Sworn to War Page 15

  She was rambling. She knew that, but if she stopped talking he would begin, and she didn’t know what else she could do after that because everything would change. They stood in an alternate timeline where the world stood on its axis. If he spoke and said what she feared he might, his words would bring them crashing back into a reality that she just couldn’t take.

  As emotions played wildly across her face and she practically shook in an effort to hold it all together, Thanar looked like a statue, unrolled by the passing wind.

  “Maybe you need this more than you think,” said someone. Ciardis wasn’t sure. It might have been Thanar. It might have been her mother. It didn’t really matter who.

  Ciardis shook her head and continued. “We can defeat a god together, but only together. I firmly believe that.”

  Thanar finally put a finger over her mouth and said in a chiding voice, “Shut up. Please, Ciardis Weathervane. Let me speak.”

  “Please do,” said Maradian dryly from wherever he was behind Thanar. The Emperor was clearly listening in. Ciardis blushed, but she refused to acknowledge him. This was not his time. It was theirs.

  Ciardis did her best to mirror the calmness on Thanar’s face in that moment. To at least try to appear put together.

  Thanar slowly let his hands drift from her shoulders down to the fingers she finally noticed that she was clasping so tightly together that she was cutting off what little circulation she had left in her digits.

  “I believe in you,” Thanar said gently. “I believe in your cause. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

  Her chin wobbled. “I can’t ask you to do this.”

  “That’s right,” Thanar said with an expressive roll of his eyes. “You can’t. You couldn’t order me to do it even if you wanted to try.”

  Ciardis crossed her arms in front of her chest and scowled at him. “Oh no?”

  “No,” he replied with a squeeze of his hands, leaning forward to put a gentle kiss on her mouth. “But just as you have the freedom to do as you will, so do I.”

  Ciardis felt her eyes close involuntarily as she leaned into the kiss and forgot the world around them.

  No one said a word. Not even Sebastian. Possibly because they knew this was the last time they would see the impudent daemoni prince alive, probably because Thanar would have cut off their ears if they had dared to so much as cough in his direction.

  When she leaned back from him and opened her eyes, Ciardis said with subtle appreciation, “That was nice, but I’m still not going to let you go through with this.”

  Thanar snorted and undid the fold of his wings around her back. Sometime between the talk and the kiss, he had closed them around the both of them like a sight shield against the world. Even Sebastian had been forced to stand back.

  “You know,” said the daemoni prince thoughtfully, “I do admire your stubbornness. I really do.”

  Ciardis snorted and waited him for to continue his none-too-subtle segue into why he was right and she was wrong, but Thanar surprised her, and a lot of other people as well.

  “But this time,” Thanar said as he dropped her hands, “it isn’t your decision to make. I accept the Emperor’s terms as a free kith and a free man.”

  “You do?” Ciardis heard the Emperor exclaim behind Thanar with barely restrained glee.

  She wasn’t sure if he was so happy because he had gotten his way, or because he knew that in the process he was causing her unimaginable pain.

  Probably both, Ciardis thought, furious.

  Thanar took a step back and smoothly turned so that he stood beside Ciardis, facing the Emperor rather than blocking her view.

  She wondered who was protecting Raisa now that the daemoni prince and the prince heir were both standing by her side, but she got the feeling that whatever happened in the next few minutes, it wouldn’t involve slitting the dragon’s throat.

  Maradian was nothing if not meticulous, and a dead dragon ambassador most likely was not on the list of wars he wanted to start right away. Later, when he got what he wanted, but not tomorrow.

  Ciardis sighed wistfully as she wondered what it would be like to have an Emperor who cared as much about his people as he did as his own well-being. Staring at the open greed on Maradian’s face, she decided that it was a commoner’s dream. If a man like Maradian could be born into wealth and power, regardless of how he had actually gotten on the throne itself, there was no higher authority that could ensure that the people’s Emperor might actually be the empire’s servant.

  Thanar spoke before she could. “So how do we do this?”

  The Emperor eyed him in satisfaction. “Ready as always, are you? Good, I like that in my people.”

  “He’s not your people,” Ciardis snarled. “He’s mine, and he’s the kith’s, and he’s the daemoni race’s.”

  “My, my,” said the Emperor dryly. “You are a fierce little kitten when riled.”

  Ciardis was tempted to swing a fist in his face. Negotiations or not.

  Fortunately, Thanar caught her right hand and Sebastian caught her left.

  The Emperor’s eyes flashed in laughter, as if he knew what they were doing, but he didn’t say anything untoward to her again.

  Instead, Maradian sighed happily and said, “I like a dance partner with fire, and you, Ciardis Weathervane, are certainly learning to play the game quickly. It pleases me.”

  Ciardis stayed silent. It was the best she could do.

  28

  “How do we do this?” Thanar asked again, with a flash of bare teeth.

  Maradian rubbed his fingers together. “With a lot of magic and a little bit of good will.”

  Ciardis’s eyebrows flew into her hairline. That didn’t sound very promising.

  “Have you done this before?” she asked suspiciously. She wouldn’t precisely be happy to find out that the Emperor she served was experimenting on his subjects by sending them into the immortal realm, but it would be at least some comfort to know that Thanar wouldn’t be the first, and perhaps not alone. She desperately wanted him to be able to come back to her.

