A Veil of Truth and Trickery by Analeigh Ford

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It wasn’tlong before my gasps of pain had turned to sighs of pleasure.

Armene hadn’t lied when he said he wasn’t afraid of blood. He was deft with his tongue, so skilled that it wasn’t only the magical properties of his fae saliva that dulled the agony. My head rushed with sensation—a mixture of adrenaline, fading pain, and near overwhelming desire.

He worked the blade from my muscle and skin, inch by excruciating inch, until at long last he pulled the final length of it free. The feeling of him removing it from my body came with a near orgasmic release—followed almost immediately by an actual one.

For Armene didn’t stop when he finished healing my wound. No. He’d only begun.

By the time the prince resurfaced from my skirts to pour the remains of his water skin over his face and chest, it wasn’t pain I was panting from. I reached to grab him by the collar, to pull him to me. He obliged, allowing himself to be dragged, drenched and dripping, on top of me until our faces were mere inches from one another.

“I don’t want you to stop,” I whispered at him, still breathless and shaking. “I want you to have me. All of me.”

Armene stopped just before we kissed, our lips hovering so close together that I could feel the faintest whisper of them on mine.

“There’s nothing in this world or the next that I want more,” he growled back, voice husky. “But I can’t give that to you. Not tonight.”

I let go of Armene and he fell back onto the dusty floor beside me.

“Why not?”

I found myself shrinking back, arms moving to cross over my chest. I knew I was foolish to feel insecure, that it was this same creature that’d just spent the better part of the night first healing and then worshipping my body, but I still felt the weight of his rejection all too keenly.

Armene reached out to cup the side of my face with one of his hands.

He was a gorgeous creature, sprawled out before me with his full lips and dark olive skin. His hair had been swept back at some point into a long tail that dangled now over one shoulder, though some loose strands remained plastered by sweat to the sides of his face.

“Well first, because there’s a limit to what I’ll do while the enemy looks on,” he said, one thumb running along the line of my cheekbone.

Color surged in my cheeks as I glanced over his shoulder at the fae still pinned to the wall behind him. I’d entirely forgotten about the scout. Already, his own wounds had healed to the point he no longer bled. He just stared at us with an unfettered hatred, the thoughts turning over in his mind surely not the kind that would allow him to forget either me or Armene for a second.

Let alone what he’d witnessed us do while he looked on in agony.

“And second, because my conscience won’t allow it.”

His hand dropped down to his lap, where it remained, the void tangible where he’d touched me only moments before.

“Lovemaking in my court is a sacred bond,” he said, the words coming out strained as he formed them, as if he was trying hard not to offend me. “It wouldn’t be right for me to take you into my bed knowing the future I’ve condemned you to.”

It wasn’t until he looked away and his hands curled up at his side, that I realized I’d read him wrong.

His hands didn’t simply curl up, they’d turned white. His breaths were shallow and measured, as if he was carefully timing each one. More telling, still, was the way he tilted his body away from mine, one leg coming up to cross over the other in an attempt to hide the throbbing need between them.

He wasn’t trying not to offend me.

He was trying to restrain himself.

Across the cave, the scout made his first sound in hours. Armene ignored him, but still started to get to his feet, the spell of our night spent together broken as his hand reached for the blade he’d only recently removed from my thigh. His fingers fumbled for a moment to reattach it in its holster at my side before he reached for the torch to once again light it.

“Now we really should be going. If you can walk, all things considered …” he said, with one last hint of a wicked smile flashed in my direction, “Caldamir and the others are probably wandering the canyons looking for our remains. We shouldn’t keep them waiting any longer.”

His hand had not so much as grazed the torch, however, before the scout made another desperately strangled sound and this time we both turned to face him. Only for it not to be his face peering back.

It was something else.

Something huge emerging from the depths of the cavern.

And that something lashed out and struck Armene before he could so much as reach for a weapon.

He flew back, head cracking against the wall before he crumpled to the ground in a heap. Still, it wasn’t this sight that made my blood turn to ice. It was the way he lay still, unmoving afterwards, without so much as a breath to make his shoulders rise and fall.

I didn’t have time to reach for him, not when the creature that had attacked him was moving close enough for me to finally see what it was. A fiend. Not a bat, as great and terrible as those creatures outside the cave were in the blinding moment they attacked. No. This was a great fiend.

Just what I’d been warned of.

As soon as I knew it, as soon as I saw the great armored flanks of its sides, the long whip-like tail ending in a wicked spur and the eyes that gleamed with intelligence, it struck again. This time, however, it aimed for the helpless fae now thrashing against the wall he was pinned to.

Until Tallulah and Armene had told me otherwise, I’d always been under the impression that fae were immortal, that their ability to heal made them essentially impervious to attack. Even when I witness Armene snap the fae’s neck earlier, the true weight of what I’d witnessed hadn’t dawned on me.

But then here, this time, I saw the light leave the scout’s eyes—and it shattered me.

I’d never seen a human die before, but somehow, I didn’t think it would amount to this. This wasn’t the cutting short of a life. This was the ending of an eternity.

