A Veil of Truth and Trickery by Analeigh Ford

Chapter Six

There wasno time for goodbyes, but in a way, I was grateful.

I wasn’t sure I’d have the strength to look Sol in the eyes and tell him where I was going. That this time, when I left, there’d be no coming back.

I expected Caldamir to grab me and whisk us away through some kind of magical spell, but instead, he just led me to his horse where he stood for a moment by the steed’s side. It took me another moment to realize why we’d paused. He’d offered out his hand, the white of his palm the brightest thing in the long-faded twilight.

I hesitated a moment too long before taking it, apparently.

Frustration creased his brows, and he suddenly dropped his hand and used them both to lift me up from the ground to place me up on the horse in one swift motion. I was startled for a second, even more so when he didn’t climb up behind me. Instead, he took the great mare’s reins and started leading her away on foot. Leading us away.

The crowd parted before us with each step, leaving a wide berth through which we passed. No one followed us. No one tried to stop us. They just looked on in silence, unmoving, as we followed the path back out of the village.

Even when I passed by the faces I recognized, not one of them so much as offered a word of remorse. Not Leofwin, who stepped to the side like a stranger. Not even Ascilla, the one friend I’d had in the entire world. It was her face that cut deeper than Sol’s. Her face the one that stayed, haunting me, in the forefront of my mind.

Because Sol didn’t understand.

Sol’s face, when I peered back at it one last time in the treetops, was just confused.

All the rest of them, friend or stranger, did understand and they still showed the same thing.

Relief.

At the end of it all, Caldamir was right. Not his honeyed lies, not his empty promise that I’d be viewed as some kind of hero.

No.

It was what he said when he’d finally stopped lying.

They were glad to be rid of me.

After all that they’d done to me, I should’ve been equally glad to be rid of them.

They’d treated me as a pariah from the moment I was born. They’d spent their whole lives waiting—no, hoping—that something like this would happen to me.

Then, at least, all their hate would be justified.

I hoped they were happy now. They, at least, had gotten what they wanted.

I had too, in a way.

But the cool night air that filled the void of the village behind us brought me none of my own relief. One day to Midsommar.

One day to my twenty-first birthday.

I’d gotten so close. So close.

I never should’ve hoped for a curse. I never would have, not if I really believed in it, not if I’d known what that truly meant. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The fae were known for kidnapping.

I was just the latest in a long line of victims.

“It’ll be better for you if you just accept it.”

Caldamir didn’t turn to look up at me when he said it, just kept walking with one hand on the mare’s reins. We’d been walking like this for some time, enough for the very last of the blue sky above the trees to fade to black. If it weren’t for the moon above our heads, waxing large and silvery white, we’d have long since been cast in blinding darkness.

“Are you able to read my mind, too?”

Caldamir glanced back at me suddenly, and it took me a moment in the darkness to realize he was trying to tell if I was serious or not.

When he looked away, he shook his head for a moment as if to clear it. “No, human. I can’t read your mind any better than you can read mine. If you want to keep your thoughts private, though, you might want to work on keeping them off your face.”

Caldamir said nothing for a long time after that. The silence of the forest was pressing. Even the frogs ceased to croak and the insects quieted their rhythmic chirps as we passed closer to the river that wound through the forests bordering the traitorous Lord Otto’s estate. Not a single creature rustled through the grass as we passed. It was as if the whole world held its breath in the fae’s presence.

I, among them.

Only Caldamir seemed content in the quiet. In fact, each moment it dragged on he seemed to grow more confident, comfortable, even.

Maybe a little too comfortable.

Each of those same silent steps was carrying me toward some terrible, unknown fate.

The night might have been dark to me, but I worked on composing my face. If I was going to survive, let alone have a chance to escape this fate, then I had to be better about hiding my thoughts. I had to find out more.

I had to find out as much as I could, starting with this ‘deal’ that had gotten me into this position in the first place.

“You keep talking about this deal like it’s not your fault,” I said, finally, ignoring how strange my voice sounded in the darkness.

“Because,” he said, “it’s not my deal. I’m just the one who’s come to collect.”

“So, you’re some kind of glorified delivery boy?”

Caldamir peeked at me, just for a second, out of the corner of his eye. “Call it what you like.”

“Then why do you care so much?” I asked. “What do you get out of this?”

“It’s better not to question the workings of the fae,” was Caldamir’s irritating excuse for an answer. “The deal is done. Best to accept that.”

Acceptance.That’s what I’d been doing all my life.

I was tired of it. After all, what good had it done me?

