Jennifer Armintrout - Veil Of Shadows

It spoke with all of its mouths at once. “Do you enjoy killing?”

An aura of menace surrounded the thrice-faced woman, but it did not touch Cerridwen, and she spoke without fear. “I do not enjoy it. But it was necessary.”

The head nodded, all six eyes closing in slow appreciation. “This is a lesson many warriors take time to learn.”

“I am no warrior.” It embarrassed her to be called such, after seeing the bravery displayed by the Guild members in the fight at the Elven quarter.

“You are a warrior.” The answer brooked no quarrel. “You have blood on your hands, three times, blood on your hands.”

More than three times. This woman with three faces did not know that she stood before the Faery who had destroyed her own kind, killed her own mother and father through her foolishness. She did not need a blade to kill.

The three mouths continued to speak in unison. “The blood of your enemies. The dark one. The traitor. The deceiver.”

The Elf, and Flidais, and Bauchan. “They all had to die.”

“I will grant you a boon.” The woman dropped her spear and used a finger to trace the symbol of three spirals, connected in a triangle, the same as Cerridwen had seen in her dreams, in the air. Mist conformed to the shape, twisted into something more tangible. It turned to fire and steel, cooled to a stone and dropped into the woman’s open palm. She held it out, as if offering it, but when Cerridwen reached for it, she turned with sudden violence and threw it into the trees. It was lost in the mist and the darkness on the forest floor.

“Why did you do that?” Cerridwen cried, feeling entitled to the thing that had not been hers a moment before, had not even existed.

The woman shrugged, three bland expressions on her faces. “You will find it when you need my aid, and I will come.” She turned and walked toward the darkness of the trees, the fog clearing like courtiers bowing out of the way for their ruler to pass. She halted and cocked her head so that one face looked back, shrewd eyes looking Cerridwen up and down. “Wake up, Sister. Wake up.”

Cerridwen woke to darkness. There was a disconcerting moment in which she did not remember what had happened, and then the memory returned, horrible in its clarity.

She had killed Bauchan. She had done the right thing. No one would convince her otherwise. But when they’d seized her…when they’d hit her, the last thing she’d heard was Cedric, shouting her name.

Her hands were bound, but she tried to grope through the darkness, her breath coming faster and faster as she remembered the words that had drifted to her through her semiconscious fog. They had wanted to execute her, and Cedric; and the Humans had been concerned only with money.

“Cedric!” The panic she felt overrode any thought to what dangers might befall her if they discovered her awake and alive. If they had killed him—

“I am here.” The sentence was cool and perfunctory, no attempt to comfort or reassure her.

But he did not sound damaged, and that outweighed any concern she might have had for his demeanor. “Where are we?”

“We are in a prison.”

Had she slept that long? “They’ve taken us off the ship, then?”

“We are in a prison on the ship.” His words seemed to come from behind clenched teeth.

Vaguely, she remembered him chasing after her, shouting for her to stop, but her head ached and she did not want to examine her actions, or his reactions to them, now. “Why would someone need a prison on their ship?”

There was a rustling in the darkness, and the sound painted a picture in her mind of Cedric, wriggling against his bonds in an effort to free himself. “Perhaps in the event that someone loses all sense and reason and murders a fellow passenger?”

Absorbing that anger, she said softly, “You could have stopped me.”

A spot of red flared in the blackness. His antennae. The illumination gave her a clearer idea of where he was. Close to her, but not close enough to touch if she stretched out her bound hands. He sat upright, and the red glinted off the metallic surface of the wall behind him. In the glow, she could see the top of his head, but nothing else, none of his expression.

It was probably best that way. “You could have stopped yourself! You must learn, Your Majesty, that only you are responsible for your actions. Your stupid, rash actions!”

Though he meant to chastise her, she could not feel guilt over her actions. She ran the moment of Bauchan’s death through her mind once, twice, a third time. Her palms remembered the vibration of the blade in her hands as it sank into Bauchan’s body. The scent of his blood, dried onto her skin like war paint, tainted each breath. It had all been real, and it had all been her doing. But she could not lament it.

“I take responsibility for what I did. Of course, I do. But you must have wanted him dead, as well. He knew the one thing that you did not want him to know. His death must be a great relief to you.”

“A relief? To be imprisoned?” His voice rose in pitch, almost comical in his outrage.

“A relief, because now we are safe when we arrive at Danae’s Court. Bauchan can tell no one what he heard!” They were not safe from execution for murdering Bauchan. How to avoid punishment for that still escaped her.

Metal thudded dully. Cedric had kicked the floor in frustration. “There were other ways, ways that might not have gotten us killed!”

“Bauchan could not have been bought.” As if struck by lightning, a realization came upon her. “No one can truly be bought. If they are willing to trade their loyalty for gold or power, someone will always have a better offer.”

“So, all enemies must die, is that what you’re saying?” Cedric’s bitter chuckle sounded as though it would gag him. “I had no idea you were so naive.”

If he had looked into her most private fears, he could not have found words more able to wound her. “I did what had to be done!”

“Yes, I’m sure Danae will accept that at our trial—if she bothers to have one!”

Their anger filled the silence with hollow, rasping breaths. As if she’d brought that coiling, insidious mist with her from the dream world, something nebulous expanded in her, pushed out words that did not need to be said. “What do you think Danae will do to me? Imprison me? Execute me? Permit her to do it! I would welcome anything that would take this burden from me!”

“A burden you created!” he snapped back.

At once, the heady vapor that had fueled her rage fled her. She was empty, nothing but a husk of sorrow again. She’d forgotten that she’d felt this way before the exhilaration of Bauchan’s murder. Would it always take being the instrument of death to fill that void she’d created? She’d felt at peace again when she killed Flidais, but it had not lasted. And the Elf, that death had given her the illusion of putting things to right. With each death, the wound in her grew deeper, and the balm did not deaden the pain as long as it had before.

Cedric had heard her restrained crying, and a soft, masculine sigh rumbled between them. He did not apologize for what he’d said; no Fae would recant what they believed to be a true statement, not if they valued the sentiment of it too much. Instead, he said, “You would not welcome death.”

“You cannot know what greeting I would give such a sentence.” You did not kill your family with your deception.

“I should not have laid all of the blame on you.” A thud, a rustle. He tried to move closer. “You are to blame, for some. But there were more lies at work than a Faery no older than twenty could have dreamed up on her own. You may have hastened the end, but you weren’t the only instrument in that respect, either.”