The Cedna (Tales of Blood & Light Book 2) (10 page)

I put my eye to the spyhole again. The chamber I viewed made mine appear plain. Gilding and jewels spiraled up the supporting pillars, and an enormous tapestry, threaded with gold and silver in the likeness of a woman’s face, took up nearly a whole wall. A woman in a voluminous gown stood, hands on her hips and scowling. Her hair and skin were as pale as milk; she appeared sickly or ill. The roundness in the front of her body suggested pregnancy.

Onatos stood before her, his back towards the spyhole, his posture rigid.

“I will not endure it,” the woman said, loud enough to penetrate our hiding place.

“That’s Daria,” whispered Laith.

Onatos shook his head, but he spoke too softly for us to hear his reply.

Daria glared at Onatos and lifted her full chest. “You cannot do this to me!” she cried. “To imagine you would dare to keep your mistress— your mistress!” Her voice rose to a shriek. “In my house! I won’t have it!”

“She isn’t my mistress,” Onatos said. “I am supervising her as part of a sentence as a favor to Mydon. That’s all, Daria.”

They were discussing me!

The woman let out a blood-turning shriek, squeezing her hands into fists. I recoiled from the spyhole, wincing. Laith rolled his eyes.

I leaned towards the hole again. Daria paced, clutching at her blond hair, pulling it as hard as Ikselian ever had done braiding mine. Onatos abruptly departed. Laith tugged on my arm, and I let him have a look while I pondered what I had heard.

The couple did not like each other, any fool could see that. And yet, until now, I had thought that Onatos favored me with something more than friendship. But he had told her so calmly the truth: I was not his mistress. I was here only as his prisoner. A sharp, glassy sensation pricked in my chest.

Laith offered me the spyhole again. Daria now held a baby, a pale, pitiful-looking creature with skin as colorless as hers.

“That’s my brother, Jaasir,” Laith whispered.

I saw little resemblance between the siblings. Laith was a handsome boy, a fine son. The baby looked weak and sickly like his mother.

T
hat night
I could not sleep. Laith had led me back to my chambers as stealthily as a thief and departed. Though I liked the boy, looking at him incited an uncomfortable jealousy. He was a sign of Onatos’s passion for another woman, further evidence that the man was not for me, no matter what my bloodlight said.

Lying awake, I imagined Onatos’s graceful body embraced by supple feminine legs. Delicate hands, soft and unscarred, clutched his back. I turned, drawing the covers around my shoulders.

He had touched my face through the bars of the Galatien prison, a touch as soft as a spring wind. No one had ever touched me like that, with such care. I scrubbed my cheek with the blanket as though to wipe away that memory.

As soon as I closed my eyes, I pictured his: indigo, fringed with black. My eyes flew open. I threw off the blanket and sat up, letting my feet cool on the floor before fleeing into my courtyard for fresh air. I trailed a hand in the fountain.

I wanted him. Against all Gantean sensibilities, I didn’t care if he already had a mate. The southerners were not so strict about such matters—and if they were not, perhaps no good reason existed for the rule. Perhaps the limits of Gantean mating were only another pointless tradition passed down by rigid Elders.

I gazed at the stars. I wanted him enough to break rules and cross lines.

Heat rose in my blood, a burning I could not contain. I had waited far too long to let my blood. I hurried to the table in the courtyard where I kept my sculpting tools, took up a blackstone edge, and opened a track in my arm.

Relief and pleasure coursed through my body like cool water. I let my blood drip onto the grass. The ritual was not usually so heady; the power went straight to my head like Lethemian wine, and I collapsed to my knees, dropping the blackstone shard. Need sucked me down, down, into the lonely void that only the Cedna knows.

I
want to see Onatos
,” I told my handmaiden when she brought me breakfast. I had recovered from the night’s ritual slowly; it left me angry and drained. I pushed aside the food and glared at her.

“I’m sorry, my lady.” She bowed. “He cannot see you today.”

“What about tomorrow? He told me he’d take me to Orioneport.”

