A Veil of Truth and Trickery by Analeigh Ford

Chapter Two

He didn’t lookhow fae were supposed to look.

He didn’t have hair like starlight or skin so pale the veins peeked out in crisscrossing lines of blue beneath the surface.

But somehow I knew, the minute I laid eyes on him, exactly what he was.

He stood at the edge of an armchair by the fire, his body frozen as if he’d heard me coming and leapt to his feet the moment before I burst through the door. His chest rose and fell with breath, the softest breeze from the summer air nudging the lone strand of coppery hair that had fallen over his forehead.

It shimmered in the dim light, each soft strand lit from its own light within.

That was where his softness ended.

His eyes were stony, glaring at me with a severity that made me want to shrink inside my own skin. His gaze bored into me, seeing something inside of me that I didn’t want to be seen. The line of his jaw could cut as surely as a knife, as surely as the downturned corners of his mouth would slice me with a curse spoken from those drawn lips.

He towered over me, easily seven feet tall, with broad shoulders and arms that could squeeze the life out of a human without trying. He was no willowy creature of fairytale. He was massive, looming, and oh so very real.

It was more than that, though. More than his overwhelming physical presence. It was a feeling. An aura.

A danger.

A glamour.

The man, the creature, standing in front of me was more vicious than any wild beast I might encounter. More dangerous still than any fiend in a storybook.

Power emanated from him like the heat from a flame. It simultaneously drew me in and sent me stumbling backward, mind reeling.

“I… I’m not supposed to be here,” I stammered, my eyes not daring to look away from him.

It was the wrong sitting room. Part of me was sure I knew that all along, that I must have been drawn here, to the fae. That was their nature, after all.

Tricksters.

It wasn’t trickery I was afraid of, however, in that moment. The fae in front of me didn’t look like he was going to try to back me into some poorly worded deal. No. He looked more like he was going to pick me up and pull me apart like some kind of helpless rag doll.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

I was unable to look away from him, his own eyes roving over me with a keen sort of interest that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I was looking at him for the first time, but the way he looked at me…

It was the familiarity sparking in his eyes that left me unsettled. More than that, it was the way his gaze lingered on my black eyes, my pale skin, the shining white of my hair. He didn’t shrink away from me the way Lord Otto’s other visitors did.

Moments hung between us, a silence that held weight. It would have hung there forever, until I aged into dust and he remained a shining beacon of unadulterated youth, if I hadn’t broken it. Though I broke our gaze first.

My first mistake.

“I have to go,” I muttered, eyes dropping to stare at the floorboards. I started to turn before he could answer, my instincts kicking in at long last as each fiber of my being screamed for me to get away from this predator as fast as I could.

Not fast enough, apparently.

“Those marks on your skin… what are they?”

The question caught me so off guard that it made me pause despite myself. Hot embarrassment burned in my cheeks as my hand slithered up to gingerly touch the mark still smarting at the top of my back. I risked one glance over my shoulder at him again, hoping to catch some glimpse of what he meant by asking that sort of thing. I regretted it immediately.

There was a new question in his eyes, and it wasn’t kind. It was feral. Wild. The knuckles of his hand had turned white at the strength of his grip on the back of the armchair. Those eyes stared at me like a predator.

He’s sizing me up,I realized, but for what purpose… I had no idea.

I shook my head. “I think you know the answer to that already,” I said, ever so quietly.

The fae opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, I heard a creak in the doorway leading to the hall and his eyes finally lifted from me to rest on Lord Otto himself as he appeared, flustered and red-faced, beneath it.

The lord’s eyes flickered between us, the wine already running through his veins making his movements a bit too slow, his emotions a bit too visible.

“Ah, well, I see you’ve met Caldamir, then,” he said, speech slurring. He tried to force a welcoming look on his face as he stepped forward, one hand reaching to take the bottle still grasped between my fingers. The other rose up to catch my shoulder. It was all I could do not to flinch back at his touch, as well meaning as it was. “Best run along now. There’s work to be done.”

That could only mean one thing when it involved a fae.

There were deals to be made.

I knew I should leave, get out while I could. But I glanced once more between the old fool and the likely even older trickster, and I paused.

“Are you… are you sure?”

For one moment, Lord Otto’s face sobered. The grip on my shoulder tightened, and he fixed me with a harder stare than I’d ever seen on his ruddy features before.

“Leave us,” he said. “And have Ascilla take you home.”

“But Midsommar …”

His voice dropped this time, taking on a tone that had become all too familiar in the last years since he took me into his household. “Would it really kill you to do as you’re told for once?” he asked, the words making a slight lump rise in the back of my throat. “For once, Delphine, do this for me.”

I’d never seen him so serious. There was fear in his eyes, a fear I’d never expected to see there. Fear for me.

I had no choice but to do as I was told.

I nodded once, and slipped away before either of them could respond. Before the fae could trap me with honeyed words.

Or, at the very least, any more than he already had.

