A Veil of Truth and Trickery by Analeigh Ford

Chapter Twenty-Two

I don’t knowwhy Nyx’s words left me feeling so betrayed. It was Caldamir who kidnapped me in the first place. Caldamir who’d played the obvious ringleader all along.

Still, somehow Nyx’s claims left a weight on my shoulders I couldn’t shrug off.

I was there when he, Armene, and Tethys had all agreed that this had to be done, that my sacrifice was worth regaining hold of their glamour once again. Had really changed so much in the days since then, or was Nyx—the only fae not present that night—mistaken?

He had to be mistaken.

Nyx, pretty as he was, was not the brightest of the fae princes. It was more likely that he’d misunderstood, or never understood, what we’d really set out to do. I could imagine the others trying to shield him by sparing him the gruesome truth.

A truth that, in the past few days, I’d begun to forget myself.

I waited until Nyx had long since fallen into a deep slumber before I searched the surrounding forest, always staying within sight of the fae until I found a small, dark puddle of water reflecting the still darker sky overhead. Only a few stars glittered back at me, peeking out from between the thick branches.

The lighted flora of the forest illuminated my face enough to make it out in the water, if only barely. The dark shadows around my eyes were made darker by the poisonous lines still spreading out from their lids.

I’d been given a promise in the pool that night, made a deal to defy the princes in exchange for being taken out of this place, but how was I supposed to do that? In order to defy the princes, I first had to live long enough to be given the chance. I could die of being human any day now, well before we ever made it to Caldamir’s Mountain Court. I wasn’t enough of a fool to think I’d survive a single day alone here in the forest. I’d seen the way it twisted the minds of the fae, glimpsed the kind of deadly fiends waiting within. I needed the princes’ protection to stay alive, but at what point were they more of a danger to me?

I peered past my reflection in the pool, trying to focus on the dark water itself. No shape formed in the pool when I reached a hand out to it, my hand making tiny ripples that spread through the surface of the water.

I glanced over my shoulder once to make sure Nyx was still asleep before I leaned closer to the water and whispered, “Are you there?”

I felt silly. I didn’t know who I was trying to summon, didn’t know if this was any way to go about it. I had no name, let alone species to call upon. When nothing responded, I leaned a little closer.

“It’s been days. What do you expect me to do?”

Again, nothing.

I looked over my shoulder to make sure Nyx’s chest still rose and fell with sleep before I tried once more, acting on a hunch. “If you really are the Starlight Fae, and I’m one of you. Then I deserve answers.”

Nothing.

Anger and frustration welled up in me. I had no reason to believe whatever creature had made the deal with me before would answer, let alone that this was the way to do it. Both Tethys and Armene had warned me of this. That pool was nothing but a curse. I’d been mad to believe the words spoken to me that night, madder still to try to contact those who spoke them again.

This was nothing more than a futile prayer. The futile prayer of a desperate, angry woman.

“Fine then,” I hissed into the water, knowing full well I was speaking to no one other than myself. “Let the princes kill me. I don’t have the strength to do this on my own. Better to die by their hands than be torn apart by faerie beasts in the forest. You’re the true villains here, giving hope you have no business to give. Whatever it is you’re afraid of, I hope it comes to pass a thousandfold.”

Desperate and futile as it was, there was a strange satisfaction in saying it aloud.

I lifted up my hand and plunged it down into the puddle, intending to splatter the dark water into a thousand tiny muddy droplets—only for something beneath the water to grab hold of my wrist and pull me in instead.

“Who are you, to threaten us?”

The world tilted and me along with it until I came face to face with the dark figure in the pool.

It wasn’t like before. I wasn’t pulled into the blackness fully, wrapped in its warm embrace outside of time. I was still fully aware of my body hunched over the puddle, could feel the cool air where the water soaked my shoulders.

“I—I didn’t think you were listening.”

“We’re always listening for the cries of our own kind.”

My heartbeat quickened. “So, you are the Starlight Fae then?”

“We’ve been called by many names,” he said. “That’s one of them.”

