A Veil of Truth and Trickery by Analeigh Ford

Chapter Thirty-One

When I closed my eyes,I could still feel Tethys.

I could feel his rough hands where I didn’t let him touch me.

I could taste his saltiness in the kiss I didn’t steal.

I could hear the gravel and honey of the words I didn’t let him speak.

Each of these things made the anger boil inside me again. I was a fool to look for allies in the princes, even for a second. Caldamir’s opinion was as unchanging as ever, much like the stones of his court. Nyx was desperate to prevent more of the destruction of his forest. Armene felt powerless, the magic stripped from him leaving him naked and ashamed in his own eyes.

And then there was Tethys—the prince who had the audacity to tell me to my face that nothing we’d endured together actually meant anything to him.

Now that the end drew so near, now that the new moon already peered down at me from its perch in the daylight sky, I shouldn’t have felt as devastated as I did.

Try as I might not to let Tethys’ words get to me, each hour that passed before Caldamir’s dinner seemed to drag out in increasing agony. I tried more than once to peer into a dark cup of wine, a bowl of water, a bath of milk and try to summon the fae that had promised to take me away from here in mere hours … but I received nothing more than a lungful of liquid in response.

In the end, I had the same choice to make that I’d been making all along.

Trust in the fae.

Trust in the fae that had promised to murder me, or trust in the fae who’d promised to rescue me. It wasn’t a hard choice in the end, because it wasn’t really a choice at all.

I didn’t know what Caldamir had planned for me at the dinner. I didn’t care. I just had to make it to the end of it, until the new moon set beneath the horizon of Avarath, and I was to be taken away from here.

Unless, of course, Tethys was right.

My attempted kidnapping had affected Tallulah in two very particular ways. She’d fallen into a silence stonier than before, if that was even possible. From the moment she’d practically dragged me—entirely unnecessarily—into a new set of rooms, she’d set her jaw and refused to say a single word to me. That, and between the many series of baths I was subjected to, by the time I’d been corseted up into a traditional Mountain Court gown, she’d gotten all too familiar with each and every nook and cranny of me.

It was these two things that I blamed for my particular edginess when Caldamir finally came to collect me.

It certainly had nothing to do with the way he looked in his royal regalia—a tailored jacket with a high neck that looked like it had been carved from the same stone crown that encircled his forehead, sitting just above his brow. It was all hard lines and sharp edges, accentuating the tallest of the fae princes so that he looked like a stone pillar himself.

My foul mood had even less to do with the way he looked at me.

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen me since the fae blood in me had settled, but Tallulah in her angry silence must have worked some kind of further magic. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I still saw nothing that compared to the full blooded fae.

But Caldamir stood in the doorway, staring at me seemingly incapable of speech. His jaw, usually set with the same anger that’d been radiating off his guard for the last day, had gone slack, softening the features that otherwise might have looked lifelessly chiseled by a sculptor.

His stare wasn’t what made me purple with rage, however. It was my own feelings, the same betraying ones that had risen up in me when he first dragged me into Avarath, that made me spit my next words with venom. I’d let myself get carried away with Tethys, with Nyx, with Armene. I couldn’t let that happen again.

Not when I was so close now to making it back to Alderia.

Still, I may have grown a little too bold in the hours leading up to dinner.

“Do you always look at your dinner like you want to fuck it, or is that something you’ve specially reserved for me?”

Caldamir balked in the most satisfying way, but it didn’t last long. Tallulah was still gaping at the both of us, one hand hovering near her sword as if she wasn’t sure whether or not she should run me through with it when he finally responded.

“Dinner? Do you really think we’re going to eat you?”

“I don’t know what the fae do with their sacrifices,” I spat back. “I don’t know anything about the fae. I’ve been cooped up in here, without answers, ever since I arrived.”

Something sparkled in Caldamir’s eye that was usually reserved for Tethys.

“No, Delph, I’m not going to eat you, not after a greeting like that. Not unless you beg me to. Though …” Here his eyes became hooded, his chin lifting up as he peered down at me from above, “I do like the thought of what it’d be like to see you on your knees.”

It was my turn to be speechless. In the open-mouthed silence that followed, with only Tallulah’s choking noises to fill the space between us, Caldamir grabbed me roughly by the arm and pulled me straight to his side.

“Now, unless you have more outrageous claims to make, we’d best be off. Better not to keep fae waiting. I have no doubt that if any of them decided to make a dinner of you, it’d be far less pleasurable than what I have in mind.”

* * *

Caldamir’s handdidn’t leave my upper arm until he’d practically thrown me into the seat at his side in the great hall. There was no formal introduction of the fae prince, nor one for me either.

Not that it was needed.

Not when Caldamir’s advisor, Navi, the same fae who’d asked for permission to poke and prod at me like some kind of science experiment when I first woke up here, took that upon himself.

