Shadowstorm (Sorcery and Science Book 6) (2 page)

Aaron and Lord Adrian claimed their chairs at the opposite end of the stage. It would have been nice to bring an Elition bodyguard along himself, if only to glare at Nemesis. But he couldn’t. If King River found out what was going on there, he would blow a fuse.

And Aaron couldn’t really blame him. Lord Adrian’s project wasn’t pretty, but it was necessary. The Avans were like sharks. If they tasted so much as a single drop of blood in the water, they wouldn’t hesitate to strike. Aaron was the emperor of the Selpe Empire now. It was his responsibility to keep all Selpes safe, even if that meant doing unseemly things. As the former leader of the Diamond Edges, he’d gotten pretty accustomed to doing unseemly things.

“Let’s begin,” said Empress Avan.

They were there to ‘discuss innovation’. This basically meant that at the beginning of every year, the leaders of the Selpe and Avan Empires got together for one day to engage in an overly-elaborate, extravagantly-staged pissing contest. They met on neutral territory. Marina Bay was at the southern end of the neutral Learan Peninsula, wedged tightly between the two empires’ lands of the Eastern Continent. Each year, the rulers of both empires brought along a presentation of their latest advances. And each year since the precarious peace treaty had been signed into effect, both sides had hoped to upstage the other and gain the advantage. But they’d always come out about even. And so the peace had held.

There were rumors, though. The Selpe Intelligence Network had reported that the Avans were developing a new weapon; they just didn’t know what this weapon was. Whatever it was, Aaron had to counter it. Elitions had turned the tide in the Selpes’ favor during the last war. They would do so again.

Lord Adrian’s project was just reaching maturity, and with the help of a few parts bought from the Helleans, the Selpe Empire’s military would finally gain the upper hand over the Avans. The Helleans had found a way to harness Elition power. The Selpe Empire had long sought to purchase this technology, but it was only last month that Lord Adrian had finally named a price the Helleans couldn’t say no to.

After today, the future of the Selpe Empire would be secure.

It was the Avans’ turn to kick off the Summit this year. Sarah Avan looked back over her shoulder at Nemesis, and the fire-haired Triad waved over a group seated in the first row of audience chairs. There were three people. The first, a man in a long white coat, stood and led the way across the stage. He pushed a cart before him. A woman dressed entirely in black followed behind him. Then came the third.

And he was the problem.

The overhead spotlights danced off his eyes, setting the pools of oozing honey alight with a thousand golden sparkles. The man was Siennan, of the former Elition kingdom that had broken away hundreds of years ago. He didn’t look old—Elitions hardly aged—but there was knowledge in those eyes, as though he’d lived to see many centuries. Perhaps this Siennan had personally fled Elitia for the Estival Isles.

Back on stage, the doctor pulled out a pair of deeply-shaded sunglasses. He set them over the ancient Siennan’s honey-colored eyes as he handed him a shot glass filled with thick, dark liquid. The woman in black typed a few things into the computer atop the cart, then she and her colleague withdrew to the sidelines as the stage spotlights dimmed and the Siennan stepped forward. He tipped his head backward and emptied the contents of the shot glass in one gulp before his shaking hand set it back down on the cart.

Beside Aaron, Lord Adrian stiffened. Something strange was going on. It was all too familiar.

The old man stepped lightly, soundlessly, across the creaky stage. He stopped in front of the Selpe party and clasped his hands together. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, an icy chill crept down Aaron’s neck, as though from a breeze. But there was no breeze. His hands felt wet, slippery, watery. But there was no water.

Everything around Aaron shimmered an eerie blue, and Ambrose Selpe, his deceased uncle and former emperor of the Selpe Empire, stepped up to him. Aaron was standing to face his predecessor when Lord Adrian set a hand upon his shoulder.

“It’s merely an illusion,” he told Aaron.

“Oh, but it’s so much more,” Nemesis’s shrill voice called out.

Aaron couldn’t see her. Ambrose Selpe’s blue shimmer illuminated the Selpes, but the Avans had fallen into shadow. Even armed with the knowledge that Ambrose wasn’t real, Aaron couldn’t help but feel uneasy as his uncle, ghostlike, stared down upon him. He looked just as he had in life, minus the added wrinkles he’d put on in his later years.