“Would you like to go to the city? I can arrange that for you.”

“No, I want to go to Orioneport
with Onatos
. Tell me when he can take me there.”

“I do not know, my lady. He is busy.”

I bit my cheek. The pain centered me so I did not scream at the useless handmaiden. I stormed from my chambers into the courtyard, taking one of the spalls of blackstone in hand. I neglected to put on my leather guards, and I snatched up the hammerstone with a grip to shatter mountains. My anger set me alive, connecting me to the seams of magic in the earth beneath my feet. I felt those power lines as I felt my own muscles. I brought down a blow.

An ulio blade curved in a perfect arc in my hand. I had only needed my anger. The rest would be easy. I had to find the right handle—a piece of bone or antler or tusk.

“I need to find bones,” I announced to the handmaiden as I returned to my chamber.

“Bones, my lady?”

“Materials to make a knife.”

“This is why you want to go to Orioneport? Shopping?”

“Is there a place where I can get such goods?” If I could make the knife whole, I would have my excuse to find Onatos and give it to him. It would be worth making the trip to the city, even without him. I let go my anger at the handmaiden. It really wasn’t her fault he would not see me.

“You can get nearly anything in the city. Shall I arrange the trip?”

“Yes. I will go today.”

“Very good,” she nodded. “I will fetch you when the party is ready.”

I wound my braids around my head, pinned them in place, and waited. A shuffling disturbed the quiet of my courtyard. Laith stood beside my fountain, his gaze darting side to side.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“What are
you
doing?” he replied.

“I’m going to Orioneport today.”

“Oh, take me! I love going to the city.”

I shrugged. “Do you need to ask your father’s permission?”

“My mother lives in the city.” He seemed to think this answered my question.

“Fine,” I replied. “Wait with me. My maid will fetch me when it is time to go.”

He took a seat, and he didn’t pull away when I stroked his hair.

Laith rode beside me on his pony and happily told me how to guide the horse with my legs, though they had given me a calm, plodding beast that did nothing but follow the Amarian guards’ mounts.

“Where did you wish to go, my lady?” asked a guard.

I looked up, bewildered. “I want to buy some items from Gante.”

“Gante?” The guard sounded as though he’d never heard of my island.

Laith came to my rescue. “I know where to go! The shipping warehouses, right along the water.”

The guard frowned. “That’s a rough area.” He turned to me. “Are you certain?”

I nodded.

The Amarian guards escorted me to a rundown row of warehouses abutting the vast harbor. Laith and I dismounted to walk the rickety causeway, leaving the horses with the guards on the street. Laith pulled me down to the last building. It smelled like home. A mountain of sealskins nearly blocked the entry. A full basket of anbuaqs and carved tormaquines nearly stopped me dead in my tracks as I shifted around the skins. A second basket contained ulios, both broken and whole. Anger, cold and determined as midwinter snowfall, chilled my blood. How did these sayantaq traders have so many of our sacred objects?

I helplessly scanned the warehouse full of Gantean plunder as my blood pounded in my ears. My magic thrummed to life with my rage. The dangerous door in my mind shuddered. In the harbor, beyond the warehouse walls, the sea surged in direct response. The sea-beast screamed behind my chains, a scream of such rage and despair that it might have signified the end of the world. A great, black power slithered through my veins like a shark, threatening destruction with every pulse beat.

I pushed it down and forced it behind the door. Too much—it threatened to overwhelm me.

I could only chain it back up again and pray for patience.

Evidence of great Gantean suffering lay before me. This was my half-sister Malvyna Entila’s work, abetted by the Galatien King. He had condoned this ruin by refusing to listen to my plea.

The spoils in the warehouse stunned me speechless. I caught up a handful of the broken blackstone blades in the basket, ignoring the pain as the edges cut my palm.

I arranged my face for the merchant who stood before me, staring at my hand. Red tears dripped onto the ulios left in the basket. I opened my hand and let the shards fall.

Laith, beside me, had grown as still as flotsam bones abandoned on the shore.

