Veil of Shadows (20 page)

With a groan, he staggered backward to sit on the bed, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He braced his hands at the small of her back and she leaned into them, pushing herself tighter against him. Gasping, panting, she folded her legs on either side of his and used them to raise and lower herself, as he flexed up, deeper and deeper into her. But it was not enough, and she thought she would scream at the frustration that built within her, the feeling that intensified and swelled, the way her energy had built up and built up between her hands before it became too much to bear, and she had thrown it, bursting to light, into the air. Already this was too much to bear. Already, she wished she would burst.

She cried out in desperation, begging without words, and he pushed her off him, onto her knees beside the bed, and before she could complain at the desperate emptiness at his withdrawal, forced into her again, his hands covering hers, pinning them to the bed. His every thrust pushed her face into the bedclothes, pinched and crushed her wings, but she did not care. He slammed into her, over and over, and she shrieked with each breath that jolted from her panting lungs. His fingers twined with hers, his breath heated her sweat-slicked skin to boiling. He laid his head on her folded wings, his movements faster, frenzied, until he pushed against her so violently that it was painful and shouted her name.

The tension in her did burst then, and she gripped the bedclothes, screaming, every part of her aflame.

Just as quickly as it had begun, it was over. He pulled her onto the bed and collapsed beside her, breath rasping as though he had just run harder and farther than he ever had in his life. The chill air bit at her exposed skin, and her legs trembled, too weak even to help her push under the covers. He gripped her hand suddenly, pulled it to his lips and kissed her fingertips.

“It is not dawn yet, is it?” he asked, as though he feared the coming morning.

She turned her head, saw the guards. fire still flickering outside. “It is not.” She yawned, and then she could no longer keep her eyes open.

She slept on her stomach, tangled in the tattered remnants of the gown, her hair, still pinned up from the feast, a mussed tangle on her pillow.

This was not how he had wanted it to be. No. He had never wanted it to be. He could have fought it, could have kept himself from ever revealing any of those feelings to her. It had been Danae.s spell that had forced him to act out those emotions, though the emotions themselves were true enough.

“I am cold,” Cerridwen mumbled in her sleep, clutching at the shoulder of the gown as though it were a blanket she could draw over herself. He pulled the blankets free and tucked them around her, the little good it did to show her tenderness, now.

He could not blame the spell for the fury with which he had taken her. That had been his own base desires fighting free from their tortured confinement. He had wanted her more and more with every breath. He would have taken her, despite the spell. But now, the deed was done, and he would kill her before first light, and he had not even managed to be gentle, to savor the act that would be their final moments together.

He tried again, with all of his might, to force himself from the bed, to get away from her and get her out of harm.s way in the process. But he would not budge. He could stroke her hair and smell her skin, he could whisper to her that he loved her, but he could not do something so simply as stand and walk away from her.

When the spell wore off, which he still held out hope would be before the morning, he would do more than kill Danae. He would torture her. He would torture her, almost to the point of death, but he would not let her die. She would beg for death, but he would not grant her that boon, not until he was satisfied at his revenge. If he killed Cerridwen under this spell, if there was nothing he could do to stop it, the day of Danae.s release in death would never come. And immortal creatures could live a very, very long time.

As if the murderous thoughts in him controlled his hand, he reached for the dagger in his boot and pulled it free. But it was not time. Though the air smelled faintly of cold dew, and the fire outside died, he could resist the spell for at least a little longer.

He lay beside her, a prisoner in the body that would kill her, and watched with growing dread the night begin to recede outside the tent.

Thirteen

T he mist in the clearing was not white but bloodred, and it pulsed as it undulated around her legs. Cerridwen did not know how she had come to be in this place, but she was not frightened. She waited, watched as the sanguine mist tickled her ankles and waited.

She did not wait long. A woman, slender and beautiful, with long, straight slashes of pale blond hair, appeared. The simple dress she wore was as bloodred as the mist and clung to her, suspended from her shoulders by two thin cords. A matching red cord wound around her hand, tethered to the collar of a huge white pig that walked at her side.