“Ah yes,” he said, standing the moment Caldamir had settled down beside me. “Here we are, our guest of honor.”

He lifted up a cup that shook in his hand as if it’d already been filled several times already and called for a toast. “For the sacrifice that will return Avarath to her former glory. Let us all hope it’s worth it.”

The silence that fell for a moment was as telling as any words in response. The fae of Caldamir’s court drank to his toast, though some less enthusiastically than others.

Caldamir grabbed a jug of wine and filled first his own cup to the brim, and then with only a moment’s hesitation, did the same to mine. “I have a feeling we’re both going to need this.”

Unlike Nyx’s table in the Woodland Court, Caldamir’s head table was round. It was scattered with faces I recognized, advisors and princes alike, with one noticeable absence.

I scanned the length of the two long tables that ran along either wall leading up the great hall, and though every face I searched look back at me, I saw no sight of the one I sought out. Armene was still nowhere to be seen.

Perhaps even more noticeable, however, was how neither Tethys nor Nyx were seated beside me this time. That honor had been reserved for Navi who—from the way his hand kept trying to brush mine whenever he reached for his quickly dwindling cup of wine—had yet to give up on the idea of trying to get his hands on me.

Caldamir’s arrival announced the start of dinner, with fae servants carrying out tray after tray of dishes they promptly began to serve. I instinctively tucked my hands under the sides of my thighs, ignoring the intoxicating scent of the food as I had at the last fae feast I’d attended. My head swiveled back and forth in search of the servant I was sure was already headed my way with some other variety of bland human food that had someone been preserved long enough not to poison me.

One of the female advisors, the same one who was complaining that I didn’t have horns the first time she spotted me, leaned forward across the table until she caught my eye. “You know, it’s rude not to eat at a fae’s table.”

She spoke loud enough that more eyes turned our way. Beside me, Caldamir stiffened a little, but I answered for myself before he could try to do it for me.

“Humans can’t eat the food of the fae.”

She let out a laugh that made me shrink back a little in my seat.

“What do you think you’ve been eating the last two days?” she asked, sitting back in her own seat with a smirk on her face. “Stop acting so provincial. You’re embarrassing yourself. You’re fae now, might as well start acting like it.”

My eyes slid down to the gilded plate in front of me, at the food that smelled bewitching enough to cast a spell without so much as tasting it. I supposed she was right. I hadn’t paid much attention to the change since I’d awoken in Caldamir’s court.

Instead of reaching for my fork, however, I reached for the glass of wine Caldamir had poured me earlier. He’d been right. I was going to need it.

“Lilliope, no need to torture the girl.”

I wished it was Caldamir’s voice that chided her, but instead, it was Navi at my other side.

“I’m just saying, why waste empathy on a creature that’s basically already dead?”

“Careful now …” the advisor said, hand tightening a bit on his cup. “Caldamir hasn’t set an official date. For all we know, she could be a guest here a while yet.”

Lilliope eyed the advisor’s shaking hand a little too closely as he re-poured his glass before lifting her own to her puckered lips. “Whatever you say, Navi. We all know you’re just not looking forward to picking up the sword again. You always did say the human realm didn’t agree with you.”

The walls of the castle for a moment, seemed to be crashing down around me.

“Sorry,” I said, leaning forward. “What are you talking about?”

“The Great Enslavement, of course,” Lilliope said, batting her eyelashes at me in false surprise when she saw the way my face paled. “Or hasn’t anyone told you?”

“Lilliope …” Caldamir’s voice carried a warning. It was a warning that Lilliope immediately heeded, but Navi, at my other side, was far too drunk to.

“Once the king’s great deal is fulfilled, we won’t need him anymore,” he said, patting my arm. “It shouldn’t take long to take over the human kingdom, and then the high king can be put to rest for good this time—glamour intact.”

I couldn’t tell if I was going to vomit or faint.

“Such a shame about the humans though,” he continued. “I’d always hoped to study them in their natural habitat. That’ll be quite difficult to do afterwards.”

“That’s enough, Navi,” Caldamir growled at my side. He fixed the advisor with a look that even in his drunken state, he managed to understand enough to fall back into his chair, lips sealed this time in terrified silence.

I whirled on the prince.

“What is he talking about?”

Caldamir kept his face pointed stiffly forward, refusing to look at me as he lifted his wine glass to his lips. “It’s nothing for you to be concerned about.”

“It sure as hell sounds like I should be concerned about it,” I hissed back. “The GreatEnslavement? Taking up the sword? What’s really going on?”

“Now is not the time,” Caldamir said, carefully.

“Now is the only time,” I shot back. “Tell me now.”

“Or what?” Caldamir was finally looking at me. “Tell you now, or you’ll do what?”

I felt my hand twitch toward the fiend dagger concealed beneath my bodice.

