A Veil of Truth and Trickery by Analeigh Ford

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I didn’t exactly makeit out of my encounter with the fiend unscathed.

It wasn’t until Waylan had scooped me up into his arms and the adrenaline was wearing off that I realized it. To him, I was as light as a feather—but to me, I was as heavy as the stones that made the canyons themselves.

Though Armene had healed my wound, my body had still lost a lot of blood before being whipped around like a rag doll—to say nothing of the toll Avarath itself had been taking on my body over the days since I arrived. It turned out that it would take more than a good night’s rest for me to recover.

More than a couple.

By the time Waylan had pulled me through the veil alongside him, I was barely conscious of the shift at all.

All I saw was dark stone. Silk sheets. Concerned faces shadowed in the doorway.

The last thing I saw before my eyelids were dragged closed with this immense, invisible weight, was the form of a body tucked beneath the sheets in the bed beside me.

Armene.

He still didn’t move, and despite Waylan’s promises that he was alive, it was fear for him that consumed me as I fell into a deep sleep. It was a sleep plagued with nightmares of burning forests, ice-cold pools, and canyon walls so dry that simply breathing beside them dragged knives down my throat.

Between the fits of nightmares, I was vaguely aware of brief moments of waking. I saw faces hovering over me, some familiar, some strange—more strange than familiar as the nights wore on. The strange faces blurred together into these nightmares, joined the fae scouts and the humans who’d wanted me dead for the blood that ran through my veins. They sneered down at me with hatred. With pity.

By the end of it, I wasn’t sure which was worse.

Between all the dreams was the voice of the fae in the pool. The voice in the puddle, in the darkness. It was always faceless. Always watching. Always saying the same thing. Telling me to stay alive.

As if I had any say in the matter.

Those dreams should have been the most exhausting, but they were nothing compared to the dreams I had of Armene.

We’d survived our night in the caves, but we’d carried something with us when we left, Armene more than me. Though my body was the one that lay broken long after his appeared standing at my bedside, he was the one who was the most changed.

He was the one, that even in my dreams, could no longer bear to look at me.

The prince of the Sand Court in my dreams was not the prince that saved me in that cave. This prince was broken. This prince was afraid. This prince was ashamed.

I didn’t understand it.

But it was only a dream.

Only a dream … unless it wasn’t.

Finally waking was like emerging from the dark water of the pool that first time. The film of sleep remained over my head, the sheets like water trying to drag me back down as I fought to sit up in bed. Sleep pulled at my eyelids, hot and sticky, even as my body shivered in a cold sweat.

I would’ve let it drag me back down if it weren’t for the sight of the bed beside mine. In all my half-waking states before, the shape of Armene’s body had been there.

Now, it was empty.

Something about the pristine way the sheets had been pulled up and tucked neatly underneath the down mattress made my stomach turn. In my mind, it could only mean one thing.

I struggled to swing my legs over the edge of the bed, pausing to pull the long rope of my hair away from where it clung to my shoulder. My hair had been plaited at some point, but it now stuck in curled tendrils to the back of my neck. My bare skin glistened in the flickering light of a fire beneath an enormous mantle.

Bare skin.

Someone had undressed me.

The realization shocked any lingering sleep from my body. Ice ran down my rigid spine as the color—or what remained of it—drained from my skin. I started frantically searching the blankets piled up around me with an ever-increasing sensation of dread.

“Looking for this?”

Shame burned hot on my skin as Waylan, appearing as only he could from thin air, procured the curved end of the fiend’s tail from his pocket.

The demon stared unblinkingly down at me over the length of his long, pencil-thin nose.

I wet my cracked lips, wondering if he could hear the way my pulse had begun to race unchecked beneath my skin. “I … I found it in the cave when you were gone.”

A solitary eyebrow arched up Waylan’s forehead. “Is that so?”

I started to nod, but one look up at the demon, and I knew any deceit was useless. My shoulders slumped as I tugged the soaked sheets back up to cover my shivering shoulders. It was cold despite the fire and the late summer weather. Too cold.

And I was too tired for any more lies.

“No,” I said, staring straight ahead at the way the oranges and yellows of the fire fought for oxygen in the grate. “The fiend gave it to me.”

I expected Waylan to be angry with me. He had every right to be. He’d saved me, and in return, I’d lied to him.

That was why what he said next shocked me.

“I don’t blame you for lying to me. This is a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands.”

Waylan turned the blade-like appendage over in his hands, then made a short, tutting sound with his mouth when the dull end of it still caught his finger. It left the tiniest prick, not enough to draw blood, but enough to make him screw up his face and hold it out at arm’s length.

“Much too easy to hurt yourself with. That would have sliced off the end of your finger.”

“But—”

“We’ll just have to do something about that.”

Before the end of my protestation could fall from my lips, Waylan had set the blade back down on the end of my bed. He pulled a familiar blade—the one given to me by Tallulah—from pockets that shouldn’t be able to hold one let alone two blades, and laid it beside the fiend’s tail.

I looked on as he hovered both his hands over the knife first. The gnarled, bony fingers made strange, methodical patterns in the air above it until, like the peel of a fruit, the handle pulled back and the blade could be plucked out and tossed aside as easily as a useless piece of scrap metal.

Which in my hands, it really was.

Waylan took the peeled handle and slid it into place over the fiend’s tail. He waved his hands once more and the handle reformed and hardened across the new blade. When Waylan once again plucked it from the bed, I saw that the spike had changed shape slightly, becoming flatter and shinier so that only the most trained eye would realize it was not, in fact, the same blade I’d once been gifted.

Still, Waylan knew, and so when he handed me the knife, he instructed me to take great care with it.

I turned the new blade over in my hands, and though I was grateful for Waylan’s forgiveness, I couldn’t help but feel how pointless the gesture ultimately was.

