A Veil of Truth and Trickery by Analeigh Ford

Chapter Twenty-Six

My screams were lostin the shrieks of the fiends and the clash of steal as Caldamir and the others fended off their attack. Or, I only hoped they were fending off the attack. By the time their shouts were fading down below me in the canyon, I was too far up to tell if it was because they were losing the battle, or because they were being driven away.

At least I wasn’t alone when the scout dumped me onto the floor of the shallow cavern. Armene was there too.

Not that he would do me much good.

He was bound, hand and foot, by some kind of thick rope.

Mushrooms and lichen glowed so bright along the inside of the cave that I could see the way Armene’s eyes rolled in their sockets at the sight of me. He tried to say something, tried to cry out, but the only noise that made it past the gag on his mouth was a muffled shout directed at the scout who stepped into the cave after me.

“How did you …”

I trailed off, already realizing the answer before a third fae, a stranger dressed in the same worn scout’s uniform, appeared behind him. Dust and dirt exploded at his feet as the remains of a heavy coil of rope collapsed from where it was slung over his shoulder.

A bird flew in from the window, a garbled scream croaking from its throat before it alit in the spot where the rope had previously occupied. The scout turned to his companion and nodded.

“It’s time. They’re long gone, now.”

I looked between the two fae and the familiar black and white bird, and I knew they’d been responsible for leading Nyx and I astray in the forest, too. When that hadn’t worked, they’re lured us here.

Lured me.

Nyx had said that the birds had once been used as spies. It seemed they still were.

The scout whispered something to the bird and then sent it on its way, surely to deliver some kind of message to the scout still down in the canyon with the rest of our party. Or what was left of it.

That was when I recognized the emblem on his cloak.

This one wasn’t as faded and threadbare as those on the other two—who I was willing to bet had been picked at to make them look like they bore the remains of the emblem of the Mountain Court.

But none of them had. They all bore, instead, the image of a circle engulfed in flames.

The symbol of the truth-bringers.

So much had happened since my encounter with the two women bearing the truth-bringer’s symbol back in Alderia on Midsommar’s Eve, that until now, I’d completely forgotten it. Now, with the two men bearing down on me and Armene, it was all I could think about.

“I know that symbol,” I spluttered, crawling backwards on my hands to match each step they took toward me. “The truth-bringers despise the fae, they’re heralds of your destruction.”

The two scouts paused, exchanging broadening smiles that did nothing to warm my heart.

“We are the truth-bringers,” the newest one said, when he looked back at me. “Not the other way around. We warned the humans of the fae’s destruction. We told them to steer clear of the fae, to not trust the words of their deals. And yet … here you still are.”

I shook my head, confused. “I don’t want to be here.”

“Well then, that makes all three of us.”

I scrambled back another foot, the knife Tallulah gave me falling to the ground with a dull thud, useless at my side.

Not that it was useful before. Not in my hands. It would’ve barely nicked the fae in front of me.

The two scouts saw the blade and laughed, knowing as well as I did that there was no point in reaching out to take it from me.

“I almost feel bad for what we’re about to do,” the first scout said, cocking his head at me. “I’d forgotten how pathetic humans can be. It feels kind of unfair, killing her like this.”

Behind me, Armene’s muffled cries grew more desperate. I flinched at the sound of them, at the way his hands scraped the dusty floor in his frustrated attempt to right himself from where he lay.

“Then don’t kill us,” I said, stumbling over my words. “You could let us go.”

“We have every intention of letting the prince go,” the newest scout said. “We have no quarrel with him, with any of the princes for that matter. We’re not here to start another fae war. We’re here to make sure that the king is never put back on his unholy throne.”

“I—I want that too,” I said. “I don’t want to die.”

“But you have to, if we’re to make sure no one tries to use you again in the future. As long as you live, you pose the single most threat to the peace here in Avarath.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but I had nothing to say to that … because they were right. Even if I didn’t have enough Starlight Fae blood running through my veins to actually undo the spell holding their king under the mountain, as long as I lived, so would the hope in me that I might.

The two scouts advanced, drawing swords from their belts in preparation for the blood they were about to spill.

I had no way to defend myself. No words. No weapon.

Fortunately, it wasn’t up to me to defend myself anymore.

Armene had grown quiet for a moment, but I didn’t understand why—didn’t notice until he suddenly lunged forward, using the rope still attached to one of his wrists to loop around the neck of the scout closest to me.

It still took me a moment longer, a moment spent frozen as Armene pulled the rope so that it dug into our assailant’s neck, leaving him gasping and choking, to understand how he’d gotten free in the first place. It was the mess of bloody cuts already healing down the length of Armene’s forearm that gave him away.

