by Terah Edun
The woman let an eye wander over to Sebastian, who didn’t twitch a muscle.
“It’s been a long time since the boy was here.”
“The boy?” spluttered Ciardis, indignant on her future husband’s behalf. “That boy is your future ruler and a tad more of a man than any of the whispering idiots you have arrayed behind you.”
Finally the woman cracked a smile.
“Well now, you’re not such a sopping princess as I’ve heard, then,” the woman said with a curious inflection in her voice.
Ciardis’s back stiffened. She wanted to lay into the woman. Fortunately, for Ms. Marlstone, Sebastian stepped forward at that moment and put a hand on the back of Ciardis’s waist. It was probably supposed to be a reassuring presence. Ciardis preferred to think of it as proprietary rather than the warning it was for her to be nice. She didn’t need him telling her to be nice. Besides, this woman had started it.
Head of the empress’s household, indeed.
“What kind of head of household challenged the presumed mistress of the home?” she muttered to herself.
“The kind that’s interested in the well-being of the master,” said the woman snidely.
Ciardis jumped a half a foot and flushed. She hadn’t realized she’d said that aloud.
Before she could respond, the woman reached forward and enveloped the prince heir in the largest hug Ciardis had ever seen.
To her surprise, proper and careful Sebastian let the woman do so. When he stepped back he was grinning. “Ciardis Weathervane, may I introduce you to the woman that cared for me and kept me alive for the first ten years of my life?”
“As well as the next ten, if I have anything to say about it,” the woman said with a quick pinch of Sebastian’s cheeks, leaving him flushed.
He turned and caught Ciardis’s hand in his own as he said, “When my mother died it was Mary who was my wet-nurse, my caretaker, and eventually my surrogate mother.”
Ciardis’s mouth opened in surprise as she looked at Mary with new eyes.
Unfortunately, Mary didn’t look too pleased with her as she eyed the Weathervane in front of her.
With a grunt, Mary said, “Bit on the dirty and skinny side, don’t you think, lad?”
This time it was Ciardis who flushed in absolute mortification. It was odd how one comment from this woman could bring her to her knees, but appearing in front of the emperor in a dirtier state hadn’t deterred her normal confidence.
Finally, Sebastian recognized that Ciardis had had enough. “She’s had a rough time and needs a healer. We all need a bath and some food. Will you guest us in my mother’s quarters before our meeting with the nobles this afternoon?”
Mary sniffed. “Of course, lad. You should have come here first instead of staying in that dratted lord chamberlain’s manor.”
Sebastian said, “Well, it was a matter of circumstances then.”
“Nonsense,” Mary tutted. “He can’t protect and care for you the way I can. Bring your friends with you. We’ll get you fixed up.”
Under Sebastian’s hold, Ciardis stiffened. She did not like the way Mary had addressed her.
Mary noticed the change in Ciardis’s expression. Turning back from the instructions she was giving to her followers, she said, “Unless that will be a problem?”
“No, no,” Sebastian hurried to say. “We appreciate you opening the guest rooms on such short notice.”
He almost ended that sentence in a yowl when Ciardis dropped the heel of her boot on his foot.
Chapter 12
An hour later Sebastian and Ciardis were facing off in one of those sumptuous guest quarters. They had already been attended by healers and relaxed in the baths. But she was still bothered by their treatment at the hands of the head of the household. Being given a sponge and a small bar of soap in a private bathroom hadn’t helped matters, either. She should be grateful, she knew. Hell, she’d been bathing out of buckets for months. Ciardis knew how to be humble. She knew how to accept a token with grateful pride. But this? This was a slap in her face by a woman who thought she didn’t know enough to know she deserved better.
It was that gall that stuck in her throat like an undigested piece of meat that wouldn’t go down the right tract. Ciardis didn’t mind bare amenities and this certainly didn’t qualify as bare. What it was however was the palace servants’ way of thumbing their collective nose at the prince heir’s retinue. They thought Ciardis and her group were too stupid to realize how much of an insult it was that they were housed in guest quarters, given only the luxuries due a minor noble, and allowed no servants in attendance aside from the butler outside their door.
