A Veil of Truth and Trickery by Analeigh Ford

Chapter Sixteen

My eyes flewopen underwater at those words. I didn’t have the benefit of Tethys’ second eyelid, but it didn’t take me long to start making out shapes in the midst of that darkness. Tiny lights popped up, stretching around the inside of that black water at the edge of the pool. Almost like stars.

The last great gift of the Starlight Court.

From within the starlit water, a new shape began to form. A blackness darker than all the rest began to move forward. The rounded shape of a head and shoulders strained at the line where the two waters met, but struggle as it may, it was never quite able to leave it.

“Come closer. There’s something you need to know. Something only we can tell you.”

The sound was surprisingly clear, unlike the bleary shapes my watering eyes were making out in the darkness.

I had no way to respond to the being—or phantom—and I was already running out of air. Part of me was afraid to surface. Afraid that the voice would disappear by the time I dove back down. Afraid that I wouldn’t have the courage to dive again in the first place.

A curse supposedly waited for me in that inky blackness, one that the fae themselves feared. I was no stranger to curses, but this one made me pause. It was one thing to be cursed among humans, another among the creatures from which all curses sprung.

But then the voice spoke again, and any thoughts of turning away to surface disappeared, my need for breath suddenly not so urgent.

“There’s another way out of Avarath.”

This time when the darkness reached out to me, I reached back.

The moment I did, the very instant that the tips of my fingers grazed the ones beckoning to me, I was plunged into darkness.

It was unlike any darkness I’d known before.

I was weightless in it, floating in a void that wrapped around me like the tender caress of a mother with her newborn babe. All around me, those pinpricks of light pulsed with their own life.

I wasn’t alone in this darkness, either.

That black shape grew larger, more defined until it formed the shape of a shadowed body. I couldn’t make out its face, but I could somehow sense it meant no malice toward me.

How could it, in a place like this?

“Do you know why you were brought to Avarath, Delphine?”

I opened my mouth in an attempt to respond, to try to force something garbled through the water—only to find no water rushing in. I answered hesitantly at first, but my voice came out as crystal clear as the pool I had only begun to realize I no longer floated in.

“I have to die so the fae king can live. So the magic can come back.”

“That’s what we were afraid of.” There was a darkness inside the voice too this time. Danger. “If you really want to save Avarath, you can’t let that happen.”

I turned slowly in the blackness, my outstretched arms unable to stop the slow spinning. Wherever I turned, the shadowed form remained in front of me, staring at me, staring into me.

For the first time, I felt something cold grab hold of me.

“But how am I supposed to stop that?” I asked, trying not to sound desperate. “I’m only human.”

“Are you quite sure of that?”

I hesitated this time, turning over in the star-spinning blackness until I finally answered. There was no one here to lie to other than myself. This blackness had known my name before I spoke it. There was no telling what else it knew.

“I don’t know anymore.” I swallowed hard, only to find I couldn’t, not from the lump that had formed in the back of my throat. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. None of this does. I’m never going back to Alderia.”

“Very little in life is certain,” the voice said. Despite the darkness, I thought I made out its hand reaching out to me again. “But I can make you this promise. We can get you out. Stay alive, Delphine. Defy the princes, and we’ll make sure you do not die in Avarath.”

I reached out and took the hand.

The moment I did, the darkness started to recede and a panic welled up in me as quickly as any hope.

“How?” I asked, already feeling the space around me grow thicker. “How am I supposed to defy them?”

With each word, my voice grew more garbled. The shadow receded into the stars, fading until it blinked out of existence without another word. The stars followed after.

The moment they disappeared, I was plunged back into icy moonlit waters.

* * *

When I did finallysurface in the pool again, it was with a gasp so loud I was surprised half the court didn’t immediately come running. I coughed and spluttered, ignoring the water running into my eyes as my lungs dug deep for the air it had been deprived of.

Tethys swam just a few feet away, his face showing he was more than a little impressed.

“I’d just started to wonder if I needed to pull you out again.”

I ignored his comment.

“Did you hear that?” I asked, between panting breaths. “Did you hear what they said?”

