Veil of Shadows

by Lindsay

  The chill air bit at her exposed skin, and her legs trembled, too weak even to help her push under the covers. He gripped her hand suddenly, pulled it to his lips and kissed her fingertips.

  “It is not dawn yet, is it?” he asked, as though he feared the coming morning.

  She turned her head, saw the guards" fire still flickering outside. “It is not.” She yawned, and then she could no longer keep her eyes open.

  She slept on her stomach, tangled in the tattered remnants of the gown, her hair, still pinned up from the feast, a mussed tangle on her pillow.

  This was not how he had wanted it to be. No. He had never wanted it to be. He could have fought it, could have kept himself from ever revealing any of those feelings to her. It had been Danae"s spell that had forced him to act out those emotions, though the emotions themselves were true enough.

  “I am cold,” Cerridwen mumbled in her sleep, clutching at the shoulder of the gown as though it were a blanket she could draw over herself. He pulled the blankets free and tucked them around her, the little good it did to show her tenderness, now.

  He could not blame the spell for the fury with which he had taken her. That had been his own base desires fighting free from their tortured confinement. He had wanted her more and more with every breath. He would have taken her, despite the spell. But now, the deed was done, and he would kill her before first light, and he had not even managed to be gentle, to savor the act that would be their final moments together.

  He tried again, with all of his might, to force himself from the bed, to get away from her and get her out of harm"s way in the process. But he would not budge. He could stroke her hair and smell her skin, he could whisper to her that he loved her, but he could not do something so simply as stand and walk away from her.

  When the spell wore off, which he still held out hope would be before the morning, he would do more than kill Danae. He would torture her. He would torture her, almost to the point of death, but he would not let her die. She would beg for death, but he would not grant her that boon, not until he was satisfied at his revenge. If he killed Cerridwen under this spell, if there was nothing he could do to stop it, the day of Danae"s release in death would never come.

  And immortal creatures could live a very, very long time.

  As if the murderous thoughts in him controlled his hand, he reached for the dagger in his boot and pulled it free. But it was not time. Though the air smelled faintly of cold dew, and the fire outside died, he could resist the spell for at least a little longer.

  He lay beside her, a prisoner in the body that would kill her, and watched with growing dread the night begin to recede outside the tent.

  Thirteen

  T he mist in the clearing was not white but bloodred, and it pulsed as it undulated around her legs. Cerridwen did not know how she had come to be in this place, but she was not frightened. She waited, watched as the sanguine mist tickled her ankles and waited.

  She did not wait long. A woman, slender and beautiful, with long, straight slashes of pale blond hair, appeared. The simple dress she wore was as bloodred as the mist and clung to her, suspended from her shoulders by two thin cords. A matching red cord wound around her hand, tethered to the collar of a huge white pig that walked at her side.

  Cerridwen blinked and stared. “I know you,” she said. “I am you.” Was that right?

  “You are my namesake.” The woman knelt in the mist and cupped the animal"s snout, clucking to it affectionately.

  “My mother saw you. She knew you.” Cerridwen pressed her palms to her eyes, but in this dream, she could see through her hands, and it did no good.

  “And you know me, whether we have met or not.” The Goddess, the one Cerridwen had been named for, straightened. “I come to the faithful, even if they do not know yet that they follow me. I came to your father, to help him find his way. I came to your mother, to guide her. And I come to you now, though you did not know that you need me.”

  “I—I did not call you,” Cerridwen stammered. “I do not need help. I have handled everything myself, this far.”

  “Yes, it would appear that way. On the surface.” The Goddess"s eyes narrowed playfully.

  “But we are watching. We know things.”

  “Who is watching?” Cerridwen started forward, but the space between them did not alter.

  “My mother?” Why had she asked that? That was foolish. There was no one on the Astral.

  The Astral did not exist any longer.

  But the woman nodded. “Your mother, yes. And she sends you a warning.”

  “My mother is dead. She cannot warn me of anything.” But you were so certain of her a moment before.

  “After I am gone, you must be patient. You are not my own. I intervene here on your mother"s behalf. And she says that you must wake up, Cerridwen.”

  “Wake up?” Now, that simply made no sense. If she had no tangible body here, she could not be asleep here. “Wake up?” Her words echoed back at her eerily from the forest.

  “I must go.” The Goddess came forward, gripped her face, kissed her lips. “Wait for her!”

  “Wait for who?” she pleaded, capturing the Goddess"s hands against her face.

  “You must wake up, Cerridwen!” The Goddess moved without moving, and suddenly she was across the clearing, barely distinguishable against the trees. “Wake up!”

  Cerridwen shook her head. This was going all wrong. It was nothing like her other dreams.

  She looked down at her hands, ghostly white in the darkness. Blood welled on her skin in the form of the triangles she had dreamed of so long ago. And then her mother"s voice rang out through the dream forest, clear and commanding.

  “Wake up!”

  With a gasp, Cerridwen opened her eyes. The dim light of the morning cast a blue pall over Cedric as he knelt above her, arms stretched over her, trembling with exertion. He held a dagger, fingers clenched on the hilt so tightly that blood dripped from them. His eyes were hollow, his lips white. “Run!” he managed, in a voice that did not sound like his own, like it came from someone far away.