Already in just this short meeting, Caldamir had undone every idea I had about the fae. The way he looked. The way he talked. The way he felt, his very presence different from what I’d been taught to fear my whole life.

I realized in that moment that I’d been lying to myself all this time. The way my heartbeat deafened any other sound, any other thought, revealed the truth.

I’d only wished for a curse because I’d truly believed there wasn’t one. Now, faced with an actual fae, the suddenly very real possibility of a curse sent my feet tripping over themselves in a building panic.

The fae were no longer just warnings whispered in old texts and fairytales.

Fae. A fae was here.

And he’d seen me.

More than that, he’d seen what I was… and recognized it.

* * *

“What’s wrong with you?You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

It was surprisingly easy to catch up with Ascilla and Leofwin on their way out of the estate. The gates were still open and the hallways bustling with the last of the preparations to close the estate for the coming days as Midsommar dawned. It was a traditional precaution against the fae who’d once made a habit of visiting terror on Alderia on this holiday in particular.

Fae, like the one that now sat as a guest in Lord Otto’s drawing room.

I didn’t answer Ascilla right away. My mind was too preoccupied as I hoisted the hastily gathered bundle of clothing up over my shoulder and glanced over it, my eyes seeking out the window to the East study—and finding it. I swore for a moment that I saw a face in the glass, a near-gaunt face looking out from the top panes, but it disappeared just as quickly.

If only the pit in my stomach would do the same.

“Shit, Delph …” Suddenly Ascilla’s footsteps ground to a halt, forcing myself and a half dozen other servants to have to narrowly avoid being run over by a hand-pulled cart just as we stepped out of the main gate. “Did something happen? Seriously. You don’t look well.”

I batted away her hand with my own, shaking my head as I forced my thoughts ahead and away from everything I’d just left behind.

“It… it’s nothing,” I said with one last shake. But it wasn’t nothing. That fae Caldamir wasn’t the only problem I’d left on the other side of that gate. There’d be more than one debt to pay when I came back to the estate.

Raful wasn’t the kind to forget slights, however small. I had a lashing in wait for me when I came back.

If there was any estate left to come back to.

Who knew what the fae was here to do—make a new deal or collect on an old one? Either way didn’t bode well for the ruined lord. There was nothing left for him to give. And making a new deal, well, that was always a bad idea. Surely he wasn’t such a fool as to agree to one now?

If the lord did make a deal with the fae, I didn’t know if any of the staff would agree to come back and work for him. I wasn’t even sure if I would.

I’d had trouble enough from the fae without ever actually having dealt with one.

“What? Did Otto finally decide he’d waited long enough?”

This time the high-pitched question came from my own personal harpy, my stepbrother’s betrothed, Lavinia. She appeared from Leofwin’s other side, her face pinched up a bit as she took me in with a critical eye. “It was only a matter of time. You know his wandering eye… and hands.”

“Lord Otto wouldn’t do that,” Leofwin interrupted, his eyes cutting over to me for a moment before quickly darting away. Not, of course, before I saw the jealousy narrowing them. “Besides, Delph wouldn’t let him.”

It was a strange thing to hear him say, given that he’d insinuated the same thing less than an hour before.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lavinia said, her hand raising up to brush a lock of hair off her shoulder. “From what I’ve heard, your precious Delphine is all too happy to give it away for free.”

“At least I don’t have a price,” I snarl back. “You’re not the only one spreading rumors, you know that, right? Or did you not tell Draigh that your father squandered your dowry? I wonder if he’d be so keen to wed you if he knew.”

Lavinia’s face stayed focused forward, but her shoulders tensed.

“Come on,” Ascilla whispered, her elbow jabbing into my side. “Do you really want to start this now? Can’t we have three days’ peace away from the estate without having to drag Lavinia, of all people, into it?”

We fell back a step, letting a gap form between us and the others. The trees here leading up to the estate had already started to grow wilder as the walled-in buildings shrunk behind us.

“Easy for you to say,” I said, glancing one last time back at the estate, now in the distance. As I looked on, the gate finally closed, where they wouldn’t open again until after the festival. I wondered if that would change this year. Would Otto spend his entire holiday locked inside with the fae? Though, I supposed if the fae was still there, he probably had his own means of getting in and out that didn’t involve the lord having to re-open the estate. “You don’t have to practically live with her.”

Ascilla let out the smallest of sighs. “I suppose you’re right.”

When my gaze once again turned to the road ahead, I fell back one more step. “Ascilla …” I started, glancing between Leofwin, Lavinia, and the few other members of staff who’d finally fallen out of earshot. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

She didn’t hear me, however.

Not when the handcart just in front of the rest of our group suddenly lurched to a halt.

Two women on horseback had appeared up ahead, their mare melting out of the forest like a specter of the night.

I knew who they were immediately. More importantly, I knew what they were here for.

Who they were here for.

Whether they knew it or not, they were here for me.