by Terah Edun
The dragon cocked her head and seemed to come to a decision. Her voice mellowed a bit as she finally answered Ciardis’s earlier question. “Not who, my dear sarin.”
“Then?” Ciardis prompted.
“What,” Raisa said simply.
The dragon turned a darkening glance on the mirror as she refocused on the reason she had stormed into Ciardis’s palace bedroom chambers so early in the morning like an avenging angel.
Or an infuriated dragon, Ciardis thought as she, too, eyed the latest problem in her life with a measure of exasperation.
“What in the sense of a creature, an entity, a god?” Ciardis asked with some exasperation. It was a fair question. She was as tired of non-answers as Raisa apparently was of tutoring her on her problems at court.
Raisa didn’t answer. Instead, she upped her magic and held up a hand. She was questing for something that Ciardis couldn’t see. That no one could. Not unless they had the magic of an adept dragon and the skills to see across planes into the Aether Realm. Perhaps even beyond.
When Raisa stopped the pulsating and somewhat nauseating mix of draconic magic, Ciardis felt a little light on her feet. Dizzy even. Like she’d drunk just this side of too much champagne and suddenly the alcohol was going to her head.
The trouble was, it was barely seven in the morning and she hadn’t been drinking anything.
Dazed, Ciardis focused her increasingly doubled vision on the dragon and managed to demand in a slurred tone, “What did you do, Raisa?”
The dragon was turned away but apparently heard the distress in her voice, because she deigned to actually look at the Weathervane when she answered. With a furrowed brow and a decidedly undraconic look of concern, the ambassador demanded, “What’s wrong with you?”
Ciardis, unsteady on her feet, fell to her knees. The effects were getting worse. Her head was pounding and she could barely keep upright.
Through a groan and weirdly aching teeth, Ciardis gasped, “You tell me. This is your doing. It’s worse than that buzzing presence from before.”
Eyes wide and her expression was one of a concentration so fierce that it was a bit scary, Raisa leaned down until her face was centimeters from Ciardis’s own.
In a voice that brooked no objection, the dragon asked, “What buzzing presence?”
In pain and trying to gasp for a semblance of breath, Ciardis answered, “I don’t know. Something I felt briefly two days ago when we held the second conclave. It was there a moment, then gone the next.”
The dragon’s eyes shifted as her pupils constricted into slits, and she hissed with a light flicker of her tongue across the tip of Ciardis’s nose.
“Interesting,” said Raisa finally.
Eye twitching from the pressure in her head, Ciardis said through gritted teeth, “Try excruciating. Help me. Please.”
Those were the last words the Lady Companion uttered as she slumped forward with a moan, falling into blissful darkness.
27
If only for a moment, that is. Ciardis couldn’t keep herself upright, there was so much pressure building in her brain, but neither did she pass into full unconsciousness. She experienced only brief blindness and a loss of the sense of pressure before both returned. She greeted the first joy, the second with regret.
Luckily Raisa didn’t take umbrage at her tone. In fact, she hitched up the skirts of her dress and squatted in front of Ciardis Weathervane as smoothly as a farmer woman would to collect eggs from a chicken coop.
There’s more to this dragon than meets the eye, Ciardis thought as a wave of nausea hit her. She thought she was going to be sick all over the tips of the ambassador’s dark gray heels.
Which would have been funny if she weren’t so nauseous.
“That wouldn’t be a good look,” Ciardis slurred to herself. The drunk-but-not-actually-drunk state was cutting across her mental and physical faculties. She felt like she was falling apart at the seams. It was so bad she couldn’t seem to differentiate between words spoken aloud and words murmured in her head.
Her thoughts and her speech were becoming one stream of consciousness.
She was losing her mind while her body felt worse with every second.
What kind of torture is this? Ciardis managed to scream aloud.
Or at least she thought she had.
But her lips were closed. She could see that through her dazed focus on her reflection in the dragon’s very close eyes.
“It’s all right, sarin,” Raisa murmured in a soothing voice. “I’m going to fix this.”
Ciardis said through teeth gritted from pain, “You’d better.”
“Or else what?” asked the dragon as she delicately placed two very-sharp-clawed fingertips against Ciardis’s temple. Before Ciardis could respond, Raisa said sharply, “Don’t move. Don’t even flinch. I don’t wish to scar you.”
Well, at least that means that last comment wasn’t the threat it sounded like, Ciardis grumbled to herself—still not certain what was spoken and what was thought.
But it didn’t matter as much as the relief in her temple that grew greater with every passing moment.
The headache was dissipating.
The double vision was gone.
Even her body felt less like it was struggling to balance on the deck of a wave-tossed ship.
She looked up and suddenly she felt normal. Like the last few torturous seconds were nothing but a bad dream. Ciardis knew it was because Raisa had finished whatever it was she was doing. But still the dragon didn’t stand up fully from her crouch, she just hovered.
She did however manage to say her next words while looking down her nose at Ciardis Weathervane. Which Ciardis guessed had been the point of the maneuver.
“Draconic magic,” Raisa finally said. “True draconic magic, not telepathy and assorted tricks, is done on another plane. A plane you are unfamiliar with, but one that will negatively affect you if you are unshielded from the magic in it.”
