A House Divided

Chapter 7

Heart seizing, Cianne tried to beat back the wave of dizziness that swept over her. Her pulse pounded, her blood roaring in her ears like Cearus's wrath. Over the years she had become good at marshaling her emotions, concealing her thoughts, but the shock of seeing Kila was so great that all her training had gone out the window as she was catapulted back into the skin of her twelve-year-old self.

***

Her nightly forays into the city began shortly after her mother's death, her need to escape overruling all sense.

Daerwyn treated her as if she were an unwelcome stranger. Overwhelmed by his grief and his need to control it, he put on a good show outside of the manor, projecting an image of dignity and strength to the other House members. Inside the manor, he had no room for his daughter's pain, unwilling to offer her anything to help her navigate it.

Coupled with his grief was the bewildering challenge of determining how to raise her on his own, a child he already found so unfathomable he didn't quite know what to do with her. He had counted on Annalith to be there for him, to see to it that Cianne didn't become the wild, feckless creature he feared would disgrace him and their whole House.

Lach was more than kind, though. Annalith had been like a second mother to him, and his affection for her had been genuine. His sense of loss was keen, if not quite as keen as Cianne's. For the first few days after Annalith's death they had spent the bulk of their time together in one another's arms, sobbing over their broken hearts. But no matter how hard he tried, no matter how desperately he wished he could do so, Lach was unable to help her find her way through her despair.

House members crowded the manor, demanding recognition for their own suffering, and she wasn't merely beyond being able to accept the possibility that they were hurting too, she was indifferent to their pain. Who were they to lay claim to her mother? What did they know of her? What did they know of the hole her mother's absence had punched into the universe?

Annalith's funeral was lavish, and Cianne felt in her bones that her mother would have hated it. Clad in the customary deep green, the color of the sea at its most forbidding, every member of the House had crammed into the Council Hall. Funerary rites were read, offerings were made to Cearus, and many House members took their turn to say some words about Annalith, but Cianne was aware of none of it. Her eyes were fixed on the empty, gilded casket, as if they might catch sight of that beloved face one last time if only they could bore through the wood.

She never would see her mother's face again, no matter how hard her eyes strained. Annalith had been swept away while at sea, during a violent storm that had left her vessel severely damaged and Cianne's life destroyed.

When the casket was carried to the sea to be borne away on the waves, Cianne collapsed. Her world had fallen in on her, and she was powerless against the pain.

Her mother's casket was long gone by the time she woke. Cianne regretted that she hadn't been able to watch it disappear, to imagine Annalith being carried out to Cearus's embrace. Perhaps the peaceful image would have cured Cianne of her nightmares. Every time she closed her eyes, she watched the greedy waters swallowing Annalith's lovely, kind face, her silken ebony curls.

The walls of the manor pressed in around Cianne, threatening to crush her, making her skin crawl with the need to get away. Outside the enclave walls she could be alone with her thoughts, could probe the pure, jagged edges of her grief without fear of witness.

She waited until her father locked himself in his room and the servants had gone to bed before she crept down the stairs. She and her mother had made a game of sneaking up on one another, and so Cianne had long since learned which steps to avoid so that she wouldn't make a sound. Slipping through the door of the manor was child's play, and avoiding the night guards wasn't much more difficult. She loved climbing and snuck away to do it whenever she could, so although scaling the enclave wall was a challenge, it was not an insurmountable one.