  Then he stabbed the knife down.

  Cerridwen rolled out of the way, fell, wrapped in the bedclothes, and could not struggle free.

  “Run!” Cedric shouted at her, and again: “Run!”—a scream tearing from him as though ripping a part of him away even as he gripped her ankle, crushed the bones in his strong grasp—and she screamed, kicking at him with her other foot. He covered her body, a sick parody of the night before, and she could not fight him, pinned beneath him. He still held the dagger, and the blade of it cut into her palm as he held her hands down.

  “I love you,” he whispered against her ear, and she felt something hot and wet fall on her cheek. He rose up, and she saw the tears that flowed down his face.

  The disparity between action and word was so unreal that she could not reconcile what she witnessed. She could not even plead with him to stop. Cedric raised the knife again, and she waited for it to fall, knowing that it would end her life.

  The sound of the guards" footsteps as they raced into the tent sent a shock of reality through her, and she brought her arms up, together, to shield herself from the dagger. The blade tore through her flesh, but she pushed back, bucked her body, and through some miracle managed to free a leg. She planted her foot against his chest and pushed.

  He fell back, screamed at her to run, even as the guards fell upon and disarmed him.

  Bleeding, sobbing, she staggered back. Strong arms caught her. “Easy now, easy,” the guard soothed, but when she glimpsed his face, he looked as though he would crumble as easily as she might.

  “My hands,” she whispered, raising her arms to show him, and hot jets of blood poured from her torn skin.

  “Gods!” He grabbed her, lifted her in his arms, and ran her outside, into the growing light of the dawn. She sat on a stump beside the fire, shivering as he cut strips from her ruined gown and bound her wounds, disinterested in the entir
e process. There was no sound from inside the tent. Had they killed Cedric?

  “This is too much for me. Stay here, I will go and get the healers,” the guard instructed her before jogging away.

  She stood, not really feeling her legs, nor the pain in her arms, though she knew it was there.

  She pulled the gown onto her shoulders, held the torn front closed. She had come to the bottom steps of the tent before she realized she had moved at all. She had reached the top step before she realized that she did not want to look inside. She did not want to see Cedric, alive or dead. She did not want to see her blood on the floor. She did not want any part of this.

  Sitting on the steps, she listened to the commotion inside. It did not grow in volume, though it seemed to inside her own skull, and she looked out to the forest. It was so peaceful, so dark.

  It could not be as cold and harsh as this clearing.

  Climbing to her feet, she walked toward the trees. Her walk grew in pace when she reached the edge of the clearing. She caught her torn skirt to keep it from tripping her as she broke into a run. The trees came at her, faster and faster. She opened her wings and used them to push her ahead, catching them on branches. She closed her eyes. She would not collide with anything. She could not. And she could not stop. Because something would catch up to her, something that she did not want to think of.

  She turned her head to see the thing that chased her, though she knew it was formless. It was something she carried with her. The trees obscured her view of the camp, and she realized with sick panic that she had come too far now, that she could no longer see the clearing….

  What had she done? Gods, what had she done? She was wounded, bleeding, and she had run from help. What had happened? Cedric had tried to kill her.

  Kill her.

  For what?

  She could not breathe, panic clawing inside her chest like a wild animal. She folded her wings before she realized that her feet no longer touched the ground. She fell and tried to open them again, only to snag one painfully on a branch. The ground rushed up to her with a sickening crack, and she lay, too weak to move, unable to do anything but scream at the agony that exploded over and over, unrelenting, in her shattered body.

  Though no one would hear her, she screamed, bellowed like a wounded animal. Even after the riot of pain dulled some, into a white-hot, stabbing ache, she screamed, as though every sobbing breath expelled more of the pain in her wounded heart.

  When her throat was raw, and the cold and fatigue had numbed her, body and mind, she stared up at the sky. First one cold drop fell, then another. Beside her face, a fern trembled from the weight of the drops. The forest filled with the dull popping sound of the falling rain, hypnotizing her.

  With no strength to fight off the darkness, Cerridwen succumbed to it.

  When the alarm sounded, Amergin was in the village center, watching from one of the tall tree houses as the Humans slaved to clean up the destruction wrought by the night"s wasteful banquet. Faeries, half-dead from too much drink and too little sleep, stumbled out from the trees and dwellings and sat up under tables. Idiots, to think themselves so safe as to let down their guard. It would serve them all right if he had let down the wards and all the pretty magic that disguised their Kingdom and let the Enforcers come to their doorstep.

  Not that he would appreciate being dragged off by them himself. Humans found consorting with magical beings were put to death. As he would be hard-pressed to explain that he fell somewhere between the two races, he would likely endure several attempts on his unkillable body before they realized he was not going anywhere.

  The commotion brought a flood of Faeries to surround Danae"s Palace. The clever girl hadn"t left it yet, obviously stalling to retain de facto control. Amergin understood the stubbornness of the Fae, possibly better than they understood it themselves.

  A group of Faeries, heavily armed, but not outfitted like Danae"s guards, wrestled a stumbling figure down the path. A sting in Amergin"s heart told him the Faery"s identity, without seeing his face.