It seemed my knife wasn’t so useless after all. It may not have been able to kill one of these fae, but it could, at least, cut a rope.

The other scout lunged out to try and pry Armene off of his companion, but the prince’s iron grip refused to let go. The three of them became a writhing mass of bodies, the shape of them difficult to distinguish from one another beneath the swirl of glowing lights. It was all I could do to keep from getting caught up in the tangle of it—right up until I had no choice but to get involved.

The second scout, having finally realized he wasn’t going to get Armene to let go of his companion, stumbled back to get his bearings again. That was when he remembered the sword in his hand.

He raised the blade, preparing to swing at Armene’s exposed and unprotected back, when I lunged at him. I collided with the back of the fae’s legs, but the motion didn’t so much as make him stumble.

It did, however, remind him of my existence—and the true reason they were here in the first place.

He spun on his heel and struck me. Hard.

The blow might have been enough to finish me if I wasn’t already reeling back from my failed attempt to topple him. I fell back into the dust and dirt, head ringing so loud that Armene’s mouth appeared to yawn in a silent scream as he looked on.

A new fury rose inside him, lighting a rage that twisted his features into something feral. With a single, deft movement, the prince snapped the neck of the fae still struggling in his arms. By the time the second scout had understood what just happened, Armene was upon him too.

He tore the sword from the fae’s hands as if it was no more than a wooden plaything, then took the scout by the neck and pinned him up against the wall so that his feet dangled a good half foot above the ground.

The scout stared in horror at the limp body of his companion, his voice barely choking out beneath the pressure of Armene’s hand on his throat. “You killed him. A fae. That breaks royal code. You know that?”

Armene’s hand only pressed harder.

“You dared attack a prince of Avarath and really thought you wouldn’t have to suffer the consequences?”

His face hovered mere inches in front of the scout’s.

“Are you going to kill me too, then?”

“No,” Armene said, after a moment. “Only so that you can live to warn anyone else who might try to stop us. We’ll not hesitate to do what needs to be done. For Avarath.”

He let go of the scout’s neck and used the tip of the sword to keep him pinned to the wall instead. He kicked a stone up to the edge of the wall beside him then gave the scout a slightly less than gentle nudge with the heel of his boot.

“Step up onto it and put your hands up above your head, palms together.”

A strange look flashed across the scout’s face, the closest thing to real fear that I’d seen on a fae yet. “What?”

“Do as I say,” Armene snarled, pushing the tip forward so that it started to cut through the layers of the scouts’ waistcoat, “or I won’t hesitate to run you through.”

The scout did as he said, his hands shaking as he lifted them up and placed them overlapping above his head.

I tried to get Armene’s attention then, calling his name out only for him to wave my words away, his eyes fixated on the scout in front of him.

“Armene…”

He had no time for me, however. Not when he was focused to solely on the scout in front of him.

“Higher,” he instructed, jaw set.

The scout followed Armene’s instructions, though his whole body was quivering now.

A moment later, I saw why.

Armene drew the sword back from the scout’s stomach, but before he could so much as breathe a sigh of relief, the prince let out an ear-splitting scream of rage and lifted the sword overhead to plunge it straight through the scout’s hands, hilt-deep into the stone.

Though I saw it with my own eyes, I’d not have believed it if Tallulah hadn’t already told me it was possible. So was the true strength of the fae.

The scout’s own scream was still echoing through the cave when Armene kicked the stone from beneath his feet, leaving him to dangle on the very tips of his toes or else let the sword cut further into the flesh of his hands. He cried out once more as blood trickled in long rivulets down his arms, but his own healing powers worked against him, mending the flesh of those hands as quickly as the sword cut into them.

The prince stepped back and nodded once, admiring for a second his own gruesome handiwork.

“Now, feel free to pull yourself down whenever you like, but you won’t be climbing out of this cave anytime soon,” Armene said, with a matter-of-fact air that bore no sign of the cruelty he’d just committed—justified or not.

“Why not just kill me?”

“You deserve to suffer,” Armene said. He started to turn back to me, but froze when the scout’s next words hissed out between his trembling lips.

“All this for your little human whore?”

Armene didn’t move for a long moment. He didn’t speak for longer still. When he did move, he moved with a contemplated, terrifying patience. He produced a small, sharp knife from his pocket, and moved to stand directly in front of the scout.

“Armene, please …” I said again, but he ignored my plea a second time and reached for the scout’s mouth. This he pried open, his hand forcing his jaws to widen before he moved to conceal what he was doing behind his broad shoulders. The cave once more echoed with the sound of gurgled choking, but by the time Armene stepped back, the scout made no sound.

From the look of the blood dripping from both Armene’s hands, he couldn’t.