My muscles were cramped and stiff, barely able to keep my head bobbing above the surface of the water. It was hard to tell in the moonlight, but I had a feeling my skin was quickly turning the same shade of blue as the water.

Tethys stopped and looked down at me for a moment, as if realizing for the first time that I’d come to press myself up against his heated side. I only realized it then too, but I didn’t care. I’d instinctively sought out the warmth, my body choosing immediate salvation over his eventual threat.

It was bold, but I felt bold.

After what I’d just been told, however vague, I had hope. For the first time since Caldamir arrived and announced my fate, I had a plan. A way out.

It was faint still, but it was something. And that was what I clung to.

That, and Tethys’ shadow. His body was so hot that it warmed the water immediately surrounding him. It may have only been by a degree or two, but in the current freezing temperatures, it was enough to almost make me want to reach out and wrap my legs around him, removing any remaining space between us.

Almost.

“Silly girl,” Tethys said after a moment, after he too had caught the breath that momentarily escaped him. “You have to actually go into the cursed water to hear what it has to say.”

I blinked up at him out of confusion for a moment, somehow stopping myself from correcting him.

He hadn’t seen me get dragged in.

Better that way,I realized. This was one of those secrets better left kept to myself.

“I … I decided I’ve had enough of curses,” I spluttered, pretending for a moment to splash water into my eyes so I didn’t have to meet his gaze. When I gasped to the surface again, I let a shiver wrack my body before nodding toward the stairs. “I think I’ve had enough of this freezing water, too.”

“I could keep you warm you know, if you let me,” Tethys said, his maddening grin making its return.

The water was cold enough that his offer was almost inviting.

Tethys swam by my side to the stairs, where I noticed the dark shadows around the edges of the pool seemed to have retreated a bit. I was too cold to care if he watched as I rose from the pool and reached for the dry shift to pull it back over my head. For once, I was grateful of the hot, sticky summer air. It would only be a few minutes before my shivering turned to quaking, and not long after that before my body finally agreed to still altogether.

If Tethys hadn’t noticed the change in the water, too.

“Is it just me, or did the shadowy bits used to be bigger?”

My heart leapt up into my throat where it remained lodged. It was better for me if he continued to think I hadn’t had any contact with the being in the pool. I doubted he and Caldamir would give me any freedom if they knew I’d been directly tasked with defying them—in exchange for the very thing they’d denied me.

My freedom.

“Oh? I didn’t notice,” I lied, praying internally that Tethys would just let it go.

He didn’t.

“No,” he said, that note of concern growing in his voice. “I swear it used to be bigger. That tree there used to dip right into it. I’m sure.”

It was everything I could do not to show my obvious alarm. I tried to keep my breaths normal, measured.

“Is that so?”

He still didn’t let it go. He started taking a step back into the water to take a closer look, but I couldn’t let that happen.

I couldn’t chance him getting suspicious. I’d been given a rare opportunity. I was under no illusions that I’d get another chance like this, a chance to do the impossible, to get back to Alderia.

So, I did the only thing I could think to distract him.

“Actually …” I said, suddenly turning back to face him. “Does that offer still stand?”

For a moment, Tethys only blinked his double eyelids back at me, confused. I banished any doubt of my intentions when I slowly, deliberately, moved the shift that hung in front of my naked body to hang it once again on the stair rail.

I stepped one foot back into the freezing water so that my head was now level with his.

“The offer to warm me,” I whispered, leaning closer. Tethys stood stock still, unable—or unwilling—to move. “Unless, of course, you didn’t mean what I think you did.”

When Tethys did move, it was only to let out a long, slow breath. The heat of it warmed my face mere inches from his.

“I should warn you,” he said, “I may be a prince, but I’m not so honorable as to turn you down.”

This close, Tethys’ breath was somehow salty like the sea, and his skin still glistened as if with tiny crystals. The gold in his ears reflected back onto his skin, casting tiny lights dancing across his jaw. A jaw so sharp it made my fingers itch to reach out and touch, if it only to see if it would make blood bloom across their surface.

With his one free hand, he brushed away a tangled strand of my hair that stubbornly clung to the side of my neck.