Astute as ever, the demon cocked his head at me and asked, “What is it? Aren’t you pleased?”

“I am!” I said, hastily, though I couldn’t stop my face from falling when I turned the new blade over in my hand. “It’s just … it doesn’t change anything, does it? Even if it’s sharper than the last one, I’d still not be able to do any real harm.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he said, his voice deliberate. “You should be especially careful with this one. Not even the fae’s healing powers will work on a wound made from that fiend’s blade.”

I stared down at the new knife in my hands, and for the first time in a long time, I felt that dangerous spark of hope as I realized what he meant. This is what the fiend had tried to tell me. This was the tool that even a human could use to kill a fae.

To kill a fae.

Is that something I’d be able to do, even if the time came?

I’d never have doubted it before that night in the cave. But after seeing the light die in a fae’s eye for myself, after feeling what it meant for them, I wasn’t so sure anymore.

Still, when I glanced up at Waylan again, this time, it was with true gratitude. I’d started to wonder if I might have more allies than I thought.

It wasn’t just the Starlight Fae who didn’t want the old king awakened, even in exchange for the glamour. It was the fae of Avarath, those with no allegiance to the courts. It was the very fiends that crawled its surface.

It was the demons enslaved by their princes.

If I could keep most of them from killing me themselves the first chance they got, then maybe I would live long enough to see the new moon set. It couldn’t be too much longer now.

I should have showered Waylan with thanks, with my eternal gratitude, but instead when I looked up at him, I ended up blurting out, “How is it that you have magic still?”

It was a question that’d bothered me ever since I met the demon. The fae kept going on about how magic was gone, how its fading was closer to ending their world with each passing moment. And then there was Waylan, who dripped magic with every movement.

Waylan pursed his lips, but I was sure it was to keep from revealing a smile. “Like you, I don’t come from this realm. My magic isn’t bound by the same deals of the glamour.”

I looked over Waylan again, in his simple servant’s jacket that did nothing to conceal the magnificent power possessed beneath, and I once again wasn’t able to stop myself.

“Then … then why are you here?”

“You mean, why do I serve my prince?”

My eyes flickered over to the empty bed again, as much as I hated it, I couldn’t stop my heart from skipping a beat.

A grimace tugged down the corners of Waylan’s mouth. “Humans aren’t the only race the fae have found a way to enslave. I’ve served Armene’s family for millennia.”

“Armene … he’s alright, then?”

Waylan looked at me all-too-knowingly before he answered, this time bringing color to my cheeks for an altogether more embarrassing reason. “Of course, he is. A little shaken … but alright.”

I sat back in my bed, and for one moment, I allowed myself a small sigh of relief. “Could I see him?”

“Strange you’re so concerned with the fae’s wellbeing,” Waylan said, but something about his answer made me pause.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Armene has specifically requested to be left alone.”

“Are you saying he’s asked not to see me?” I asked, heart sinking.

Maybe the Armene I saw in my dreams wasn’t in my dreams at all. Maybe the Armene I saw was in those brief moment of waking.

Waylan looked unsure for a moment. “Armene was once a powerful fae, Delph. I don’t think he ever truly realized how much he’d lost until that night, with you. The Armene I once served never would have been knocked unconscious by a fiend—great or otherwise—to speak nothing of being kidnapped in the first place.”

The look on my face made him clear his throat. “I think he needs some time to come to terms with the inevitable now that it’s finally arrived.”

The tone of his voice made me sit up again. “What are you saying, Waylan?”

The demon stepped aside to reveal a mirror set at the far wall that I hadn’t noticed before. It was too dim to make out my reflection, so the demon waved a hand to make the heavy drapes draw back of their own accord.

I threw up a hand to shield my eyes, only to pause. Even in the stark transition between dark and light, I saw immediately what Waylan meant.

More importantly still, I knew what he meant by it.

The black marks around my eyes had vanished.

That wasn’t the only thing that had changed. I barely recognized the face that looked back at me.

Sure, it was me. I had the same dark eyes, the same stark white hair … but I’d transformed.

I was human, still.

But I was also fae.

My face had barely had the chance to begin to pale at this realization when Waylan suddenly cocked his head to the side. It took me a moment longer to realize why that was.

Footsteps. At least half a dozen pairs of them were fast approaching down the hall, headed directly toward us.

“Ah, yes, my message must have reached Caldamir,” Waylan said, with a single, curt nod. “Armene told me to notify him as soon as you woke.”

Armene. Hearing what he’d told Waylan felt like a knife to the gut.

“I should be going,” Waylan said. “Unless you’d like to meet the whole of the court in your natural state, I recommend dressing.”

He waved one hand, and a new gown appeared on the bed before he turned to go—this time, heading toward the door instead of simply disappearing.

“Wait!”

I ignored the gown and crawled forward on my hands and knees to call after him before he could leave.

“The fiend,” I said, breathless. “Would you like to know what it said to me?”

The phrase had its intended effect. Waylan paused, his back going rigid for a moment.

“It gave me a warning.”

He still didn’t move.

“It said something about awakening the king … that it would be the end of my kind. Do you have any idea what it meant by that?”

“Armene was very particular in my instructions this time,” Waylan said, carefully. “On what I can tell you.”

The footsteps outside the door had grown louder. I’d be lucky to have time to pull the gown over my head before they burst in. Waylan still didn’t turn to face me. His voice, strained, seemed to wrestle with itself as he forced the next words out of his mouth.

“Be careful of who you trust here, little one. The dangers outside these courts are nothing compared to what you’ll find within. You’ve done the easy part. You’ve survived Avarath itself. Now begins the more difficult part.”

That part he didn’t need to articulate.

We both knew what he meant.

I was alive, a miracle in and of itself. The more difficult part was, of course, staying alive.