Cerridwen blinked and stared. “I know you,” she said. “I am you.” Was that right?

“You are my namesake.” The woman knelt in the mist and cupped the animal.s snout, clucking to it affectionately.

“My mother saw you. She knew you.” Cerridwen pressed her palms to her eyes, but in this dream, she could see through her hands, and it did no good.

“And you know me, whether we have met or not.” The Goddess, the one Cerridwen had been named for, straightened. “I come to the faithful, even if they do not know yet that they follow me. I came to your father, to help him find his way. I came to your mother, to guide her. And I come to you now, though you did not know that you need me.”

“I—I did not call you,” Cerridwen stammered. “I do not need help. I have handled everything myself, this far.”

“Yes, it would appear that way. On the surface.” The Goddess.s eyes narrowed playfully.

“But we are watching. We know things.”

“Who is watching?” Cerridwen started forward, but the space between them did not alter.

“My mother?” Why had she asked that? That was foolish. There was no one on the Astral. The Astral did not exist any longer.

But the woman nodded. “Your mother, yes. And she sends you a warning.”

“My mother is dead. She cannot warn me of anything.” But you were so certain of her a moment before.

“After I am gone, you must be patient. You are not my own. I intervene here on your mother.s behalf. And she says that you must wake up, Cerridwen.”

“Wake up?” Now, that simply made no sense. If she had no tangible body here, she could not be asleep here. “Wake up?” Her words echoed back at her eerily from the forest.

“I must go.” The Goddess came forward, gripped her face, kissed her lips. “Wait for her!”

“Wait for who?” she pleaded, capturing the Goddess.s hands against her face.

“You must wake up, Cerridwen!” The Goddess moved without moving, and suddenly she was across the clearing, barely distinguishable against the trees. “Wake up!”

Cerridwen shook her head. This was going all wrong. It was nothing like her other dreams. She looked down at her hands, ghostly white in the darkness. Blood welled on her skin in the form of the triangles she had dreamed of so long ago. And then her mother.s voice rang out through the dream forest, clear and commanding.

“Wake up!”

With a gasp, Cerridwen opened her eyes. The dim light of the morning cast a blue pall over Cedric as he knelt above her, arms stretched over her, trembling with exertion. He held a dagger, fingers clenched on the hilt so tightly that blood dripped from them. His eyes were hollow, his lips white. “Run!” he managed, in a voice that did not sound like his own, like it came from someone far away.

Then he stabbed the knife down.

Cerridwen rolled out of the way, fell, wrapped in the bedclothes, and could not struggle free.

“Run!” Cedric shouted at her, and again: “Run!”—a scream tearing from him as though ripping a part of him away even as he gripped her ankle, crushed the bones in his strong grasp—and she screamed, kicking at him with her other foot. He covered her body, a sick parody of the night before, and she could not fight him, pinned beneath him. He still held the dagger, and the blade of it cut into her palm as he held her hands down.

“I love you,” he whispered against her ear, and she felt something hot and wet fall on her cheek. He rose up, and she saw the tears that flowed down his face.

The disparity between action and word was so unreal that she could not reconcile what she witnessed. She could not even plead with him to stop. Cedric raised the knife again, and she waited for it to fall, knowing that it would end her life.

The sound of the guards. footsteps as they raced into the tent sent a shock of reality through her, and she brought her arms up, together, to shield herself from the dagger. The blade tore through her flesh, but she pushed back, bucked her body, and through some miracle managed to free a leg. She planted her foot against his chest and pushed.

He fell back, screamed at her to run, even as the guards fell upon and disarmed him.

Bleeding, sobbing, she staggered back. Strong arms caught her. “Easy now, easy,” the guard soothed, but when she glimpsed his face, he looked as though he would crumble as easily as she might.

“My hands,” she whispered, raising her arms to show him, and hot jets of blood poured from her torn skin.