Ciardis would have turned the servants away anyway except for the basic requirements like cleaning the room. She didn’t need someone to help her dress or bathe her. But Ms. Marlstone didn’t know that and what’s more she shouldn’t have assumed that she could get away with snidely withholding the services. That and more was why Ciardis was ticked. She was trying to save the world and the woman was doing everything in her power to show her contempt for the prince heir’s guests without slipping into overt nastiness. Well, she had certainly succeeded in riling Ciardis Weathervane up.
“The guest quarters? The guest quarters!” Ciardis shrieked.
Sebastian had backed up against a writing desk and held out his hands as if pleading for his life, “Now Ciardis, it’s just a temporary measure. Much easier for us to protect ourselves if assassins have to search half a dozen rooms before finding the right one.”
A vase flying past his head was her answer to that idea.
“Who does she think she is?” Ciardis fumed to no one in particular as she paced the room.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Sebastian slumping in relief. No longer the focus of her ire, he thought he was safe.
Ha! Not a chance. Ciardis thought to herself. He let this happen!
“I don’t see what the problem is,” Sebastian murmured weakly.
Ciardis whirled to him, her mouth agape. “How are we supposed to convey a show of strength if the servants think they’re better than us?”
Confusion reigned on Sebastian’s face as he looked around for someone, anyone really, to save him.
And that led to Ciardis’s thinking more rationally than she had for the past five minutes. He looked like a lost little boy who didn’t know what he’d done wrong. How could Sebastian confront the emperor with impunity but quail at the thought of making a servant woman mad?
Thanar shifted in the distance as he whispered in her mind, it’s because he cares for her. He couldn’t give a rabbit’s foot what happens with the emperor—whether that be his father or his uncle. Because neither had shown him kindness in the past. But this woman. This woman is special to him.
Special enough to let her undermine our entire plan without even trying?
Perhaps. Now you see why you were a fool to choose him, Thanar answered.
Ciardis shrugged off Thanar’s connection and mentally pushed him away. She didn’t want to hear this. Physically, she stared at Sebastian as if he was a puzzle she had yet to piece together. Still baffled she sat on the bed. She really didn’t get how he couldn’t understand the larger issue regardless of his emotional ties to this...woman.
“If I may?” Thanar said softly.
Before she could cut him off, she heard Sebastian say aloud, “Go ahead. Dig my grave further.”
So Ciardis said nothing. Thanar was the only one making sense in this room. Perhaps he could make the entire situation unravel and re-group into something that got through to all of them. Because it had honestly never occurred to her that her first problem stepping back into the imperial palace wouldn’t be the nobles or the emperor himself, but rather the servants with prejudiced opinions about who deserved to reside in the former empress’s quarters.
Thanar walked forward until she could see the leather boots that clad his feet. She reluctantly followed the path of leather up his feet, past hi
s heels, and traveling along his lower legs until the sumptuous black ended mid-thigh and she was forced to look up his chest and into his face.
“Do enlighten us,” she said. She was still dazed as to how this could be happening. How could the prince heir of the realm be such a cuckolded idiot that he let his servant chastise his future wife in front of the entire household and let said servant house them in the guest quarters.
Thanar let a bright, pink tongue appear minutely between his teeth as he hesitated before he spoke.
She glared up at him. “I won’t bite your head off.”
“I didn’t think you would,” he said with an amused look. “I merely wish to state this in the most tactful way possible.”
Ciardis leaned back on the bed with her hands splayed behind her back. “You, tactful? Impossible.”
His lips twitched into a smile. “You don’t know half of me, Ciardis Weathervane.”
Sebastian snapped from across the room. “If you’ve got something to say Thanar, say it.”
