A Veil of Truth and Trickery by Analeigh Ford

Chapter Four

The facesof the rider and her companion lingered in my mind long after they’d disappeared. I was used to disdain from strangers, threats even, but this was something else entirely. Though Ascilla made faltering attempts to try to convince me that they wouldn’t have actually used that knife on me, I don’t think she really believed that herself.

She’d seen the look on their faces too.

If it weren’t for whatever they’d seen over our shoulders… I had no doubt that I’d already be nursing far more than hurt feelings. Just as I had no doubt about what it was they saw.

I’d seen it too, after all.

Which was why I couldn’t hurry my footsteps fast enough, trying to put as much distance between myself and the estate as possible.

The sight of the village—more of a run-down collection of cottages than it was an actual village—wasn’t as relieving as it should’ve been. Not at least, for me. The rest of our party let out a collective sigh at the first glimpse of the familiar, dilapidated gates. The village walls had been built in a time when the truth-bringers had convinced much of Alderia of some kind of immanent fae attack. No fae attack came, not in the millennium since they first arrived, and eventually the truth-bringers were seen for what they were.

But not all their fears had faded so. I was living proof of that.

For Ascilla and the rest of them, they were home. They could finally put the short, far-too-eventful trek behind us.

For me, however, it was only the beginning.

The stares and sneers of the villagers upon spotting me were nothing compared to the look I got from my stepmother, Nerys, the moment she glimpsed me from the window of our family’s cottage. Her lips formed my name like a curse, prompting a flurry of movement behind her in the house. By the time she appeared in the doorway, face reddening with each passing moment, she wasn’t alone.

My stepsister, Ixora, appeared at her side, her face peering like a pale moon from the shadow over her shoulder. She was a mirror of my stepmother, her face pinched up so tight it’d be comical if it didn’t mean I’d soon find my name on the tip of the sharp tongue hidden between those pursed lips.

“Not going to lie, I don’t envy you right now,” Ascilla muttered at my side, her footsteps slowing to a shuddering halt that kicked up the dry summer dust. “Sometimes I forget why you usually stay at the estate.”

“Yeah well,” I said, hoisting up my bag higher on my shoulder. “I don’t.”

“You sure you don’t want to come along?”

I sucked the inside of my cheek, glancing back over at the retreating backs of the rest of our party headed in the opposite direction. Lyre music and raised voices carried over to us, the early throws of the Midsommar festival already well under way.

I shook my head, even as I locked eyes with the two women still glaring at me in disbelief from the doorway.

“Go on ahead without me,” I said, pushing open the gate to the small garden separating our cottage from the worn village road. “Better to face this head on.”

“You so sure about that?”

No sooner had Ascilla left my side to join Leofwin and the others than another stepped up to fill her place. A pit formed in my stomach as I recognized the voice of Draigh.

His hand snaked through my arm before I had time to whirl and face him, his fingers tightening around me until I’d have to make a show of pulling away. That hand held me in place so I was forced to watch as the expressions on Ixora and Nerys’ faces changed. I’d never seen faces go from despise to delight so quickly.

“Ah see, that’s what people are supposed to look like when you show up unexpectedly,” Draigh whispered into my ear.

Draigh’s hand made no move to let go of me, even as he twisted his own face into a friendly mask and used his free hand to wave to his mother and sister. By the time it had dropped back down to his side, the other had begun to leave a bruise on my upper arm.

I tried to jerk my arm free, but he wouldn’t budge.

Draigh’s face tilted down to look at me, and this time I had no choice but to look up into his face. His lips curled up in a cruel smile.

“What, not happy to see a hero returned home from the front?”

“I’d hardly call you a hero,” I snapped back. “You’re not even a proper soldier. For you to be a soldier, there has to be a war. How long’s it been since Alderia saw so much as a skirmish? A thousand years? Two?”

Draigh bared his teeth at me, hand tightening further. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I wasn’t given the chance to respond, however, not when Nerys and Ixora had finally reached our side.

“You weren’t supposed to be here,” Nerys hurled at me like an insult. “I would’ve liked a bit of warning next time.”

“Draigh!” Ixora took the alternate route and ignored me altogether in favor of her brother, elbowing me out of the way and into the bushes. I didn’t mind though, not when it afforded me a glimpse of the small boy lingering at the top of the steps.

While Ixora and my stepmother took turns shooting me dirty looks and fawning over Draigh, I ducked around their skirts to sweep my half-brother Sol up in as tight a hug as he’d allow me. At first, he squirmed between my arms, trying to disentangle himself until he finally realized it was a futile fight.

Once he gave in, he wrapped his arms around my waist and squeezed me back, just for a second. His round face was smeared with dirt when I finally let go enough to hold him at arm’s length, but no amount of dirt could hide the rosy glow of his full cheeks.

“At least I can tell they’re feeding you well,” I said, laughing as I reached up to try and wipe some of the smudges from his skin. He let out a feral kind of growl and this time did successfully manage to wriggle free of me.

He didn’t run away, though. He just beamed up at me for a second before remembering to screw up his face in an angry pout.

