Veil of Shadows

by Lindsay

  “You cared for her.” Cedric"s heart clenched in a grief he had thought long since burned out.

  The guard gripped him by the arm, pulled him to his feet roughly. “No. I did not know her.

  She was not a Queene. She was a kind Faery. That is a rarity, I have come to find.”

  Cedric agreed, but he did not say so. It was not what the guard wished to hear. He let the guard have the moment for himself, to assuage his own grief. The pain of loss made them kindred, though the guard would not believe it, and that comforted Cedric as he was led out of the tent, into the angry throng in the clearing.

  The scaffold had been erected over the central cooking pit. The fire had been buried, but the heat of it wafted up through the cracks between the boards. Cedric had listened to them building all through the day. Each hammer strike had been a blessing, bringing him closer and closer still to the end of existence. When the ax fell, he would be free from the pain of what he had done, free of the prison of Danae"s spell.

  The witch herself waited at the top of the scaffold steps, beside the burly Human who wielded the delicate silver ax that would sever him.

  The pitying look on Danae"s face was not meant for him, but for the crowd that pressed forward as he mounted the steps. She played her role so convincingly, he could not fault them for falling under her sway.

  Danae said nothing to him, but turned and walked to the front of the scaffold, standing just slightly left of the block, so that she would not block the view. “As you know,” she began, as Cedric was made to kneel on the straw behind the oak block, “I have struggled with myself over the decision to see this traitor put to death. It is not an easy thing, to take a life. I recognize how precious it is, and how very tragic the consequences of a death in these times are, when we are not certain of an Afterworld. But our Queene, may she rest easy in the Summerland now, believed in vengeance. She put the traitors Bauchan and Flidais to death, as she had every right to. I do not make a judgment now on whether that was wrong or right. I merely do what I believe she would have wanted, were she here to consult on this decision.”

  Cedric shook his head. Each time he thought he"d seen the very limit of Danae"s treachery, she had set the bar surprisingly higher.

  She paused, turned to him, her annoyance flickering briefly over her face before she could compose a hurt expression. “Even now, you mock her? Does your cruelty know no bounds?”

  The crowd cried out with its disapproval, and it took a long moment for Danae to calm them again. While she did, guards looped rope around Cedric"s wrists and tethered him by the arms to iron rings affixed to the floor.

  “The sentence I have passed gives me no pleasure. As the mate of the Queene, the sacred line of our Faery rulers passes from him to his next mate, and then to their children. But he has so tainted that bloodline that I fear it might never recover. And so, Cedric, mate to Queene Cerridwen, I sentence you to death. Your head will be struck from your body, and both parts burned, and the ashes scattered to the wind. Have you anything to say, before the sentence is carried out?”

  She expected him to beg, or to try to denounce her, to struggle against the spell and ultimately fail in despair. He almost laughed at her. She had no notion of what he felt, how it pained him every moment that passed without Cerridwen.

  Instead of speaking, he merely shook his head again and held her gaze.

  Fury built up in her eyes, and he felt a stab of satisfaction that she was the one struggling between what she wished to do and what she was able to. Though there was no spell on her, she was not free to act as she wished. She was not free to strike him and rage aloud.

  “Executioner,” she called out, moving past him with a haughty flick of her skirts. She had worn black, he noticed, the same gown that she had used to make her pretend mourning over Cerridwen seem genuine.

  The guards pressed him forward, until his chin fitted over the groove in the block. He closed his eyes, saw Cerridwen"s face in his memory, the wonder in it as she looked out over the sea and the wind lashed her porcelain face with her copper hair.

  “When you are ready,” the executioner said, awfully solicitous of the condemned, in Cedric"s opinion.

  “I am ready now,” he told him, joy welling in his chest as he remembered the feel of Cerridwen"s soft curves against him, her eyes fluttering beneath their lids as she slept.

  The executioner"s boots crushed the straw on the scaffold floor, and the ax scraped on wood when he lifted it.

