Veil of Shadows (16 page)

“No.” Cerridwen spoke firmly, though all she wished to do was crawl into bed and sleep until she forgot everything that had happened. “There is too much that needs to be done.”

“And too much that needs to be discussed privately,” Cedric pushed.

“It can wait.” She tried to give him a reassuring smile, to let him know that she did not care about his past. She was not as good at playacting as Danae was; she could not mask her uncertainty and anger completely.

“Sadly, it must.” Danae bowed, and this time it seemed genuine, not mocking. “I had arranged a celebration tonight, to welcome the new Queene, and the Underground Court. Nothing so glamorous as you.ve seen in Mabb.s Court, surely, but there are so many preparations already under way, we could not cancel it now.”

Once again, Cerridwen found herself trapped. She loathed politics. Still, she forced a smile.

“That sounds…pleasant.”

“I assume Your Majesty wishes to dress and prepare…. You will sit on the dais with me, and assert yourself as Queene, will you not?” She turned to Cedric. “And you will be there, as well?”

“I do not see a way to refuse,” he replied, as though he would have, if there had been.

Danae faced Cerridwen again. “We have started badly. Know that, although I am still not comfortable with the thought of entrusting my Court to you, I admire the way you have conducted yourself today.”

Cerridwen did not know how to respond, so she bowed, out of habit, knowing it was the wrong thing to do only after she had begun the motion. She righted herself and made no comment on her mistake. “We will speak again this evening.”

After they concluded their polite goodbyes to Danae, during which she promised to send an appropriate gown and two of her maids to help Cerridwen prepare for the night.s festivities, they left the Palace. On the steps sat Mothú, calmly twisting a knife into the wooden floor.

“Cedric,” Cerridwen began, but he took her hand and squeezed it hard to silence her. By the time they reached the camp, other matters had pushed the Empath.s presence from Cerridwen.s mind.

There was so much she wished to ask Cedric. Had he been mated before? Did he truly have seven children that he had hidden from her? And why not tell her? Why hadn.t her mother told her of his past? Had she known? But all of these questions burst when they reached her mouth, the way her energy had burst against her fingertips. She did not ask, because she did not wish to know, too afraid of the answers.

When they reached their camp, she went past the little serving girl, ignored her eagerness to help. Directly into the tent, every step full of purpose, and when Cerridwen reached the bed, she did not fling herself across it as she had imagined she would. Instead, she sat on the edge, hands resting lightly on the neatly folded covers, and let silent tears fall.

Cedric.s footsteps alerted her to his entry, but she did not turn to see him. She would sob, in humiliation and anger. She would scream those questions at him, and they would not burst. She would force them into him, and pull the answers from him, whether it was his will or not. She could not stand to think of the consequences.

“You did very well.” He did not come to her. In her mind.s eye, she imagined him standing just inside the tent, looking as ashamed as he sounded. “I apologize for my behavior. I let her get the better of me. It will not happen again.”

You do not apologize for lying to me? For lying with me, when you have another mate? She squeezed her eyes shut tight. He had not lain with her. He had barely touched her again since that morning.

Barely looked at her.

He owed her no explanation.

He took a few steps toward her. “I should explain myself, after what Danae said.” He paused.

“Your mother should have mentioned it, when she betrothed us.”

“Do not blame my mother!” she shrieked, unable to hold back her rage any longer. “My mother did not deceive me! You did!”

He stood before her, and when she would not look up, he knelt down. “I was betrothed, as you were, against my will when I was very young. My mate…she won me through deceit, and when I discovered this, it was too late. I had entered into a contract of a year-and-a-day handfast. When it expired, I was out trooping, and Mabb saw fit to punish me for not meeting my obligation. She ordered us mated. I did what I could by Aidbe. And yes, I did father children. But after a century, Mabb took pity on me, and released me from my misery.”

“You abandoned your children?” She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. She did not know if she could love him if he.d done something so terrible. Her heart clenched, then; it did not matter if she could love him, if he did not love her in return.

