Shadowdance 01 - A Dance of Cloaks

could find beautiful. To see such parental devotion twisted and turned to murder and fratricide…
    “Listen to me,” Kayla said, lowering her voice. “I can’t love you, Aaron. I can’t even treat you with kindness, and my reason is the same as why you killed your brother. Take the earrings. Don’t hide your hurt. Don’t be ashamed of your tears.”
    She took his chin in her fingers and tilted his head upward.
    “But you were right,” she said. “I can love Haern. I’m not sure what Aaron might become. He may scare me, may even hurt me at his own father’s request. So you must keep Haern hidden and safe. Keep him alive. Can you do that for me?”
    His tears rolled down his cheeks, but he nodded. She saw that strength and felt beyond proud.
    “Aaron must never love me,” she said as she turned to the door. “Not while under the shadow of his father.”
    She opened the door, paused halfway through it.
    “But Haern can.”
    “I’ll remember,” Aaron said as she left. Down the hall she went, all the way to Thren’s room, where he waited. She knelt before his table.
    “My task?” she asked.
    “Were you successful?” Thren asked her first. Knowing her life was on the line, Kayla kept her smile hidden deep inside her breast.
    “Beyond expectations,” she answered.
    As Kayla left, Aaron grabbed one of his many swords and slammed the side of a training dummy. He had learned another lesson about what it meant to have power. It meant crushing the will of another to meet your own. To learn that lesson, to know that it had been brought down upon him by his own father…
    For the first time Aaron felt rebellion growing in his heart at the very notion of wielding that same power. He choked it down. Those thoughts didn’t belong to Aaron. They weren’t who he was, and he could never think them. Not when his father might see.
    He cut one of his blankets in half, poked in a few eyeholes, and then wrapped it about his face. Lost in his training, he swung his sword about the room, shifting from stance to stance. Feeling somehow freed, somehow unchained, he let his anger rage and his rebellion grow, for he was Haern now, and those thoughts belonged to him.

CHAPTER
14
    W earing the same disguise as before, Maynard returned to the priests’ temple a week later as promised. He dismissed his guards when he reached the gate, confident his threats were more than enough to keep him safe. It was the ruffians and cutthroats who wandered the streets that worried him. He didn’t want to imagine the celebration that might erupt in the underworld if he was found and killed in the open.
    Not surprisingly, his reception was far less warm than on his first visit. He was immediately led to Pelarak’s room and then made to wait. The high priest arrived shortly after.
    “You have put us in an uncomfortable position,” Pelarak said as he shut the door behind him.
    “Welcome to the rest of Veldaren,” Maynard said. “No one is comfortable, not while vermin pretend to be kings.”
    “When men pretend to be gods, things are just as dire,” Pelarak said. Maynard ignored the thinly veiled insult.
    “I’ve come for my answer. Will you aid us in destroying the thief guilds, or will you cling to your worthless neutrality?”
    Pelarak walked around him and then sat at his desk. He tapped his fingertips together, then put his forefingers to his lips.
    “You must understand that I do what Karak desires of me,” Pelarak said. “This decision is not mine, but his.”
    Under normal circumstances, Maynard would have paid lip service to Pelarak’s faith. With his daughter missing and his estate lacking a true heir, he had no time or patience. He rolled his eyes.
    “Don’t feed me that nonsense. You are in charge here, high priest, not some voice in your head.”
    “You doubt Karak’s power?”
    “Doubt it?” Maynard said. “Would I be so insistent you help me if I doubted it? I just don’t want to hear any nonsense about prayers or obscure promises and prophecies. I want an answer. The correct one.”
    Pelarak smiled a wolfish smile.
    “You won’t get it. Not the one you want.”
    “I will carry out my promise,” Maynard said.
    “And we believe you,” Pelarak insisted. “Listen to what I have to say.”
    He gestured to the chair opposite him. Annoyed, Maynard sat down. Part of him knew he should calm himself. He was being hotheaded and rash, something he always dismissed in others. The priests had vexed him for