“Thwarted by your shell game of diversion? I might wish instead Davien’s treasonous anarchy would smash Asandir’s unholy pact with the sisterhood at a stroke! Someone should obliterate that nest of harpies.”
“I know.” Sethvir foresaw all the bleak probabilities. The Seven’s hamstrung resource could scarcely stem the bleeding breach as Selidie’s plots pitched their guardianship of Athera to shambles. Tough as nails amid building disaster, he folded veined knuckles and temporized. “The short-term defeat may not lose us the war. And I lit up the tower on the outside chance Davien might take notice. A token show of his support at this pass might give the Prime wary pause.”
But even provoked a third time, Kharadmon never swerved. “What rankling ploy is that she-spider hatching?”
“Today? Another manipulation against us.” Sethvir picked a loose thread from his sleeve and sighed. “Her mission is desperate. Either she must snare a talented candidate strong enough to survive the succession, or she has to defeat the compact and fall back on her order’s cache of proscribed secrets. For one cause, or both, she’s playing a puppet initiate from Deal as the woebegone victim of rape.”
“And?” Kharadmon prompted, while the anguished pause stretched to the whicker of candleflame.
Sethvir glanced up, desolate. “The chit’s being used as the baited trap to exploit the glaring flaw in Prince Arithon’s character.”
The discorporate Sorcerer recoiled, aghast. “To acquire his blood-line?”
“Or break him,” Sethvir said, unflinching. “Either convenient happenstance suits the sisterhood’s cause.”
The worrisome scene tracked by Althain’s Warden unfolded in the Storlains, well into the nadir of night. The old ice-cutter’s cabin by then was snug, even cozy under latched shutters. Lit rushes spilled softer light over the makeshift trestle, littered with wintergreen sprigs shorn of berries to compound a liniment.
Vivet refused the astringent paste, mashed to soothe her livid bruises. “I’ll not touch the rank stuff!” She puffed a vexed breath. “It stings, and the smell makes me queasy.”
Seated opposite, his bowl of spurned remedy a strained declaration of tension between them, the Crown Prince of Rathain measured her sullen regard, too canny to rise to the bait. A woman scorned, Vivet well might try rejection as her next inveigling weapon. Braced by the tingling scent of crushed herbals, he matched her complaint with cool silence and did not volunteer to poultice her injuries.
Vivet slapped down her comb. Reclothed, erect in the tatters of her dignity, she began with crisp yanks to rebraid her hair. Arithon watched, careful to dampen the outrage smouldering beneath his leashed temper. As deeply betrayed by another woman, even yet beloved beyond measure, he dared not lose his grip on the embedded hurt that clouded his mage-sighted discipline. Vivet’s pique perhaps stemmed from misdirected pain and not venal manipulation.
Mindful of his thoughtless power to wound, Arithon waited for accurate insight, while she eyed him sidewise, unchastened. Empathy forgave her contrary behaviour, given how little he knew of the crisis she battled. Trauma alone would not drive an intelligent young woman to fling herself on him, try suicide, then irrationally neglect the physical marks of abuse.
Initiate restraint must outlast moody tumult. Tidied himself, reclad in his marred shirt, and in charge of both knife and his shoulder-slung sword, Arithon perched on the makeshift log seat.
He could do nothing else.
Althain’s Warden witnessed, in full, the invidious thread of Prime Selidie’s design. An innocent female, cast as victimized pawn, paired with the damning, implied falsehood sown by an incomplete record left planted in crystal, had skewed Arithon’s internal boundaries. The mix spelled disaster. Vivet’s straits grappled his vulnerability, abrasive as slivered glass on torn nerves in the confines of the remote cabin.
The blood-bound tenets of Rathain’s crown heritage disallowed comfort, or distance. S’Ahelas foresight stayed silent, as well, while Arithon’s recoil sought the blind solace of an outside distraction: easier for him to redress Vivet’s woes than to bear his own desolation.
Sethvir’s flash-point acuity plumbed the abyss of uncertainty caused by the prince’s blocked memory. Stripped of Tarens’s steadfast loyalty, Arithon’s purposful character lost firm direction. Where safety and solitude would have granted space for mage training to master the impasse, Arithon endured in resigned suspension, his innate faculties entrained on another’s behalf.
The battered victim in front of him trembled, too damaged to function. Sent as she was on a mission to ensnare him through her human weakness, Vivet leaned, and commanded his strength.
“What if my future is ruined?” she confided in jagged distress.
Arithon measured her lustrous hair, the blemished symmetry of temple and cheek, then the expressive eyelashes and pert chin. Against her dispirited anguish, he said, “You are individual as a melody sung once, then lost in a storm. Calm will refound the cadence again. Beauty survives, and healing demands a fallow time for renewal.” His tender entreaty insistent, he added, “I promise you this. The harm you have suffered is an affront to all that is right in the world. You will find the joy that eludes you tonight. But only if you gather your courage, stay the course, and live in the present.”
Vivet convulsed with sobs. He did not gather her misery close or smooth back the hair slicked to her swollen cheeks. And yet, though his intimate trust remained shaken, he did not disown her suffering.
“Your affection is not a gift to be squandered over a night’s inflamed passion.” The bitter edge underneath his straight speech eluded her wounded perception. “Entanglement now would upset better choices. Do you understand, Vivet? Your worth is greater than any male stranger’s thankless, quick toss in the sheets.”
Blinking through tears, she fastened on his promise of requite. “You’ll still see me home?”
“Better,” said Arithon. “I’ll make sure of your welcome. If your kin cast you out for what happened, we’ll leave them. Your fortune will thrive in a different place, among kindly folk who deserve, and appreciate, the unique grace of your company.”
Vivet mopped her face, encouraged to venture a tentative smile. “Then you don’t spurn belief in chance-met fate?”
“That upsets don’t happen by accident?” Arithon shrugged. “I’m too tired to hazard the question.” Slight as shadow itself, green eyes lowered, he stirred to retire.
Reluctant to release him, Vivet blurted, “My mother told futures. She taught me the art. What will happen is marked in the lines of your palm.” Flushed slightly, she seized his right wrist, poised on the trestle between them. Arithon curbed his recoil. He suffered the touch to appease her and let her uncurl his long fingers.
Shiny white, the old knot of scar tissue exposed to the rush-light. Apologetic, Arithon freed her shocked grasp. “I’ve no past and no future where you are concerned. Wiser for you to remember that.”
Yet the gathered probabilities of Sethvir’s earth-sense foreshadowed no simple release from his tacit engagement and no turning away. Bred to heal fractious conflict in whatever form, and royally gifted with the insight to forge unity between Mankind’s wayward factions and the mystical presence of Athera’s Paravians, Arithon could not resist his born nature or callously force disentanglement.
A snarling blast of frigid wind yanked the Warden’s distanced awareness back to Althain Tower.
“The hussy is pregnant!” Kharadmon snapped. Two shelved books toppled and smacked into the floor, while precipitate moisture crackled and froze under his ferocious outburst. “Not by Arithon, either, mark that!”
Sethvir caught the whip-cracked ends of his beard and peered through the gyre of snowflakes. “Two days ago, yes. I observed the conception. The woman is bearing the dead trapper’s get.”
“Our