“I did not abandon them. They were grown, and none of them inclined to stay. They were unhappy in our home, and their mother had done what she could to poison them against me. I have not seen any of them since, and I think they prefer it that way.” There was pain in his voice. “I warned your father once not to turn his back on happiness with your mother. That was because I have had so little, in my life.”

“But you loved your Human,” she protested. “You loved her, and that made you happy.”

“Yes. For a time.” He took her hands in his. “Our lives are too long to be lived alone, Cerridwen.”

It was the time to tell him. To say the words. But once she said them, they could not be taken back. So, she said nothing.

“Guild Master!” A voice from outside interrupted them.

“Guild Master?” Cedric climbed to his feet. Halfway to the tent flap, he stopped and turned back. “Cerridwen, I—”

“Go.” She stood to follow him. “This is more important.”

More important, and less frightening.

Perhaps it was a sign from the Gods, wherever they might have gone, that this unnatural attraction he felt toward Cerridwen was not to be acted upon, Cedric though as he exited the tent. It seemed so many forces conspired against him on that subject—the serving girl, his past, this current interruption—that it could not possibly be meant to be.

Outside, six Faeries stood, held off by the guards, at the end of the path leading into the clearing. Cedric recognized one of them on sight. The others were more difficult to place.

“Stand down,” he told the guards as he got closer. “What do they want?”

“They are from the Underground,” one of the guards said, sneering. “Came over on the ship, or so they say.”

“They did.” Cedric folded his arms across his chest. “But it is their purpose here now that concerns me. Tell me, what would bring the group of you to my door?”

One of them, tall, willowy, with long brown hair, pushed back the braid that fell from her temple to display the Guild Mark on her neck. “We are Assassins. All of us. We come to declare our loyalty to our Guild Master.”

“Your loyalty?” Cedric turned his head and saw Cerridwen standing at the top of the steps.

“Did you hear that?”

She nodded and kept a coolly composed expression on her face. She was so skilled at this. It had come as a pleasant surprise. He.d feared, from the way she had behaved on the ship, that she would be as wildly impulsive as her mother. Growing up in the Palace had proven much better training than he had expected.

He turned back to the Assassins who waited there. “We do not need loyalty that only proves true when convenient. Best you go and find another occupation, for I will not employ you, and I do not believe Her Majesty, the Queene, will, either.”

The leader stood straighter, her expression sharper, though no offense showed there. “Perhaps we could speak to Her Majesty herself, and pledge our loyalty there. Explain ourselves, and why we betrayed Queene Ayla.”

“You admit you betrayed her?” Cerridwen came down the steps, her features carefully composed, still. “You admit that, by leaving, you turned your back on the Lightworld, and the entire Faery Quarter?”

“It certainly can be perceived that way,” the Faery answered with a bow. The other five bobbed their heads respectfully, as well.

“It is not a matter of perception. It is a matter of fact.” Cerridwen turned her back to them and started up the steps, as though she would go inside.

“We were lied to, by Flidais,” the Faery called, and Cerridwen halted.

Cedric saw her spine go rigid, her hands form to fists. The sound of her blade, slicing through the traitor.s throat, filled his head anew.

She faced them again, and remained silent for a long time. “Perhaps I have misspoken. Perhaps it is a matter of perception, after all.”

They seated themselves on the ring of stumps around the fire. The cooking pot had been put into service for the preparation of the night.s feast, and small flames crawled along the embers, white with ash in the twilight.

The Faeries had, in turn, introduced themselves. The only female, the one who had spoken for the group, was Fionnait. She had brought with her Colm, Scathach, Prickle—a Pixie who Cedric had reprimanded numerous times in his tenure as Guild Master—Bardan and Hawthorn. They each bore the Guild Mark and seemed content to let Fionnait speak for them.

“Best state your purpose, rather than waste our time, if that is what all of your talk turns out to be,” Cedric told them gruffly after they had finished their hasty introductions.

Cerridwen placed a gentle hand on his arm, as if to restrain him. For a moment, he was affronted, before he had the sense to remember that she was, indeed, the Queene, no matter what their personal dynamic might be.

“You may speak,” Cerridwen said in her best impression of a Queene. Which was, Cedric realized with a shock, fast becoming her role, not an act.