Ciardis stood on steady legs. “Like the Aether Realm?”
Raisa nodded.
With a frown, Ciardis added, “But I was shielded. I’ve been doing it at least on an unconscious level ever since some unfortunate run-ins with a mind-bending satyr.”
“Not strongly enough, apparently,” scoffed Raisa. “And certainly not against draconic magic.”
Ciardis couldn’t say much in response to that.
Raisa, however, must have been unconvinced of her ability to be silent, because she said unprompted, “Enough questions. I’ll answer no more until this is done. Now call your bondmates. They are taking far too long to storm in here and rescue you.”
“What—” stammered Ciardis. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Raisa didn’t even bother looking at her as she resumed studying the gate with what Ciardis assumed were both magical and visual means.
“Don’t play coy, Weathervane,” the dragon said dryly. “It doesn’t suit you.”
Ciardis glared at her back but didn’t deny it. Seeing that it was a stalemate the dragon would probably win, Ciardis did as she was bid.
Over her shoulder, Ciardis called out, “Come on in, no need to deny you’re there. Besides, I’m pretty sure she won’t try to roast you now.”
Ciardis had been well aware that the matron and the two men from the haberdashery, if they had known what was good for them, would have run straight to the nearest soldier to inform them of the flaming remains in the Empress-to-be’s chambers as soon as they left.
She’d been counting on it.
Even if she couldn’t reach her two seeleverbindung bondmates by link, they would still get the word, and so they had.
She’d been unable to “hear” either of them, but she had felt the nearest of their respective magical cores grow closer and closer as they’d raced to be by her side moments before.
Because the closer the cores were to each other, the stronger she was, and vice versa.
They needed each other in a sense,
and they strengthened the other just by their mere presence.
Ciardis had never appreciated that more than she did now.
Except perhaps two years ago, she thought generously.
It didn’t matter as much right now, though, as having their physical presences near. She didn’t plan to attack Raisa—the woman had just helped her, after all. Ciardis couldn’t yet explain how or why she’d been attacked by the magic Raisa referred to in the first place, though. Then Thanar dropped into the room from the balcony and Sebastian blew through the closed anteroom door. Pacing forward like dangerous lions, closing in on the kill to be by Ciardis’s side.
When she gave them a tense but small smile, they relaxed—incrementally.
Then Thanar sauntered forward with a deceptively soft look on his face.
To someone who couldn’t read him, he looked almost relaxed. To Ciardis, he looked as dangerous as she’d ever seen him.
He’d have to be, to face off against a dragon.
She stepped forward and put a bracing hand against his chest. Not necessarily to stop him or to calm him, but to react to his magic. She could feel it building like a storm ready to break over the fields. It was as exhilarating as Raisa’s draconic magic had been exhausting.
Which was strange.
It had never felt like this before.
Almost like an aphrodisiac. Certainly more alluring than any time she had tasted his mage core before.
Ciardis turned as she felt Sebastian flank her. Really, he was putting his body between hers and Raisa’s.
Not that it would stop an angry dragon, but the thought was nice.
Almost as if in a dream, Ciardis raised her other hand and put it flat against Sebastian’s chest, mirroring what she had done with Thanar.
As soon as her fingers touched cloth, her knees buckled.
She couldn’t hold her weight.
It was life. It was overwhelming. The magic was everything.
She felt rather than saw her bondmates grip an opposite arm of hers. But they, too, were caught up in the allure of the mage cores drawing together. Like water passing through a sieve, each of their magics were leaving their respective bodies. As if called upon to by their owner mages.
But Ciardis Weathervane hadn’t drawn on her core. She hadn’t prepped for any spells.
Neither had Thanar. Nor had Sebastian.
It was unbidden. It was raw. It was magic.
She couldn’t snap out of the reverie that was overcoming the three of them.
Then a dry draconic voice, getting deeper by the second but still female, abruptly brought them back.
“Control yourselves. Control your cores or be lost to the power,” shouted Raisa.
Blinking as though she had stepped out of a cave and into the harsh sun, Ciardis turned. Sebastian and Thanar loosened their tight grips on her arms and let her go. She in turn dropped her hands from their chests and gripped her own forearms uncertainly.
She wanted to ask but she didn’t.
Fortunately, Sebastian had no such compunctions.
The prince heir demanded in a voice verging on anger, “What just happened? What did you do to us, Ambassador?”
“What did I do to you?” the ambassador from Sahalia scoffed. “It’s more what you did to yourself.”
“Not more of those spy-gate fantasies?” questioned Ciardis in a disorientated voice.
She too was displeased.
The dragon whose human face had long ago lost the pale human skin that made her approachable just laughed.
“No, darling sarin,” Raisa said with wit. “This…core merge was merely your bond reacting to the presence of your two chosen mates while free.”
Thanar gave a few choice words to that pronouncement, and Sebastian said something swiftly in a questioning tone.
Ciardis tried to focus on the words, but for some reason her ears were ringing.
The uncomfortable situation was over in seconds, but by the time it was done, Sebastian and Thanar seemed to have moved on from their own concerns.
