Veil of Shadows (17 page)

“What does Your Majesty need with a sword?” the one called Prickle asked, his wide, gold Pixie eyes narrowing in suspicion.

Fionnait elbowed him. “Do not question Her Majesty. Have you forgotten your geis?”

“I haven.t forgotten that I don.t like getting stabbed,” he said, scratching his behind.

“You hold your tongue in the presence of the Queene,” Cedric said sharply. Then, to Cerridwen, he said softly, “What do you plan to do? Kill Danae now, in full view of a Court that you do not have control over?”

“Yes.” It should have been obvious, she had thought. She snapped her fingers, and the guard brought forward the sword.s sheath. She wound the leather strap of it around her waist and tried, ungracefully, to slide the weapon into its home.

The Assassins stood, almost in unison, each of them pulling out a weapon of their own. “We are with you, Your Majesty,” Fionnait said, her eyes flashing. In them, Cerridwen recognized the desire for justice, and she admired it.

“No one will go anywhere,” Cedric bellowed, dropping his obedient mate act. “My Queene, you are not thinking this through. If you kill Danae, you gain the throne through a military coup. You will not win the hearts of the Fae here.”

“The only Fae heart I care for here is Danae.s!” Cerridwen shrieked. She had lost control; it felt good. “And I will see that it beats no more—this night!”

He stepped to her side and angled his body so that the Assassins could not see his face. He spoke so low that they would not hear. “You will not do this. I will stop you.”

“You will try,” she scoffed, but the resolve that hardened his face cast doubt over her heart. She struggled to turn her anger onto him, but she could not.

The weight of this would crush her, she was certain. “I cannot go to this feast tonight and look into her eyes, knowing this,” she whispered. “I cannot.”

“You can. You are…” Frustration lined his brow. “I can do nothing for you at this moment. Dismiss your Assassins.”

Everything within her demanded she fly apart, but somehow, she did not. Eventually, these reserves of strength, ones she did not know she had, would run dry. “Thank you. Your…services will not be necessary.” She cleared her throat. “You will not only serve as the founding members of the new Assassins. Guild, but you will be my eyes and ears in those places where I cannot observe. That is your assignment tonight. Keep watch at the celebration. Protect me by uncovering any plots evidenced there.”

“We are not trained as spies, Your Majesty,” Hawthorn protested.

Fionnait did not elbow him, but cast him an angry glare. “Come, let us do as the Queene commands.”

They sheathed their weapons and bowed, then left the clearing without showing their backs to her. Cerridwen stood beside the fire, which now illuminated the night that had crept up without warning, and felt the last of her strength leave her. She slipped the scabbard from her waist, feeling like a child doffing a silly costume.

Cedric stood by silently, watching. She could feel his watching. Now, after all that had transpired between them, he would become patronizing, try to lecture her as though she were

one of his Assassins. She clenched her fists until her nails dug into her palms. The little bit of pain gave her a little bit of fight. “Tell me now what I have done wrong, so that I can go to bed and have done with it!”

It took him a long time to speak, but she did not flatter herself that he was shocked. “You did nothing wrong. You reacted as I wish I could have.”

This, she did not believe. She rolled her eyes up to meet his gaze, then looked away with a noise of disgust. “You do not react to anything. You barely have emotions. You are, as my mother would say, truly a full-blooded Faery.”

Another long silence. Perhaps she had hurt him. Good.

When he spoke, it was not to defend himself. “You said before that you could not go tonight and face Danae. But I know that you can. If you do not, the Fae here will see it as a slight. You do not care about them, I know that. But you will care, in the years to come, when it is said that you did not embrace your role as Queene, when your enemies use that against you.

“Do you believe that Danae truly wants you there, tonight? She wants to appear supportive of you, and eager for you to be restored to the throne. She wishes to show us the face of someone who wants only that which is beneficial to the Fae. We know now that she has lied. What kind of a Faery would send such foul creatures after her own, rightful Queene? What kind would even think to consort with the Waterhorses?”

“The same kind as would pretend to be a Queene, when she is nothing more than the half-breed daughter of a half-breed Faery,” she said miserably.

