Veil of Shadows

by Lindsay

  It spoke with all of its mouths at once. “Do you enjoy killing?”

  An aura of menace surrounded the thrice-faced woman, but it did not touch Cerridwen, and she spoke without fear. “I do not enjoy it. But it was necessary.”

  The head nodded, all six eyes closing in slow appreciation. “This is a lesson many warriors take time to learn.”

  “I am no warrior.” It embarrassed her to be called such, after seeing the bravery displayed by the Guild members in the fight at the Elven quarter.

  “You are a warrior.” The answer brooked no quarrel. “You have blood on your hands, three times, blood on your hands.”

  More than three times. This woman with three faces did not know that she stood before the Faery who had destroyed her own kind, killed her own mother and father through her foolishness. She did not need a blade to kill.

  The three mouths continued to speak in unison. “The blood of your enemies. The dark one.

  The traitor. The deceiver.”

  The Elf, and Flidais, and Bauchan. “They all had to die.”

  “I will grant you a boon.” The woman dropped her spear and used a finger to trace the symbol of three spirals, connected in a triangle, the same as Cerridwen had seen in her dreams, in the air. Mist conformed to the shape, twisted into something more tangible. It turned to fire and steel, cooled to a stone and dropped into the woman"s open palm. She held it out, as if offering it, but when Cerridwen reached for it, she turned with sudden violence and threw it into the trees. It was lost in the mist and the darkness on the forest floor.

  “Why did you do that?” Cerridwen cried, feeling entitled to the thing that had not been hers a moment before, had not even existed.

  The woman shrugged, three bland expressions on her faces. “You will find it when you need my aid, and I will come.” She turned and walked toward the darkness of the trees, the fog clearing like courtiers bowing out of the way for their ruler to pass. She halted and cocked her head so that one face looked back, shrewd eyes looking Cerridwen up and down. “Wake up, Sister. Wake up.”

  Cerridwen woke to darkness. There was a disconcerting moment in which she did not remember what had happened, and then the memory returned, horrible in its clarity.

  She had killed Bauchan. She had done the right thing. No one would convince her otherwise.

  But when they"d seized her…when they"d hit her, the last thing she"d heard was Cedric, shouting her name.

  Her hands were bound, but she tried to grope through the darkness, her breath coming faster and faster as she remembered the words that had drifted to her through her semiconscious fog. They had wanted to execute her, and Cedric; and the Humans had been concerned only with money.

  “Cedric!” The panic she felt overrode any thought to what dangers might befall her if they discovered her awake and alive. If they had killed him—

  “I am here.” The sentence was cool and perfunctory, no attempt to comfort or reassure her.

  But he did not sound damaged, and that outweighed any concern she might have had for his demeanor. “Where are we?”

  “We are in a prison.”

  Had she slept that long? “They"ve taken us off the ship, then?”

  “We are in a prison on the ship.” His words seemed to come from behind clenched teeth.

  Vaguely, she remembered him chasing after her, shouting for her to stop, but her head ached and she did not want to examine her actions, or his reactions to them, now. “Why would someone need a prison on their ship?”

  There was a rustling in the darkness, and the sound painted a picture in her mind of Cedric, wriggling against his bonds in an effort to free himself. “Perhaps in the event that someone loses all sense and reason and murders a fellow passenger?”

  Absorbing that anger, she said softly, “You could have stopped me.”

  A spot of red flared in the blackness. His antennae. The illumination gave her a clearer idea of where he was. Close to her, but not close enough to touch if she stretched out her bound hands. He sat upright, and the red glinted off the metallic surface of the wall behind him. In the glow, she could see the top of his head, but nothing else, none of his expression.

  It was probably best that way. “You could have stopped yourself! You must learn, Your Majesty, that only you are responsible for your actions. Your stupid, rash actions!”

  Though he meant to chastise her, she could not feel guilt over her actions. She ran the moment of Bauchan"s death through her mind once, twice, a third time. Her palms remembered the vibration of the blade in her hands as it sank into Bauchan"s body. The scent of his blood, dried onto her skin like war paint, tainted each breath. It had all been real, and it had all been her doing. But she could not lament it.

  “I take responsibility for what I did. Of course, I do. But you must have wanted him dead, as well. He knew the one thing that you did not want him to know. His death must be a great relief to you.”

  “A relief? To be imprisoned?” His voice rose in pitch, almost comical in his outrage.

  “A relief, because now we are safe when we arrive at Danae"s Court. Bauchan can tell no one what he heard!” They were not safe from execution for murdering Bauchan. How to avoid punishment for that still escaped her.

  Metal thudded dully. Cedric had kicked the floor in frustration. “There were other ways, ways that might not have gotten us killed!”

  “Bauchan could not have been bought.” As if struck by lightning, a realization came upon her. “No one can truly be bought. If they are willing to trade their loyalty for gold or power, someone will always have a better offer.”

  “So, all enemies must die, is that what you"re saying?” Cedric"s bitter chuckle sounded as though it would gag him. “I had no idea you were so naive.”

