Veil of Shadows

by Lindsay

  They might follow your trail. You could lead them directly here.”

  “My cottage is my home—” Trasa protested, but stopped herself. “No, Your Majesty is correct. For Danae, I would not abide such a request, but for you, I will stay here. Some of the Sisters live in the colony, and I can stay with them.”

  “You could take Bauchan"s tent,” Amergin said, biting off a bit of bread. He spoke around it.

  “No one"s using it now.”

  “Cedric will need somewhere to stay,” Cerridwen said, a little faster and harsher than she had intended.

  “I do not see why,” a voice said from the doorway. Cerridwen looked up reluctantly to meet Cedric"s eyes.

  “May we be alone?” he asked Trasa and Amergin, and they both stood, nodding, and took their plates with them when they left.

  Cedric sat on the stool Trasa had vacated, at Cerridwen"s left. He did not speak at first, and he did not touch her. He gazed at her with an intensity that made her fidget, and she would not meet his eyes.

  “Why,” he asked slowly, “why would I not stay here, with you?”

  She did not want to have this conversation. She did not wish to show him how he had hurt her, and that there was no way she could pretend he had not. There was nothing she could say to disguise how she felt for him, not after she had admitted to it that night. Still, he would not accept silence from her, she knew him too well to expect that. “Because you do not love me, and I will not force you to stay.”

  He reached for her hand, and she fought to control its trembling. “You would not have to force me to stay. And I do love you, Cerridwen. I was under a spell—that was the only reason I harmed you. You cannot believe that any part of that was me.”

  “I do not.” Gods, how she could not stand it if he thought she held him accountable for that attack. “I know that you would never have…I could not believe it, even as you wielded the dagger against me. Even as I lay on the forest floor, it did not seem real to me. I tried to accept it as reality, and every time, I could not bring myself to hate you…. You were under a spell. That, I know all too well. That same spell bade you to tell me that you…love me.” She stumbled over the words, feeling foolish that she had to utter them.

  “No.” Cedric squeezed her hand. “No, I did not say those things because of the spell. Or I did. But the spell did not make me feel them. I said what I felt in my heart, truly.”

  She pulled her hand back.

  With a curse, Cedric stood, and, though she did not wish to, she shrank from his sudden movement. His face paled in horror. “Do you still believe that I would harm you? I love you, Cerridwen. I went to the block today happy, glad to know that my life would end and I would no longer have to bear the grief and guilt I felt over your death.”

  “Stop!” She could not hear it, because she could not believe it was true. There had been so many stories read to her as a child, the valiant prince breaking the evil spell out of true love for his princess. It was foolish, she knew, but her heart broke at the thought that whatever Cedric had felt for her, it had not been enough to stop the knife from cutting into her. “If you love me, why did you do it? Why did you…hold me down and…why could you not stop?”

  “I wanted to!” He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I fought so hard to warn you. Holding myself back until you woke was…Gods, I have never felt such pain! I took no pleasure in what I did to you! How could you even think that of me?”

  She stared at the tabletop, unable to think of the words to forgive him, certain she would not be able to say them if she could.

  A guttural noise of disgust broke from his throat and he stalked toward the opening in the tent wall. Without knowing why, Cerridwen sprang to her feet and ran for him, his name tearing from her lips on a desperate cry. He turned and caught her in her flight, gripped her shoulders and hauled her up to smash his lips against hers. The tears that fell onto her cheeks were not her own.

  “I have wanted to touch you—” he gasped against her mouth “—since I saw you come into the clearing. I thought you were dead. She told me you were—”

  “I know,” she whispered, fitting her palm against the hard curve of his jaw. “I thought that you had wanted me dead.”

  “Never.” He kissed her again, with less grateful urgency than before. The need in him now was not simply to touch her, but something closer to the desperate passion he had displayed the night before their horrible parting.

  She pressed herself against him, arched as his mouth slid down to the hollow between her collarbones. An ache rose up in her, pulsed between her legs, and she wound them around his waist as he dragged her skirts up and laid her on the end of the long table.

  Trasa and Amergin, not to mention other members of the Morrigan"s strange Sisterhood, remained in the Palace, and a flush heated her skin at the thought that they would certainly know what was transpiring in the dining room. “Someone will hear,” she whispered against his ear, and then she could not resist biting it.

  “I do not care,” he growled, pulling his robes open. He hissed as she traced her tongue over the Guild Mark at his neck, paused as if trying to regain self-control, despite his remark.

  It occurred to her that she did not care, either. The fear of someone condemning her behavior was the only motivation she could think of for caring what they thought of her, a trait drummed into her from her time in her mother"s Palace. After all that had happened here in the Upworld, she could no longer pretend that the opinions of others mattered to her.

  All that mattered to her, in that moment, was that Cedric was safe and healed, and that she was alive, and that, despite the tremendous hardships they had faced, no force existed that could drive them apart.

  She lifted her hips, eager to feel him again, ignoring the pain in her still-tender wings as her weight settled back against them. As before, the excitement of touching him was all her body had needed to make itself ready for him, and when the wide, firm tip of him pressed against her opening, he slid in easily. Sheathed in her completely, he rested his forehead against hers, hot breath brushing over her face.

