I hated how much I liked that feeling.
“Thank you,” I mumbled. “For sending her away.”
He blew out a breath, any leftover rage disappearing with it. “Anytime.”
I shook my head, almost letting out a sarcastic laugh. There was no way the Unseelie Prince meant those words. Rather than call him on it, I changed the subject. “You can change your look.”
He shook his head, his features softening until he was almost smiling. “Not well, and not for long. My friend Jax can do it better—he’s a puka, a shapeshifter. I have to rely on an enchantment, but it worked well enough for what I required.” He paused, his smile growing. “Why? Do you prefer looking at me when I’m like that?”
I snorted, unable to bring any bite to my words. “I’d prefer not to look at you at all, but here we are.”
This time, when his smile grew, it remained. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
A blush inched up my cheeks. There was no way that was true. Prince Fergus in his usual form was very easy on the eye with his high cheek bones and defined jawline. The problem was, he knew it. To my relief, he pulled his skull mask on. “What are you doing?” There was no need for masks now.
“Making sure your mother doesn’t recognize me as the prince.”
“Oh, right.” It suddenly occurred to me that he’d placed a lot of trust in me, by bringing me here. Already, I could have told several people his secret. Yet it was he who’d stood up for me and was now giving me time with my dying mother.
I started for her closed door, my heart beating in time with my boots as they tapped on the wooden floor. “Mother?” I knocked, but there was no answer. I pushed the door open and walked in. A shaft of moonlight fell across her body as she lay in bed. Her eyes were closed, and her chest rose and fell slowly. I lit a candle so I could see her properly and immediately wished I hadn’t. The wound eating her skin had spread across her chest, but even so, the weight on my shoulders shifted as I realized she was still alive. I’d made it home in time.
“She lives.” Prince Fergus stood behind my left shoulder. I hadn’t even heard him enter.
Mother’s eyes flickered open, focusing on Prince Fergus, rather than me. She licked her lips. “The Wild Hunt. Come to take me at last.” Her voice lacked the strength I was used to hearing, but no one would mistake it for fearful. It made me proud that she would look Xion Starguard in the face without cowering, even if I was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t quite as bad as I’d always thought.
“Mother,” I whispered. It was so good to hear her voice.
Fergus stepped across the room toward her, his movements too fast for me to react. He crouched at her bedside and gripped her chin with a grasp so tight, her skin turned white where his fingers pressed. His other hand shot out and pulled her blonde hair away, revealing a human ear. Mother didn’t so much as flinch, and had it not been for the way her eyes widened when he launched at her, I might have thought Xion Starguard didn’t scare her at all.
“Now do you believe me?” I demanded, finally jumping into action. A surge of anger shot through my veins. Mother was ill, and this was not how a dying woman should be treated. “She’s not fae. Her ears prove it.” It still didn’t prove I wasn’t. But since neither Mother nor Father were fae, I couldn’t be, either.
Fergus’s only answer was to angle Mother’s head for a better view of her ears as he spoke a mumbled sentence beneath his breath.
The moment he began to mutter, Mother found the strength to fight. She wriggled beneath his grasp, tossing her head from one side to the other in an effort to escape. She’d been sick for so long, I wasn’t sure where she got the energy, but she bucked and kicked like her life depended on it. Fergus, unfazed, continued to hold her chin and mumble.
“Stop.” I pushed his shoulders, trying to dislodge him. What he was doing to her was wrong on so many levels.
“Do not push me.” Fergus’s words came through gritted teeth, his eyes never leaving Mother’s face.
I shoved him again. I may as well have shoved the timber wall of the cottage for all the good it did.
He stretched his arm toward me, palm facing out, demanding I not come any closer.
I didn’t need to. I could see what he’d done perfectly well from where I stood. Mother’s human ears were gone, the round tops replaced by the sharp points of fae ears.
NINE
I shook my head, refusing to believe, my eyes locked on what Fergus had done to Mother. “This is a trick. You used your magic to make her ears like that because you couldn’t bear to be wrong.” Or perhaps it was the guttering candlelight that was making me see things.