The heat of him burned deep into me, igniting a fire inside my core.

I took one more step down, further into the water, closer to him.

I blinked up at him for a moment, not at his eyes, but fixated on the lips that had come so close for a moment to hovering beside mine. I wondered what they would taste like, if they’d taste like the sea that Tethys carried with him. I swore, for a moment, that standing so close to him I could feel it. His body swayed ever so slightly against mine, his feet still standing on the deck of a long-forgotten ship.

I opened my mouth to tell him I’d changed my mind, that this was wrong, but I couldn’t. I could have stopped it there. I had no doubt, honorable or not, that Tethys would have let me walk away.

But I didn’t want to.

I wasn’t in the habit of expecting gifts for my birthday, but after the one I’d just had, this time—I gave one to myself. I was still most likely to die in Avarath, promises of an inky black pool or not, but at least now I could say I didn’t die without first tasting its charms.

There was no hesitation this time. No waiting to ask me questions, and certainly no waiting to allow me any more of my own.

His lips were just as I imagined. Soft and powerful as the sea. His hands moved around my waist, drawing my exposed body to his, lifting me up. They didn’t stay there, either. They explored the flat of my lower back, the sharp inward curve of my waist, stopping only when they came to the shadow beneath my breasts.

My body ached for him. There was no denying it.

No denying him.

All I had to do was place my hands on his and pull them upwards for a new frenzy to overtake him. He needed no further invitation.

Tethys rose from the water in all his naked glory and swept me with him to the top of the steps. He dropped me, breathless, in the tangle of his forgotten clothes and clambered down on top of me, pausing only to remove each of his rings—one at a time—in careful, methodical movements. His eyes never left mine as they did. A flash of Nyx earlier came to mind, only for more need to flood my body.

I reached for him, trying to pull him in for another fevered kiss, but he stopped me short.

“Unless you want me losing one of these rings inside you, you’re going to have to be a little patient,” he said. “But I promise you, it’ll be well worth the wait.”

And it was.

The moment he tucked the last of his rings into the pocket of the same jacket sprawled beneath us, Tethys shoved me down onto the flat of my back and crushed my lips beneath his. One hand supported his weight so he didn’t crush the rest of me while the other, with the same tenacity as the tide, moved to nudge my knees apart.

No, not nudge, force.

He wasn’t rough, but he wasn’t gentle either. His hand moved with practiced precision, stroking the outside of my sex first in long, teasing lines, then moving inward to the swollen bud at its center and pressing harder, forming circles that coaxed a moan of pleasure from my lips.

He hadn’t let the sound die in my throat before he turned it to a gasp by slipping a finger inside me. His teeth bit down on my lip until I let out another soft cry. Only then did he draw back his face from mine, and only enough to lock eyes with mine.

“There, just like that …” he whispered, panting. “I want to get a good look at you while I can. I want to see what your face looks like before I fuck you, because I can promise you—you won’t be looking at me the same way after.”

Another finger joined the first then, nudging further into me and hooking up to find a place inside me that made my sex pulse in response. I tightened around him, thighs clenching as I tried to hold back, only for Tethys to force them apart again.

“I can feel you’re close,” he grunted, lips parting. “Come for me. I’m not going to fit inside you until you do.”

So, I did.

I couldn’t have stopped it if I tried.

As soon as the wave of pleasure dulled, he rolled me onto my belly and pressed his hardened member to my opening. He dipped his head down so that his lips brushed first between my shoulder blades, then trailed across my shoulder until they were behind my ear.

“Tell me this isn’t your first time. I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

“It’s not,” I said, trying to steady my trembling lips. “There was another.”

“Good,” he said. “Now I’m going to make you forget him.”

And he did. Both his hands moved to balance his body over me, steadying himself before he pushed the tip of himself inside.

He let out a soft grunt of his own pleasure, his panting breaths a measure of his carefully restrained power as he eased the rest of his length in inch by inch—or what of it would fit, anyway. It was only then that he began to allow himself to rock in an upwards circular motion, the shaft of him withdrawing and then pushing back faster each time.

I buried my face into the pile of clothes to muffle the involuntary gasp that followed each one of his strokes.

