Silver Stands, Chapters 1 & 2: The cost of Secrets.
Roswell is not, not, not, NOT MINE. But this little plot twist mostly is. Love my readers. Sorry for the long lapse between updates, but my operating system crashed and I literally had to start all freaking over. Not fun.
Antar—Earth Year 1906
Vilandra raced towards the innermost rooms of the palace, stumbling over her skirts, breathless, gasping, tears running down her face.
She did her best to ignore the warring emotions inside her chest.
Grief, horror, guilt.
Zan, Avaliera, Rath….. They were all dead.
And it was her fault.
She could hear the sounds of pursuit behind her. They couldn't possibly know her goal; they were simply pursuing her on Khivar's command. Khivar, who said he had loved her, who had told her in secret the bloody past of her planet, who had begged her with tears in his eyes to help him right wrongs centuries old.
Khivar who had murdered her brother, her sister-in-law, and her fiancé, all in one fell swoop. Avaliera, nearly a year younger than she, herself, who had told her in secret confidence only that morning that not only had the palace physicians confirmed that she was pregnant, but that it was twins. She had told Khivar, making him promise that nothing was to befall her sister-in-law, that she was to be handled as carefully as possible during the transition.
He had killed her first. In her mind's eye, Vilandra could still see Ava's body falling, her hands protectively cradling her abdomen.
Zan had simply looked at him, that eerie call falling over him, as Khivar had turned to him. She herself had been screaming in horror. At that moment, with his wife's body before him, she could see the two sides of her brother as never before. The man and the king.
The man inside him was screaming obscenities, ready to destroy the entire world if that was what his revenge required.
But the King inside him was stronger. The king inside him was willing to yield, to prevent further bloodshed.
Khivar hadn't given him the choice.
Rath had fought his way through only a moment later, furious movement and action, the storm that was the protector, the greatest general in Antarian history.
She had watched something in his eyes break when he had seen Ava and Zan's bodies.
Zan, who had been not only his best friend since childhood, but his King.
And Ava, who though only his cousin, had been his only remaining kin. She had been the little sister fate had never afforded him.
For the first time in perhaps his entire life, Rath had simply stood still.
"Vilandra, what….what have you done?" He had whispered brokenly.
And then he, too, was dead.
Vilandra knew at that point she had fainted.
Waking up later, in her own room she had picked up the letter on her pillow.
The writing was as familiar as her own.
"Someday, you will understand."
She could hear the sounds of searcher's throughout the palace. She knew what they were looking for.
The Granolith.
She had fled, then, through the same secret passage she had once used to visit her lover, to the heart of the palace, the oldest part, where the Antarian Kings had long safeguarded the most prized position of the Five Worlds.
The Granolith.
She could still remember her brother arguing that day with Rath, as she hid breathlessly in the shadows.
Rath hadn't understood how Zan could have chosen Earth, a feral planet light years from Antar, as the secret destination of the Granolith, should the need ever arise.
But he had remained adamant. And for once, even she respected her brother's decision. And she hadn't told Khivar.
Breaking into the room, she began entering the command sequence she had heard Zan give to Rath, that long ago day. It had never occurred to them that neither one or nor the other would make it to the Granolith chamber.
"Vilandra! Don't make me kill you!" a strong, masculine voice cried.
She closed her eyes. Even now, his voice tied her in knots.
"Why did you kill Ava?" She asked without turning around, her hand hovering over the final button. The command sequence was irreversible, the Granolith itself untraceable. To retrieve it, not just one of their people, but one bearing a rare First Power would have to go to earth and activate it.
"She was pregnant with two potential heirs to the throne, Lana." He replied. "You knew I could never let those children be born. You must have known!"
She shook her head, tears leaking from her eyes. Perhaps she had known, deep down perhaps that was why she had never told him of this place, this last desperate plan of her brother's.
She pushed the command button even as Khivar fired at her.
He caught her as she fell, his beloved face cruel and kind in some impossible way.
"Lana…."
"Zan's children may never sit on the Antarian throne." she whispered weakly, "But now….
Neither will yours."