He shook his head slowly. To my surprise, there was none of the glee I expected in his voice, just resignation. “It’s not a trick. All I did was remove a glamour.” He turned his hand over. In the center of his palm, a tiny glass jar of red liquid appeared. With considerable calm, he unscrewed the lid and forced it into Mother’s mouth. “Swallow it. The potion will reverse the effects of the other potion you took.”
Mother let the liquid sit in her mouth for a moment before dropping her shoulders and swallowing it down.
Fergus held his hand above the wound on her bicep and as I watched, it knit together, healing until it became a faded scar.
But the healing wasn’t the most remarkable thing in the room. I couldn’t stop looking at Mother’s ears. This wasn’t possible. I knew Mother, and she wasn’t one of them. She was kind and compassionate. And pretty. And she’d never had ears like the ones protruding from her hair.
“Xion Starguard.” Mother’s head once again rested back on the pillows. With closed eyes, she spoke. “The boy whose smirk haunts my dreams. Thank you for choosing to save my life.” She drew in a breath, her blonde hair fanned out around her head.
“I had a point to prove.” Fergus cut a glance in my direction.
“You have proven nothing. This is magic, a trick. I’m not naïve enough to think those ears are real!” Because believing that meant I had to reassess my entire life.
“Oh, you should believe, Bria Tremaine. It’s not my magic at work on your Mother.”
I clenched my fist, wondering if I dared smash it into his nose again. I wanted to.
Mother shifted on the bed, pulling herself to sit up, her voice stronger than it had been in weeks. “It’s true, Bria. I’m fae. The same as him.”
Fergus cast a told-you-so look over his shoulder.
Mother caught the movement, her eyes narrowing. “Xion Starguard. You think you’re special, untouchable even. You pretend to forget, but I know your secret. I know why you wear that mask.”
Fergus stared at her, then got to his feet. He shook his head, not as if he were repelling her words, but as if he needed to clear his mind. His eyes jumped from Mother’s new ears to the living room outside her open bedroom door. Perhaps he never fully believed she could be fae, either.
“No.” I shoved his shoulder, and he stumbled back. “This isn’t real. Whatever game you’re playing here, we want no part of it. The only fae here is you.”
His lips tightened and he gave a nod, took a long look around the room, then started for the door, mumbling beneath his breath something about having been at the cottage before.
“Xion.” Mother called to him before he made it to her bedroom door. He stopped without turning. “Can I … can I remove your mask?”
He turned, looking at me.
I shook my head. She couldn’t. She’d see he was the prince. “Mother. Sorry, but you can’t do that.”
“It’s okay.” Fergus watched me as he moved closer to Mother. “It will be fine, Bria.”
I looked between them both, an overwhelming need to sprint from the room overtaking me. I might have forgotten how to breathe.
Fergus squeezed my arm on his way past. “It’s okay.” He crouched beside the bed, angling his face to Mother.
She reached out, her fingers sliding beneath
Fergus’ chin where she hooked them beneath the edge of his mask and pulled.
I braced for her reaction, for what Fergus would do because of it, but nothing happened.
The mask didn’t budge.
“Well?” I asked. If she was going to do this, she might as well get it over with.
“I’m trying.” She brought her other hand up, pulling with both.
The muscles in Fergus’ neck stood out as he braced against her.
I shook my head. “You’re weak. You’ve been in bed too long and lost all your strength.” But I heard how wrong I was. The mask had almost flown from Fergus’ face at the slightest touch from me. Weak or not, she should be able to remove it. She was doing this for another reason. “What is it you’re trying to say, Mother?”
Fergus got to his feet, looking at me the moment Mother dropped her hands. “Remember I said—”
I put a finger up, stopping him. I didn’t want to hear from him right now. I wanted to hear from Mother. The things she’d neglected to tell me over the years were piling up.
“No human can remove a hunter’s mask. And only some fae can do it.” She lifted her eyebrows. “Have you tried?”
