“No,” echoed the Shadow Mage with a cruel smile.
“Why?” Ciardis said desperately, spreading her hands, “Female Weathervanes are always, always, more powerful than males ones. I know that.”
“While that is true,” the Shadow Mage said, “you are untrained and untested. More power doesn’t mean equal finesse.”
“Please,” she said, begging.
“No,” the Shadow Mage said. “In fact, my job here is done.”
As he stepped back into the darkness of the shadows, her brother by his side, she screamed, “Wait! Don’t go.”
Laughter echoed back at her through the darkness of the shadows. “Ah, little mage. We shall see each other soon.”
With that, he disappeared and the shadow creatures dissipated.
Ciardis fell to the ground sobbing.
After a few minutes, Christian approached her. When he dared to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, she lashed out. Pushing to her feet with a strength borne of fury, she began pummeling him with her fists. Hitting him where she could and screaming in anger. He dodged her blows with the ease of years of practice and tried to keep her from hurting herself.
She didn’t calm down. She wouldn’t calm down. Not until Stephanie finally came forward and tackled her with Christian. As they held her down, she screamed even harder.
“You bastards! I thought you were my friends. Let. Me. Go!”
“No,” said Christian. “Not until you calm down.” He started to pour his healing power into her to soothe her high-strung emotions, but retracted as soon as he felt her magic swell.
Christian and Stephanie released her quickly and scrambled back.
“Enough,” snapped Stephanie. “You may be angry, but you don’t want to kill us. Stop raising your power levels and snap out of it!”
Ciardis looked at her from where she crouched on the ground. Sniveling and angry with the world.
“Did you know?” she asked. “Did everyone know?”
Stephanie raised her chin and admitted, “Most of court knew.”
Ciardis closed her eyes and choked back a sob. “And they just let me think I had no family?”
“It was an Imperial decree. No one was to talk about the other Weathervane child. Besides, many at court didn’t even believe you were a Weathervane,” Stephanie said carefully.
Ciardis stood up and turned away.
“Where are you going?” asked Christian.
“Back to camp.”
Chapter 34
She walked calmly into camp, not shouting, not venting, and not screaming. Quietly and with a purpose. But without fail, every single soldier who crossed her path backed away quickly upon seeing her face.
Ciardis headed straight for Sebastian. She had a hunch where he’d be. The Prince Heir was seated on the ground with the same group of individuals she’d left him with earlier. His back was to her so he didn’t see her approach. But Meres did. When Meres saw her face he cleared his throat, stood, and stepped forward. Casually he moved through the group, putting his body in front of the Prince Heir’s.
When Sebastian stood up to see who had caused the disturbance, he looked at Ciardis quizzically with dark green eyes.
“Ciardis,” Meres spoke, his voice quiet. “What’s the matter?”
Ciardis looked at him with coldly calculating eyes. For once seeing the world and the people around her for what they were—self-serving and conniving individuals.
Ciardis lifted her hand and offered it, palm up.
“What do you see, Lord Meres?” she said.
He was silent for a moment. “An empty hand.”
She nodded. “I thought it was full until a few minutes ago. I thought I had a place to call home and friends to grasp.”
“Ciardis,” Prince Heir Sebastian said carefully. “You’re acting quite strange.”
She wanted to believe that this innocent boy becoming a man couldn’t have known. That he hadn’t deceived her, but she wasn’t a fool. Sebastian was the Prince Heir first, a friend second.
“I guess I am,” she admitted. “Wouldn’t you be if you found out you had a brother that everyone else knew about?”
The entire group of people blanched, and it wasn’t because she had practically shouted the words at the end. It was because they knew what she had said was true. She could see it in their faces.
She wished she could say it didn’t hurt the most that Sebastian had clearly known, but she couldn’t.
Holding out his hand, Sebastian pleaded, “Let’s discuss this somewhere more private.”
“Why?” snapped Ciardis. “So you can lie some more?”
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” said Lady Vana.
“Ciardis, it wasn’t like that,” Sebastian said. “The Imperial decree was a direct order; no one was to mention even the possibility of another Weathervane to anyone else. For secrecy’s sake.”
“So what?” said Ciardis slowly. “If he wasn’t spoken of, he didn’t exist?”
As Meres began to speak, she held up a hand. “Where has my brother been for the last eighteen years? If he wasn’t with the family that was assigned to adopt him, where was he?”
“On the northern border,” said Sebastian slowly. “At first he was fostered with an old knight family there, and since his powers came in he’s been working in the service of the emperor.”
“With that control bracelet on his arm the whole time?”
She continued issuing rapid-fire questions. This time to see if the man she had seen in the bookshop in Sandrin was the same person. “Does he have free will? Can he go as he pleases?”
“The bracelet monitors him as a tracking device would,” said Lady Vana. “If the minder allows him the freedom, he can go as he wills.”
Ciardis nodded. “And who is his minder?”
“That doesn’t matter,” interjected an advisor to Sebastian. “What we want to know is where you found this information.”
“Where I found it?” echoed Ciardis softly, fury overtaking her every limb.
“From my brother,” she snarled. “He told me.”
“In a dream?” asked Lords Meres quickly.
Ciardis looked at him as if he’d gone nuts. “He’s here and he’s with the Shadow Mage.”
Lady Vana swore and the regiment commander wasted no time in ordering a unit to form up in search of the wayward Weathervane.
Ciardis laughed with bitterness in her tone. “I take it that surprises all of you?”
Prince Sebastian reached out a cautious hand to take hers. She moved out of his reach in seconds, distaste on her face.
“Were you planning on putting me ‘in service to the emperor?’”
“No, of course not,” were the denials shouted at her from all sides.
But she knew—she knew in her heart that it had been a consideration. But was it still? As she struggled to digest all that she had learned, Ciardis felt the weight of pain enter her heart, that all of her friends had kept something so important from her.
Sighing, Meres said, “Ciardis, it is unfortunate that you found out in this manner, but it was ongoing discussion whether or not you were to be made aware of a living sibling.”
“Since you only manifested so recently – within months in fact,” ventured Lady Vana, “Lady Serena and I deemed it best, in initial discussions with Damias, to wait until your powers were stable enough for you to meet him.”
“Stable enough?” demanded Ciardis.
“Weathervanes can feed off each other in unsettling ways,” said Meres Kinsight.
“How did he get here?” questioned Vana.
Ciardis shrugged and said flatly, “I don’t know, but I do know that the Shadow Mage controls my brother.”
“Which would explain the huge increase in power beyond the abilities of a normal mage, even one with dark gifts like a Shadowwalker,” said Lady Vana.