Antar- -Earth Year 1907
The exiled Dowager Queen Theadra of Antar stood in the darkened chamber. As ever, her posture was perfect, her clothing meticulous. Even after all that had happened, the people were too loyal to her for Khivar to mistreat her. Even before her marriage, and subsequent ascent to the throne as the queen of Antar, she had been an icon to her people. People born with Seer-sight, the ability to look forward, were rare and treasured. They were the keepers of the pattern, the protectors of the balance between the different races on Antar and the planet itself. She was a precious, rare and gifted.
And cursed, she thought, silent tears drifting down her face from her sightless eyes. Like all Seers, she was born blind to the physical world around her, seeing it only in her visions. Her gift required touch, coming and going at will, capricious and cruel and demanding and beautiful. It had long been her greatest source of pain, that she, with all her gifts and powers, could not command the future, could not force a vision that could have stopped all this madness, this pain and death.
Death. Always, death eluded her sight. Death itself was a type of darkness devoid of light, color, shape. She could make no sense of visions of death.
Not even of her own children
Her fingers brushed over the features of her first born.
Zan.
She had never seen his face clearly, not in the hundreds of visions she had in the course of his life. Her visions were always of the future, of what could be, might be. She was told his hair was "sun spun" her people's word for that true metallic gold hue preeminent in her husband's line. Her thoughts trailed back to the vision she'd had twenty-three years ago. A small, dark haired child on a strange grassy lawn holding a little feathered animal in his hand.
No matter how many times her ladies had assured her otherwise, she had from that day on thought of her firstborn as dark haired.
She moved on to the next marble slab. Avaliera Tessawyn. Her fingers traced the name carved into the front of the stone.
All four of the names were here, carved into this tomb, this vulgar display Khivar insisted on putting up. In a way, she supposed his hands were tied. Rumours ran rampant, even a year after the coup, rumors' that the "Royal Four" as they were now being called, were still alive, somewhere, in secret. Planning, waiting for the right moment to strike back.
Instead of releasing her children's bodies into the sea, where they could re-join the pattern, he had trapped their souls, here, in this marble tomb. Using alien technology that should never have been allowed on Antar, he preserved their bodies, trapping their souls in a death like slumber she, but no other, could feel.
Her fingers traced over the face of the girl who had, at nineteen, been not only her daughter in law, but her distant cousin. Ava had been the last of the Tessawyn line, a line that had long been the final refuge of the Seer-Sight. The hopes that one of Theadra's future children would be born a Seer, as Theadra was, were crushed at the birth of her daughter, when the physicians had insisted that to bear another child would risk her life.
Her daughter, Vilandra.
She had been told her daughter was possibly the most beautiful woman on the planet, perhaps among all five. She alone knew what Vilandra had hid so desparately behind her beauty. What she feared anyone, especially her own family, discovering.
Vilandra had been Mind Aware.
There had always been a chance one of her children would be born, not a seer, but possessed of one of the forbidden gifts. And the moment Vilandra had been born, Theadra had sensed the truth. In fear for her daughter's life, she had insisted on Vilandra being surrounded by only the most shallow, unobservant, self-centered ladies she could find.
It had broken her heart to think of those vapid women raising her daughter, influencing her thoughts and actions, but the risk of anyone with an actual mind discovering her daughter's secret was too great. And the one time she herself had witnesses her daughter using her gift she had made it a point to frighten her so badly that Vilandra had locked a whole portion of herself deep inside where no one could touch it. And so Vilandra grew up, beautiful, shallow, vain and self important.
But alive. And until a year ago, Theadra had considered the loss acceptable in the name of her child's life.
Even Seer's were fallible.
She came at last to the final body.
Rath had been a second son to her, showing all the passion, the energy Zan had denied himself. She had hoped he would be able to unlock that hidden part of Vilandra. She had sensed he could be strong enough to deal with Vilandra's secret, that, should he give his heart to someone, it would be irrevocable, that he would move entire worlds to protect the one he loved. There was a kind of wild, restless strength in Rath, a sense that he had always been searching, for what, even he hadn't known.
Perhaps, in the end, it would be Rath who would save them all.
And Khivar's cruel treatment of her children, the desecration of their bodies, would be his downfall.