Ciardis didn’t have to look away from Thanar’s beautiful alabaster face to note that Sebastian still hadn’t come any closer. He might be perennially irritated by Thanar, but he also knew she was angry with him. Therefore it was pertinent for him to stay out of the throwing range of objects. She had a wicked right arm.
With a graceful shrug of his shoulders that left Ciardis wondering if he practiced at being this beautiful, Thanar said, “The prince heir is the second most powerful man in the realm by birth. Outside of Sandrin he commands armies and soldiers jump to his bidding. As evidenced in his commandeering of troops in the north.”
Ciardis nodded. That was a fair assessment. Although General Barnaren’s challenge of Sebastian’s role in the north left her wondering if the statement was a bit too holistic for a shifting environment.
“But within Sandrin, he is one noble amongst many,” Thanar said as he stepped back and began to pace in a circuitous route, “A very rich one, but a seemingly powerless one as well.”
At the “powerless” comment Ciardis leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
“Do tell,” Sebastian chimed in dryly.
Thanar sent the prince heir a charming look and continued talking. “Up until one year ago the prince heir was mud beneath the nobles’ boots. They tolerated him. Most were as rich as him or more so. Even more commanded more power—magically and physically—than he did. Suddenly the tables have been turned and they don’t know how to handle it. On top of that he’s been absent from court for most of the year. By your side. They haven’t been able to assess who he has become, which would be essential in deciphering the changes in the boy that became a man, the powerless that became a true mage. It frightens them.”
“It frightens them in ways they hadn’t imagined,” Thanar said, “because they can’t fit him into a category or a box. Sebastian Athanos Algardis is an unknown. They would rather squash an unknown than learn its secrets, which is why none interfered or warned us of the Duke of Carne’s plans.”
Ciardis raised an eyebrow. “What does that have to do with that witch of a woman?”
Thanar smiled, “I was coming to that.”
She waved a hand. “Do continue.”
“From what I’ve heard,” Thanar said. “The prince heir was poisoned, shot at, and even attacked more than ten times in the first decade of his youth.”
Ciardis looked over at Sebastian with a question on her lips.
The prince heir crossed his arms in an angry line but he answered her unasked question, “It’s true. Standard fair for a newborn of the Algardis line. Defend yourself until you can’t, even as a baby.”
“Even before it was discovered that you couldn’t connect to the land as a toddler?” Ciardis said astonished.
“Especially before,” Sebastian said. “Being a baby didn’t protect me from political machinations at court. Particularly because of the circumstances that surrounded my birth. With my mother dead, the nobles wanted to see if they could put their own blood on the throne. The problem was, if my father married another, then their child would be second in line while I lived. Therefore my enemies who were smart tried to get rid of me so that the emperor would be forced to find a new wife and an heir to the throne.”
“Oh,” Ciardis said, shocked. Growing up in the imperial court was a lot nastier than she had thought.
Sebastian shrugged. “Eventually my father put a stop to it by declaring his intentions to never marry again and putting an unofficial rumor out that he would assassinate anyone who attempted to kill me before my twelfth birthday.”
“Which is where Mary came in,” said Vana shrewdly. “If they poisoned you and the emperor couldn’t prove they had, it wouldn’t be categorized as an overt attempt on your life.”
“Yes. So you see, Ciardis, I owe Mary Marlstone my life,” said Sebastian morosely. “She was my taste-tester as a child to ensure I wouldn’t fall over and die, she slept in a trundle beside my bed to ensure no knife-wielding assassin slipped into my chamber at night, and she kept me from ‘accidentally’ falling down flights of stairs more times than I remember.”
Ciardis stood and paced. Eventually she came over to Sebastian.
“I understand that,” she said softly. “Truly I do. But you are the recognized heir to the realm and a man in your own right now. By disrespecting your future wife, she disrespects you.”
Sebastian looked down at her with his emerald eyes gleaming. “I’ll speak to her. I will.”
