A Veil of Truth and Trickery by Analeigh Ford

Chapter Eight

I staredin dumbfounded silence as the fae prince approached, the corner of his lips turning up a bit more with each step. He had a sort of softness to him up close, an almost feminine grace that only made it more impossible to look away from him, let alone form a single, coherent thought.

He held out one hand in a welcoming gesture, his palm turned upward as the other crossed his chest to rest over his heart—if fae had hearts.

“Good as always to see you, Caldamir. Better yet since you’ve brought my prize.”

My prize. His gaze turned from Caldamir to me when he said it, startlingly green eyes flickering over me, taking me in. He passed judgment on me in an instant, and something shifted within him… I just didn’t know what.

Caldamir made a deep sound in the back of his throat, drawing this fae’s eyes away from mine.

“No need for the dramatic greeting, Nyx.”

As if in agreement, the mare beneath me let out a loud snort. Caldamir and she exchanged glances ever so briefly, and I wondered what unspoken conversation passed between them. In the silence that’d fallen in the last hours of our journey, I’d already started to forget the creature could actually speak.

Between the three of us, I was probably, for all current intents and purposes, the dumbest creature here.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed the look, and for one second a hint of something like annoyance flashed across this new fae’s face, like he didn’t appreciate being left out of the joke.

“Oh, but we so rarely have guests,” Nyx said, keeping his stare on Caldamir level, even as his lip jutted out in a pout. “And even less often royal ones. Give me this, at least.”

Caldamir made another one of his grunts, but he didn’t disagree.

“Royal ones?” I asked.

Nyx’s face lit up, that smile broadening as he looked between my confused face and Caldamir’s unmoving one. He looked delighted to be on the inside of the joke this time.

“What? Did Caldamir not tell you he’s a prince as well?”

So much for being little more than a delivery boy.

My throat, already parched, somehow grew even drier. “Caldamir didn’t tell me anything.”

Nyx nodded at that, eying his friend with a small shrug. “Ah well, at least one thing in Avarath hasn’t changed. No one can say the Mountain Court doesn’t stand steady and unchanging as ever.”

This new bit of information begged the question—what kind of deal had been made that prompted a prince of the fae realm to come and collect? No fae are spotted in Alderia in decades, and the first one that is … is a prince?

“I’d be amiss if I kept you out here waiting any longer.” The fae before us made the subtlest of bows before rising up with a small flourish of his hands. “Please come, taste the delights of my court. It’s still Midsommar, is it not?”

A simple tilt of his upturned palm made the sunlight pool in its center, almost like it was filled with golden honey. Only, when he tilted his hand back, it was.

Nyx saw my eyes widen at the sight, and this time, his delight bubbled over into a musical laugh.

“Ah yes,” he said, lifting up his palm so that the thick, golden substance started to dribble down the inside of his wrist. “The glamour still lives in the Woodland Court. At least for today.”

He lifted his wrist up to his lips and licked the honey from his skin in one long, slow swath stretching from his inner arm and up to the tips of his fingers. His lips glistened, wet with the sugary substance, when he parted them again, eyes returning to mine.

I nearly melted beneath his gaze, and would have, if it weren’t for the voice of a newcomer that cut out above the silence.

“We can all stand around licking honey from your palms, or maybe not, because there are more important things to be done.”

It still took me a minute to realize where this next voice came from, because I was only just discovering that we weren’t alone—Caldamir, Nyx, Rynn, and I. More fae, several dozen of them, had spilled out through the same doorway Nyx appeared in.

They were dressed similarly to their prince, all in an array of earthy hues and textures that looked like they’d been plucked from nature itself—all shimmering, waxy greens and earth tones in thick woven cloth. Their skin had a bronzed tint, as if they’d spent just one too many days lounging in the same sunlight that had tinted their hair with shimmering gold, giving them a perpetually backlit glow.

The voice, however, came from the only fae present who didn’t look like all the rest.

His skin was more than bronzed, and his hair dark and coarse, so thick it could rival the mare’s beneath me. His eyes were lighter than either Nyx or Caldamir’s, a blue so bright they couldn’t be more different from the pools of black embedded in my own skull.

