by Terah Edun
Sara looked up from where she was studying her hands, and she made sure that her face was as blank as she could make it. If she was going to go down this road, if they were going to go down this road, she wanted to be sure.
She wanted to have rock-solid confidence in the people she would be entrusting her life to. Because she had already signed on with a leadership who had failed in that task, and with only herself to blame. So now, to get what she needed, Sara Fairchild feigned ignorance. And she tested just how far the Sun Mage would go and what information she would give to recruit her to their cause, the Kade cause.
“Why would they do that?” Sara said while feigning a frown. “Kill them, I mean.”
“Because your empress thought our Council of Mages had grown too independent, too powerful,” Nissa scoffed.
Sara sat back as she said, “No offense, but that doesn’t seem like reason enough to involve the entire empire in a petty grievance. The empress could have easily just had you all replaced.”
Meanwhile, she thought of Lady Chatteris’s arrogance and wondered what a person like the head of the Algardis family would do in her stead. It wouldn’t have been pretty.
“And if we refused to tender our resignations?” the Sun Mage said coldly.
“Kill you off,” Sara said in an off-hand manner—not even thinking of what she said—it was after all one of the easiest solutions to a stubborn problem.
Then Nissa leaned forward with a smile, “And there—you see? That was the start of our so-called petty grievances.”
“But it didn’t end there,” Sara said—guessing correctly.
Nissa shot her a sharp look as she admitted, “No, it did not. But by that time we’d already called together secret conventions, which would have been seen as treason at best.”
“So you went forward?” Sara said as she linked her fingers and just gave Nissa a calm, perhaps even understanding, gaze—as if they were just discussing the remodel of their home instead of the foment of outright war.
“As you said, ‘we went for it’,” Nissa said with a bitter, brutal smile. “And we could not back down. After all, we soon discovered that we weren’t just on the offensive. We were winning.”
Sara was silent for a moment, “And that’s the only reason you kept going?”
She didn’t know what she expected the Sun Mage to reveal, but Sara was no fool—she could see that Nissa was spinning her the simplest explanation possible to get her to pity their ‘forced’ entry into a war. Trouble was, Sara knew there was more to the story.
“The only reason I’m telling you,” Nissa said in a voice so pointed that it snapped Sara out of her reverie.
Sara paused for a second and ran her fingers through her hair. “What if I said I thought it was more? That I know this involves darkness inside the imperial courts…and maybe the family itself.”
“What proof do you have of that?” hissed Nissa—looking a bit anxious if Sara didn’t know better.
“What proof do you have of your accusations?” Sara shot back. “Whatever it is you’re getting at, I do not want to hear it. I have enough on my plate.”
Nissa stood up and stretched for all the world, as if she was a cat. “You mean your father’s death.”
Sara stiffened and stood up, as well. “How did you know about that? Have you been talking to Gabriel?”
Nissa laughed, “I don’t need to whisper with the Illusions Mage to know about the most infamous traitor of the Imperial Armed Forces, little warrior. What’s more, I know a lot of other things, too. Things that would make a great deal of sense in the context of your father’s betrayal.”
Sara shifted uneasily. This conversation was beginning to remind her a lot of the one she had had and denied with Gabriel in the days past. Why were the Kades so set on connecting her father to their movement? And what did they know that she didn’t?
Secretly, in a part of her mind she didn’t want to acknowledge, Sara wondered if they had already found the journal he bore…and if it lent credence to the matter of his treason. Had he been a traitor? Or was he really a loyal imperial all along?
Licking her dry lips, Sara suddenly wondered if the woman sitting before her knew the answers to the most pressing question of them all.
Was he alive?
Or was he dead?
And if she did…would she tell Sara the truth, or twist and lie like Gabriel did? Could the Sun Mage be trusted?
Looking into the intelligent and cold eyes of the woman before her, the woman who could burn like the sun and yet spoke with the frost of winter in her voice, Sara knew that she had at least part of the answers she sought.
So she continued to play Nissa’s game as she reluctantly asked, “What is it that you think you know?”
Sensing an opening, Nissa looked at her hopefully. “What about the fact that they sent you out searching for us, but you’re really looking for something else. The trouble is you have no idea where it, your father’s last words, resides. I can help with that. He may have been a member of the Imperial Armed Forces, but we kept excellent surveillance on your people from afar. We know when he was slated to die, we know where, we even know how.”
Sara interrupted dryly, “Then you’ll also certainly know where his body lies. Oh, wait, I thought your brother, Kade, was convinced he was still alive?”
Nissa gave her back a sugary-sweet smile as she said, “I said where and when he was slated to die. I never said he did.”
Sara sat back and glared, “And I don’t suppose you could just trot him in here and let us have a proper father-daughter reunion then could you? Because I would love that.”
