Sworn To Conflict: Courtlight #3 (16 page)

It turned out it wasn’t her decision to make.

As his guards shouted in frustration all around them, the column underneath Prince Heir Sebastian’s feet began to crumble. He had no choice. He jumped on the bridge and ran as the crystals of black ice that made up the connecting patch crumbled underneath every new tread of his feet. As he reached Ciardis’s column she threw herself to the edge, forgetting her anger in the moment’s desperation to latch on to his hand. He fell beside her in a heap, and for a moment the only thing she heard was the prince breathing harshly beside her.

She closed her eyes in relief as they lay side-by-side on the ground. Thanking the gods for answering their prayers. And then she raised herself up on her hands and knees, careful to keep a grip on the slippery surface of the ice pedestal. As she stood up, so did he. The pedestal was so small that they couldn’t help but first bump into each other and then to grip hands for steadier purchase. In hindsight, she supposed that was the point.

As soon as their flesh touched, Prince Heir Sebastian’s magic rose. His connection to the Algardis Empire was always present, like a memory in the back of his mind. But in the face of the natural and overwhelming power of the Old Ones it had been recessed, pushed back. Ciardis’s power flowed through their physical connection instantly. He didn’t have to ask, she didn’t have to push. It was if the two snapped together and had never been torn apart. A benefit of their bond, alongside her ability to read his emotions and their ability to exchange thoughts.

The power of the Earth answered Prince Heir Sebastian’s unspoken call.

And then things got interesting.

As his guards called out to the Prince Heir, their voices dimmed to a persistent buzz in Ciardis’s mind. Their connection had strengthened, and it was as if their awareness had shifted. She was aware of him, his touch, his feelings, and his mind in ways she’d never been before. She couldn’t tell if was the stress of the situation or the meld of Sebastian’s natural magic with the primal force of the Old Ones’ powers, but it was as if her consciousness had become one with his. They became one person in two bodies. She could tell Sebastian felt the same. She felt the weight of his armor on his body, the strength of his stance as his boots firmly sought purchase on the slippery ice, the sharpness of the gaze that he kept on the Old Ones even while their magic went haywire, and the subtle hint of warning he was sending her through their mind link.

Their breath frosted in the cold air. Synchronized.

And then she realized when his hand tightened on hers involuntarily that she wasn’t feeling everything he was. Even in the midst of the natural force of the Old Ones he was holding back. And they knew it. She felt a shift in the pressure of the cavern. A tightening of the cold in the air, like a snap of frost in the darkness of winter. The Old Ones didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to. Their anger was present in the air. The wintry temperature, the shattering of columns, and the push of power that was threatening to overwhelm them. With a bitter taste in her mouth she knew that this was them being tolerant. That tolerance wouldn’t last.

She was scared. She was frightened. But she knew he couldn’t handle the amount of power that he was holding back alone. Because it wasn’t just his. It was a gift from the Old Ones, and it was meant to be hers, as well. Ciardis knew he was trying to protect her from the onslaught of the power. But she also knew that if she took it on, she wouldn’t be alone. No matter what. They would share the burden together.

Ciardis turned her attention from the beings in front of her and the individuals around them vying for her attention and focused her entire being on Prince Heir Sebastian. Just before she turned away she saw a bright snap of power in the distance. A pedestal was glowing bright with a mage core that surpassed her own. Surpassed those around her. It felt familiar, as if she should know it, remember its presence. She worried for a moment that it meant another attack. But she knew, with a dark hint of satisfaction, that the orb, no matter its power, couldn’t surpass the powers that she and Sebastian could draw together.

She thought the bright snap of power was another manifestation of the Old Ones. She was wrong.

Ciardis resolutely stepped forward and turned around so that she stood face-to-face with Prince Sebastian. She was about a foot shorter than he, so it was more face-to-throat, but Ciardis didn’t let a little thing like height stop her. She reached up with her free hand and tilted Sebastian’s chin down until his eyes met hers. They were hard like emeralds. And then she placed her free hand into Sebastian’s and squeezed with reassurance. She tried to smile, but even she couldn’t put a happy face on a situation like this.