His hand gripped mine tighter for a moment. “Don’t tell me you dragged me all the way here just to ask me that. Every moment we spend speaking, the longer it takes for us to get to you.”

“I can’t do this on my own,” I said, keenly aware of my half-exposed body on the other side. “I can’t defy four fae princes when I’m barely fae myself. What am I supposed to do, wander off into the forest on my own?”

“That would be unwise.”

“Then tell me what to do.”

The figure pulled me a little closer, but I still couldn’t make out anything more than the solid wall of black in the shape of a fae. “That part is up to you. Staying alive is your end of the bargain, Delphine of Alderia. You do that, and I promise you we’ll uphold our end.”

“But how long? How long do I have to stay alive?”

“Long enough for us to reach you.”

“That doesn’t help me,” I snarled back. I kicked my foot in frustration, immediately regretting the thud of it on the dry ground. I couldn’t hear what was happening outside the pool, but I could feel the shift of something nearby.

Nyx. It had to be.

I’d woken him.

The fae in front of me sensed the change too, even before I felt the rumble of footsteps nearing me on the other side. I knew how I must have looked to him, that it wouldn’t be long before another set of hands wrapped around me to pull me back.

Before that could happen, the fae let go of me. I started floating upwards, back, out of the darkness for one moment, but I lashed out and caught his wrist, and he didn’t pull away. Not immediately.

“Please, I need a date. I need something to strive for. I can’t do this forever. But give me a day, and I can do it.”

Nyx’s arms finally did reach me, started pulling me back.

The fae in the pool hesitated a moment. “Stay alive until the new moon sets, and we will come for you.”

“The new moon? But that’s nearly two weeks away. There’s no way they’ll keep me alive that long.”

Nyx was pulling harder. My hand was slipping.

The fae in front of me pried his hand free of mine, uttering one last useless reminder before the image of him shattered with the pool as I was pulled free. “And you’ve already survived nearly one in Avarath,” the fae said. “That’s more than any mortal before you can claim.”

The forest spun back into view with a spluttering gasp. I spat dark water out of my lungs and across my front, aided by several swift slaps on the back courtesy of Nyx.

“What were you doing?”

The Woodland prince tilted my chin up to look me in the face, concern patterning his own. I, in turn, glanced back at the puddle, but the remnants of it were already drying up.

That was all I’d get out of the Starlight Fae.

“Nothing,” I said, “I just, I just fell asleep.”

I thought the lie was pathetic, that Nyx would immediately become suspicious of me, but he only nodded his head in commiseration.

“I’ve fallen asleep in puddles like that too before,” he said, “but I don’t have to breathe like you do. I made it halfway through the night before I realized it. You should be more careful where you choose to take a nap. Maybe next time choose a tree. Or a nice rock.”

This time it was Nyx who made me do a double take. “Don’t worry,” I said, taking his hand to lead him back toward our previous sleeping spot. “I won’t be falling asleep in any puddles again any time soon.”

I let Nyx spend a few minutes stomping through the underbrush, breaking apart any water he was worried was deep enough for me to fall asleep in before he once again curled up in my lap.

The display was as sweet as it was simple.

None of the other fae would have believed my lie for a second, and for that, I was grateful for Nyx. Twice, now, I’d gotten away with an encounter with what I now knew was the Starlight Fae.

Twice now, I’d been given hope that there really was a way out of this godforsaken place.

And now, at least, I knew how long I had to endure this madness.

* * *

True to Nyx’s word,we were no longer lost in the forest thanks to that single spark of magic he pulled the day before. We’d barely set out in the direction he pointed us in before we started seeing signs of others nearby; a smothered campfire, bits of old string, boot prints still fresh along the edge of a bank, sunk in despite the dry soil. It didn’t look like remnants of Caldamir and the others’ encampment, but at that point, I don’t think either of us cared.

Right up until a strange scent started permeating the air.