  Living as long as he had, in both the physical and Astral realms, Amergin had learned a thing or two about large crowds. They would always look to the source of the disturbance, each individual believing that they could not be seen, so long as something held their—and everyone else"s—attention. It provided Amergin with ample opportunity to gauge their reactions.

  Danae, for instance, came from her tent with no hint of surprise or concern or urgency. She viewed the scene calmly, kept her eyes fixated on the Faery bound and hooded as his captors marched him toward her.

  “Gods above, what has happened?” she asked, her face suddenly ashen. But she did not need to ask. She already knew what she would hear. It was clear from the way she held her body, as if anticipating the news.

  “There was an attempt on the Queene"s life,” one of the captors called out, and the obligatory chorus of whispers rose from the crowd of bystanders.

  “An attempt?” Perhaps Danae had not anticipated this, after all. She seemed genuinely surprised at the proclamation.

  Or she did not expect to hear that her plan had failed….

  It became clear, like clouds moving away from the sun. Of course. He had seen them, the night before, as he had hidden from the festivities and sat high above, alone with his harp.

  He"d seen the two of them in conversation, and then their disappearance into the tent. Cedric had emerged with wine splashed on his robes, but he had not looked like a man just engaged in an argument. His expression had been grim, determined.

  “Bring her attacker forward,” Danae ordered, and they pushed Cedric toward her. “I wish to see his face.”

  As if she did not know what face she would see. Amergin"s mind raced…. Of course they had planned this. And last night, they had decided to act on their plan.

  Sickness clenched in his gut. The new Queene was practically a child, and so lost when he had looked into her eyes. No matter how brave a front she had mustered before Danae upon her arrival, she showed fear, and deep despair. Harming her was destroying an already wounded heart. There was no sport in it, no honor. Certainly no dignity.

  The guards pulled the hood from Cedric"s head, which drooped on his shoulders, and his bloodstained hair obscured his face.

  “Cedric!” Danae"s hand flew to her chest in the kind of dramatic gesture Humans liked to use. She"d probably practiced it before a mirror. “Gods and Goddesses, what have you done?”

  Cedric did not respond. Amergin leaned over the rail, then thought better of it. Though a fall would not kill him, he would probably wish it had.

  “Tell me!” Danae snapped. “I order you to tell me.”

  “I…” Cedric sobbed, as if fighting back the words he did not wish to admit. “I stabbed Cerridwen. While she slept, I took a knife, and when she tried to fight me, I…”

  “Enough!” Danae lifted her hand in a good show of anger. “Where is the Queene now?”

  “We do not know,” one of the guards admitted. “While waiting for the healers, she…disappeared.”

  “So, is she dead?” The eagerness in Danae"s words would go unnoticed by any that did not know to look for it. But Amergin chuckled ruefully. My, how she wished for the girl"s death.

  “We do not know, Lady Danae,” the guard said with a bow. “She may have gone into the forest. There were tracks, but they ended.”

  Danae considered a moment, her dark eyes scanning Cedric"s humbled form. “Organize a search party! Every able Faery should scour the forests. Bring the Queene back to me, safely, and you will be richly rewarded.”

  This would never do. Amergin turned and ducked into the small tent. He had few possessions in this realm, but he would find what he needed in the chest that stood at the end of his cot. A pair of trousers, the heavy woven denim kind favored by modern Humans, to protect his legs from the whiplashing briars growing from the forest floor. Human “sneakers,” thin canvas boots that only laced to the ankle but had thick, hard soles
to guard his feet. He found a doublet spun from soft wool, and pulled that on, as well. A flashlight, which he would need if caught out after dark. Good thing he had bought it off the Human trader who had come during the last fair. So much easier than torches.

  He also took the pack that he had cobbled together long ago in case he ever wished to run from Danae"s Court and stay hidden. Inside, all manner of food, preserved in aluminum cans by the Humans, strained at the seams, and a small plastic case with a red cross emblazoned on it held some meager supplies for patching wounds. To this strange mix, he added his wand, and slung the long handle of the bag over him so that it crossed his body.

  Stepping back out of his tent, he could see that the village was, as expected, in chaos. Danae had known exactly what she was doing by ordering an immediate search. Some would object, others spring to action. Those who objected would do nothing. Those who were moved to act would clash with others who had plans of their own, and the whole of the effort would bog down in petty bickering. By the time a search got under way, the poor girl would almost certainly have bled to death.

  He descended into the clearing on the rope ladder from his narrow porch and tried to make his way through the throng without attracting Danae"s notice. But she always noticed him, the way one always fixates on the single guest at a party that they do not care for.

  “Where do you go, wizard?” she called out.

  He stopped and bowed to her. “To search for the missing Queene, as you commanded.” He paused, then added, “Your Majesty.”

  Her chest swelled with an outraged breath. “You will watch your words more closely, wizard.

  There are many things I can think of to do with a body that does not die.”

  “I am sure there are.”

  And with that, Amergin slipped into the forest.

  The rain had stopped, and the cold had become warmth to her. She opened her eyes, the great effort in that simple movement stabbing pain through her head.