Let it go
, she entreated him, mind-to-mind.

Sebastian’s lips thinned and he didn’t respond.

We have to do this together
, she reasoned.
It’s a gift from the Old Ones and it’s clear what they want.

He flicked his eyes back down to hers.
And what about what I want
?

She raised an eyebrow in question.

To guarantee the safety of my mind. To speak to them on my own. To solve this on my own.

You don’t think I have the skills to help you
? She sought to pull back. Her hands barely slipped from his before he recaptured them in a tight grip. She felt an odd sense of fondness flow through their bond. As if he was amused at the very thought that she wasn’t worthy of the two of them together.

That is not what I meant
, he said, his eyes darkening with emotion.
What if what I want is to protect you, not rely on you?

Maybe reliance is just what we need
, she countered.

Sebastian was about to retort when Ciardis sighed in frustration. This was getting them nowhere, and she knew, regardless of whether or not Sebastian would acknowledge it, that the Old Ones were growing impatient. She felt the barrier in his mind. The tense struggle he was fighting with his own powers to keep the cresting wave of power from pushing through him and consuming her. He was almost losing. He just needed something to distract him so that the power could overwhelm him and come through to her as it wanted.

She didn’t have a ton of options, so Ciardis did what had tended to work on the baker’s son.

She kissed the Prince Heir.

Reaching up on the tips of her toes, she pressed her lips to his. And for the first time in her life, a kiss meant something to her. More than a way to secure a marriage, more than a way to reassure a boy that her fondness lay only with him. It was a sense of right that she hadn’t thought was possible. She felt the warmth of his lips on hers. The surprise that flowed through his mind and the abrupt switch to a desire that pleased her in more ways than one.

The kiss was chaste, but the feelings and the emotions that exploded between the two of them made Ciardis feel like it could be so much more. Before they could explore that feeling, she felt the wave of power riding Sebastian’s crash through his mind as the barrier between them broke down. It was like riding through a storm with nothing to hold onto but the one thing in front of you and so Ciardis did. She released Sebastian’s hands and threw her arms about his waist. He gripped her body just as hard as their powers responded to something they’d never felt. A cresting rise in the land and in her own gifts.

When the wave of power subsided it did so with a rush. Their powers peaked and then thrush out from their bodies in every direction as a ring of power visible to the naked eye. When she could feel her own body again everything came back in a rush. Minutes had passed. They were breathing hard. Her face pressed to his chest and his face buried in the mass of dark chestnut curls atop of her head. She felt like crying, she felt so
alive
. Alive with energy, alive with feelings. And then a throat cleared in the silence of the cavern.

Face burning she stepped back from Prince Heir Sebastian and turned to face the rest of the cavern. She didn’t want to. She wanted to stay in the comfort of being clutched close to him. But she had to.

As she turned to stand back by his side he kept a tight grip on her left hand. She squeezed in reassurance. She wasn’t sure what had just happened to them but she hoped whatever it was
worked
. They were all out of options and the Old Ones were waiting.

F
or a few moments the cavern was silent as the soldiers, Vana, Serena, and even the frost giants stared at the young couple holding hands.

“Well?” snapped Vana. “As much as I enjoyed the show, did it do anything?”

Ciardis felt Sebastian stiffen. She didn’t have to read his emotions or his mind to know that he was upset at Vana’s impertinence.

She was talking to me
, she whispered mind-to-mind.

“I don’t care,” he said with all the regality of one born to the Imperial throne. He tossed a sharp glance at Lady Vana.

Lady Serena began to speak up and Ciardis murmured too quietly, “Wait, I hear something.”

“Ciardis, I suggest you figure out—” Lady Serena was silenced by the abrupt hand Prince Heir Sebastian threw up, commanding her to cease speaking.

He partially turned to Ciardis and dipped his head to her. “What? What do you hear?”

She paused for a second and turned a puzzled face to look at the surroundings around her. “A buzzing. It’s coming from somewhere nearby.”