“Ah—what is it you are looking for, lady?” the swarthy merchant asked, pretending at a normalcy no one who stood in that room could possibly feel. A flurry of waves struck the dock outside, beating an unnatural rhythm that left us all ill at ease.

Laith grasped my bleeding hand. He used his own shirt to wipe away the excess blood. To my shock, he lifted my hand before him and ran a finger over the cuts. The pain abated, and the boy’s action shook me out of my helpless trance, though I remained too rattled to be suitably amazed by whatever healing magic he had just enacted.

“A bone,” I said woodenly to the merchant. “I need a bone for the handle of a knife.”

He pointed down at the basket of ulios. “What I’ve got, you’ll find in there. I cannot answer questions about quality. Your guess is as good as mine.”

He didn’t recognize that I was Gantean.

I bent over the ulios, trying not to imagine the raids that had killed their owners. The knives held memories of magic and pain. Distress made my hands shake.

In my head, behind the door, the beast kept screaming.

Finally I came up with a handle, a fine, curved tusk from a great seal, long enough to balance the arc of the blade I had made.

I forced my hands to settle as I showed the bone to the seller.

“This one.” I could not bring myself to say please.

He named a price. I didn’t listen. How could a price be put on the life of an entire people? Laith carried the money, and the boy handed it over without argument.

Laith appeared subdued on our ride home, as though the trip had taken something out of him, too. We did not speak when we parted. I sent my handmaiden away while I performed the small magic of binding blade to bone, all the while wondering what to do about the beast whose scream continued to fill my head, reminding me of my duties.

I had to return to Gante. I had become distracted by the sparkle of the southern lands like some sayantaq fool. I sighed.

I couldn’t leave without seeing Onatos one last time. Something drew me to that man as I had never been drawn to anything in my life. Cednas were never allowed personal preference in selecting a mate. Because he gave me desire—even unfulfilled—Onatos gave me a slice of myself I would never have been permitted to know in Gante. Saying goodbye was the least I could do to show my gratitude.

I lifted the new ulio and brandished it so it caught the light. I hoped he would remember me by the blade.

I retraced the path Laith had shown me down to the Court—he’d left the doors unlocked. Clever boy, he must have known I would traverse his secret route again.

Instead of sliding into the tiny door that led to Laith’s spying room, I swung myself over the railing into an open corridor. Aware that Lady Daria’s chamber stood only a few strides away, I retreated deeper into the building. A wide stair veered down, while the hall led towards an enormous door, the twin of Lady Daria’s.

Gingerly, I pushed on the door opposite from Daria’s. It swung open, and I caught a breath of Onatos’s warm scent—cinnamon, it was called. My handmaiden had told me when I smelled it in a breakfast dish.

Shutters obscured any light from the windows. I reached into the thick darkness. My fingers met silk, and I edged along what could only be a bed. My groping hand quavered as it met flesh.

In half a heartbeat I was thrown facedown on the bed, a hard hand pressed between my shoulder blades.

“Don’t move. There’s a blade at your neck.”

I gasped as he pressed down, sending me into an airless panic.

“Daria?” Onatos’s pressure lessened on my back. “What the hells are you up to now?” He pulled me up and shook me.

“It’s me.” He would not mistake me for Daria once he heard my accented voice.

“Cedna! What in the name of Amassis are you doing here?” Onatos relaxed and let me go.

“What if I
were
trying to kill you?”

He chuckled. A light flared as he lit a candle and placed his blade on his bedside table beside a glimmering round stone in a carved wooden stand. “You wouldn’t,” he said with irritating confidence.

Tendrils of weird magic emanated from that stone. I couldn’t rip my gaze away as it gleamed like an opal in the candlelight.

“Cedna? Are you—well?”

I shook myself free of the stone’s influence and brought out the ulio. “I made this for you.”

“For me?” He took the blackstone blade carefully, as though to make certain our skins never touched. He hefted it. “It’s lovely. Thank you. But you must return to your room.”