The eyes that were part of the reason I was so hated, and had yet to see on a single other actual fae.

But then, nothing about the fae was anything like what I’d been told.

Nyx’s expression didn’t waver, even as he turned back to face the only fae present who wasn’t completely enraptured by his display. “I can’t imagine anything more important than indulging in life’s pleasures. Why else would we be blessed with such long lives? Surely it’s not all meant to be suffering.”

He turned back to me briefly, eyelids fluttering shut for a moment. “No offense meant to present company, of course.”

It should have felt like a slight, but the slightest attention from this fae just made my heart skip another beat. I’d been prepared for the fae to have some kind of glamour, but Nyx … he was just too much. Even Caldamir had fallen under his spell for a moment.

A spell that he cleared away with a deep rumbling from the back of his throat at the sight of this newest fae.

“Armene is right,” Caldamir said, hands tugging on Rynn’s reins so that she started forward again, causing the other two fae to step back half a step. It also had the added benefit of shaking me from my Nyx-induced trance. “There’s not much time left. Unless you want your prize to die before the deal is fulfilled, then by all means … keep making more palm honey.”

Instead of getting angry, Nyx just cocked his head to the side. A genuine look of confusion tugged at the inner corner of his brows.

“What’s the rush? There’s plenty of time to rest before the end of the night.”

Caldamir moved a step closer to Nyx, but his hand never let go of Rynn’s reins. “The rush,” he said, “is that this human is about to collapse, but she can’t touch down until she’s cured.”

“Human?” Nyx’s eyes suddenly grew wide. “You know, I entirely forgot for a moment. But can you really blame me? You’ve got to admit, the resemblance … it’s uncanny.”

“I was about to say the same thing.” The newcomer, Armene, was watching me a little too carefully as he spoke. He moved closer, his footsteps carrying him in a slow semi-circle as he took me in. “A little too uncanny, if you ask me. You say she’s human?”

“Please, Nyx, Armene,” Caldamir growled, actually growled. He kept his voice low, but I saw the other fae leaning closer to try to overhear his next words. “We’ll discuss this later.”

“But if she really is—” Nyx started, only for Caldamir to silence him with a look, followed by a well-meant clap on the shoulder as he tugged Rynn back into motion.

“Just don’t forget tonight. Armene and I will handle the rest.”

I half expected Nyx to argue with that, with being told yet again what to do in his own kingdom, but instead the only thing he seemed interested in were the flecks of dirt left on his shoulder after Caldamir touched him.

“Don’t worry,” Armene, the dark-haired fae, said to me from where he’d appeared on my other side, “Caldamir and I won’t let him smother you.” He stood close to the mare’s side as we passed between the other gathered fae of the Woodland Court. “Or any of the rest of them.”

It was clear who he meant when he said it. The other fae of the court were watching me as intently as I’d watched Nyx when he first appeared. For some, it was a look of wonder or curiosity.

But for most, it was hunger.

“Wait.”

We were nearly through the gate when Nyx’s voice carried over to us. He was still staring down at his palm, his gaze fixated on what he found there.

“Did you … did you kill these creatures?”

Both Caldamir and Armene exchanged a glance, but it was the tightening of Caldamir’s hand on the reins that made fear start to rise in my stomach.

“They were just gnats,” he said, carefully.

“Just gnats?”

I might’ve been imagining it, but for a moment it seemed like the forest grew a shade darker around us. The vines swaying overhead came to a halt, their stillness almost as unsettling as the way the roots beneath Rynn’s feet started to subtly shake.

Nyx’s face remained smooth and unchanging, but his hand balled into a fist until I could imagine hearing the bones start to crack. “You of all people should know better, Caldamir,” he said, the musical lilt of his voice a pitch too sharp. “Everything inside these woods belongs to me. It’s not up to you to decide what lives or dies.”

“Is that really up to any of us? Last I checked, a few gnats were the least of our worries.”

The second time, there was no denying the darkening of the forest.

The fae in the court grew restless, their eyes darting through the branches of the trees. It wasn’t fear, though, it was a kind of nervous energy—an excitement.