The sarcasm in her voice was unmistakable, and Nissa responded in kind.
“I am trying to help you, because trust me, you’d be a fool to keep blundering about as you do blindly,” she said coolly. “So I’d appreciate…“
She didn’t get a chance to finish because abruptly the room grew cold. Like every bit of heat had been drawn out and Nissa blanched. Frost began to gather on the table, and Sara jumped back to save her hands from frostbite.
Manacle chains rattling as she stood up, the War Mage asked nervously, “What’s going on?”
She knew this couldn’t be Nissa…none of her gifts had to do with ice and cold. And for that matter, the Sun Mage looked as shocked as Sara did…though not quite as perplexed. Sara looked around when Nissa didn’t answer, trying to find a source for growing ice that was taking over every inch of the room. But where she expected to find a weather mage or a freak magical object, she found none. Nothing to pinpoint and no windows to see out of. As her breath began to frost in the air, Sara wondered just how cold it was going to get in here. Even the corners of the room were taking on the look of an icebox with icicles gathered on the ceiling edges.
Snapping out her words, the Sun Mage said, “Come with me.”
Sara eyed her skeptically as Nissa went to the door and knocked politely with an entreaty for it to open. When that didn’t work, the Sun Mage knocked louder and louder. After the third knock, she tested the door itself by placing a hand flat on its surface, only to yank it back quickly with a yowl.
Watching her in shock, Sara saw the Sun Mage shake her hand with a whimper, and when she uncurled her fingers—it was clear she had lost multiple bits of flesh. As they both looked up and back at the door, Sara saw a perfect outline of a hand print o the door, which now had bluish layer of frost covering the entire surface, except for where thick pieces of Nissa’s skin lay.
Grimacing, Sara kept her own appendages close in to her waist. This was looking grimmer by the minute, and she’d rather not lose her fingers and toes to a hungry frost.
For her part, Nissa snarled, and then she balled both hands into fists. Where once there had been flesh, now there was nothing but fire. Fire that went all up and down her arms.
Without pausing, the Sun Mage lashed out with a hell of a right jab and it hit the doorway with a fireball so hot and so powerful that it crum
pled the metal door inward and blew it off its hinges.
As Nissa stepped into the now-visible corridor, Sara followed close behind with a highly impressed look, the Sun Mage said, “Stay close.”
Then she began to walk down the hall.
“No problem,” Sara murmured practically to herself as she did just that.
It wasn’t hard to see why she should.
As they walked down the hall, she noticed that the entire hallway had iced over, and when Sara got close to the walls, she could feel the cold radiating from them with an icy heat so startling that if she touched it, she knew that she’d lose more than a bit of flesh.
Her eyes alone proved the icy heat was no laughing matter. Instead of grey stone, sheets of ice had overtaken every inch of the walls and floor surrounding them, and a thick layer covered the concave roof like a frozen lake.
Looking around in disbelief, Sara tried not to give herself whiplash as she caught the appearance of faces in the ice. They’d flash, there and gone, before she could point them out, and when she did try—well, she nearly unbalanced herself in quite an ungraceful fall.
When Nissa looked back behind her to see her scrambling to right herself, the Sun Mage said pointedly, “Are you trying to break your neck?”
Sara snapped at her, “No, I saw something.”
Stopping, Nissa raised an eyebrow and Sara looked back at the bare mirror-like glass before murmuring quietly, “Never mind.”
Nissa shook her head.
Then she said, “Never mind your visions. I can keep that frost from overwhelming us, but like I said, I need you to do your part and not wonder off like a little fawn while I do so.”
Sara made a face, but Nissa had already turned around.
And as she stepped forward, Sara was careful to follow only in her footsteps, because where Nissa walked the snow melted. And where Nissa didn’t—treacherous ice formed.
Before long, they were outside, and with a disappointed look, Sara noticed the courtyard for their little manse wasn’t much better.
Walking out under the eaves of the three-level outpost and down the steps into the front receiving yard, Sara saw someone was waiting for them. To left and right of that person, a high wall of ice formed and in its center—a mini-snowstorm whirled. The individual’s entire body, cloaked heavily in furs and velvet, was practically obscured by the snow that whipped around them in an icy wind funnel—forcing those who stood between the wall and the outpost to fall back towards Nissa under its furious lash of ice needles, snow, and ring-sized pellets.
In short, all the weather formations that made snowstorms deadly.
Sara, for her part, was just staring in amazement at the magic it took for a mage—even a weather warden—to call upon the elements with such perfect mastery. Although she wasn’t quite sure this person was indeed just a warden.
“I guess I’ll find out,” Sara said as she stared from her perch on the steps.