  “I love you,” he whispered. “Do not ever doubt that again.”

  There were no words that could convey the answer she wished to give him, so she held his face between her hands and kissed him, body rigid with the tension of not moving, though her every instinct demanded it.

  With a rough groan, he tore his mouth from hers and gripped her hips, pulling her hard against him, so quickly that it forced a shocked moan from her throat. His hands slid to the curve of her buttocks, to her thighs, underneath her knees, where he urged her wordlessly to wrap her legs about him again. She complied readily, grinding against him, and with a growl deep in his throat, he pounded into her, over and over, fingers digging into the flesh of her thighs.

  The table beneath her rocked and creaked; for a hysterical moment, she wondered if it would fall. But the thought fled on the wave of energy that flooded her, forcing her into the other sight. The usual green color of her energy had been replaced by something bright white, something not moving in bubbles or sparks but blazing flame through each part of her, most specifically to the place where she and Cedric were joined. The light in her pulsed with her heat, with his heartbeat, each ripple growing in intensity until it was so bright that she could not look at it anymore. She opened her eyes to the sight of the dining room as her body jerked and her mouth opened to release a cry that hung suspended on the very edge she teetered over: herself. She did not need the other sight to know the moment she went over and the flames within consumed her. She shuddered, gripped his arms as anchors in fear of being swept away, and shouted, finding her voice again in the moment of pleasure so intense that it both grounded her and unhinged her further.

  Cedric drove deeper into her, and then went still with a cry of his own. He bent and laid his head against her breast, his skin separated from hers by the soft fabric of her gown.

  “One day,” she began, i
n a voice so calm that she found it comical, “I would like to do this in a more comfortable manner. Not against a tent post, or a table. And perhaps not quite so violently.”

  He kissed her, then withdrew from her with a slight grimace and carefully put his robes back to order. “I did not tear your clothes, this time. That is progress.”

  She rolled to her side and spotted her trencher, still sitting abandoned at the head of the table.

  “I did not finish my dinner.”

  “I did not get any.” He cheerfully offered her his hand. “This was a fair trade.”

  She gripped the front of his robes, stopping him as he tried to turn away. “I must know,” she said, clinging to him so desperately that she was almost embarrassed. “You told me, once before, but I must hear it again. If she had not put that spell on you…if she had not told you to do it, would you have told me that you loved me?”

  His arms closed around her, and she pressed her face to his chest rather than look into his eyes. She could not bear it if his words did not match what she saw there. “Perhaps not that night, if things had gone differently,” he admitted, “but your tears, not her command, moved me to tell you.” He hooked his fingers under her chin, gently forced her to look up at him. “I would have told you, eventually. I could not have kept it secret for much longer,” he said, voice dying to a whisper before he pressed his mouth to hers.

  It was not the romantic declaration of a Prince in a Story, but that mattered little to her heart.

  They lay in what had once been Danae"s bedroom, though it had been stripped bare of everything but the bed and the oil lamps that lit it. Cedric had—foolishly, in hindsight—

  asked Cerridwen why she would dispose of so many fine things. She had flown into a rage then, demanding why she should keep them when they reminded her of the traitor who had harmed them. Cedric wisely dropped the subject.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, rousing himself from the half-sleep he had succumbed to.

  Cerridwen lay in the crook of his arm, all her warm softness pressed against him, one arm braced against his chest as she leaned over him, tracing the edges of his Guild Mark with her fingertips. “This is so ugly,” she said, in the same tone that she might have used to describe a child as adorable. “I remember Mother always displaying her Guild Mark like a banner. It looked better on her.”

  “Ugly?” He pushed himself up onto his elbows. “How so?”

  She sat up, as well, stroking her hand down his neck where the mark covered his skin in black swirls. “I do not care for it. I do not think I will require my Assassins to wear it.”

  “All of your Assassins already have it,” he reminded her, sinking back down on the pillows.

  “There will be more.” She snuggled against him again, resting her head on his shoulder. “And I will not ask them to wear it.”

  “Your Majesty does not understand the purpose of the mark, I think,” he teased, and at once knew that he should not have. She went stiff beside him, the air of content they had shared evaporating into tension once again.

  “Do not call me that,” she said, pleading tingeing her words. “Not you.”

  “I will not do it again, in private company,” he promised, kissing the top of her head. “Would you like to know then what the mark is for?”

  She nodded, relaxing again. “It has been a long while since I have had a bedtime story.”

  “Do not do that,” he warned her with a chuckle. “I do not need any reminders of your youth.

  The mark was given to me when I became an Assassin. Not when I had completed my training, and not after some long trial to prove my worth. It was given to me the very moment I pledged to serve as Assassin for my Queene.”

  “Mabb?” Cerridwen asked, idly lacing her fingers with his, as though putting a possessive barrier between him and the ghosts of the past.

  “No, not Mabb. Her mother.” He smoothed a few curls of her hair against her bare shoulder.

  “I was not in love with Mabb, you know. I admired her.”

  “You were lovers,” Cerridwen insisted. “Everyone at Court knew it.”