He’d cut out his vocal cords.

“For that, you’ll suffer in silence. By the time your companions are able to make sense of your screams, you’ll have the Mountain Court army to contend with should you wish to face us again. That is, if the fiends don’t get to you first.”

Armene finally turned away from the scout, one hand wiping his small blade clean on the front of his already blood-splattered clothes. His hair had fallen loose from its bun, cascading over his shoulders in dark locks longer than mine.

He knelt to pick up a fallen torch from the ground, but his fingers—still slick with blood—struggled for a moment to light it.

“I’ll have to answer for their lives, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay. We should hurry now to catch up with the others. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“Armene,” I said again, this time, my voice faint. “That’s not going to be possible. Not for me.”

“That’s nonsense. You’ll …”

As soon as he stood, torch sparking to life in his hand, he saw why.

The same blade that had almost saved me, that had freed Armene, had just as quickly become my downfall.

I’d fallen straight onto it when the scout threw me back. I’d been too stunned to know it until the adrenaline of the moment had passed and the pounding in my head had turned into a different kind of throbbing.

It had impaled me deep into the back of my inner thigh, leaving blood to spurt between the fingers I pressed along the hilt’s edges. No matter how hard I pressed, only more blood seemed to ooze in inky dark red onto the floor of the cave.

My hands were shaking when I looked up to meet Armene’s face.

“I can’t stop it bleeding,” I said, my voice faint. “I feel like I’m going to pass out.”

He dropped to his knees beside me, hands reaching out toward the blade but stopping short of actually touching it. I was all too aware of how exposed I was to him. The blade had penetrated me about as high up as it could while still embedding itself in my actual thigh.

“Loss of blood will do that to you,” he said, moving more slowly this time as he gingerly started to peel back more of my blood-soaked skirts. I flinched back from him, only to nearly pass out from the pain of moving.

“There goes any thought of trying to turn you over,” Armene muttered, waiting for my breaths to return to normal before he returned to his slow, methodical movements. I sat as still as I could while the prince pulled back the last of my skirts and left me—as well as the wound—fully exposed.

His eyes flickered up to mine for a moment.

“Now is not the time to be shy,” he said with surprising tenderness. He reached out one of the same hands he’d just used to mutilate another fae and took mine in it. He held my gaze and gave it a squeeze, before his brow furrowed slightly. “There’s a way I can fix this. I can make you live, but I’ll not do it without your permission.”

“How—”

Armene’s tongue darted out between his lips. “I think you know the answer to that.”

And I did.

The memory of Nyx healing my cut hand at Midsommar came to mind, of his tongue lapping at the wound he’d created until the skin knit itself back together. Caldamir had healed me too, but his method wasn’t the one that the memory of nearly made me pass out again, this time, from the surge of heat that accompanied the realization of what Armene was suggesting.

“No, no,” I muttered, even as my speech grew more faint with each word. “You can’t.”

“So, you’d rather I let you bleed out?”

Armene had already started unraveling the fabric of his hood, laying the stained gauze aside as he reached for the laces of his shirt beneath.

My head swam again. “I—I—” It was impossible to think, not just because of the blood pooling beneath me, but because of how with each ticking second the gorgeous, murderous fae was moving closer and closer to the space between my spread legs. “It’s too intimate.”

Armene’s eyebrow arched up at that. He stopped moving, his arms already hooked between each one of my bent knees.

“So, you’d rather die than let me between your legs?”

“It’s not that,” I said, gasping a little as another throbbing pain shot through me. “It’ll take too long now. It’s just, it’s too much blood.”

“Please, Delph,” he said, a sly smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “I’m not afraid of a little blood. And if it’s going to take me a while … well then … it’s a good thing I have the stamina.”

I considered, for a moment, allowing myself to bleed out on the floor. It was only natural to feel embarrassed of the situation I found myself in, but I was more than that. I was ashamed—less ashamed of the fact that a fae prince was inches from my sex, offering to lick my wounds to heal them, but more from the fact that blood wasn’t the only bodily fluid rushing toward the place that prince lay awaiting instruction.

I should have been focused on the single task of staying alive, but all I could think of was how it would feel if Armene didn’t stop when the bleeding did.

“Come on, Delph,” Armene said. “Pretty soon this isn’t going to be an option anymore.”

“Oh, fuck me,” I snapped, too overwhelmed with another burst of pain to care how my words sounded. I threw back my head with a grunt, my face twisting up as I fought back the next wave of pain that tried to tug me into unconsciousness. “Just do it, Armene. Do it now.”

“And I thought I’d never hear you beg.”

And with that, Armene, Prince of Sands, dove his face between my thighs.