It was magic, the fae’s glamour. I could feel it.

And from the sound of Caldamir’s sigh, so it seemed, could he. He held out the reins he’d so carefully guarded through the night.

“Armene, take her to the pool. You know what to do.”

Armene took a half step back, his eyes trained on the reins like they were snakes instead.

“Unless, of course, you want to deal with Nyx …” Caldamir added.

Armene took the reins but made sure not to spare a glare at Caldamir before he headed back toward the Woodland Fae, hands still balled at his sides. The ground beneath us had begun to shake more, the roots and branches that made up the entrance curling up at the tangible excitement building in the air around us.

An excitement that I wasn’t going to see unfold, it seemed.

As soon as the court’s attention had turned to Nyx and Caldamir, Armene pulled the mare’s reins and ushered us the rest of the way through the forest gate. I watched over my shoulder at the way the two fae squared off with the rest of the court looking on until I couldn’t see them anymore, and then I immediately found myself lost when I turned back to the path ahead.

I’d been so consumed by the fae that I’d paid no attention to the court itself. Inside the walls, the forest grew tall and green as it did outside. Houses were built into the trees as well as on the ground, with a network of netted bridges suspended between those that crisscrossed overhead. The paths here were laid with a short, dense grass instead of cobble, and all the houses were grown in the same way as the fence.

There wasn’t a glint of metal from a nail in sight, and I was sure no matter how closely I looked throughout this compound, I wouldn’t find any.

No wonder the leader of these fae was so concerned with the death of a few gnats. This whole place seemed alive, intricately connected to the forest and everything in it.

“Is Caldamir going to be alright?”

Armene looked back at me with a bit of surprise.

“Of course. Nyx is just a bit protective of his domain,” he said, before turning back. “These days, we all are.”

I expected to see more faces of the fae peering out at us from the windows or from behind trees, but either they were exceptionally good at hiding—or the entire court had met us outside by the gate.

The only fae in sight was the one now leading the half-stumbling mare beneath me. He kept his back to me, his hand curled tight around the reins he’d been forced to take.

I dared one last glance over my shoulder, and still seeing no sign of Caldamir, I leaned forward a little further in Rynn’s saddle.

“What was it that you said before, about me being human?”

Armene kept looking straight ahead, but his shoulders stiffened slightly. “Of course, you’re human.”

“At home I was called fae-marked,” I pressed on. “It’s why Caldamir took me.”

Armene muttered something like a swear under his breath, and this time it was his turn to glance over his shoulder toward where we’d left the other fae.

“I knew it. The moment I saw you, I knew it.”

My heartbeat quickened as he continued, half muttering to himself. “The hair, the eyes, how did he think we wouldn’t see it?”

“So, I do look like fae.”

Armene didn’t need to answer, his silence was as telling as any response.

I let out the smallest of sighs, almost out of relief. I didn’t care so much about why Armene was upset about it. Let him and Caldamir fight, fighting seemed to suit the Mountain Court prince that’d kidnapped me from my home to take me here.

I was just glad to find out I’d not been tortured, branded as fae-marked for nothing.

Still, one question begged to be asked. “If I do look like fae, why haven’t I seen any like me?”

Armene’s brow drew into a scowl. “That’s because they’re gone.”

Gone.

“Where did they go?”

Armene looked back over his shoulder at me. He seemed to consider me for a moment before tugging the horse away from one of the last buildings and toward where the forest grew thicker further in.

“That doesn’t matter, not nearly so much as what they left behind.”

I remembered the way the world had spun around me when I stepped down from the mare and felt my feet subconsciously dig a little deeper into her sides, much to her chagrin. She let me know her displeasure by swatting at my back with her long, tangled tail.

“And what was that?” I asked once I’d batted the itchy hairs back away.

“This,” Armene said, suddenly coming to a halt, the shadows of the trees having grown close enough together to cast his face in darkness. He hadn’t turned to face me, but he didn’t need to. I followed his gaze as my eyes adjusted from the bright light of the clearing to see where he’d brought me.

“The Pool of Indecision,” he said, nodding once as a grimace spread across his face. “The last great gift of the Starlight Court before it abandoned us.”