I looked past her, shaking my head. I didn’t even want to know how she knew that. “Are you saying you’re human?” My voice didn’t sound like my own.
She shook her head. “I’m not.”
She wasn’t human. And using the same story as Fergus, she was telling me what I didn’t want to hear. I blew out a breath, my voice flat. “And neither am I.”
She shook her head again.
I turned to Fergus, but at some point, he’d escaped from the room, leaving the two of us alone. “Why can I remove his mask when you can’t?”
“That is something you really don’t want to know.”
Oh, but I did.
Before I could say so, Mother reached up and took my hand. “I will answer all your questions, Bria. Just give me half an hour. I need a little more time for Xion’s potion to work.” Her head fell back against the pillows and her eyes filled with tears. “I should have told you what you were a long time ago. Your father wanted you to know.” She shook her head. “I didn’t think it was in your best interest.”
I felt numb, like I was watching this happen to a stranger. Things like this didn’t happen in real life. I didn’t want to be fae. I wanted to be Bria Tremaine, healer from Holbeck. “None of this is about my best interest, Mother, or you would have told me years ago.” My voice was flat. Mother was fae, and she was hiding out in Iadrun while pretending to be human. This was about her. “I think you’re scared, and you’re hiding from something.” And it had to be something big. Not only had she hidden what she was, she’d mutilated my ears to hide me from that same thing. No one went to such extremes without reason. “So what is it, Mother? What are you hiding from?”
She shook her head, tears spilling from her eyes and running down her face. “Bria. I can’t…” Her eyes fluttered closed as if she thought she’d given enough of an answer.
She hadn’t. Not even close. “You can’t what?” She’d lied to me all these years, and now she was hiding behind the weakness of her injury rather than offer an explanation? “Tell me what you’re hiding from? Or explain why you would mutilate part of my body when you used magic to hide your own ears from everyone?”
Her mouth fell open. “Bria.” I barely heard the words, only saw her lips move.
“I’m right, aren’t I? You couldn’t bear to do it to yourself, but you still did it to me.” I shook my head. “You could have told me all of this, Mother. You could have explained it before any of this happened, and I’d still have loved you. Now…” I shrugged. I couldn’t even look at her. “You’re not the person I thought you were. And since you seem better than you have in weeks, you can look after yourself.” I walked out of her bedroom.
“Bria! Stop. Where are you going?” Her feet landed on the wooden floor as I opened the back door.
I didn’t answer. Not because of the tears that were now streaming down my face. Or because of the anger pulsing through my body. But because I didn’t know where I was going. Selina was the only friend I knew well enough to run to, yet I couldn’t run to her with this.
I started for the swings—my usual place of comfort—to find Fergus already there, sitting on the swing Selina usually used. Part of me had stupidly hoped he was gone, out of my life. No such luck. His elbows rested on his knees and his head lay in his hands, something made possible by his height—I could never have sat like that on the swing and had my feet on the ground. Moonlight dappled his form as it shone between the leaves of the giant oak.
“Still here?” I asked, sinking down onto the swing beside him. I wished my voice had more venom. But it wasn’t him I was mad with.
He lifted his head, the mask still on his face, and blinked as if he’d just woken from a dream. His voice was soft. “You know it takes a lot of magic to hold a spell like the glamour she was wearing. Especially here in Iadrun. She probably had very little magic left over.”
I sighed. The fae in my life needed to stop talking in riddles and give me some straight answers. “Meaning?”
“Meaning maybe she did what she thought was best for you.” He touched his ear.
“No.” I shook my head and pulled my hair back from my ears so he could see them. “There is no way this was best for anyone.”
“I just think you should hear her out. Maybe she believes she had a good reason.”
I glared at him, hating that I could hear the sense in his words.
Fergus suddenly stiffened and climbed to his feet. “Do you hear that?”
Barking echoed in the distance. I glanced across the fields to the edge of the woods where we’d left Obsidian and Raven. Both horses were tense, stomping their feet and whinnying. “The Hunt?”