The buzzing sound grew louder and louder. But no one else could hear it. As her hearing was overwhelmed, Ciardis fell to her knees screaming in pain. Prince Heir Sebastian was helpless to stop it. When he pried her hands from her ears the look in his startled eyes said he was horrified to see the blood that was running down her earlobes and onto her neck.

Ciardis closed her eyes while tears ran down her cheeks. She breathed heavily, trying to ride out the pain. The buzzing was more than a sound, more than a physical thrum; it was a surge of magic in her head. The overwhelming presence of
other
in her mind. She knew the source instinctively. It was the Old Ones trying to communicate a vast concept to a tiny mind. A concept that was simple to them but was quickly becoming fatal for her.

She did her best to listen, but even she couldn’t hold out for long. Ciardis shrank further and further into the recesses of her gift. Hoping for any way to ease the pain. And then the strange mage core that she had seen a hint of before came back. But it came back as more than a presence. Curled into a fetal position within her own mind, Ciardis was shielding her mage core as best she could. She couldn’t understand the Old Ones and they couldn’t understand her. But she knew that if she were exposed to one more push from them, one more attempt from them to show her the concept, explain their reasoning, then her mage core would burst. And she would die.

She felt the strange mage power prod her softly at first and then more insistently. She uncurled her body slightly, ready to curl right back up quickly if she came under assault again. She didn’t know it, but she had just built the strongest mage fortifications in her life. Even Sebastian couldn’t reach her. She couldn’t hear him. Only the blankness of her own mind, the steady thrum of her mage core in her center, the strange feel of the other mage core lingering near her own, and the overwhelming wave of power that threatened to come down upon her once more from the Old Ones.

The mage fortification was a mental manifestation of fear – fear of drowning in the overwhelming power of the Old Ones. She had heard of mage fortifications that took on the manifestations of castle walls or moats. Anything that the mage thought would bar another from accessing his or her gift. In her panic, she’d done the only thing that had come to mind. She had mentally curled her body into a ball around the core. Hell, it had worked when protecting her prized tankard from the evil little hands of the village children when they had set out to target her and her meager belongings.

Mind back on task, Ciardis cracked open a wary eye to look at the mage power that was lurking in her mind. It looked like an unwieldy tunnel that was wrapped around her like a snake. She could see its power coursing as it endured wave after wave of the Old Ones’ power. It was halting their advance and, to her enduring curiosity, the Old Ones weren’t attacking it, just pushing at it insistently. What could that mean? And where had the strange mage power come from?
Who
had it come from?

And then dread filled her. A small opening was slowly materializing in the glowing coils of the snake of power that wrapped around her like a cocoon. Frantically she scooted back to the opposite wall of coils, clutching her mage core like a child. She didn’t know what to do. But she soon noticed that the coils were forming the hole deliberately. That didn’t make her any happier, but it did ease the frantic beating of her heart.

Shortly, a voice that Ciardis recognized spoke to her in her mind’s eye.

Trust me.

Two words, but two words that rocked her world. The voice had come from the coils surrounding her. Protecting her. The voice had been Lady Serena’s. Serena was her benefactor?

I must be hallucinating, that’s the only explanation for that
, Ciardis thought to herself.

But right now there wasn’t anyone besides the voice of the coils, herself, and the Old Ones’ gift. On a scale from bad to worse, Ciardis decided that trusting the idea that it was Serena protecting her was right up there at “worse.” She spoke aloud, hoping the voice would answer. “Lady Serena?”

Nothing spoke. No voice answered her and she was left alone in her mind with the quiet hum of the coils around her. Frustrated, Ciardis reached out and kicked the closest loop. Not a budge or a sound. And still the hole in the wall grew ever larger. Today was just not her day.

Swallowing deeply, she watched as the Old Ones’ power focused on the hole. To her relief, it didn’t rush in quickly. But it tried to. The coils surrounding the hole quickly shut off, like a valve, when it sensed the rush. This went on for a minute or two: open a little, then close in a rush when the force of power coming through the hole was too great. Eventually Ciardis realized that the coils were responding the Old Ones power. Too much and it closed. Just enough and it stayed open.