Jennifer Armintrout - Veil Of Shadows

He flexed his fingers, and she whined, jerking her arm from his grasp. “I am glad!” he shouted, not caring at this moment who heard him. “But there is no way I can hurt you more than you have hurt yourself tonight! How could you be so stupid?”

She shoved him with enough force that, combined with his shock at her action, he stumbled backward. It gave her time to get past him, to run down the steps to the lower hold, her hair like a banner behind her as she whipped through the door at the bottom and out of his sight. He did not pause in his pursuit of her. She would go to the place where they slept, because there was no other place for her to flee to. She was as trapped here as she had been in the Palace, he thought with mean satisfaction, only this time she could not as easily run away.

“What did you think to accomplish with that display?” he asked as he pushed past the blanket partitioning their space from the rest of the hold. He had shouted the words, and now the echo rang off the steel walls, taunting him with a reminder of how silent, how close, the space truly was. He lowered his voice and continued, “Do you really think that you have the power to rule these betrayers?”

“Of course not!” Cerridwen was not as conscious of the possibility of eavesdroppers, and she shrieked like the Bean Sidhe.

“What, then? Did you think Bauchan would simply hand over power to you?” A rage burned deep in him, oddly protective and perhaps even jealous at his next thought. “Did he make a promise to you? Did he seduce you with pretty words? I told you that you could not trust him!”

“You think me so stupid as to fall for such an obvious trick?” Tears sprang to her eyes, and her antennae drooped on her forehead. “No, his manipulations were far more clever. Even you would have been impressed.”

“What do you mean by that?” Now, the rage that had been directed toward Bauchan turned ugly and pointed to her.

Though her words had been intended to cause a fight, there seemed to be none left in her. Her breath left her in a long, shuddering sigh. “Why are you here?”

“Because I made a promise to your mother.” It was automatic, simple, and not, he realized, the entire truth.

She slumped to the floor and stared at the floor. Her hands lay limp in her lap. “My mother is dead. You need not honor that promise any longer.”

How to explain the concept of honor to her? If she had not learned it from her mother or her father—two of the most loyal beings he had ever known—perhaps she was destined to never know it. “I cannot abandon you.”

But it was not just his promise to her mother. In their flight from the Elven hall, he’d hated Cerridwen, and had seriously considered leaving her for dead. It had been only his promise to Ayla that had stopped him. But in the time that had passed since then, in the time since he’d made yet another promise to Ayla that her child would not be harmed, he’d learned something about his charge.

She could not survive on her own.

It might have been the way she’d been raised; in the Fae tradition, the Royal Heir was never truly expected to inherit the throne. Mabb had gained hers only when her mother had stepped down. That Queene was still out in the world somewhere, but she’d merely tired of ruling her subjects. She’d prepared Mabb for the job, though. No one had prepared Garret. What kind of a King could he have been? Ayla, a complete outsider, had learned what she needed to know about life at Court in such a short time, but she had come armed with the cool, logical head of an assassin. That she had not prepared her daughter to come into her title was not a surprise; she’d left behind what should have been the more dangerous life.

If Queene Ayla would have been able to see ahead, to know that her rule would be so short, she might have instructed her Heir in the ways of the Court. Not the manners, for as surly as Cerridwen could be, and the poor choices she could make, she knew the graces of the Court and could also make herself a pleasing addition to a gathering. But she did not understand the games, the intrigues, that one needed to be aware of to maneuver at Court. Not knowing, one could not rule, not successfully. And success was measured by how long one could reign before someone stuck a knife in one’s back.

The truth was, as he had marched through the crowd on deck, he had not seen Cerridwen standing there, but Mabb lying on her bier, limbs twisted to withered branches by death. When Cerridwen’s face had replaced hers, he had known what he was called to do, not simply because of a geis made to a dead Queene.

“I cannot abandon you,” he repeated, forcing the image of Mabb’s cold face from his mind, “because if I did, you would not survive long.”

He was not certain how she would accept this explanation. He expected anger, and a heated denial. Instead, she looked up at him with wide, tear-filled eyes, and said in a near whisper, “Then you should abandon me.”

It was some mortal trait, surely, to wish for one’s own death. He could not think of hearing an immortal creature long for the end of their life. In fact, they feared such an unnatural event. He recoiled without meaning to, and she looked down again, as if his disgust were another weight added to her burden.

“You should not say that.” He tried to sound comforting, but she had frightened him too much, and it came out stilted and insincere.

“I should not say it, because it makes you uncomfortable, or because it is true?” A bitter, mocking laugh came from her, as if coming from another body altogether. “I have destroyed them, Cedric. My parents, my fellow Fae. I am nothing, was nothing. If I had not been Garret’s daughter, I would not be the Queene now. I would be some worthless half-breed dying on the Strip, or in the Darkworld tunnels. But I am not Garret’s daughter. I am more mortal than Fae, and somehow, by being both of those things, I am less than either. You should let Bauchan’s Queene kill me. I can bring only despair to those I touch.”

He raised his hand to stop her. “Cease your self-pity!” he barked, jerking his head toward the curtain, hoping she understood his sudden change in mood.

Her head lifted, eyes going even wider as she looked at the curtain. She saw the silhouette of someone standing, listening, on the other side of the partition.

He spoke again, louder, and inched toward the curtain. “And your lies. Garret might have been a worthless King, but you cannot distance yourself from the stain of his ignoble lineage with a falsehood!”

Cedric turned and launched himself at the figure on the other side of the curtain, but he knew the moment he moved that he would not be successful. He tumbled through the cloth, arms full of empty air, and saw Bauchan fleeing. In the next instant, he saw Cerridwen’s feet as she leaped over him, and he ducked his head to keep from being hit by them. He called after her, but she did not stop. “He heard everything!” she shouted back.

It took him a shocked second to realize what she’d done, and what she intended to do. It was an increment of time he hoped to make up as he chased after her. If he did not reach Bauchan before Cerridwen did, the Ambassador was dead.

“Cerridwen—stop!” he shouted after her as Bauchan fled out the door, down the hall that lead to the stairs that took them above deck. Bauchan was halfway up that steep rise, and Cerridwen on the bottom. Cedric knew he was too far when he saw the curved flash of the Elven knife. “Bauchan, look out!”

Even in his days as a young, untried warrior of fifty years, he would not have done something so foolish. To shout out a warning to someone already engaged distracted them; for Bauchan, it was a fatal distraction. Even as Cedric blanched and heard the echo of his mistake off the metal walls, Cerridwen brought the blade down, down into the base of Bauchan’s neck. The point of the warped blade appeared nearly level with the handle as it protruded from Bauchan’s throat, and Cerridwen jerked it free with a grunt, releasing an arc of blood that sprayed her, the floor, the ceiling, the wall.