Nyx caught on to it long before I did. We’d been following along a rough, unmarked trail for about an hour when he first smelled it. I saw the moment he caught the scent for the first time, because his face screwed up in such exaggeration that it was almost comical. He stopped in his tracks, tilted his head back and took a deep breath that ended in a choked snarl.

His eyes narrowed and his head snapped back down to glare forward.

“No …” he started, head shaking. “No, it can’t be.”

He didn’t stay to tell me what it was he smelled, what it was that had creased his perfectly smooth forehead with worry. He just took off, leaving me standing stunned as tree branches swung back to slap me in the face.

“Nyx—” I started and then paused. Just for a second.

I’d smelled it, too.

Something rotten—something too sweet and sour and smoky.

Something up ahead had died, and it was this that I followed long after Nyx’s thudding footsteps had left me behind, right up until I broke through another thick patch of underbrush and came to a stumbling, crashing halt.

We should’ve been at least one more day’s journey to the edge of Nyx’s woodlands. We might have been, once—back when there was a day’s journey left of them.

Something had wiped out miles upon miles of Nyx’s forest. As far ahead as I could see, the ground was turned an inky black. The edge of the forest rose like a wall of its own out to either side, curving ever so slightly around the far-off line of mountains.

It was the first time I’d gotten a glimpse into unobstructed Avarath. It was not a pretty sight.

This was not the kind of destruction caused by a fire. It was deeper than that.

The trees hadn’t turned to ash in a blaze, they’d withered instead into dried out husks of themselves. The grass had rotted away, exposing roots that had died as they tried to free themselves from the ground—as if the ground itself had been poisoned.

It left the ground looking like a sea of dirt, the trees captives, unsuccessful in their escape and left like bloated white corpses upon its surface.

And that was to say nothing of the actual corpses.

Deer. Rabbits. Birds. Elk.

Something larger, like a fiend, rotted just off to my right.

They all lay unmoving with ribs exposed to the air as even flies and carrion refused to pick at their spoiled meat. The scent in the air was more than rot, however. It was as if the air itself had spoiled long ago, and this was just the aftermath.

“What … what is this?”

“This,” Nyx said, from where he stood frozen, “is what happens when the magic truly leaves Avarath.”

He turned to me for a second, eyes glazed over. “I never should have used magic to get us out. I should have let the two of us die there, in the forest.”

“Nyx …” I started, but he wouldn’t let me finish.

His gaze turned ahead again, his head shaking from side to side as if he couldn’t believe what he saw with his own eyes. “I’d never have drawn that spark if I knew this would be the price.”

Nyx fell to the ground at the edge of the forest just a few paces away. His knees sunk into the black, ashen dirt. Hair fell over his eyes, covering his face—but I knew what I’d find there.

I knew it from the way his shoulders wracked with sobs, how his hands turned to curled, gnarled claws where they grasped at the dirt. I knew it from the way he tilted his head back and let out a heart-stopping scream, so filled with anguish that my heart broke for him a hundred times over.

This time, Nyx’s scream had the opposite effect as the first. Where the first one broke apart out party, this one drew us back together.

Voices broke out from the tree line, followed by the crashing sound of leaves and broken branches under hoof, right until Caldamir and Tallulah broke out of the tree line still on horseback.

Tethys and Armene followed soon after, accompanied by two more men in black hoods that I didn’t recognize.

Seemed they’d caught up to the fae Tallulah had been tracking.

They all stumbled to a halt too as they took in the missing forest before them.

Tallulah was the only one fixated on something beyond the wreckage. While everyone else was dropping down from their horses to examine the scorched earth, her hand rose to point at something in the distance. I followed the tip of her finger, eyes searching the line of dark gray mountains until I saw what she did.

There, set into the tallest peak, something glimmered among the stony walls. The high afternoon light had caught on the smooth walls of a tower.

There was only one place it could be.

The Mountain Court.

The place I was set to meet my end.

I wondered, when Nyx turned to Caldamir with a look I’d never thought I’d see on him, if what he’d told me the night before still held true. I wondered, if now that he’d seen what it was to lose his precious forest, if he’d still prefer to keep me alive.