It wasn’t my first time, sure, but in Tethys’ hands, it might as well have been. He made my fumblings with Leofwin seem positively innocent compared to how he took me. He dominated over me, giving pleasure as much as he took it.

As soon as I’d been stretched enough to take him in, he spread my legs wider, pushing my hips further apart before he began truly thrusting.

The sheer size of him should have hurt, but my body welcomed him with another shaking orgasm instead. It wracked my body, building in my core until it exploded out of me with quivering thighs and shaking knees.

Not just me, either.

Tethys plunged in with a final, fierce burst of passion before he met his own release. I knew when he met it from the way his hands dug into the earth on either side of me, soil and dried leaves forced between his curling fingers as a feral growl rumbled from the back of his throat.

Where I collapsed, exhausted, to the ground—he was practically writhing with newfound energy when he took me into his arms.

No matter how still he lay, it was like something inside him constantly begged to move. Just as he made love, his body rocked with that energy. It was a rhythmic, unceasing motion that had his hands moving to slide between my slick thighs again by the time I’d barely caught my breath.

“Did I make good on my promise?”

“Promise?” I asked, rolling over to look up at him. He was all I saw, all that consumed my thoughts until they slowly, ever so slowly, began to return to me. I wished they wouldn’t. I wished I could forget them, forever, and only lay here in Tethys’ arms. Lay here where I felt safe, even if here, in his arms, was really the most dangerous place a human could be.

And for me in particular—human or fae—more dangerous still.

“My promise to warm you,” he reminded me, salted lips moving to tease me with a kiss on the corner of mine. “Or do you require further fire in your belly?”

His hand dove the rest of the way up to bury itself between my legs again, his fingers teasing much like his lips had moments earlier.

I was tempted to take him up on the second offer, to forget again everything else but the feel of us wrapped together. But that wasn’t going to happen.

Not when Tethys happened to look up from me to spot something up ahead that made him swear.

“The sun’ll rise soon,” he said, scrambling to get back to his feet. “I hope you know I’d enjoy nothing more than to lay with you here until then, but I’d hate to make Caldamir jealous before we’ve even left.”

“Jealous? Caldamir?” I let out a scoff. “He doesn’t seem the type capable of the emotion.”

Tethys shot me a sideways glance. “I think you’d be surprised what we’re all capable of.”

He offered me no chance to respond, in its place offering a hand up instead. Between the two of us, we were soon laced up and brushed down enough to start the short trek back without arousing too much suspicion.

I, meanwhile, was already dreading the look on Waylan’s face when he saw what I’d already managed to do to my hair.

“Let’s keep this little excursion to ourselves,” Tethys said as we walked back toward the edge of the inner forest. We paused for a moment and looked at the way the moonlight caught on the edges of the trees overhead. The humming that had filled the air earlier and faded almost entirely away. The magic was there, but it was buried deep down.

Midsommar had come and past, and with it, the glamour had retreated.

“What?” I asked, emboldened by the sight of Waylan peeking out of the window up ahead. “Really that eager not to tell Caldamir about what we did back there?”

Tethys let out a small breath. “You’re not subtle at all, you know that?”

“It’s one of my strong points.”

“Yeah well, I’m even less eager to tell him I let you back into the pool,” he said, hands still shoving ring after ring onto his fingers from the depths of his many pockets. He stopped me though, before we parted ways. “I hope I won’t come to regret that. I shouldn’t have told you what I did. Caldamir would skin me alive for that. But I’m glad you didn’t go into the blackness. It … wouldn’t have been good for any of us if you’d touched it.”

What I didn’t tell Tethys, however, was that he was worried about the wrong thing. I hadn’t just touched the blackness—I’d made a deal with it.

Caldamir had warned me of this, or tried to, anyway. Not all deals were signed with contracts, neither was it always obvious they were deals at all. At least this time it was clear. I didn’t need to see the details of what I’d just agreed to in writing to know a deal was exactly what it was.

By the time the two of us left, I was the only one who’d looked back at the pool.

The only one who’d seen that the black water had not only receded, it’d disappeared completely.