Veil of Shadows (22 page)

“Why would they believe that?” Cerridwen sputtered around a mouthful of stew.

Trasa did not answer immediately, pretending instead to be more concerned with the frayed hem of her sleeve. “Because it is safer for you, if she thinks so.”

“Why?” And then, mocking, she realized. “Danae was behind this somehow? But that is impossible. Cedric—”

Cedric had wielded the knife. She looked down at the rough black robe she wore, held up her arms and let the sleeves fall back. Bandages swathed her forearms. Cedric had done this to her, the morning after he had met with Danae in private.

“No.” She shook her head and pushed the bowl away, suddenly no longer hungry. “No, that is not possible.”

Trasa did not argue. It was not enough. Cerridwen wanted her to apologize for thinking such a thing, to laugh away the suggestion. Her silence was as harsh an accusation of Cedric as her words had been.

“It is just not possible,” Cerridwen repeated firmly. She looked out the window. She saw no trees, just an endless expanse of night. “Where are we, now? In relation to the Court?”

Trasa gazed out the window as well. “Outside the forest. Far enough that my Sisters and I could hide here to escape the Enforcers. Close enough that I can still serve at Danae.s side.”

“You will continue to serve her? You said that you were loyal to me.” If the Human truly believed that Danae had tried to kill her, what kind of loyalty was that? Was she even safe here, in the cottage?

“We are loyal to Our Lady,” Trasa corrected, no sign of regret on her features. “But we do still remain allies of yours. If we stay close to Danae, we will be on hand when all is revealed and the Court sees her for what she truly is.”

“And what is she?” Cerridwen needed to hear her slandered, even though it was a pathetic revenge, at best.

“A coward,” Trasa said simply. “She wanted you dead, but did not possess the courage to do the deed herself. She sent someone in her place.”

They fell silent then, and Cerridwen.s wounds throbbed, as if to remind her of the agony her heart should still feel. “I thought Cedric found me. In the woods.”

“No.” Trasa went to the hearth and stirred the embers. “No, that was Amergin. He found you within hours of your disappearance, and good thing, too. You would have died had he not.”

“Thank you,” she said, miserably picking the bowl back up. She would eat, whether she was hungry or not. Not to would be ingratitude. “For all of your kindness.”

Trasa nodded. “Do not thank me just yet, though. You are not healed, and you cannot have given thought to what you will do next.”

Not only had she not given thought to what she would do next, she hadn.t thought that it was something to think about. Now that the Human had brought it up, it seemed obvious that she could not stay here in the cottage forever. And she had no money, no possessions, no connections. Where would she go?

Perhaps it would have been better to die in the forest.

“You cannot lose hope, Your Majesty,” Trasa told her, kneeling beside the bed. “You have more allies than you know. It will simply be a matter of calling them together, and striking at the right time. You will be Queene, and greatly admired, if you plan your next steps carefully.”

Cerridwen did not have the courage to tell the Human that she was no longer interested in being a Queene, that none of that mattered now. She might survive for centuries, but she would never live. She would merely exist.

The brew Trasa fed her later, before she banked the fire and went to her own pallet, was not as strong as it had been before, and Cerridwen lay awake, staring through the blue-dark night.

She had grown so used to Cedric.s presence beside her, it was unsettling to sleep without him there. She balled up the blankets and tucked herself next to them. It was foolish, she scolded herself, to miss him, after what he had done—even more foolish to pretend he was there with her. All it did was delay the inevitable, that one day the reality of his absence would strike her a crippling blow. He would never lie beside her again, never tell her that he loved her as he had the night before that horrible morning.

As he had whispered while trying to kill her.

Her stomach turned at that, and she punched at the blankets wildly, unwinding them. Instead of comforting herself with phantoms, Cerridwen chose to spend the sleepless night alone.

Cedric woke, unsure when he had fallen asleep. The raw ache in his throat reminded him at once of the night before, the horrible sight of those feathers in Danae.s palms. He closed his eyes and willed his heart to stop beating, but the immortal will of his body to go on living could not be broken.

