A Veil of Truth and Trickery by Analeigh Ford

Chapter Ten

Both fae wereeager to leave me in the care of one of Nyx’s Woodland servants as soon as we returned, damp and shivering, to the court. I only guessed she was a servant from the slightly less extravagant drape of her gown, though from the way she roughly tore the wet clothes from my back, muttering the whole time, you’d think she was a queen forced to dote on a slave.

Which, in a way, I suppose she was.

My ranking here was quite obvious, something lower than the mare that was now making sighs of pleasure as someone outside the leafy house brushed the tangles from her mane and tail with much more care than was being taken with mine.

“Have you ever brushed your hair before?”

The question wasn’t meant to be answered, a fact reiterated by the next tug of the brush that pulled my head back as far as it would go, and not without a small screech of my own in response.

The servant grumbled some more and reluctantly started working in smaller sections. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone with so many leaves in their hair.”

“It’s not like I put them there on purpose.”

We fell into a disgruntled silence—her with the fact that she had to disentangle each one of my white strands from where they’d gotten matted in the mud and dirt, and me with having to put up with her less-than-gentle touch doing so.

We’d been led to one of the smaller houses inside the cluster of living buildings that made up the court. This one wasn’t suspended as high as the others, though I knew if I went to the window and drew back the vines, I’d likely break a leg trying to leap down to the ground—if the building would let me get that far.

Inside, the walls had fashioned themselves into intricately woven patterns of interlocking tree branches. Paintings hung on the walls depicting faerie beasts—or what I could only assume were faerie beasts. Most of them looked foreign, like strange versions of creatures I might’ve encountered back at home.

Others looked straight out of my nightmares, creatures that had no right to exist in this world or the other.

There were no candles here. The inside of the rooms were lit with more glowing fungi. Here, inside, they grew in elongated candle-like clusters that gave off a welcoming warm light instead of the enchanted blue I’d seen most often in the forest.

That familiar light did nothing to change the fact that something about the servant tugging at my hair seemed … off … in the cracked reflection of the glass before me. She worked with disjointed movements, as if she was unused to her body. Or unused to me.

That was one thing at least that we had in common. We shared a mutual discomfort that was, in its own right, comforting.

“How is it I understand you?” I blurted out, when another sharp tug was already forcing a squeak out of me.

She gave me a withering look meant to dissuade me, but it didn’t last long. She melted a little, and with it, so did some of the stony exterior that had left her face looking drawn.

“Fae language is universal to humans,” she said, finally. “Part of the glamour that still remains intact.”

My heartbeat quickened at her words.

There it was again,this casual mention of their magic as if it were something from the past. I hadn’t thought much of it before, but now it sent my mind reeling. Maybe the fae weren’t as powerful as we’d been led to believe.

I leaned forward a bit and was promptly rewarded with a smack to the back of the head. “Hold still or I’ll cut it all off and blame the pixies.”

“So, this glamour …” I started. “Something’s wrong with it, isn’t it? You’re not the first fae to say so.”

Though not in as many words.

“I’m not a fae,” she said, suddenly. “I’m a demon.”

“A—a what?” I started and stood up, knocking the chair back so that it tumbled to the floor. Or it would have tumbled, had roots not shot up and caught it, gently returning it to its upright position before slithering back to their place as part of the floor.

“I just presented myself in the way Armene thought would be most pleasing to you.”

“So … so you’re Armene’s?”

Her lips turned up in a grimace. “I serve the prince, yes, but not in the same way that you’re now Nyx’s … but you wouldn’t understand.”

Another fae prince.

“What’s your name?”

That question had a far more extreme effect than I anticipated. She tilted back her head and laughed—a hollow, screeching sound that made me shrink back from her. For the first time, I saw the demon in her. It flickered in and out with each wracking of her breath, only to disappear again behind her smooth fae features when she locked eyes with me again.