It was more like watching a star die, the light in his eyes burning so fiercely for that final moment as the huge piercing end of the fiend’s tail sliced straight through his body as if it were nothing more than smoke that I thought I might be blinded by it. I saw something in there, an anguish so cutting I felt it in my own soul. It didn’t matter that this fae had been all too eager to murder me only hours before, I felt his death as if it was my own.

Just as quickly as that light sparked in his eyes, it turned black. The color in his body drained as every inch of him went limp. He collapsed onto the tail of the fiend, still stuck through as if on a pike.

It wasn’t until only his body remained that I felt fear for my own.

In one smooth motion, the fiend ripped the fae off the sword and flung the scout’s body out of the mouth of the cave like he was nothing more than an insignificant rag doll. He disappeared into the darkness as the fiend rose up to size me up next. Here, in the dim light of the cave, I was just barely able to make out the actual creature that would make me meet my end.

The closest thing I’d seen to it was from drawings in the books at Lord Otto’s estate, long before he betrayed me to the fae—however unwittingly. It was scorpion-like, with huge, segmented parts of its body leading to an immense curled tail. I followed the line of its body, half-clinging to the back wall of the cave, until I saw where straw and bones were littered at the many feet clicking against the stone.

It had been hiding there all along, camouflaged into the stone until it saw its chance to strike. We were fools not to see it before. We were too preoccupied with our own fight to see the true one right in front of us. Until, of course, it was too late.

Though this was a beast, the look in its eyes was far from dumb. It regarded me in the moment before it struck again, finding me—rightly—an unworthy opponent.

The fiend wound back its tail like a great, deadly snake, and then struck. The blow landed squarely against my ribs, but it didn’t pierce through me as it did the scout. It flung me backward, a sharp pain erupting across my quickly bruising body.

I hit the wall with enough force to knock the breath out of me, landing in a heap on top of Armene. The fiend let out a howl and coiled back, drawing its body another segment up onto the wall. It drew its sharp tail back to examine it, surprise flickering across the uncannily human features of its face.

Beneath me, Armene remained so still that I daren’t look closer to see if he, like the scout, had already died. Besides, I didn’t dare look away from the fiend.

Not when it was already coiling back to strike again.

This time I met it standing, one hand reaching toward the knife that I realized had blocked the first blow—a knife that had now nearly killed me and saved me again in the span of a few hours—but I was too slow to draw it from its sheath. I would’ve, should’ve been killed by the fiend’s next blow, but the tail struck lower this time, aiming for the wide target that was my ruined skirts—an object the creature, as intelligent as it appeared, seemed unfamiliar with.

The blade of its tail sliced through the fabric, tearing through easily until it reached the armored trunk of its appendage, where it snagged and grew tangled. The fiend let out a second confused, frustrated roar, and made the unfortunate decision to try and drag its tail back to its side—taking me with it.

It was all I could do to protect my skull from the sharp rocks on the floor and walls of the cave as the creature whipped me back and forth. Eventually, it did manage to tear its tail from my skirts, but by then the screeches issuing from its throat were far more than frustrated.

There was rage in its eyes.

The next time it struck, it didn’t pierce my side. Its tail wrapped around my torso, drew me the rest of the way back up to my feet, and started to squeeze. The air rushed out of my body without my bidding, my lungs too compressed to draw in more. It crushed and crushed until I felt the blood start to pool in my face and the strain on my ribs great enough to crack bone.

My head swam, my heart raced, my pulse pounded so fiercely that I was sure the blood vessels in my temples were going to explode.

But then it stopped. The great thing loosened its hold just a bit and pulled me closer to it, drawing me near enough that I could feel the prickle of the short hairs growing from between the plates of its armor. Plates that, upon closer inspection, seemed to almost breathe.

“It can’t be …” it said, speaking for the first time with sudden disgust. The tail that had only moments before attempted to first stab and then crush me, loosened so quickly that I fell gasping and scraping to the cavern floor. “You don’t look like fae.”

My breath rushed back into me so quickly that it left me spluttering, barely able to keep track of the creature circling back a bit to give me my own once-over out of the corner of my eye.

The fact that it could speak didn’t surprise me. At this point, I would’ve been more surprised if it couldn’t. But the way it looked at me, the way it paced the short length of its own cavern snorting and hissing … that surprised me.

It stopped suddenly, glaring at me as those little holes on its body once again pulsated. It was breathing, I realized. Taking in the scent of me.

The scent it found made the great creature’s head lower as it examined me, differently, this time.

“Why, if you aren’t fae, do you still reek of one?”

It took me a moment to realize the creature was actually waiting for an answer. It took a moment more for my voice, hoarse and spluttering, to be found.

“I—I’ve been traveling with them for days.”

“No.” It pulled back the front of its jaw to expose two long, pincer-like teeth in the front of its mouth. “You don’t reek of them.”

Its tail pointed at Armene, still crumpled on the floor.

“You reek of the real fae.”

I sat in dumbfounded silence until the creature, with another frustrated growl, bared its pincers a second time.

“Are they back then? Are you their herald?”

“I really don’t know—”

The fiend silenced me with another roar, its tail pulling back to point at Armene on the floor. “I knew I smelled royal blood on him. I’d heard rumors the princes were gathering.”