  Someday.

  Unfortunately, that fate didn’t seem to be in the plans of the gods.

  “I’ve yet to have a good reason to try this bit of realm-bending,” Maradian said, eagerness radiating from every line on his face. “This will be an excellent tutorial.”

  Ciardis narrowed her eyes. Tutorial implied that he was studying for something.

  Could the thing he’s after be in another realm? she wondered, stunned. It made sense; there wasn’t much on this earthly plane that was out of the reach of the power and grasp of the Emperor of Algardis. If he had to get something beyond the mortal realm, he would have to both find a way to get there and manifest the power needed to make the journey.

  And find his way back.

  Thanar said firmly, “Then how exactly will this be done?”

  The Emperor opened his hand and wiggled his fingers. The commander reached to her belt and unclipped a small bronze disk from her waist. It didn’t look very promising. In fact, it was just a crudely carved sun with rays on a flat sheet.

  “With this,” Maradian said authoritatively. He petted the bronze disk with loving hands.

  “I have had it in my possession for some time,” the Emperor said slowly. “But the lore carved into the walls of the underground city were complex. Understanding it and what it can do has been an invigorating journey, but now it’s time to test just how powerful these ancients were.”

  Ciardis’s skin crawled.

  She was ready to jump in front of Thanar and plead for his life again. Because that was what this had come down to. She looked at that innocuous little disk in the Emperor’s hands and she saw the daemoni prince’s death. There was no way the Emperor knew precisely how to work his toy, and even if he did, playing with a dead ancient society’s objects of residual magic was just a foolhardy thing to do. Thanar wouldn’t come out of this alive. Briefly, she wondered if Maradian would a
s well, but the man had the cunning of a spider spinning its web. He wouldn’t die by his own hands.

  By mine, though, he will, she promised herself. Sooner or later I will get through his layers of protection.

  Thanar sighed outwardly and stepped forward with an irritated snap of his wings. “Let’s get on with this, then,” the daemoni prince said.

  Ciardis lifted her forsaken hand up automatically with a twitch of her fingers.

  What’s the rush? she wanted to cry forlornly. But she knew what the issue was. The bluttgott was barreling down on them, the city was on fire, and the dragon empire may or may not already be planning an invasion.

  They had little time to lose.

  The Emperor’s eyes widened in pleasure as he murmured in appreciation at Thanar’s strength of character.

  Ciardis stood back, watching sadly, as bitter bile rose in her throat.

  If she thought the ceremony would be a long one, she was mistaken.

  The Emperor centered the bronze disk on the palm of his hand, and said to Thanar, “Place your right hand an inch above the surface.”

  Thanar moved forward a bit and did as instructed.

  Maradian called in his magic, his connection to both the nexus and the very real magic he possessed within himself. Ciardis felt the powers that be respond with a chill inside herself. But she steadied her beating heart and didn’t move.

  They all waited as Maradian fed that magic into the disk that lay flat on his palm. With a harsh chant from him, the disk began to levitate, then twirl in mid-air.

  It spun faster and faster. Ciardis caught herself holding her breath as she waited for it to enact its devastation.

  She didn’t have to wait long.

  A pulse of energy shot up from the center of the inlaid sun directly into Thanar’s hand.

  The daemoni prince jerked, almost like he wanted to move away, but instead Ciardis watched him freeze in horror.

  His face was a rictus of pain as the blue energy flowing from the blue disk increased in width until it dominated his entire palm.

  Thanar’s wings snapped open in agony; his feet floated off the ground with his body splayed in every direction in order to get away from the torment of pain that little object was inflicting on him.

  Ciardis raised a hand. Three different voices shouted at her, “Don’t touch him!”

  When Ciardis turned to glare at the female commander, because she didn’t know precisely what she was capable of doing if she turned her fury on her mother and the Emperor, the woman shook her head.

  “You’ll just be dragged in with him,” the commander said, her eyes flashing in warning and her hand was on her sword pommel just in case.

  Not to stop her from attacking the Emperor, Ciardis realized ruefully. But to slice her hand from her arm if she touched Thanar.

  The tableau of Thanar in agony mid-air continued for what felt like hours as the blue light of the energy field enveloped first his hand, then his arm, and slowly traveled up his body like a warm embrace to take over his entire form.

  When it was done, the daemoni prince could no longer move.

  He was a grotesque statue of flesh and blood forever halted in a moment of torrential pain.

  Ciardis felt a silent tear slide down her cheek.

  If the Emperor saw it, even he was not fool enough to acknowledge it, much less gloat.

  The blue light that encased Thanar began to pulse like a magical beacon guiding ships into harbors.

  She squinted; several soldiers threw up their forearms to shield against the glare. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the daemoni prince for the few seconds she had left.

  The beacon that was Thanar pulsed again with a mighty flash, and then he dropped to the floor with a loud crash.

  Ciardis rushed forward and fell to the floor by his side where he lay splayed out like a wounded bird. No sign of consciousness, not even a twitch of his fingers.