As she studied what she could see of the warden as he appeared irregularly in gaps through the mini-snowstorm, she felt a twinge. An insistent tug from her magic….and perhaps the darkness that resided within her. But if it wanted to speak with her, wanted to warn her, apparently it couldn’t. Not while she still stood bound by the manacles on her wrists.
Still, she swept her gaze along the ice wall and back to its originator after only seeing darker shadows in the ice, which reminded her of what she had seen in the hallways before they disappeared again like ghosts. Wary, Sara with Nissa as the wind funnel before them visibly died down and the snow it had churned settled in a two-inch layer in the courtyard all around them.
The entire event was beautiful, but the man standing in the center of the newly-fell snow was mesmerizing. Mesmerizing in his darkness and his piercing eyes. But what she saw when she looked deeper into those eyes was chilling. Even from across the courtyard his eyes felt like pools of vast emptiness, and Sara knew then that he was someone she didn’t want to cross.
Trouble was, she had a bad habit of crossing every single person she came in contact with, so without the comfort of a blade in her hands or even her band of friends by her side—she was feeling mighty nervous. Fortunately, at the moment he didn’t seem the least bit interested in her. In fact, his gaze and anger was solely leveled on Nissa Sardonien.
If Nissa felt troubled by that steady look, she didn’t let it show.
Instead, she glided down, and Sara waited for a moment before following.
Instinct told her to hold back.
Curiosity said she could come forward.
Justifying her movements by the fact that Nissa happened to have the strongest gifts to counteract this warden’s gift, she walked a few steps behind as she waited to see how fire would confront ice.
When they were a few steps away, Nissa tilted her head a bit and spoke to Sara calmly.
“Remember,” she said. “I tried to give you a choice. A say in the matter. It was you who refused to pick a damned side.”
Sara thought about pointing out that she already had a side, the right side, but reminding the Sun Mage at that moment and drawing the attention of the frigid man in front of them both seemed…unwise.
So as Nissa walked forward, Sara kept behind her and a little off to the side, which gave her a great view for what happened next. The ice wall to either side of the interloper, in the center of the courtyard, fell. It didn’t melt, it didn’t evaporate—it just collapsed into huge chunks of jagged ice in a heap.
And behind that wall was a new line of individuals. Five in all, each mirroring the position of the dark shadows she had seen before. She didn’t have time to point out her vision in triumph, she didn’t really care to either. She was most focused on taking in every individual’s stance and aura. Each one was wearing a different set of attire and glimmering with more magic in their pinky fingers than Sara could conjure on her best day.
And when her gaze passed over and then raced back to the fifth of six individuals, including the original interloper, her heart stopped.
It wasn’t just his power that was electrifying. Nor was it his thunderous gaze.
No, it was his visage, his stance, the way he held his weapons, and the way he looked forward—straight and tall. He was a face she’d never forget. A name she hadn’t let cross her lips in over a year.
He was her father.
Heart wild, Sara Fairchild rushed forward through the ice and snow, heedless of Nissa’s warning.
She didn’t get very far before a wall of frost and snow slammed into her, directed by the interloper’s hand. Shocked and harmed, Sara scrambled in the snow before she fell again, off-balance from the leg irons that still hobbled her feet.
It was Nissa, not her father who rushed to her aid then.
“Show some respect,” Nissa snarled while hauling her to her feet by her shoulders with hands that felt as hot as oven mittens.
Sara shrugged her off with a yank. “Who do you think that is? None of you can get in my way now.”
They were still yards away from the mages who stood stock still in the center of the courtyard, but Nissa didn’t let her go.
Instead the Sun Mage said in a voice that was equally filled with resignation, as well as trepidation, “I know who it is I’m looking at, but I’m not sure you do.”
Sara stilled. She heard the seriousness in the Sun Mage’s voice.
So she reluctantly asked as she refused to take her anxious gaze from the man who stood in the line of six before her. He didn’t move or make any effort to come towards her. Just watched her from afar. His expression unreadable. His stance immovable.
As the silence stretched, Sara said forcefully, “Who?’
Her single question was a demand, which would not be ignored.
“Those are the rest of the Kades,” the Sun Mage said calmly. “And you may think you know at least one of them, but trust me—you’d much rather I do the talking this time around.”
Then the Sun Mage squared her shoulder
s and walked forward to meet them, dragging a disbelieving Sara Fairchild right along with her.
~*~*~*
Liked the book? Be sure to keep up with the series by picking up the newest release here: Blades of Fortitude: Crown Service #5!
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About the Author
Terah Edun is the New York Times bestselling author of the Courtlight, Crown Service, and Algardis series, set in the eponymous Algardis Universe. Her books boast exhilarating adventures, breathless romance, and incredible fantasy for readers of all ages. You can visit her online at www.terahedun.com.
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