  In Cedric"s mind, he saw the beautiful white curve of his mate"s neck, the sweat-damp hair at her temple as he had leaned over—

  “Stop!”

  The familiar voice jolted him from his imaginings, and for a moment he thought that the deed had already been done, that the blade had fallen and he had not noticed its strike. He opened his eyes, struggled to lift his head, as the awed whispers of the crowd rose to a frenzy of shouting voices.

  Cerridwen, alive and whole, rode into the clearing on the back of an enormous white bull.

  The light from the torches in the trees gilded her copper hair, matted against her head where it had been pinned up for the feast, the curls that had cascaded down her back then twisted to tangled ropes. A crow led her. The same that had brought him his supper all those days.

  Amergin followed behind, dressed in ridiculous Human clothes, but somehow still possessing an air of dignity.

  But Cerridwen. It was not possible. He pulled against the ropes that held him, no longer content to die there. “Let me up,” he called out. “Let me up!”

  “Release him,” Cerridwen shouted, gesturing to the guards. When they did not move, Amergin raced forward, but was held back.

  Danae came back to stand at the front of the scaffold. “Your Majesty,” she called out, sounding as though she would choke on every word. “You are alive. Thank the Gods!”

  “I am alive, yes.” Cerridwen"s cold eyes fixed on Danae as though she could turn the harpy to ice. Was it possible that she knew what had occurred? The breath seized in Cedric"s lungs at the mere hope of it. “I am alive,” she repeated. “So you do not have any reason to put my mate to death.”

  Danae swallowed audibly, spread her hands and then twisted them together again, wringing her sleeve between them. “Your Majesty, I only thought to avenge you, the way I believed that you wished—”

  “You thought to kill me, to kill my mate, and take the crown back for yourself!” Cerridwen shouted.

  Silence fell over the clearing, as though all of the murmurs and whispers of the crowd had been wiped away.

  “Your Majesty—” Danae began again, but Cerridwen interrupted her with a shout that echoed to the treetops.

  “Silence!

  “Release my mate,” she ordered, and the guards finally moved to do her bidding. The moment his ropes were cut, they hauled Cedric to his feet, and he thanked the Gods that he did not have the strength to run to her. He was still under the spell of the Corpse Water, still compelled to end her life.

  Cerridwen was alive. Though she was there, right there, he could scarcely believe it. The gory wounds on her fair arms mocked him, and his pain at causing them flared to new life.

  He lunged at Danae—that, he could not help—and Faeries and Humans alike gasped. The guards held him, and he sagged back, body feeble from weeks of captivity and immobility.

  “Tell her,” Cerridwen calmly instructed the crow. “It is you who must order her to reveal her secrets, yes? I think now would be an excellent time.”

  “What are you talking about?” Danae, no longer able to conceal her fury, turned her fiery gaze to her handmaiden. “Trasa, you will tell me the meaning of this, immediately!”

  “I will do no such thing.” The woman straightened, arms folded in the wide sleeves of her black robe. “Danae, we of the Order have long looked down on your deceit and underhanded trickery. We have served you, because in the past you were a great warrior. Your greed and your villainy has grown, like a fetid canker, all of these year
s. You gave this Faery Corpse Water, and forced him to make an attempt on the Queene"s life, didn"t you?”

  Danae laughed, and shook her head, but when she spoke, all that came out was, “Yes.” Her eyes widened, her laughter died. She cleared her throat. “I did not mean…Yes. Yes, I did.”

  “Tell them, then,” Trasa commanded. “Tell them your plan to kill the Queene.”

  Though she struggled to hold back her words, they broke free, cascading from her lips like water over a damn. “I poisoned Cedric with Corpse Water. At the feast. I instructed him to take the Queene back to her camp. To make love to her. To tell her that he loved her. And to kill her before first light.”

  Cedric closed his eyes. He had lived the moment once, and he could not stand to endure it again.

  “Why did you do this?” Trasa asked, in the voice of a parent scolding a child, pulling out the answer that was already plain, but that needed to spoken aloud by the guilty party.