The crow came to bring him water. As always, she looked on him with disgust. Today, though, instead of staying silent as she pressed the dipper to his mouth, she said, “You have a guest to see you.”

He gulped greedily, far more eager to get the liquid down so he could speak than to slake his thirst. He choked on the last bit of it, fought through it before she could leave. “Who?”

“A friend,” she said tersely. Striding to the flap that separated the space from the Throne Room beyond, she said, “I hope what you did to her was worth it, in the end.”

It was the first time anyone, apart from Danae, had mentioned Cerridwen.s murder to him, and her words shocked him. He was not surprised that she would condemn him—he condemned himself, so why should she not, as well—but it surprised him that Cerridwen had been embraced by anyone in the Court during the very short time since her arrival.

“You don.t have much time,” the crow whispered to whoever waited in the other room.

“Danae will return before the noon meal. Leave the way you came.”

Cedric struggled to sit up straighter against the post he was tied to, the muscles of his back and his folded wings protesting with the motion. When he saw who had come to him, he stopped breathing.

Amergin stood at the doorway, looking at him with a strange mixture of pity and loathing. Danae.s words floated back to him on a cruel wave of hope. You cannot tell anyone, Human or Fae.

The man who stood before him was not wholly Human, but neither was he Fae. He was something apart, elevated to the level of Demigod by the faith of a people who had immortalized him.

He was Cedric.s last hope, if any remained, and the man knelt before him now with a concerned expression on his sharp features.

“I am under a spell,” Cedric blurted, and hoped that Amergin would not dismiss it as a foolish defense.

“I can see that,” the Human said simply, looking at a spot over Cedric.s shoulder. “Anyone who would bother to look at you would be able to tell that.”

“Corpse Water,” Cedric said, unable to hold back, now that he could speak the words. “She poisoned me with Corpse Water and ordered me to kill Cerridwen.” He stopped, his chest squeezing tight, as though he had just uncovered a hidden well of screams. “I did not want to. I fought it, I tried to warn her, but I could not tell her. I could not utter a word of it to anyone Human or Fae.”

“And I am neither.” Amergin rocked back on his heels. “I should go, before anyone knows I was here, then.”

“Do not leave me!” Cedric could not let him go, not without…“Cerridwen…Danae said, that is…They brought back feathers.”

Amergin looked away. That one gesture told Cedric all he needed to know.

“She was alone. She fled to the forest, and she died there.” He nodded his head, as though he could force himself to accept it. “I killed her.”

“Do not think of that now,” Amergin said faintly. “I cannot stand another night of your wailing. You must be strong if we are to repay Danae for this.”

“You know the truth,” Cedric insisted. “You can tell them, and Danae can be—”

“Your revenge will not come today, friend.” Amergin moved to the back of the room, lifted the cloth wall. “I will do what I can, but for now, you must keep this meeting secret.”

“I will do what I can,” Cedric vowed as the Human slipped under the curtain.

His revenge would not come that day, but waiting another would not be impossible. Cerridwen was gone. If nothing else kept him alive, it would be his hunger for vengeance. No matter how long he was forced to wait.

The long hours that Trasa was away serving with the other Sisters were unbearably boring now that Cerridwen was conscious of them. The long, black robes that Trasa had lent her covered her wings, so she felt safe enough wandering on the grounds of the cottage.

The building stood halfway down a gentle slope. The grass appeared exceptionally greener against the sunless white sky, and dark lines of stone fence dissected the hill into neat squares. For as far as Cerridwen could see, there were no other Human dwellings, only the vague imprint of a Human road at the bottom of the hill suggested that mortals had ever lived

there, aside from the presence of the little cottage. The road made a ghostly impression with chunks of broken black paving, grown over by sickly yellow grass. On the other side of it, another stone fence, and beyond that, the forest.

Cerridwen had watched from the window as Trasa made her way down the hill that morning, toward the V-shaped break in the stone. She had passed through it confidently and strode straight into the trees, though no path showed that any foot traffic went that way at all.