Ciardis, however, was still confused.
Unsteady on her feet she moved away from everyone and turned to look at the room with a demand in her voice. “Will someone explain what just happened?”
Thanar said with frustration, “Whatever it was that weakened you before, that pressure you felt in your head, it weakened the strength of the bond.”
“Once you all were in the same room, your magics were drawn to each other like lightning to a rod,” Raisa said derisively. “You physically reconnected and the bond snapped back into place at full strength as if you’d never been apart.”
“And that made us almost fall convulsing to the floor?” Ciardis said in a suspicious tone.
Sebastian shrugged. “We’re all powerful, Ciardis—especially when together. If I learned anything from my studies in magical theory, when mages join together in partnership to form a more intense magical union, funny things can happen.”
“Funny things like passing out from magical overload,” Thanar said, displeased. “So I’d appreciate if you didn’t do that again.”
They all turned to look at the youngest mage in the room.
Defensively Ciardis threw up her hands. “Why is everyone looking at me? I didn’t start this.”
“No,” Raisa said, “but your inadequate barriers certainly let it in.”
“Let what in?” Sebastian said with an upset look on his face.
The dragon rolled her eyes and turned to look back at the mirror with a frown.
“Yes, why are you here, dragon?” the daemoni prince asked, stepping back from his close proximity to everyone in the room.
Still Raisa was silent as she sniffed the air again.
Ciardis added helpfully, “She seems to think we’re being spied on.”
Raisa turned from studying the walls to focusing back on them. “Mostly you, Weathervane.”
“Fine, then who is doing the spying, why Ciardis, and why are you the person who discovered this?” added Sebastian dryly. “We are, of course, grateful for any aid you can give, Ambassador, but as far as we knew, you had a pressing matter in the dragon courts. Far from here.”
“Across the seas,” added Thanar in a helpful tone that did nothing to dissuade the onlooker of the dangerous glint in his eyes.
“Pressing, yes,” said Raisa. “But your damage to your own palace and its magical protections has left your people and you yourselves in quite the conundrum.”
Sebastian began to pace the room. “I’m aware of some cracks in the seams. I’ve gathered the foremost minds in the land, even ones from the Madrassa, to see that our transition is smooth from here on out.”
“Smooth?” questioned Raisa.
“Seamless, without error, if you’re looking for a definition,” Thanar purred.
Raisa shot him an unamused look, but Sebastian answered, “Yes. They will fix what has gone wrong.”
“And they promised you this?” Raisa demanded with a flicker of a sinuous tongue from between her hard-scaled lips.
Sebastian gave her a disturbed look. Ciardis didn’t think the ambassador’s in-transition appearance disturbed him as much as what her tone implied.
But he answered her.
“They did,” the prince heir said while raising his chin in defiance.
“Then your mages lied to you,” Raisa said flatly. “You don’t have cracks, Prince Heir. You have rifts in the very fabric of your defenses. They are so torn and ragged that they are practically nonexistent. They cannot be rebuilt.”
“What are you saying?” Ciardis asked, shocked.
Raisa tilted her head. “That if you don’t do something fast, you’ll have more than a headache coming at you from every which way and won’t be able to stop it, no matter how many of your mages promise they can fix a problem for you that they had no idea had sprouted in the first place.”
Sebastian said gravely, “It seems you know more about this situation than any of us.
”
Raisa pinned him with a fierce gaze. “I should, since it’s my people who started it.”
28
“Are you saying your draconic kind is launching an attack against Algardis?” Sebastian said, for once flummoxed.
“No, nothing so maudlin,” Raisa said while waving a dismissive hand. “Merely that if we sense a weakness, we take advantage of it, and believe me, Prince Heir, there are grave weaknesses in your defensive walls. It doesn’t take an army to take advantage of them either.”
Sebastian waved a hand at the walls. “Tell me something I don’t know. I’m quite aware that the walls around the palace have faltered. That the holes are enough for an army to sweep through, and even entire connecting chambers were destroyed. But they will be rebuilt and our magic defenses built within them will emerge even stronger.”
Raisa laughed.
It was as disturbing as anything Ciardis had ever heard. Coming from her inhuman throat. Even Thanar ruffled his wings in an almost-shiver.
“So you know that the mage wards were built into the very fabric of these walls?” the ambassador said. “Good. But, little princeling, those aren’t the wards I meant. Those are the wards that will physically keep out my kind. You should be more worried about the attacks that are unseen.”
“Like the one we just witnessed?” Thanar asked.
“Precisely so,” replied Raisa. “You’re worried about the strength of your defensive walls when I’m here to tell you that your very palace has been compromised…and it is failing fast.”
“What’s the weak point, then?” the young prince heir said. Though he was pale, his eyes held steely determination.
She wondered if that determination would be enough, but at the same time, she knew it had to be. Sebastian was the bluff that the ocean would have to meet and eventually fall back from.
Ciardis just hoped the Emperor-to-be’s will didn’t erode alongside the receding tide.
Raisa shook her head in slight mockery. “The question you should have asked is what the weak point isn’t. You’ve opened a mess of trouble, boy, and even I don’t know if you’ll be able to clean it all up.”