“Good,” said Thanar sarcastically. “But you’ve got more of a problem than just Mary Marlstone and her merry band of servants.”
Ciardis and Sebastian looked over at him uncomprehendingly.
Thanar rolled his eyes and she swore he murmured under his breath, “Children. Why did I align myself with children?”
She stiffened.
Then Vana spoke, “Before you get your panties into a bunch, wait a second. Thanar’s right.”
Ciardis wasn’t sure if Vana was referring to her or Sebastian. She guessed it didn’t matter. Ciardis threw her a dark look.
Vana hastened to add, “Not about the children part. But our problems are much larger than a servant’s...disrespect.”
“As long as the nobles and the servants think you’re weak and don’t have a leg to stand on, your entire position at court is precarious. Let alone your plan to defeat a god,” said Thanar, cutting to the chase.
“Then what do you suggest we do?” Ciardis asked.
Thanar flashed a devilish smile.
Vana said, “I have an idea.”
Sebastian looked to her.
“You may not like it.”
Ciardis and Sebastian exchanged glances.
“But it may be the only thing that keeps you from lying awake at night wondering who’s going to send the next assassin into your bedroom. I don’t know about you but I’m damned tired of other assassins intruding on my territory,” Vana said with a hint of darkness. Ciardis didn’t think it was a coincidence that Vana mentioned assassins as Sebastian’s uncle had sent his own brand of hit man to kill Ciardis the last time she was at court.
“We’re listening,” said the prince heir.
Vana smiled and sat on a chair next to the writing desk with an apple in her hand.
Biting into its juicy core and chewing, she eyed the three before her.
Finishing the bite, Vana said, “The Companions’ Guild controls the most powerful spouses and companions in the land. It’s time you stopped ignoring them, Ciardis, and take advantage of so many eager brothers and sisters.”
Ciardis said, “How would I go about doing that? I barely know any of the other companions.”
“Yet you were obliquely counting on their support in the face of the nobles’ wrath?” Sebastian said.
Ciardis sent him a dark look. Now he chose to speak up.
“Yes,” she said through gritted teeth. “I was hoping for some solidarity.”
He smiled through the
thin line of his mouth. “Perhaps you should think of kinship as a process of give and take, dear wife-to-be.”
Before the conversation could devolve further, Vana said, “It’s time to change that. There’s no better way to call a gathering of the companions resident in Sandrin—and there are a lot—than to announce the coup of the century.”
Thanar rustled his wings and asked with an amused twitch of his lips. “What would that coup be?”
Vana raised an eyebrow. “Why, the engagement of one of our own to the empire’s most eligible bachelor, of course.”
Then Ciardis turned pale. She stood slowly. She knew Vana knew about the engagement but regardless of her feelings about or against Thanar she’d been hoping to tell him in her own time.
She had been thinking sometime between now and the edge of never, honestly. But realistically she knew they would have had to have that conversation sometime between the morning and the big nobles’ court meeting. She had just hoped to ease into it her own way. Rather than have it blurted out like the latest court gossip.
“Thanar,” Ciardis said numbly, not knowing what to say. She had already made her feelings clear, but just as she hadn’t wanted to learn about Fervis Miller’s infidelities from another’s lips, she certainly didn’t want anyone who had declared an interest in her to be informed of her engagement in the same way she had.
As she turned to eye the daemoni prince with dread in her heart, she expected to see cold anger on his face. Even rejection. Instead his features were impassive. She couldn’t read him. She reached out on the mind link and couldn’t feel him.
Then Thanar said, “What? You thought I didn’t know? It’s the perfect way to gain ground in this political battle.”
Ciardis’s breath caught in her throat. “And you don’t mind?”
He smiled at her as if there was no one else in the room. “It changes nothing.”
She blushed crimson. Sebastian strode up with a snarl, only halting when Vana stepped directly in front of him.
“It changes everything,” the prince heir snarled. “You are no longer welcome to Ciardis’s affections.”