  “Because I hated her.” Danae"s shoulders sagged in defeat. “She killed Bauchan. I loved him, and she killed him. She ruined my Queenedom here. She ruined…” Her voice broke and died into a whisper. “She ruined everything.”

  Cerridwen climbed down from the animal"s back and left him standing there, placidly chewing what little green he could find on the trampled ground. As she came forward, Cedric saw that she wore the same dress she had the morning of her disappearance. She did not look at him as she passed, but he saw more clearly the damage he had done her.

  Cerridwen stood in front of Danae, emotionless and still, contemplating her for a long, silent moment. Then her face contorted and her hand came up, landing with a resounding crack against Danae"s cheek.

  “I woke to find my mate kneeling over me in my bed, a dagger in his hands!” she screamed, her face turning red with the exertion of rage. “I flew into the forest, bleeding and terrified, and I lay in the rain and prayed for death! I would have died…had Amergin not found me.”

  She slapped Danae again, a wordless cry accompanying the action. “And this makes you happy, does it? Answer me!”

  “Answer her,” Trasa echoed, and Danae was forced to nod.

  “Kill her!” someone shouted in the crowd, and a ripple of approval followed. They would tear Danae apart, Cedric realized, and he felt no horror at the thought.

  “I will not kill her!” Cerridwen called over the crowd. “I will not! I would be no better than she is, if I did. Only a coward seeks to remove their enemies in such a way. I do not fear her.

  What can she do to further harm me? Nothing. I am Queene. She is nothing but a viper. I will send her away, banish her from her kind. Let her see then if her tricks can help her survive on her own.”

  “Before she goes,” Cedric said quickly, “she must remove her spell. Else I will still be obligated to kill you.”

  Cerridwen flinched, and he ached to take her into his arms and comfort her. He could not, he knew; her trust would be long in coming, if he ever gained it again.

  “Remove your spell,” Cerridwen told Danae.

  The stubborn witch did not act until Trasa repeated the command.

  “From this day forth, Danae is forbidden from contact with anyone in this encampment. If a member of this colony is caught supplying her with food or comforts, they will be branded as a traitor and banished, as well,” Cerridwen pronounced, appearing so much like her mother that it took Cedric"s breath away. “You will go now, and take with you only the clothes you stand up in.”

  Danae looked out to the assembly, her chin quivering. “I have kept you safe all of these centuries,” she cried. “I have kept the Enforcers out, and welcomed you Humans into our world. I have built the very colony that you live in! How can you turn me out?”

  “Danae,” Trasa called. “Do not speak.”

  Her mouth clamped firmly shut, and tears of defeat rolled from her eyes. She made her way down the scaffold steps, and no one hindered her progress as she walked through the clearing, toward the path that led away from the encampment.

  “Guards, see that she goes,” Cerridwen said quietly, and the two holding Cedric released him to do her bidding. He swayed on his feet and fell to the floor.

  In an instant, Cerridwen was at his side, her beautiful face lined with concern, her white hands moving over his hair, his back, his arms. “He needs a healer,” she told the executioner.

  “Could you please bring one, and help him into the Palace?”

  The man who had been only seconds away from ending his life now lifted Cedric to his feet and helped him make his way down from the scaffold. The crowd cheered, and Cerridwen shouted over them, “Let Danae"s banishment be a lesson to all who have witnessed it today. I am your Queene. My throne in ensured by the will of the Gods. My life is protected by their good graces. Any who seek to destroy me will fail. And any who seek to destroy you will be met with my wrath.”

  They cheered louder. Cedric turned his head, wished he could see her in her moment of triumph, but he glimpsed only the curve of her back, and her arm raised, hand clenched to a fist over her head as she stood in the adulation of her Court.

  Cerridwen left the scaffold without further remark. She did not have an ounce of eloquence left in her tired body. The heady mix of emotions pounding through her veins had nearly robbed her of the few words she had managed. Now, she wished only for solitude, and silence.