  He shrugged. “We were. But I did not feel for her what I feel for you.” After a silent moment, he continued with his original purpose. “The Guild Mark displays to everyone who sees it that I have committed my life to eradicating the enemies of the Queene. After I became the Guild Master, it reminded me of the lives that I commanded, and my responsibility to them, as well as to the Queene.”

  “But you are no longer an Assassin,” Cerridwen said, rolling to her side to face him. “Do you still wish to have this mark on you, if that is no longer a part of your life?”

  “I will always be an Assassin. That training never leaves you.” He closed his eyes, feeling the lure of sleep again. “And you need more than six in your Guild.”

  “I am still unconvinced,” she said, mocking a haughty tone. “But for now, I will bow to your experience.”

  His lips twitched into a smile that he was almost too tired to see through to the end. “Thank you, that is very kind.”

  The warm heaviness of sleep had sunk into his bones, the familiar feeling of drifting into deep blackness washed over him. He had thought Cerridwen asleep, but then she spoke, almost hesitantly. “There were Enforcers in the woods, near Trasa"s cabin.”

  At once, sleep fled, eluding his tired body as his mind snapped to frantic attention. “What?”

  “I should not have said anything.” She sat up and wound the bedclothes around her body, as though she would leave.

  She seemed almost guilty, and Cedric could not fathom why she would blame herself. “Why did you not tell me?”

  “You were with the healers, and I thought it best if you were allowed to fully recover….” She shook her head. “I did not trust you enough, yet.”

  “Have I ever done anything that would make you not trust me with this?” he asked, then quickly amended that statement. “Anything while not under a spell?”

  “I did not know if you would stay.” She would not meet his gaze. “I did not want to tell you and make you feel obligated to stay.”

  “I would have been obligated to stay, anyway. I swore an oath to your mother that I would keep you safe. If nothing else existed between us to keep me here, I would have stayed, knowing this.”

  “Exactly.” Her shoulders sagged. “It would not have been fair. And I did not want…”

  He sat up, reached for her, but she held herself away from him. “What did you not want?”

  “I did not want to spoil this night.” A tear rolled down her cheek when she faced him. “I have the most awful premonition, Cedric. I do not believe our time here will last any longer than my time lasted underground. I feel as though there will never be permanence. I will never have a home again. And for tonight, I wanted to ignore all of that, and ignore the Enforcers. I think that they are what will drive me from this place. And if I go, what will happen to the Fae here? What of the ones who followed us from the Underground? Who will lead them when I am…”

  Her silence, and the heartbreak in her eyes, sent a chill of foreboding up his spine. “You have foreseen something?”

  “No, not this. Not yet.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and laughed through her tears. “I am probably imagining terrors that are not there.”

  “It is understandable, after all that you have been through,” he soothed, pulling her back to lie down. “You are tired. We will sort out the problem of the Humans in the morning.”

  “You are right,” she said, but it was clear that her fear was not dispelled by simply ignoring the problem.

  The dread that gnawed at him all night proved that he could not put it from his mind, either.

  The dawn brought the sun, and actual sunlight, into the clearing, rather than the misty gray that had plagued the forest since the Underworlders had arrived.

  Cedric had not slept. The revelations of the night before were not solely to blame. The few times
he had managed to drift off, he had woken with a start, terrified to look at his hands, sure that he would find a knife there. He could not rest easy until the sun had come up, and Cerridwen had opened her eyes to greet him with a sleepy smile.

  He had taken her again, while her body was still warm and limp with sleep, thankful with every breath that the spell was truly gone, and the danger had passed. Though he would have preferred to stay in bed all day, limbs tangled with hers, it would have been irresponsible, no, plainly idiotic, to do so when Enforcers prowled the forest around them.

  After taking their breakfast alone in their room, they faced the daunting task of rebuilding the governing body of the Court. It was not an easy task. Amergin and Trasa met with them and were kind enough not to mention what had taken place on the dining table they all sat around.

  “Danae never had a traditional Council,” Amergin told them. “She started off with one, but each member fell away as they disagreed with her on one point or another…and she kicked them out.”

  “That sounds like Danae,” Trasa said, her face pinched with annoyance. “If I did not know you, Your Majesty, I would say that all Faeries were the same. Selfish, cruel, thinking only to advance themselves, no matter the cost to anyone else.”

  “And you would be right, for the most part,” Cedric agreed. “But this is something we hope to change. In the Underground, things were not much better, but at least there was a cohesive goal. We were united in our hatred of the Darklings below and the Humans above.”

  “We wished, and still wish, to take the Earth back for the Fae,” Cerridwen clarified. “It would be unfair to expect you to aid us without knowing that, to help you in your decision.”

  Cedric took a deep breath, not certain whether he should be proud of Cerridwen for her honesty, or dismayed by it. He had seen the way the people of the colony, Danae included, treated the women he had come to think of as crows. Cerridwen had told him of their devotion to the Morrigan, and the nickname had only seemed more apt. They were revered, almost as the representatives of the triple Goddess on Earth, and he did not wish to lose their support, especially if they could sway the colony"s Humans to follow them, as well.