done.”
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