The old Siennan opened his mouth, his voice pulsing with an unearthly echo. “It was nearly seventeen years ago, and Ambrose Selpe was visiting Elitia in the hopes of winning over the support of its high king in his war with the Avan Empire.”

From across the stage, someone—Nemesis?—let out a hiss of conceited air.

The old man continued, “The Selpe emperor didn’t trust Elitions, for they were rumored to wield great magics, but he needed them for this very reason. To woo their support, he paid his respects at Rosewater, the temple of Pegasus. And there something happened that he did not expect.”

The figure of Ambrose Selpe flickered for a moment. He looked over his shoulder, where a woman stood framed in the doorway.

“Livia?” he called out.

“Your Majesty.”

“Call me Ambrose. Please.”

As she took a step toward him, her face came into focus. “As you wish, Ambrose.”

Lord Adrian’s eyes widened in surprise. Then, as he took in the sight of her, he tensed in his chair. The deceased empress was standing in the middle of Rosewater, looking different than Aaron had ever seen her in life. Very different. Instead of ghostly pale, her cheeks were rosy with color. Her eyes shone out stormy grey, like a raging tempest, and her hair fell to her hips. With each step, it swung like a sparkling, blinding waterfall of feather-light gold. It was mesmerizing.

Aaron shook his head once, trying to clear it. Livia Selpe had been Elition? She’d been beautiful, but that beauty was human. Her golden hair had shone but not shimmered. Her eyes had been deep blue-grey, not a raging hurricane. Aaron had always thought she was quite exotic for a human, yet the thought that she could be Elition hadn’t even crossed his mind. Her features were not vibrant enough.

She must have subdued them with an Inhibiting Serum. Which meant… The boys’ unsettling eyes. Their Elition bodyguards. The fact that they’d lived most of the year close to Elitia. The oddities swirled in Aaron’s head, coalescing into one undeniable truth: Hayden and Ian, the sons of Ambrose and Livia, were half-Elition.

But why had no one ever thought of it before? King River was more conniving than Aaron had ever imagined. Had the boys still been around, a half-Elition would now sit upon the Selpe throne—and no one would be any the wiser. Old Ambrose and King River had tucked away that little secret. Aaron watched his uncle and couldn’t help but be impressed. He must really have loved Livia.

“I love you, Livia,” Ambrose Selpe echoed Aaron’s thoughts.

A tear, glowing in the strange blue light, slid down her cheek.

Ambrose Selpe rushed forward, setting one hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong? Are you having second thoughts?”

She brushed off the tear. “No. I just had to say goodbye to an old friend. And to my sister.”

“You’ll see her again soon.” He clasped her hands in his. “The high queen of Elitia will always be welcome in Orion.”

“As long as she pretends not to be my sister.”

“I…I’m sorry.” He actually looked sincere. “But it’s the only way. The Selpe aristocracy would never understand.”

“They don’t trust Elitions.”

“They don’t understand you. Someday…I hope it will be different.”

Livia’s hand rose to her neck—and dropped it, as though what she’d reached for had gone missing. She folded her hands together in front of her. Aaron had been so distracted by her Elition appearance that he’d completely overlooked everything else. She was dressed in the robes of a temple priestess. So Livia was not only an Elition; she was a priestess, a perfect representation of their arcane magics. The Council would have thrown a fit.

“Promise you will still come with me.”

“I promise,” she said, her stormy eyes shaking.

Ambrose and Livia faded out of sight, swallowed by the blue mist.

“Shortly thereafter, Ambrose Selpe and Livia Cross, sister to Elitia’s high queen, were married. It was just in time for the signing of an agreement between Elitia and the Selpe Empire. The official alliance followed five years later. And you all know the rest,” their narrator finished.

The blue glow dissolved, the overhead lights flickered on, and the old Siennan storyteller left the stage. Black Suit and White Coat followed him off.

“And that was our little project called Spectacles,” Sarah Avan declared with a satisfied smirk.