He let out a long, low whistle and turned on the spot, looking around our moonlit back garden. “Where do you hide? When there’s, you know, danger?”
He was still part of the Hunt. I wasn’t telling him that. “We run into the woods.”
His long, slow blink told me he didn’t believe me. “Not helpful.” He whistled again, and the cinnamon-colored hound I’d injured last time they were here came bounding out of the trees and across the fields.
Fergus’ worry put me on edge. Seeing that hound made it worse. I balanced on my toes, ready to run if that animal so much as looked at me. Perhaps I could scurry up the oak tree before the animal attacked.
But I seemed to be the least of the hound’s worries. She bounded over to Fergus, her tail wagging so hard her body almost bent in half. Fergus crouched, and the dog rolled onto her back for a belly rub, long legs pointing to the sky. Damn thing didn’t look half as terrifying like that.
“Are they coming here?”
Fergus straightened. “I believe so.” His words were careful.
There was something he wasn’t saying. “For me? Or you?” I was the one who fit that damned shoe, but Fergus was currently missing from the Wild Hunt. I really hoped they were on their way to pick him up.
“Officially, me. But Buttercup thinks—”
I snorted. “Buttercup?”
He glanced at the hound lolling at his feet.
“Seriously? You call one of the hounds of hell Buttercup?” That was the name for a tame little terrier. Not the thing that had come at me with snapping jaws and dripping saliva.
“Don’t judge what you don’t know.”
I shrugged. I knew enough about that animal to know she didn’t suit the name he’d given her.
“Buttercup thinks they’re after you. Or your mother. We need to leave.” Buttercup sat up, nudging her head into Fergus’ thigh. He scratched behind her ears.
“You two can talk to each other?”
He nodded and tapped his temple. “In here.”
I sighed. I didn’t even need to listen to Buttercup. If the Wild Hunt were retu
rning to my cottage, no matter how hard I wished it weren’t true, logic said it wasn’t Fergus they were coming for. My glance fell on Raven and Obsidian. They were our ticket out of here. “I’ll meet you at the horses.” Without giving him the chance to disagree, I ran for the cottage, ready to throw Mother over my shoulder and drag her out to Raven if I had to. But I stopped suddenly when I found her out of bed and dressed, her cheeks rosy with health. Whatever Fergus had given her had worked fast.
The dining table was covered in a pile of long-bladed knives, swords, a cross bow, axes, spears, and about twenty other unnamable weapons I didn’t know we owned.
She glanced up as I slammed the door. “You should have gone with him.”
I lifted my eyebrows, surprised she knew he’d left. “I am. We are. Come on. There’s a horse that can take us away from here.”
She raced the short distance from the table into her bedroom and pulled another long-bladed knife from under the bed, the handle covered in strange writing. I had no idea how I’d never known it was there. “I can’t guarantee your safety here.”
I took hold of her as she ran past, gripping her shoulders to make her stop. She had so much energy. I didn’t know where it had come from. “We’re leaving. We don’t need to stay and fight.”
She shook her head. “Too late. Hear that?” She paused, the barking of the hounds taking over from the noise of her feet slapping against the floorboards. They were so much louder than they’d been before. “They’re almost here. Grab a weapon or two. You will need them. We’re too late to run.” There was a modicum of glee in her voice. Like she wanted to fight. I wondered if it had anything to do with her newly released fae ears.
My heart thudded in my chest. I looked over the pile of weapons on the table. I didn’t know how to use any of them, except the hunting bow. Truthfully, I didn’t want to use any, though that didn’t seem to be an option. I picked up two smaller versions of the knife she had pulled from beneath the bed, tucking one into my boot and holding the other in my hand. I carried a knife when I hunted and had once gutted a young boar that had charged me. “Maybe we’d be better hiding beneath the cottage.” Maybe I should have told Fergus where we usually hid.
Kingdom of Yesterday's Lies (Royals of Faery Book 1) Page 10