“You were gone too long this time,” he said, blinking up at me.

I let out another laugh, but this one was choked—because he wasn’t wrong.

“I have to work. You know that.”

“It isn’t fair,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. The sleeves of his shirt tugged up almost to the elbow with the motion, and for the first time, I realized just how much he’d grown. Soon, he’d no longer be a boy at all.

“Yeah, well,” I said, reaching over to tousle the dark hair he’d inherited from our father, “life isn’t fair. At least you don’t look like you were fished out of a lake too late.”

“I don’t think ‘fished out of a lake’ is exactly what the townspeople call it.”

My father’s small smile greeting me when I looked up over Sol’s head. He didn’t exactly reach for me, didn’t pull me into an embrace like I might have once wished for, but the fact that his was a face that didn’t screw up in some form of disappointment at my unexpected appearance was enough. For me, it was enough.

“At least one person here’s happy to see me.”

“I’m happy to see you!” Sol cried out, but I fixed him with a look.

“You’re just hoping I brought sweets.”

“No …” he said, hands swinging around to clasp behind his back as he shifted his weight between both feet. “Momma says I’m too old for sweets now.”

I arched an eyebrow up at him. “Too old for sweets? I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

One of my hands disappeared into my pocket, only to return a moment later with an outstretched palm of wax-wrapped candies. They’d been bartered from the cook for my own private Midsommar celebration, but they were put to much better use in Sol’s hands the moment he greedily forgot my stepmother’s words. He snatched them up before she could try to order him otherwise. He didn’t get them stuffed into his own pockets fast enough, however, and soon he and Nerys were racing around the front of the yard—she trying to steal the sugared honey drops from his hands, and he trying to eat them all before she inevitably caught him.

“He’s grown so much,” I said, shaking my head as my father and I stifled laughter. “I can’t have been gone only a year. Please tell me you’re not letting that witch turn him into another one of her minions. The last thing this village needs is another Draigh.”

Another slight smile twitched up at the corner of my father’s mouth. “I think Nerys’ first husband had more to do with that.”

“Well, he did produce that thing,” I said, nodding toward Draigh at the end of the garden path. Lavinia had finally spotted her beloved and latched onto his arm like the bloodsucking creature she was, trying to tug him toward the festival already. Even Ixora seemed a little annoyed by her presence.

It might’ve been the only thing my stepsister and I ever agreed on.

Perhaps the biggest sign that I’d been gone too long was when Sol successfully managed to evade Nerys by leaping into the branches of a tree and climbing out of reach. He dropped at least half the remaining candy in the process, but it didn’t matter. By the time my stepmother had gathered them from the ground, Sol could be heard happily munching on the rest well up out of reach in the thick branches of the tree.

“Glad to see he’s at least giving her hell.”

Nerys had paused to catch her breath down below. Her shoulders rose and fell with exaggerated motions, her usually perfect hair falling onto a face now damp with sweat. It was always like this with her. She was so put together. So perfect. Until I got involved.

Turned out I wasn’t the only one thinking the same thing.

“You know, if you’d wanted to come home for your birthday this year, you could have just said.”

My father’s words hit me like lead in the gut.

“Did I have to, though?” I asked, after a long pause. I looked up at him through my lashes, unable to stop the sigh that whistled out from between my lips. “I didn’t think I needed to ask to come home.”

“Not ask… just… sent a warning,” my father said, flinching a little at the sound of his own words. “You know how she gets.”

“Oh, I do.”

This time, he didn’t let my slight go unnoticed.

“I know you don’t like Nerys, but it’s not entirely her fault you know. She didn’t ask to have to deal with you.”

“To have to deal with me?”

I’d suddenly found myself stepping back, heart thumping. “If you really feel that way, then I don’t have to come back at all, you know.” My breaths hitched a bit, that aching pit in my stomach that had been forming all day solidifying further with each word. “After tomorrow, I could find my own way. I’d never have to darken your doorstep again.”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be a treat?”

Nerys had finally gotten close enough to overhear, and of course she was quick to agree. “But we both know there’s no getting rid of you. Curse or not, we’re stuck with you. Now don’t just stand there doing nothing. Get inside with Ixora and help with supper. Did you learn nothing in the last years of service to the lord?”

“The lord?” Sol’s voice piped up from where he’d settled into the nook of the tree. A small wax paper wrapper drifted down from the branches overhead the moment before his small face appeared between its leaves. “Lord Otto?”

I couldn’t help but grin up at him. His face had a way of doing that to people, even to me.

“Sure, what about him?” I called back.

His hand jabbed out over his shoulder toward the road. “Isn’t that his carriage?”

The smile on my face faltered.

Just as he said, a carriage had appeared at the gates leading into the village. But that wasn’t what drew villagers away from the festivities so that they spilled out into the streets to look.

It was who rode alongside him.

I knew, even before the carriage rumbled to a halt outside our own gate, that the worst had come at last.

Because Lord Otto was here, and he wasn’t alone. He’d brought the fae.