“Then think on this—every moment that you are in her presence, Danae will feel you planning her death. She will not know what causes you to smile so sweetly at her. It will unsettle her, but she will not be able to find the reason for the sinister chill she feels when you are near.” From the corner of her eye, she saw his hand clench to a fist, then flex open again.

“If you kill her now, her death will be quick, before she has time to fear it. If you wait, she will know nothing but fear, for the rest of her days.”

It was a pretty thought, but useless. “She has an Empath. You were there today! You saw Mothú spying! Danae will know, and she will destroy me.”

“She will not.” Cedric sounded so sure of himself, so confident, that Cerridwen was forced to believe him. “She will not find out, because you are skilled enough to conceal your emotions. You did it in the boat with the Empath. You tricked her into believing that you had feelings for me. You can trick her again. And while you bide your time, we will plan, and I assure you, Danae will be punished.”

Cerridwen looked up at him, blinking back tears of mourning, and rage. Of course, he thought she had been clever enough to pretend her feelings for him. Perhaps that was what had spurred on his actions that morning. She wanted desperately to tell him how wrong he was, how much he did not know. But not here, in front of the only Fae who were on her side.

One of the guards at the path called out a warning, and she stood, wiping her eyes. “That will be Danae.s murder of crows, then, coming to prepare me for the evening,” she said bitterly.

He placed a hand on her shoulder. “And you will be beautiful, so that when you face Danae again, you will show her what a true Queene looks like.”

The handmaidens arrived together, emerging from the darkness in an eerie cluster, looking for all the world as if they were made of the night itself. Their pale, bare heads seemed to float above their high-collared garments, and they paused just outside the dome of light cast by the flames, as though adverse to the brightness of it.

“Your Majesty,” the one at the head of the group said, and they bowed together.

They had brought with them, in packs concealed beneath their long robes, dresses and jewelry and cosmetics, which they laid out inside the tent for Cerridwen to choose. She faltered a bit. She had no notion of what might be considered fashionable, no way to tell if this were a trick of Danae.s, to make her look ridiculous in front of the Court. But Danae would not do something so blatant. She truly believed she had her rival fooled, and would do nothing to jeopardize that ruse.

Cerridwen chose a gown so snowy white it was almost blinding, made of a material that was heavy and soft and made a shushing noise when it moved. The sleeves fell in exaggerated points, almost to the floor, and the waist and squared neckline were embellished with gold cord. The handmaids expertly fitted the dress over her wings, and cinched the lacing between them so that the fabric clung to her tightly.

“Bring the mirror,” one of the crows ordered the Human serving girl, who had been lurking and watching, fascinated but afraid. She brought forward Bauchan.s long, oval mirror, and two of the handmaidens tilted it so that Cerridwen could see the whole of her reflection in it.

The person in the glass was hardly recognizable. The weeks of imprisonment and constant flight had taken their toll on her. She had been fuller before, not quite plump, but not so frail as she appeared now, and never had such hollows ringed her eyes. Her wings…she had never seen them this way before. Underground, she had always hidden them. They had been a nuisance, something to be corseted tightly to her back, always ruining the lines of any clothing she might wear. Seeing them so exposed, while she stood dressed in such fine clothing—their abysmal black against the white of her skin and gown—made her feel more naked than if she stood with bare skin to the room. They were like ghosts there, and if she closed her eyes, she could still see them. In her mind, though, they were splashed with blood, patched with bits of metal, and attached to a dying mortal father whose face she would never be able to purge from her memory.

She gasped and opened her eyes, saw the shock on the faces of the handmaidens. “I feel…”

she mumbled, and staggered back from the foreign reflection.

Pale, skeletal hands, surprisingly strong, gripped her and helped her to sit. Black fluttered around her, white faces peering at her in concern.

“Leave her, give her room,” the one who appeared to be the leader ordered, and the other crows fell back, exited the tent bowing. The servant girl remained, clutching the abandoned mirror and looking as though she would like to hide under the bed.

“You may go, as well,” the crow told her gently, and watched her scurry from the room.

“She is afraid of you,” Cerridwen said, realizing how foolish she sounded, stating such an obvious fact.