“Thank you.” Fionnait.s cool blue gaze slid from Cedric to her Queene. “When the trouble started, when that miserable Bauchan came to the Underground, the Guild was, each and every Fae individually, fully set on staying and fighting whatever threat might arise from his warnings. But then, Flidais came to us.”

“She came to the Guild?” Cedric shook his head. “I would have known if she had.”

“She did not approach the Guild, but Assassins, individually,” Fionnait corrected herself.

“There might have been more than just us, we are not certain,” Prickle mumbled, unusually subdued for a member of his race.

Fionnait nodded in agreement. “She came to each one of us with a letter, seemingly by the Queene.s own hand, with the Queene.s seal—”

“My mother could not read, nor write,” Cerridwen interrupted. “The letter could not have been from her.”

Cedric leaned closer to her to say quietly, “Your mother.s illiteracy was not widely known, not even in the Palace.”

Fionnait sat forward, elbows braced on her knees, and spread her hands apart. She brought them back together, entwining her fingers. “Because it was from a trusted member of the Royal Council, we had no reason to doubt the origin of our letters.”

“And what did they say?” A single glance at Cerridwen.s face showed Cedric the impatience and anger inside her; he wondered if they could see it, as well.

“The letters told us all the same thing. That we had been chosen for an assignment of grave urgency. We were to accompany Flidais and Ambassador Bauchan, as their protection, on their journey to the Upworld settlement. We were to tell no one, not even our mentors, of our purpose, as there might be traitors in our ranks who would prevent us from leaving.”

This was the moment that Cedric expected Cerridwen to explode with old rage at Flidais. She did not. “Why, then, did you not protect Bauchan when I killed him?”

It was an intimidating question, but Fionnait did not backpedal. “By the time it became clear that Flidais was not coming, and Queene Ayla had been slain, I sought out the other Assassins who had fled the Underground. Of them, only these five admitted, after much pressing, to being on the same assignment.”

“So, the ones who sit before us are the ones who disobeyed orders they believed came from their Queene?” Cedric did not know how to think of this, but he would not pass further judgment until the whole of the tale was told.

Fionnait nodded. “Take from that what you will. If we had not, we would not have realized that we had been tricked. We approached Bauchan, but he would give us only vague answers. And then later we overheard him talking about the Waterhorses.”

“What did he say?” Cerridwen leaned forward, as if her nearness could force Fionnait to produce an answer she wished to hear.

“That Danae had done well to send them, that they had destroyed many, in her words, lesser Faeries. That her manipulation of the Underground Elves was masterful.” The Faery cast her gaze down, for the first time since the conversation had started. “I am sorry, Your Majesty, but your mother was murdered by this Queene.”

Eleven

“I will kill her!” Rage burned, hot and uncontrollable, through Cerridwen. She screamed the death sentence to the sky, not caring if Danae herself heard. “I will tear her flesh from her bones!”

Cedric stood, but said nothing. He was powerless, before these Faeries, to do as he wished, to tell her that she would not, could not, kill Danae. Not without demonstrable proof of her treachery, not unless they were to spark a war within their barely coherent Court. She felt how much he wanted to, felt it fairly vibrating off him.

Instead of berating Cerridwen for her impetuousness, Cedric questioned Fionnait further.

“Why, then, did you not come to the Queene?”

“Fear.” Fionnait shrugged her elegant shoulders. “We had no idea what manner of ruler the Royal Heir would be. We feared that her grief might lead her to act…irrationally.”

“Fear is not acceptable in an Assassin,” Cedric scolded.

Cerridwen.s jaw dropped. They had just learned that Danae, twisted snake that she was, had sent those monsters into the Underground. That she had planned…

But how could Cedric stand there and deliver a lesson to these Assassins, when they should be marching this very instant to kill this Bitch Queene?

If he would not initiate it, she would. “Guard! Give me your weapon!”

Without hesitation, one of the guards stepped forward and handed over his sword. She hefted it in one hand, flipped the handle around in her hand a couple of times, as though she had wielded this blade before.