Though she was the one to stir the unrest to begin with, Lilliope suddenly shifted uncomfortably in her chair. It must have been something about the anger in Caldamir’s eyes, or maybe the murder in mine, but she suddenly leaned forward and loudly gave an excited squeal.

“I, for one,” she said, “can’t stop thinking about the glamour. Oh, how good it will be to feel fae again.”

Her interruption, however planted, had its desired result.

Caldamir’s chest rose with the breath he’d been holding and I moved my hand back to the table, away from my knife.

Titters broke out all around us, with conversations quickly turning to nearly breathless recounts of what each fae would do once magic was once again at their fingertips. Even Tethys was among those who couldn’t help from drumming his fingertips excitedly across the curve of his cup, his eyes taking on that bright, excited look that had alit on so many of the other faces around him.

In fact, the only fae at the table who didn’t look drunk at the thought of magic’s return was Caldamir.

“I expected you to be more excited than most,” I said, finally picking up my fork to aggressively stab it into the closest thing on my plate. I still couldn’t bring myself to eat it. The scent of it had quickly turned from intoxicating to rancid. “I thought you were the one who wanted magic back more than the rest of them.”

Caldamir kept looking ahead. “Excited wouldn’t be the word I’d use for it,” he said, after a moment. He too scanned his subjects and peers, a strange look on his face—something closer to disgust than anything else. “I’ll have magic back. But not for the petty reasons the rest of them would.”

“What reason then?” I asked. I leaned closer to him in his throne-like seat beside mine, my voice growing bolder from the single sip of wine. “What could possibly be so important that you’d be willing to—what is it—enslave the whole human race?”

“Only Alderia,” he shot back, before stopping to mull over the bad taste in his mouth. “My reasons—”

I never did hear Caldamir’s excuse.

The doors at the end of the hall burst open and a figure strode in, a familiar dark cloak streaming over his shoulders. I didn’t have to see the symbol embroidered across the back to know what it was—or who it was that wore it.

It was the scout, the only remaining one of the three that had escaped the canyons alive.

And he bore, in each of his hands, the heads of his two slaughtered companions.

Guards streamed in after him, catching up to him only when he’d already reached the middle of the hall. They caught him with rough hands, dragging him back so he stumbled as he struggled to shake their grip from his shoulders.

Not before his voice rose up into the rafters.

“Prince Caldamir!” his voice boomed out, catching in the high vaulted ceilings so that it echoed with dangerous intensity. “I’ve come to claim retribution. I demand to see the fae responsible for committing the highest of fae crimes. I demand to see Prince Armene.”

He held the heads up for all to see before letting them drop with two sickening thuds to the ground. Feet lifted up with soft shrieks as they rolled close to the fae seated closest to him.

“Silence!”

I thought the scout’s voice sounded dangerous, but it was nothing compared to the sound of Caldamir’s voice when he stood.

“There will be no trial for the prince. He did what was necessary to secure our freedom—the freedom of all of Avarath.”

Caldamir looked down at me then, chest heaving.

“As we will all do.”

The entire court looked on in breathless silence. Faces paled. Hands clenched at dinner knives. Glasses of wine stood untouched.

Caldamir nodded once to a guard at the back of the hall, and suddenly more guards filed in and began to line the outer corners of the room. The Mountain prince kept looking forward, but his hand clamped onto my shoulder.

“A new era is dawning in Avarath,” he continued, head lifting once more to face his court. “The greater courts have deserted us. We can no longer live as if still bound by their rules. We have no jury. No judge. No executioner. We only have ourselves.”

Behind us, the late afternoon sun illuminated him in a golden orange glow.

Soon the new moon would be setting with it, but maybe not soon enough. The moment I’d dreaded had arrived.

“We’ve watched as our world drew to the brink of destruction too long already. Delphine, the last of the Starlight Fae, will die tonight—for all of us. For the glamour. For Avarath.”

Despite Caldamir’s impassioned words, it wasn’t met with unanimous enthusiasm.

In fact, the moment his words finished settling over his court, the entire hall around us erupted into violence. Tables turned over. Swords flashed. Bows appeared from where they’d been hidden under skirts.

The guard made a hard wall between the head table and the rest of the hall, but still that didn’t stop an arrow whizzing dangerously past the side of my head. It seemed I had more allies than I imagined, not that it mattered. Those allies were still the kind willing to see me dead so long as it wasn’t in the name of their old king’s resurrection.

“I had a feeling this would happen,” Caldamir said, turning to Tallulah. “Fetch Armene. I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this tonight, but I’ve been left with no choice. We’re not waiting any longer, and I need every prince of Avarath standing together in this.”

Only then did he pause to look at me.

“I’m not your friend, Delphine.”

Any hope that Caldamir’s resolve might fade disappeared with his final words before he dragged me, surrounded by guards pouring in at all sides, to my feet and toward the door at the back.

“I’m your enemy. I think it’s time both of us remembered that.”