  He was still glowing bright blue, though, and every time she got even a few inches from his flesh, the blue light snapped out towards her fingers with a stinging flash.

  “Well, that was disappointing,” said the Emperor as he eyed the glowing blue form in front of him. “I thought he was going to disappear.”

  “Get a medic,” Ciardis screamed.

  At the Emperor’s unimpressed look, no one moved. That is, until the prince heir snapped, “The accord has been made, and I know there is a healer tactician among you. Get over here.”

  One of the soldiers reluctantly fell out of formation and knelt on the floor.

  But before he could touch Thanar’s blue skin, the energy field around him began to pulse once more.

  Thanar didn’t even revive to consciousness when he disappeared.

  This time for good.

  Ciardis sat back and let out a painful moan.

  A few minutes passed. Her grief was overwhelming, but business was business.

  Ciardis struggled to her feet. It was like trying to fight quicksand as she tried to stand up straight.

  Sebastian helped her with a firm arm locked around her waist. But she still wouldn’t let him speak for her. Not now, when she had gone through so much to get here.

  Ciardis looked Maradian in the face and spat, “You have your bloody accords, now let us go.”

  If the words were decidedly less polite than the usual response to the Emperor, she could be forgiven her breach of etiquette. She was in her world of hurt, and the fault could be laid squarely at the feet of the Emperor of Algardis.

  29

  Ciardis walked out the door with her back ramrod-straight. There was so much she still wanted to say, so much she wanted to do. But she could barely think straight.

  All she could tell herself to do was keep moving. Because if she stopped for even a second, hesitated and looked back, she would undo everything she had just worked so hard for. Everything that Thanar had sacrificed his existence in this realm for.

  She wouldn’t do that.

  She wouldn’t shame him, and she wouldn’t make a mistake that would cost her those accords. They needed them. They needed peace at their backs while they waged war from the front. Though at this point, Ciardis was beginning to question who was left to watch her back. Meres was gone. So was Caemon. Her mother was a shell of her once-vital self. Terris and Christian had both disappeared, and for all she knew, the darned revolutionaries were all being hung as she walked out of the healers’ hall.

  It would be just like the Emperor, to strike a bargain in her face and unleash wolves at her back. He would call it ‘tempering her will in the fire’, but Ciardis called it being an unchecked backstabbing snake of a man.

  Still, she kept going. Climbing down stairs. Walking through an empty trauma ward.

  Out into the bright day. She was bathed in light as soon as she stepped outside and blinked into the sun. She looked up at the calm, blue sky. Hoping for peace.

  She found none. After all, there was no daemoni prince with a wicked smile hurtling out of the sky. Just emptiness.

  When she finished studying the sky, she noticed that she was holding someone’s hand, unbidden.

  Still in a state that Ciardis would have likened to death if she was thinking clearly, she looked down at the warm flesh squeezing her in a grip so tight that both of their palms were taking on tinges of white.

  When she followed the palm up to the arm and then finally met his face, she looked into Sebastian’s eyes, and she felt something in her stir in response.

  It was pain and heartache, misery and relief. She wouldn’t be happy again just looking into his eyes. She knew that now. Because she always expected to see another set of eyes, alight with dark amusement, just beyond his.

  The prince heir wasn’t enough in Ciardis’s mind.

  But he has to be, she thought grimly. We have to get through this.

  When she questioned to herself who was ‘we’, though, she had no answer.

  So she turned and kept walking.

 
; She didn’t answer any questions, because she had no words.

  She didn’t let tears form at the corners of her eyes, because she was too filled with hate to dry a single drop from her cheeks.

  She just kept going.

  She did it because she had to. When servants tried to stop her on the path, to ask what was going on or to guide them to a new, safer location, the look in her eyes made them shy away.

  It was a couple dozen feet more before she heard a commanding voice call from behind her, “Halt!”

  Ciardis felt the deadness within her rise. She recognized that voice. She had thought they were done. Through, now that he had what he wanted.

  But soon enough, the Emperor caught up to her still form. She had refused to turn around or even acknowledge his swiftly moving entourage. That didn’t dissuade him.

  When he finally came into her line of sight, she saw that several, including Maradian, were on horseback now.

  She wasn’t surprised. He was the Emperor. While the world burned, he would keep his creature comforts. He would expect no less.

  She watched with resignation as he pulled up his big black stallion and turned it around to face her. With a smile on his face, Maradian leaned over the stallion’s neck and beckoned for Ciardis Weathervane to come forward.

  She wasn’t really curious as to what he wanted now. Maradian’s actions would always be unpredictable. But even he would know better than to kill the one person standing in between him and an actual fight with the god of destruction. He was a malicious scoundrel, but he wasn’t an idiot.

  She moved as if to step forward, and the prince heir held her back. To save Maradian or to save Ciardis Weathervane, she wasn’t sure. But she knew nothing would be gained by standing still. If she ignored the formalities of the Emperor’s approach now that he stood in front of her, even Maradian wouldn’t overlook that insult in the wake of her devastation. She squeezed Sebastian’s hand to say that she had to, and then she let go. Ciardis knew there was nothing Maradian could do to her now that was worse than what he had already done.