Sworn To Defiance (12 page)

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 his 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.”

Thanar gave him a lazy look. “I’m not, am I? I think that’s for her to decide.”

“I’ve stated it and so it will be,” shouted Sebastian. 

Ciardis’s back stiffened. She didn’t necessarily disagree with Sebastian’s sentiment, but no one spoke for her.

Thanar flicked a smile. “Perhaps that’s something you should discuss with your wife-to-be.”

Turning his attention to Vana smoothly Thanar said, “This engagement announcement needs to be done
before
the nobles meet.”

“Yes,” said Vana shortly. “Well before. We can’t have them saying they didn’t know and we hope to have the companions appear at the meeting in a show of strength anyway.”

Thanar nodded while Ciardis stared at the people around her planning out the biggest announcement of her life, while she stood in a daze in the center of the room. 

You put this into motion
.
They’re only following your lead
, she whispered to herself.
Then why do I feel so lost?

“What about the emperor?” Thanar questioned while looking at Sebastian. It was a forthright question with no menace behind it, as if they hadn’t been snarling at each other over Ciardis like she was the last scrap of meat on a bone a minute before.

“Protocol demands that the emperor be notified immediately,” Sebastian said coldly.

Vana nodded. “Then here’s what we’ll do. Thanar and I will go to the Companions’ Guild now.”

“Now?” echoed Ciardis amazed.

Vana gave her an impatient look. “What better time than the present? We’ll have them gather for an imminent announcement within the hour. With luck, the new head of the Companions’ Guild will be present and they can throw their support behind us.”

“Right,” said Ciardis, still wary.

“You and Sebastian will go see Emperor Bastien Athanos Algardis and obtain his permission for your upcoming nuptials. His support would be even better,” Thanar said.

Ciardis opened and closed her mouth.

“The man just imprisoned my mother,” she protested weakly. 

“Not to mention that he’s not who he seems—” said Sebastian.

Vana cut them both off. “It doesn’t matter. Unless you want to cut his head off tonight, the man is the acting head of this empire and therefore has to the power to smooth our way in the nobles’ court. I do believe he made you a promise of support once upon a time, Ciardis, if you did his bidding. Since you completed that task, it’s time for the emperor to follow through with his end of the bargain and support your cause before the court, both the fight against the
blutgott
and the marriage.”