Under any other circumstances, Aaron would have been impressed. The Avans could project an Elition’s special talents. The ability for humans to tap into the vast well of Elition magics was very powerful indeed.

“The late empress was Elition,” Lord Adrian hissed under his breath, his calm facade cracked. He wasn’t even thinking about Spectacles—its power, its potential, and most importantly that they’d come there with essentially the same project.

Coincidence? No, Aaron didn’t buy that for a moment. Not this time. Not when they were dealing with something as important as this.

When Aaron said nothing, Lord Adrian repeated his statement.

“So it would seem,” Aaron replied. What else could he say?

“But she was
Elition
,” he emphasized, as though Aaron hadn’t contemplated the significance.

But Aaron had. Terra was also Elition. He didn’t mention that to Lord Adrian. He’d had to pull out all the stops to get her accepted as his empress, and he wasn’t about to rub it in the face of his Advisory Council’s most important member—and his former boss.

“Later,” Aaron said under his breath.

They had to stay calm. Of all the ways they could have demonstrated their new toy, the Avans had chosen that scene. It wasn’t random. The Avans were hoping the Selpe Empire would implode under the strain of infighting.

Aaron wouldn’t allow that to happen, not over something that had long since lost all relevance. Ambrose Selpe was dead. Livia Selpe was dead. Their two sons had vanished without a trace. They were probably dead too.

“Lord Adrian,” Aaron said. “We cannot allow that display to go unchallenged.”

Like the practiced politician he was, Lord Adrian swallowed his aggravation. As he stood with regal grace, he waved over the two people in the audience sitting behind them. The first was another white coat, hardly distinguishable from his Avan counterpart. More interesting was the second, a twelve-year-old Elition girl. She wore a matching top and pants, both made of dark blue satin. They almost looked like pajamas. Her hair, a shocking shade of electric purple, popped out in the dim light, drawing everyone’s attention to her. The glow of it was so distracting that Aaron hardly noticed her eyes, a very pretty light sky blue.

Soft and balletic, the girl feathered forward, following in the white coat’s wake. Lord Adrian joined them center stage and set a computer on the podium. The white coat placed two blue-green discs on the girl’s face, one on each of her temples. Perfectly round and sparkling brilliantly, they looked like small gemstones.

“We call this Conduit,” Lord Adrian announced.

Sarah Avan leaned back, and astonishment washed across her face. If she was surprised that Aaron was bold to follow their spectacular act, she shouldn’t have been. He’d come with the same project—and she knew it too, the thief.

“Bellflower, are you ready?” Lord Adrian asked of the girl.

She dipped her purple-haired head. “Yes, my lord.”

He stepped back, and the Elition known as Bellflower glanced sidelong at the Avan party. Aaron was impressed to see there was no fear in her eyes—only determination. After a pause, she turned. As she made her way toward Sarah Avan, Nemesis jumped forward, blocking her path. Bellflower ignored her, staring the Avan empress straight in the eye.

“You are afraid,” the girl said to Sarah Avan. It was a statement, plain and simple.

Sarah Avan laughed, and it was the cry of dying cats. “You are mistaken, child.”

“No.”

Bellflower continued to stare at Sarah Avan until a dark brown halo shone around her. The Avan empress lifted her arm and looked it over in alarm. Nemesis batted at the air around her mistress, trying without success to displace the eerie light.

“What is this?” demanded Sarah Avan.

“Brown represents fear,” Bellflower explained, as though she were describing how to read. Well, she
was
reading. Reading emotions.

“You dare defile my empress with your parlor tricks!” seethed Nemesis.

Bellflower looked her over with such calmness that she was teetering on the cusp of boredom. “Red is anger. Red-gold is nervous anger.”

Nemesis’s eyes shot down to her hands, which like the rest of her body glowed distinctly red-gold. The Siennan jumped forward, her hands extended as if to strangle Bellflower. Unruffled, the girl’s gaze darted to her assailant. Nemesis flew back, catapulted into the rows of seating below. Just as quickly, Nemesis was staring up over the edge of the stage, her turquoise eyes now blaring hot red. Her halo was more red than gold now too.