  Trasa met her at the bottom of the steps, and Amergin, as well. They both offered their congratulations and embraced her enthusiastically, but she could only stand stiff in their arms. “I want every trace of Danae removed from this colony. Start with the Palace. I want all of it, everything she owned, out of my sight.”

  “Yes, of course, Your Majesty,” Trasa said with a bow, her worry plain on her face. “Will you require anything else at present?”

  “I want to be alone,” she replied, knowing how impossible that would be, now. She was Queene. There would never be a moment alone.

  Still, she went up the steps, into the Palace, in the vain hope of solitude. The room behind the Throne Room was a flurry of activity, the healers tending to Cedric. She went into the room to her left, a small sitting space with stools and a low table set with fruit and wine, probably put there by Danae in anticipation of an execution celebration. Cerridwen sat and miserably picked over the apples and grapes but ate nothing.

  She did not wish to see Cedric. The healers could do their work, and make him strong again, and then he could return to Bauchan"s camp, or go farther, if he wished. Perhaps to another settlement, somewhere far from her. The idea was at once painful and enticing. If he stayed, she would have to face him, sooner or later. She might see him at festivals and celebrations.

  He might expect to stay on as her advisor, and she would see him every day. That would only prolong her hurt, but when she thought of him leaving, of never seeing him again, she wondered which would cause her more pain.

  She would not force him to stay. Not now that she knew his declaration of love to be false.

  Somehow, it had been less depressing when the proof of his lie had been his act of attempted murder. She might have been able to force herself to hate him, over time. Now, she knew that he had not told her he loved her to be cruel. He had not told her because he truly loved her, either. He had told her because he had no other choice, and no emotion, negative or positive, had molded his words at all.

  She kicked the bowl of fruit, sent it clattering from the table in a move so sudden that she surprised herself.

  How had Danae known that this was the way to strike at her heart most effectively? Had she been able to see something that Cerridwen herself had not, some lack of warmth or tenderness that her affection-starved brain hid from her so to continue her delusions? How could she have been so foolish as to not have seen it herself?

  How could she have believed that impassioned declaration?

  Because she had wanted it, more than she had ever wanted anything. She wanted him, and she wanted him to feel the sa
me, to think of no one else but her, to have the passion for her that he had felt for the Human Gypsy he mourned. She wanted him to feel for her what Fenrick had pretended, wanted for herself what her mother had felt for Malachi. An immortal life without love was not something she thought she could bear, and she could not be Queene of this Court alone.

  “Your Majesty?” Trasa pulled back the fabric and stepped into the room, glancing quickly away from the food strewn across the floor. “I think you should submit to the healers, as well.

  You have not fully recovered, and you will need your strength.”

  “Yes, fine, send them in.” They could try to heal her, but nothing, short of the power of the Gods and Goddesses themselves, would make her whole again.

  Seventeen

  C edric slept through the evening, past the start of supper, and Cerridwen was glad for it. She called Trasa and Amergin to sup with her, and they ate in relative silence.

  “This is strange,” Cerridwen said, for what had to have been the third time since they had all sat down. “Being here. I suppose I knew I would be Queene one day, but yet not so soon.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Trasa said with a nod.

  “We need to think about the Humans,” Amergin said suddenly. “The ones you saw at the cottage. They were Enforcers, there is no doubt. Why they are drawn to this place, when we have such powerful magic shielding us, is a concern.”

  “There is little Cerridwen can do about this right now,” Trasa said, almost scolding. “She has only just healed, and this camp has been greatly disrupted. We must simply hope that they do not come any closer than the edge of the woods.”

  Cerridwen slipped the sleeve of her gown back to examine her arms. The healers had done what they could, but too much time had passed, and lumpy, pink scars, tight and shiny, marked her flesh in each place that Cedric"s knife had fallen. “They will come closer. They will probably come in greater number, too, if they realize that the white bull wasn"t Earthly in origin…” she said absently. She looked up at Trasa. “You should not return to your cottage.