“What? No.” I was incensed by his too-casual acceptance of my gift, and I did not wish to leave. I wanted to ask him about the opal stone beside his bed. I wanted to touch him. I wanted more than he could ever give me. “I’m not going back to my room.”

“Is it not to your liking?”

“Daria’s is better.”

Even in the dim light, I saw him pale. “How do you know about Daria?”

“Your son told me.”

His head snapped up. “Laith?”

“I don’t think the other boy can talk yet.”

“Damned Amatos.”

“What?”

“I didn’t want you to know about her. I didn’t want her to know about you, either, though I knew that was too much to hope for.”

Silence stretched between us as the candle flickered.

“Your wife is not happy,” I murmured, studying the smooth planes of his face.

“And so I will never be happy, either. She’s determined to see to that.”

“Is that why won’t you come to me, Onatos? You do not wish to be happy?”

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

I grabbed the bodice of my dress above my heart. “What about this, Onatos? What about the thread you say exists between us? You made it seem as though—”

“Cedna, listen to me. I can’t be with you, don’t you see? The Galatiens have no tolerance for impropriety from me. I have already blundered, badly, by riding with you through Orioneport. Gossip spreads like wildfire, and Daria has heard of it. It is all I can do just to repair that damage. I cannot behave badly; I should not even see you, not if I expect to make my petition to gain my title.” He pushed me away from him. “You must go back to your room. I cannot afford an indiscretion.”

“Then there is no reason for me to stay here at the Alcazar,” I said, unable to cure the plaintive ring in my voice.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve got sidereals left on your sentence.” He put the ulio down beside the opal stone, and sparks of magic flared in my fingertips, making me gasp.

“What is that stone?” I demanded.

Onatos glanced at it and shrugged. “It’s nothing. Just a bauble I found a few days ago buried in one of the guest rooms.”

The rock grated on my magic sense like rough sand on raw skin. “I came to say goodbye.” I bolstered my voice with certainty I did not feel. “I have to return to Gante.”

“Cedna, you cannot. Mydon would never forgive me if I let you go. Why would you tell me such a thing, if you did mean to do it? I must prevent you.”

My eyes burned. Did he not care for
me
at all? Only for his duty, for his obligation to Mydon? “I am the Cedna of Gante,” I said, trying to inject pride and purpose into my words. “My people depend on me. They need me.” I still clutched my dress tightly against my chest.

Suddenly, Onatos broke. He flew up from the edge of his bed and trapped that hand between both of his. “
I
need you, Beautiful. Don’t you see?” Heat pulsed through our joined hands.

“You don’t even want me!” I cried. “You won’t even touch me!”

“I am touching you! Feel this!” Even Onatos seemed surprised by the ferocity in his voice. We both stared at our interlocked hands, which felt about to combust.

“Love, if you go, I will be miserable. It is that simple. Even if I cannot have you, your presence is a comfort. I like knowing you are near me.”

“That is a puny comfort in a cold world, Onatos. I still must go.”

Onatos dropped my hand and moved between the door and me. “You cannot go.”

I made to dart around him, but he caught my wrist. A sudden, visceral explosion of magic burst from the opal on the table, pushing me into Yaqi with a violent thrust. Pale blue light wafted around Onatos and me like morning mist, cocooning us in a soft glow. Onatos’s bloodlight was almost the same color as the stone—a milky blue so pale it was nearly white, a perfect foil to the black shadow that shrouded my body here in the Spirit Layer. I suddenly understood what Onatos meant when he said our aetherlights were a match.

A rope of Onatos’s bloodlight reached for me. My blackstone light spun into an answering thread. Then, as suddenly as I’d been thrust into Yaqi, I was ripped back out of it as Onatos pulled me against his body and covered my mouth with his.

The opal stone emanated a force as powerful as anything I’d ever experienced in ritual. It caught us both up in its wave like helpless castaways.

Onatos pulled away my clothing as I ripped at his. Our skins screamed to touch. He pressed me onto his bed. The coverlet was stiff and scratchy against my bare back. He trailed his tongue over my breasts, down into the cavity of my navel, and captured my hands above my head to make me still.