“Gods!” He grabbed her, lifted her in his arms, and ran her outside, into the growing light of the dawn. She sat on a stump beside the fire, shivering as he cut strips from her ruined gown and bound her wounds, disinterested in the entire process. There was no sound from inside the tent. Had they killed Cedric?

“This is too much for me. Stay here, I will go and get the healers,” the guard instructed her before jogging away.

She stood, not really feeling her legs, nor the pain in her arms, though she knew it was there. She pulled the gown onto her shoulders, held the torn front closed. She had come to the bottom steps of the tent before she realized she had moved at all. She had reached the top step before she realized that she did not want to look inside. She did not want to see Cedric, alive or dead. She did not want to see her blood on the floor. She did not want any part of this.

Sitting on the steps, she listened to the commotion inside. It did not grow in volume, though it seemed to inside her own skull, and she looked out to the forest. It was so peaceful, so dark. It could not be as cold and harsh as this clearing.

Climbing to her feet, she walked toward the trees. Her walk grew in pace when she reached the edge of the clearing. She caught her torn skirt to keep it from tripping her as she broke into a run. The trees came at her, faster and faster. She opened her wings and used them to push her ahead, catching them on branches. She closed her eyes. She would not collide with anything. She could not. And she could not stop. Because something would catch up to her, something that she did not want to think of.

She turned her head to see the thing that chased her, though she knew it was formless. It was something she carried with her. The trees obscured her view of the camp, and she realized with sick panic that she had come too far now, that she could no longer see the clearing….

What had she done? Gods, what had she done? She was wounded, bleeding, and she had run from help. What had happened? Cedric had tried to kill her.

Kill her.

For what?

She could not breathe, panic clawing inside her chest like a wild animal. She folded her wings before she realized that her feet no longer touched the ground. She fell and tried to open them again, only to snag one painfully on a branch. The ground rushed up to her with a sickening crack, and she lay, too weak to move, unable to do anything but scream at the agony that exploded over and over, unrelenting, in her shattered body.

Though no one would hear her, she screamed, bellowed like a wounded animal. Even after the riot of pain dulled some, into a white-hot, stabbing ache, she screamed, as though every sobbing breath expelled more of the pain in her wounded heart.

When her throat was raw, and the cold and fatigue had numbed her, body and mind, she stared up at the sky. First one cold drop fell, then another. Beside her face, a fern trembled from the weight of the drops. The forest filled with the dull popping sound of the falling rain, hypnotizing her.

With no strength to fight off the darkness, Cerridwen succumbed to it.

When the alarm sounded, Amergin was in the village center, watching from one of the tall tree houses as the Humans slaved to clean up the destruction wrought by the night.s wasteful banquet. Faeries, half-dead from too much drink and too little sleep, stumbled out from the trees and dwellings and sat up under tables. Idiots, to think themselves so safe as to let down their guard. It would serve them all right if he had let down the wards and all the pretty magic that disguised their Kingdom and let the Enforcers come to their doorstep.

Not that he would appreciate being dragged off by them himself. Humans found consorting with magical beings were put to death. As he would be hard-pressed to explain that he fell somewhere between the two races, he would likely endure several attempts on his unkillable body before they realized he was not going anywhere.

The commotion brought a flood of Faeries to surround Danae.s Palace. The clever girl hadn.t left it yet, obviously stalling to retain de facto control. Amergin understood the stubbornness of the Fae, possibly better than they understood it themselves.

A group of Faeries, heavily armed, but not outfitted like Danae.s guards, wrestled a stumbling figure down the path. A sting in Amergin.s heart told him the Faery.s identity, without seeing his face.

Living as long as he had, in both the physical and Astral realms, Amergin had learned a thing or two about large crowds. They would always look to the source of the disturbance, each individual believing that they could not be seen, so long as something held their—and

everyone else.s—attention. It provided Amergin with ample opportunity to gauge their reactions.

Danae, for instance, came from her tent with no hint of surprise or concern or urgency. She viewed the scene calmly, kept her eyes fixated on the Faery bound and hooded as his captors marched him toward her.