“Rumors?”

“Don’t play dumb with me,” the creature hissed, its voice giving way to angry splutters punctuated with more clicking of its pincers. “I know what you are. I know what you’re trying to do.”

This time, when the fiend reared back, the determination on its face was far more terrifying than its rage.

“Starlight Fae or not … it can’t be allowed.”

It didn’t reach for me, however. It reached for Armene, still splayed out on the floor.

That was its mistake.

It wasn’t a hidden blade stuffed inside Armene’s garments that saved him. It was, instead, the outstretched hand of Waylan. The demon appeared calmly, as if stepping effortlessly between two pages of a book, and caught the fiend’s massive tail between two fingers.

The pointed end glinted inches away from Waylan’s brow.

“Waylan!” I gasped out his name. “Where have you been all this time?”

“Waiting until the prince needed me, of course,” Waylan replied, keeping his gaze fixed forward. He examined the appendage clamped between his fingers coolly, turning it over in his hand as the fiend’s eyes grew wide. Its attempts to draw it back were unsuccessful. The creature slipped from the wall as its many legs scrabbled against the floor. It moved with increasing urgency even as Waylan continued to look disinterested.

“What is this?” the fiend cried, its body struggling not to slip out from beneath it just as I struggled to keep from being impaled by one of the massive and abundant legs that kept stabbing into the cave floor dangerously close to me.

“This,” Waylan said, his voice as emotionless as the rest of him, “is what happens when you attempt harm on the Prince of Sands.”

With that, Wayland closed the two fingers that held the trunk of the fiend’s tail, crushing it as easily as if it were one of Nyx’s gnats.

The scream that issued from the creature’s mouth was ear-splitting. Blood spurted from the crushed and mangled tail, the scent of it foul as it filled the cave. It hadn’t hit the ground before Waylan appeared at the monster’s side, once again moving with speed that its body—and mind—couldn’t register.

He stood beneath the creature, reached up with the same indifference with which he’d crushed its tail, and plucked the creature’s heart from inside its armored torso.

By the time the rest of the dying fiend had collapsed, Waylan was kneeling over Armene’s body, taking it up in his arms with a gentleness that made my head spin—given the violence of a moment before.

“Such a silly boy,” Waylan said, shaking his head as he lifted Armene’s limp form from the ground.

The fiend writhed and twisted against the opposite wall, and it was all I could do to crawl away before it crushed me in the process of expiring.

“Is he …”

“Alive, of course,” Waylan said, looking at me for the first time. “As unfortunate as that is for me.”

I blinked up at him in surprise, but he offered nothing in the way of explanation.

“I’ll be back for you,” Waylan said. “So, unless you’d like to be picked apart by another one of these … things … I suggest you stay put.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but he was already gone.

I was left alone with the dead fiend.

Or I thought it was dead, right up until it spoke once more. Its voice was strained, barely recognizable as words. Each syllable took effort, drained another drop of the remaining lifeblood of its body.

“The high king can’t be allowed to return. You must stop them. Kill them, if you have to.”

A dark shadow settled over me. Stay alive …  that was a task I could do.

But kill a fae? Once, not so long ago, I wouldn’t have blinked twice at the thought.

But now …

“I can’t. I might have fae blood in me, but I’m only human still. At least, in every way that matters.”

Every way but one.

“Even a human can kill a fae. They just need the right tools. As you’ve seen, small one, even the immortals have their weaknesses.”

With immense effort, a great shudder wracked its body. The end of the shriveled, broken tail snaked closer to me, releasing the pointed spur with a soft click to the ground. I reached for it hesitantly, unsure whether or not to touch it.

“Take it as a gift from all the creatures of this world,” the fiend hissed. “On this side and the next.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell it that no blade would make me strong or skilled enough to kill a fae the way Armene had, the way it had. Fiend or not, I didn’t want to let it know its dying gift was all but useless in my hands.

The fiend wasn’t finished, however. Its voice issued a final, spitting warning.

“Unless you wish to see the end of your kind, you won’t let the princes succeed.”

“What?” I scooted closer to the fiend, as close as I could without muddling the foul dark blood. “What do you mean by that? The end of my kind?”

Anything else the fiend might have said was ended when Waylan reappeared, this time, right in the middle of the creature. More blood and entrails spurted from the fiend’s carcass as the demon looked down in disgust, his nose wrinkling up as he reached for a handkerchief to dab at the splatters that had appeared on his jacket.

“What a waste of a good suit,” he muttered, before suddenly looking at me with a sharpness that made me shrink back. “Did it say anything to you before it died?”

I glanced back at the crumpled form of the beast, one hand tentatively reaching toward the form of the tail-blade hidden beneath my tattered gown. I’d grabbed it the moment Waylan appeared, when he was too preoccupied with the blood to pay attention to the human sliding something up beneath her bodice. I forced my hand to still, to drop back down to my side before I revealed my secret.

I wasn’t sure what prompted me to take it.

Even less sure what prompted me to lie.

“No,” I said, the back of my throat feeling thick with the feel of it. “It didn’t.”