  If he had looked into her most private fears, he could not have found words more able to wound her. “I did what had to be done!”

  “Yes, I"m sure Danae will accept that at our trial—if she bothers to have one!”

  Their anger filled the silence with hollow, rasping breaths. As if she"d brought that coiling, insidious mist with her from the dream world, something nebulous expanded in her, pushed out words that did not need to be said. “What do you think Danae will do to me? Imprison me? Execute me? Permit her to do it! I would welcome anything that would take this burden from me!”

  “A burden you created!” he snapped back.

  At once, the heady vapor that had fueled her rage fled her. She was empty, nothing but a husk of sorrow again. She"d forgotten that she"d felt this way before the exhilaration of Bauchan"s murder. Would it always take being the instrument of death to fill that void she"d created?

  She"d felt at peace again when she killed Flidais, but it had not lasted. And the Elf, that death had given her the illusion of putting things to right. With each death, the wound in her grew deeper, and the balm did not deaden the pain as long as it had before.

  Cedric had heard her restrained crying, and a soft, masculine sigh rumbled between them. He did not apologize for what he"d said; no Fae would recant what they believed to be a true statement, not if they valued the sentiment of it too much. Instead, he said, “You would not welcome death.”

  “You cannot know what greeting I would give such a sentence.” You did not kill your family with your deception.

  “I should not have laid all of the blame on you.” A thud, a rustle. He tried to move closer.

  “You are to blame, for some. But there were more lies at work than a Faery no older than twenty could have dreamed up on her own. You may have hastened the end, but you weren"t the only instrument in that respect, either.”

  The noise of his movements continued. He was nearly beside her now, but she held still. She would not meet him. “It is easier to blame myself for my part, than to point a finger at those who were ultimately wronged most.”

  She felt the heat of him beside her, and she wanted to lean on him, to feel the reassuring presence of him against her body. But he"d hur
t her, and he"d been so angry only moments ago. She could not use him as her refuge now, as she had in the nights since they"d come aboard the ship.

  “There are so many things that are not in our control in our lives. We cannot hold ourselves responsible for them.” He sighed and leaned back on the wall. “You killed Bauchan, and Flidais. You lied to your mother. But your lies did not make Flidais betray her. You did not make Bauchan come to the Court with ill intent. You did not loose the Waterhorses upon our people.”

  She rocked herself from side to side, tried to sit up, but the motion yielded no result save for exhausting her. She lifted her head and tentatively laid it in his lap. She did not want to take such comfort in him if she had no guarantee that they would not part once things had been settled with the Upworld Queene. And she did not wish to admit that that knowledge frightened her more than any sentence that Queene Danae could pass against her.

  “You say that, because it is easy for you to say it and feel that you"ve done me some service by your words.” Her breath heated the fabric of his robe beneath her cheek. “But if I said them to you, you would not believe them.”

  “I have nothing that I blame myself for,” he answered too quickly, with too much false confidence. “I am fulfilling my vow.”

  “To me.” She did not know where these words came from, for she could not have thought them herself. “You fear that you failed someone else.”

  He took in a sharp breath, and the muscle of his thigh tightened beneath her cheek. “Who told you such a thing?”

  “No one told me anything, explicitly. But I could read the truth of it in your face as you gazed on the water.” A sudden, cold shock proved it. “You looked at it as though it were your enemy. You gazed into the depths as if you hated and feared it, but could not look away from it.”

  He took another breath, ragged, as though he held back with great effort something that he would not allow to be heard out loud. It was a struggle he could not win.

  When he spoke, it was from a place as shrouded in fear as the clearing from her dream. But this time, the dread did touch her, so palpable was it in his words.

  “The night I came to you, when I…fulfilled my promise to tell you of what transpired in your mother"s Council…” He halted, swallowed audibly. “You were not the only one to have a Darkworld lover. There was a woman, a Gypsy woman. She was a girl, really, perhaps younger than you. I never asked, and she never told me. They are timeless, ageless, her people. At least, they seemed so. She had asked me to go with her, to flee the Underground and stay with her always….”

  The words struck her like a weapon she did not see coming, and the wound in her deepened, split anew by the pain in his voice. If her hands were not bound, she would have covered her ears to keep from hearing, for she knew what would come next.

  And, as if knowing that his own sorrow would cut her to her core, he sharpened his words, formed them carefully and slowly. Perhaps he said them for the first time. “All of her people were killed. By Waterhorses. And her, as well. I left you that night and found them slaughtered.”

  Her mouth was thick, as though the moisture there had fled to become the tears that filled her eyes. “If you had not come to me, would you—”

  “No!” He threw the word down like a gauntlet. “You cannot blame yourself for their deaths.

  You cannot involve yourself in it, and do not play at it as though you could possibly share my pain!”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, let a tear fall. Not because she believed she had any connection, no matter how superficial, to his tragedy, but because in her connection to him his hurt was too much to bear witness to.

  “Anyway,” he began, softer now, “it was too late. They had been dead for some time.”

  Striving to keep the sound of her tears from intruding, she said, “I am sorry. Not because I imagine myself a part of your pain, but because it hurts me, to see it hurt you.”