The crow nodded, her fingers stroking idly, comforting, over the black feathers of Cerridwen.s wings. “She fears us, because of our association with Our Lady, the Morrigan. Many do not understand her beauty, and see only death in her.”

“Mortals fear death.” Another painfully plain fact, but Cerridwen could think of no other reply.

“Some mortals,” the crow replied pointedly. She smoothed down Cerridwen.s feathers.

“Sometimes you might say immortals fear it more, since it is so unnatural to their life cycles.”

Staring up into the crow.s face, Cerridwen saw what she had not noticed before, and felt suddenly foolish. No antennae sprouted from the woman.s forehead, and a faint network of lines ringed her features. “You are…you are a Human.”

The woman nodded again, patiently. “I am the High Priestess of our order, named Moira by my mortal parents, named Trasa by Our Lady. I came to Queene Danae guided by a dream of the Morrigan. You have had visions of her, as well?”

Cerridwen did not know how much she should reveal. If Danae inclined to send spies, surely her handmaidens would be ideally suited for the role.

Trasa put her hands on Cerridwen.s shoulders and gently turned her on the stool she perched on, then dove her long, thin fingers into the thick waves of Cerridwen.s hair. “We are loyal to only one master, Your Majesty,” she said, as though she had read Cerridwen.s thoughts. She hummed a little, combing through the copper strands. “That is Our Lady. We do no one else.s bidding.”

“I have…seen her once,” Cerridwen admitted, wincing a bit as Trasa took a brush to her tangled hair. “In a dream. But it was so vivid, it was almost as if—”

“As if she stood before you. And when you woke, you were as certain that you had spoken to her as you are certain that I speak to you now.” Wistfulness crept into Trasa.s voice. “Our Lady does not grace us often with her presence, but when she does, it is powerful.”

“Yes, it was.” The uncanny way that Trasa had described the experience cast it in a new light, made it all the more real to her. Gooseflesh raised on Cerridwen.s arms, and she rubbed them through the sleeves of her gown.

“We thought that you should know,” Trasa continued, her words low and measured, “that although we have loyalty only to Our Lady, we believe that she wishes us to welcome you as our true Queene. We will not become involved in any plot against Danae, for secrets and lies are not the weapons of Our Lady. But we will follow the Morrigan.s chosen.”

As Trasa continued to fuss with her hair, Cerridwen struggled to control the trembling in her body. It all seemed to be coming together. Until now, she had been going through the motions with regards to becoming Queene of the Upworld, never truly believing—though she

had not realized it—that she would ever actually lead this new Faery Court. But in one night, she had gained the following of a new Assassins. Guild, and Danae.s own handmaidens.

Had the Goddess truly chosen her, then? Was that what the dream had been about? It seemed all the more heady, such a weighty responsibility when she thought it one handed to her by a deity so feared and long thought to have vanished.

She thought at once that she should tell Cedric, but an inner voice warned her away from that course. He would want to know; of course he would want to know. But it seemed far too private, and, strangely, as though she would be breaking a confidence held with the Morrigan herself.

When Trasa finished with Cerridwen.s hair, she carefully applied color to her lips and cheeks, and produced a small hand mirror to show her the results. The face Cerridwen saw was more familiar now, painted beautifully, the weariness of her eyes concealed, the colors carefully blended to fool the eye into seeing robust health where little existed.

“I have this, as well,” Trasa said, pulling a medallion from around her neck. It was a miniature shield, copper hairs winding into a protective knot at its center. The Human slipped the heavy chain over Cerridwen.s head. “Wear it so that Danae will see it. You will not have to tell her of our allegiance to you. She will know it on sight.”

Cerridwen clasped the pendant in her fist, tried to stop the pounding of her heart. “Then perhaps I should not wear it. Not yet.” She pulled the necklace over her head and wound it around her wrist, concealed inside her sleeve. “Thank you, though. I will treasure it.”

“Deifiúr Trasa?” Another of the crows peeked through the tent flap suddenly.

Trasa turned. “Deifiúr Siofra?”

The girl showed no deference to the age or station of her priestess, and this sparked Cerridwen.s curiosity. Deifiúr Siofra motioned to the outside. “The Royal Consort has left for the feast. He thought we would make a more…suitable escort for the Queene.”