Prince's Master (Calluvia's Royalty 4)

“Open your mind to me,” Castien said. “Drop your shields completely.”

Eridan did as he was told. He wasn’t afraid. Even after everything, he trusted him. The realization was bittersweet as they stared at each other, a Master and an apprentice, one last time.

Sleep.

He felt a sudden heaviness in his eyes and slowly, very slowly he shut his eyes.

The last thing he saw before sleep claimed him was Castien’s blue eyes.

Were they glistening?

And then everything was black.

***

He woke up slowly, feeling sluggish and disoriented.

He also had a bad headache.

Eridan opened his eyes and slowly sat up, groaning miserably when it made the headache worse. Fuck. What was wrong with him?

“Are you all right?”

He turned toward the low voice.

There was a tall man standing by the window wearing the black robes that denoted him as a Master of the High Hronthar. His face was… vaguely familiar in a way one would remember something from a dream. Eridan didn’t recognize him.

He frowned, confused, and got to his feet. “Who are you?”

Although the man’s face remained unreadable, something about his telepathic presence changed. It… dimmed.

The man just stared at him for a long moment, his very blue eyes roaming over Eridan’s face with a strange, intense expression, before he said in a terse voice, “No one.” He strode toward the door.

Utterly confused, Eridan blocked his path. “Wait,” he said suspiciously, putting a hand on the man’s chest. “Did you do something to me? Why was I asleep with you in the room?”

The man tentatively put a hand on Eridan’s wrist, as if he were holding a poisonous snake, and removed Eridan’s hand from his chest.

Their gazes met, and something shifted in the other man’s eyes. They seemed to soften, just a little.

The mind adept leaned in and brushed his dry lips against Eridan’s forehead.

Eridan’s eyes widened.

“I hope you have a happy life,” the man said, his voice quiet. “Goodbye, Prince Eruadarhd.”

And he strode out of the room, leaving Eridan staring after him in bemusement.

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Thawing

Amara was irritated.

She was not a young girl anymore to run from place to place in search for her wayward grand-apprentice. Her mind might be sharp, but her bones were no longer as strong as they had once been. Castien should have told her he wasn’t at the monastery when she had called him, informing him of her desire to talk. She’d had to travel from the monastery to High Hronthar, but Castien hadn’t been in the castle, either, his communicator turned off.

After extensive inquiries, she had been able to determine that he was in his personal mansion in District Four. It puzzled her to no end. Usually Grandmasters completely relocated to the castle after their promotion. Amara couldn’t fathom what he could possibly be doing in his old home.

The answer turned out to be rather banal: he was working.

Castien was in his study, his attention entirely on the holographic text hanging in the air in front of him. From this angle, Amara couldn’t see the text well, but it seemed to be a report on the growth of the Order’s influence on Planet Vergx.

Amara cleared her throat, and he murmured, without looking away from the holodata, “Give me a moment, Master Amara.”

She nodded, and for lack of anything better to do, looked around the room. She hadn’t been here often. In all the years Castien had lived in this mansion, she could count the number of times she had been in this room on the fingers of one hand. Castien had another office in this house that he used for meetings.

This room was… cozy. It was probably even cozier when the fireplace was lit. It felt lived in. She could sense a lot of telepathic fingerprints. Powerful telepaths tended to leave them if they spent a lot of time in one place. They weren’t just Castien’s. She could sense Castien’s former apprentice, too. The boy’s telepathic mark was all over the room, but it was especially focused on the couch and the comfortable-looking armchair to Castien’s right. In fact, Eridan’s telepathic presence was so strong there Amara wondered how Castien didn’t find it distracting; she would have if she had to work with all that background noise in the room.

Frowning, Amara walked to the armchair and sat down—or tried to.

Castien’s terse voice made her pause. “Sit in the other chair. That one is dirty.”

Amara shot the armchair in question a skeptical look—it looked perfectly clean to her—but she didn’t argue and did as she was told.

She gazed at the man across the desk and thought that he looked tired. It was a strange thought. Castien had always been relentless. He was one of those people who never seemed anything less than put together and ready for anything life might throw at them. But he looked tired now. Or perhaps stressed.