“We’re an ancient and powerful race, nearly eradicated by the fae long before they even came to your world,” she said, voice deepening. “I’m one of the last of my kind. A kind controlled by their true names … so no, human, I won’t be telling you that.”

I swallowed, hard.

She pointed the brush into the chair and I promptly sat back in it, facing rigidly forward.

“What’s your true form?”

Her hand stopped for a second, halfway down my back.

“You said Armene asked you to take this form for me. What do you really look like?”

The brush returned to stroking, the tangles growing less and less with each pass. “I wouldn’t want to frighten you.”

I turned in my chair despite the knot growing in my stomach. “I know what it is to be considered a monster. You don’t need to pretend with me.” I held out my palms on either side of the chair, remembering another one of Caldamir’s warnings about Avarath. “There’s enough glamour here to make my head spin. It’d be … nice … to see one thing for what it is.”

She considered this for a moment, her eyes taking on a vacant stare as she fixated, unmoving, on the dim mirror in front of me. Then, as I looked on, the skin of her face drew back. The full head of luxurious hair grew sparse and stringy, colored similarly to mine if mine had spent a millennium uncovered in the hot sun. And it wasn’t a she so much as it was a he. A he with long, boney fingers and nails just as long and twice as pointed. The tips of one poked into my scalp from where he clutched the brush in his hand just a little too tight.

It was all I could do not to draw back in fear, right up until I saw his eyes.

Black, like mine.

When our gaze met in the mirror, just for a second, I wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

“That should be enough,” he said, straightening up and pointing to a gown that had appeared near the door. Someone—or something—must have delivered it when we were too busy speaking. “Stay here and no one will touch you. Leave, and I make no promises.”

He moved with surprising grace to the door, where I watched his lithe, almost insect-like body pause for a moment.

“Waylan,” he said, before leaving. “You can call me Waylan.”

* * *

I wasn’t left alonefor long, but it was still long enough to find myself spiraling into some kind of existential crisis. By the time I’d pulled on the gown meant to replace the one I’d soaked in the pool, I’d begun to feel the press of walls around me. The way this place breathed made me feel like I was inside the stomach of a monster, a monster that had swallowed me whole and already started digesting me.

It wasn’t just the building, this living house I found myself in. It was everything here. Avarath itself had swallowed me, but it hadn’t yet decided what to do with me.

Or if it had, it had yet to make its intentions clear.

Only one thing was certain.

I finished lacing up the front of my new gown, something that under normal circumstances would’ve made even the visitors to the Otto estate balk. It was simple cotton, or whatever was closest to it in the fae realm, colored like the inside of an iris. Even in its simplicity, it was finer than anything I’d ever touched, finer than anything I’d laid eyes on in the human world. Lord Otto’s estate was the richest place I’d been, and he’d long since sold off anything of value and had it replaced with a cheap fake.

Still, even in the dim light of the mushrooms and the glow of summer sun peeking through the vines swathed over the window, I didn’t look like a fae.

I didn’t look as close to death as I did earlier, but there was still a pallor to my cheeks, a darkness coloring the line of my lashes. My mouth was dry, my stomach aching from a hunger I couldn’t feel over my own anxiety. I was weak.

I could feel it.

Avarath made me ill. The very ground, the air, the reflection of the light on my skin. This place wasn’t made for humans. I might be able to stand now, but it didn’t change the fact that this place was poisonous to me.

If this deal didn’t involve me dying, I’d find my way out of Avarath. I’d find my way back to my ungrateful village. Or maybe not. Maybe I’d find my way to other villages. Maybe I’d finally shave my head and bind my eyes, hide their blackness by pretending I was blind or something.

Or maybe other places would be more kind to a fae-marked girl once she’d escaped faerie and lived to tell the tale.

One thing was certain.

I didn’t care what Caldamir had said. I couldn’t stay here. Wouldn’t. As soon as the deal was finished, as soon as I knew Sol was safe for sure, I’d find a way out of this place. The first chance I got to get out, I was going to take it.

I’d be the first human to leave Avarath alive.