Kidnapped by a fae, that’s what.

This time, when Caldamir returned to his silent trek leading us forward, I cast my gaze back over my shoulder.I wondered, briefly, as I glanced back toward the shadowy road behind us, what would happen if I ran now. If it weren’t for Sol, I’d let Caldamir condemn them all now anyway—the whole village. Let them face the same fate they were all too ready to consign me to.

“There’s a bridge up ahead that will take us away from here. Don’t even think about running away now. Simply taking you won’t fulfill the details of the bargain.”

That was twice. Twice he’d claimed not to know my thoughts but had guessed them anyway.

“Besides,” he added. “I don’t have time to go off chasing you again. We’re already short enough on it already.”

“What’s the rush? If you’re in such a hurry, why travel like this? Why not just use magic?”

The road ran alongside the river still, but it was set far enough back into the trees that I could barely make out the glimmer of its dark water through the branches. In the winter, when the trees dropped their leaves and the thick undergrowth had gone barren, it would be easy to make out.

This road led toward the next village, but it was at least a half-day’s ride … if one of the riders didn’t walk alongside the horse instead of in its saddle. But it didn’t matter. We could ride for a thousand days and never reach the fae lands.

It was a fact that, given our current situation, I felt the need to remind Caldamir.

“You can’t just cross a bridge into faerie,” I said, watching the back of his head. “Otherwise humans would just be stumbling into it all the time.”

And the fae into our realm.

“Who said anything about crossing the bridge?”

He kept looking ahead, but the muscles in his neck tensed up a bit. “If you’re going to survive long on the other side, then there are some rules about magic and the fae realm that you’re going to need to learn.”

The sound of the river had started to grow louder. It wasn’t just coming from one side of the road anymore. It was distant, but the noise swelled with each step.

I couldn’t see the bridge yet, but I knew we were drawing close.

“First, always assume that danger is nearby.”

Something moved in the forest, rustling the leaves and making me squirm in my saddle. More than that—I practically leapt out of it, and might actually have, had Caldamir not suddenly moved to my side to steady me. Both our eyes scanned the forest floor until we spotted the culprit.

It was nothing more than a rat, its own figure frozen in fear as it looked back. Whatever spell Caldamir’s presence had cast on the rodent wasn’t strong enough to stop an owl from suddenly swooping down between the trees to make a silent meal of it.

“Second,” Caldamir said, his hand pulling the reins to start our trek toward where the bridge had suddenly made a moonlit appearance up ahead, “remember that nothing—and I mean nothing—is as it seems.”

Just a few more steps, and we were already at the edge of the bridge. We moved too quickly for humans, too quickly for a man and horse even when each was practically a behemoth in their own right. If it weren’t so dark, I would have noticed before.

But here, on the bridge, all I could pay attention to was the sudden thrumming sound that filled the air. It started quietly, a nudging at the back of my mind. It grew until it drowned out the very roaring of the river itself.

Caldamir stepped close to tighten the straps on his mare.

“And third …” Here he paused, his hands still gripping the tightened straps of the saddle beneath me. “Just as fae are rare here, humans are rare where we’re headed. You won’t be feared, but you will be hunted.”

“Hunted? What for?”

Caldamir turned to me then, before tightening the straps one last time.

“For your blood, of course.”

I had no chance to respond, not when that rushing sound grew to drown out his voice. My own thoughts. It grew until I wanted to scream, but I had no choice.

Not when I was fixated on him.

He took the bundle of my things wrapped up in my cloak and tossed them to the side. “You’ll have no need of that now, not where we’re going,” he said.

His hands reached to take hold of his mare’s bridle, one hand on either side of the creature’s powerful jaw. His head bent until his forehead nearly touched hers, both their eyes closed as if in some silent prayer.

It started with a breeze, a wind that whipped at the fabric of his breeches and the ends of his shirt. His hair blew away from his face, and the mare’s mane into my eyes as this wind began to tug at me too. My own hair pulled free and swirled around me in a blinding, stinging halo.

That thing that resonated within me seemed to spread until it met with the roar of the air outside me. I reached up one hand to shield my face from my own hair, but in that moment, everything suddenly stilled.

By the time my hand returned to my side, I knew what had happened.

We’d crossed.

Not from one side of the bridge to the other—but instead, from one world to the next.

The mare whinnied beneath me, but Caldamir’s hands stroked down the middle of her face until she settled back down. Then he looked up at me, that fire once again alight in his eyes.

“Welcome,” he said, “to Avarath. The land of the fae.”