  “Empathy is a Human gift. Cherish it.” In the silence, his heartbeat was audible, and fast. “As I cherish it in you.”

  The sentiment was so intimate, it shocked her. The cold slap of recognition she"d received before repeated itself, a battering ram of truth against all she thought she knew. If they had not been bound, he would have put his arms around her. Kissed her? She thought so. If he could have, he would have touched her, and it would not have been out of obligation to his geis, or to keep up an appearance of their false betrothal.

  Her heart hammered against her ribs, and something quivered there, beat itself against her from the inside. She was too conscious of her breathing, too aware of her closeness to him.

  She clenched her thighs against the crude, primal ache that flooded the space between them, and prayed silently, No, do not let me feel this. Not now. I cannot bear it, and I cannot be trusted.

  “Cerridwen.” His voice was low and dark, meant to be spoken much closer to her, as the maddening inches of separation closed up between them. But it could not be that way, and it seemed futile to hear him now. “Cerridwen,” he said again, and then was silenced as the little room flooded with light.

  The door scraped open, but her eyes were still blinded when the Human entered. “On your feet. You"re going ashore.”

  Six

  F aeries lined the corridors as the Humans marched Cedric and Cerridwen out of their prison.

  They wore expressions of smug hatred, of ill intent. Some of pity. They felt sympathy now?

  The door they had entered the night of their arrival was open. Through the portal, Cedric glimpsed sky, and farther, over the expanse of sea, a thin, blue-gray line on the horizon.

  Land. Éire.

  Recognition of the place beat through him. It was a shimmering jewel, a cradle of magic. It was not his home, not the only place that held magic, but it drew them all there, to the place the Old Gods chose as their throne on Earth.

  They pushed Cerridwen ahead of him, toward the open door. She dug her heels in, and the Human behind her laughed. “Time to go, sweetheart,” he cackled, and pushed her through the door.

  Cedric broke free from the hands holding him, fueled by a morbid flash of memory that replaced Dika"s drowned face with Cerridwen"s, blue and pale beneath the water.

  “Don"t worry, you"re going, too,” said the Human who"d pushed Cerridwen out. Hands seized him again, and he saw through the door that the surface of the water was dotted with boats. In the one directly below the door, a Faery helped Cerridwen to stand, and the craft rocked from side to side. One shove, and Cedric fell, as she had, crashing to the floor of the wooden craft.

  “Human slime!” The Faery in the boat shouted up at the ship as she helped Cedric to his feet, as well. She turned to him, violet eyes wide with empathy. “Are you all right?”

  “You would know, as well as I,” Cedric said, nodding.

  “You recognize me for what I am.” The Faery tossed matted, sand-colored ropes of hair over her shoulder. Her skin color matched; she looked like a stretch of desert landscape, amethyst eyes nestled in the dunes. “That"s good. Proves you haven"t become totally Human, living below them.”

  He opened his mouth to tell her that Humans had treated him far better than his own kind, of late, but Cerridwen spoke before he could. “What does she mean, you recognize her? Have you been to Queene Danae"s Court before?”

  The Faery"s sly eyes moved from Cedric to Cerridwen and back, a smirk bending her lips.

  Proceed carefully, Cerridwen, he willed silently. “She is an Empath. It is a gift some Faeries receive, the ability to feel the emotions of others. Right now, she can feel our fear, and our confusion.”

  “Among other things.” The Empath darted her hand out, faster than a lightning strike, and grasped his wrist. “Your anger. You do not like me.”

  “You have not made a very good impression.” He nodded to Cerridwen. “Guard yourself.

  Danae would not have sent this one without a reason.”

  The Faery smiled; she admired him now. He did n
ot need the gift of Empathy to tell him that.

  She glanced at their bound hands, then turned back to the ship. “You have given me prisoners. Where is Bauchan?”

  A Human sailor leaned out of the door, scratching his head below the brim of his knit cap.

  “Dead. Them killed him.”

  The Empath turned, her face twisted in anger. “Is this true?”

  “We will discuss the matter with your Queene, and no one else,” Cedric said, seating himself on the narrow bench in the middle of the boat.

  “You will tell me, or I will dash your brains into the sea!” She raised the oar she held, as if preparing to make good her word.

  Cerridwen still stood, and she did not shrink at the threat. “He speaks for me, and you will not harm him.”

  The Faery sneered. “And who are you, who addresses her captor so?”

  Cerridwen"s back straightened. If her hands had not been bound, she would have looked almost royal. “I am Queene Cerridwen of Mabb"s lineage, descended from Queene Ayla and King Garret, brother of Mabb, daughter of the first Faery Queene and King.”

  The Faery"s expression did not change, and she turned to Cedric. “No wonder she is so afraid.”

  The Empath said no more as she slid the oar through the water and pulled the boat away from the ship, to the other side of the congregation of vessels.

  Though she put up a brave front, sitting still and straight on the seat beside him, Cedric could sense Cerridwen"s fear. The Empath could likely taste it. He had to take her mind off that fear, replace it with some new emotion.