Sitting on the warped bench outside the door, Cerridwen contemplated the forest and listened to the wind teasing around her ears. Cedric had told her before to listen to it, to listen to the land, that it would tell her something. Now, though, she was not interested in hearing anything it might say.

If she used her other sight, she could find her way back to the camp. When she got there, things would be as they should. The guards would laze around the fire, the little servant girl would be busy puttering away at something. Cedric would be inside the tent, and when she came into the clearing and the guards called out upon spotting her, he would emerge and run to her, catch her up in his arms and demand to know where she had been. He had been so worried. If anything would have happened to her, he could not have borne it. He loved her, and she should never go missing for so long again.

There would be another feast, to celebrate the return of the Queene, and she would preside over it and accept the tributes of the Court, songs and masques in her honor. She would sit on the throne and gaze adoringly at her mate, and all who saw them would say how very fitting it was that they were so well matched.

From where she sat, there was no reason to believe that it would not be possible, and yet she knew how foolish that delusion was. Trasa tended to Cedric every day that he was held prisoner by Danae. He did not wait at the camp for her; he sat in abject misery tied to a pole in the middle of Danae.s tent. The Monster Queene had dared to imprison him even after they had plotted together, all the better to cover her own nefarious deeds.

Cerridwen pushed back the sleeves of her robe and stared down at the bandages. Slowly, she picked at the tape that held the gauze in place. Should she look, or leave her wounds to heal, never confronting them until they had faded away? The end of the bandage was free before she could make her decision, and having come this far, she unwound the gauze.

Faeries healed quickly, but there had been no one to heal her properly. What another Fae could have done with their energy in mere moments, her body struggled to mend on its own over days. It seemed more horrible, somehow, than when they had been fresh. Her blood had clotted in uneven furrows down the length of the exposed cut, and Cerridwen ran her finger across the hard, shiny surface. The scab was itchy and tight, and when she bent her arm experimentally, fissures formed in the dried blood and fresh liquid oozed out.

Her arm aching anew, she returned the gauze and tucked the end under itself to keep it in place. She tried, just to see if she could, to blame Cedric for the pain he had caused her, to hate him…but she could not. That hardly seemed fair, that she should not be able to relish the discomfort she knew he suffered now.

Despite what he had done, she loved him. That was the sickening thing. She had defied and betrayed her mother to escape her betrothal to him, and it had been for nothing, because she loved him. She turned her gaze back to the forest. This time, instead of entertaining the delusion of returning to the campsite, her imagination went further, across the sea, to the Underground. She could walk into her mother.s Throne Room, beg forgiveness, and they would embrace. Her father would beam proudly at her, and a great feast would celebrate the smart match the Queene had made between her daughter and her most trusted advisor.

A low groaning sound startled her from her destructive daydream, and she jumped with a yelp. An animal stood beside her, larger than anything Cerridwen had ever seen. She edged away from it across the bench, but it did not appear a danger to her. It merely surveyed her with dull red eyes, its long-lashed lids drooping lazily closed. Beneath its nose, pierced with a gold ring large enough that Cerridwen could fit her hand through it, had she a mind to, its jaws worked, staining the snow-white fur around its mouth green from the grass it chewed.

“You are a bull!” Cerridwen cried, delighted to have recognized the creature from her dream.

Slowly, she stood, not wishing to startle the animal. The whole of its body was snow white, and the hair that sprouted from a spiral between its massive horns was somehow lighter. With a trembling hand, she dared to touch its face, dodging out of the way of its horns as it ducked its head.

“I do not know about bulls,” she told it, not caring how ridiculous she might sound speaking to an animal. “Are you a male bull, or a female one? I would not know how to tell the two apart!”

If the animal was bothered by her relentless chatter, it did not say. It bent its head and placidly ripped a chunk of grass and soil free from the ground with its teeth and chewed away.

“I do not envy you your diet.” Cerridwen dropped to her knees to watch it eat, examined the strange ends of its legs. “It.s as if you have your own boots!” she squealed, tapping the hard, yellowed material. “Is that bone?”