Page 29 of Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection #2)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I couldn’t stop staring. I was standing at the base of a deep chasm in the earth, ringed on all sides by craggy mountains wreathed with clouds. Flecks of rain iced my face as I counted a string of impossible structures towering over me; limestone pillars that seemed to defy gravity to remain standing. In the dusky light of evening, it looked as though they were floating in midair. Even more impossible was the collection of lights at the peak of each pillar, like small cities perched in the sky. Was this what I’d seen in my vision of Gwinellyn, with the staircase and the cliff and the boy?

The swooping snap of wings reached me, and a moment later I was buffeted by wind as something descended on me in a flurry of wind.

‘Stop! Disarm yourself!’ A voice bellowed, followed by a chuffing growl. ‘Surrender or be killed!’

‘Baba Yaga sent me!’ I found myself shouting as I thrust the chicken foot into the air. ‘Please! I mean no harm. ’

There was a soft thud, and the beats of air abruptly stopped. I warily eyed the creature now perched on the ledge before me, and it peered back at me with just as much suspicion, possibly trying to decide whether or not I’d make a good meal. It was roughly the height of a large horse, but it looked like a giant lizard, with a long, barbed tail and two muscled hind legs. A tall, bulky male slid from the creature’s back. His hair was shaven close to his skull, accentuating his sharp features, and my attention caught on the way it emphasized his pointed ears. His expression was grim. My skin prickled with a strange sensation, like someone was hovering their hand just above the surface of my arm, my shoulder, my cheek, so close but not quite touching. It made me shiver.

‘You’re under the witch’s protection?’ he asked. He spoke with a strange accent, the words dipping and rising in places they didn’t on my tongue. I could see the way his eyes roamed my face, my scars, the way his frown deepened, and I wanted to hide myself behind my hands. But I stood tall.

‘I am. I’ve come here to find someone.’

He stretched out a hand, and it took me a moment to realise what he wanted. I dropped the chicken foot onto his palm and he held it close to his face as he examined it. Then he cut his gaze back to me. ‘You’ve come for Gwin.’

The sound of the shortened name in the mouth of this strange man gave me a feeling I couldn’t name. The gravity of what I’d done to her stood in stark relief for a moment, stepping out from behind all my excuses and justifications. I’d sent her into this dangerous place. I’d put her in the hands of these strange people.

‘You’re alone?’ he asked.

‘Yes. ’

He nodded. ‘Good. I will take you to her, and then you will leave.’ He gestured to the creature, which flicked open a pair of quivering frills either side of its head and let out a hiss.

‘I’m not getting on that.’

‘Then you will turn around and go back the way you came.’

‘I’m not leaving until I see her.’

‘You are not welcome here.’ He surged forward, like he meant to scare me, and in a snap I’d drawn my knife and held it at the ready in the air between us, as though I had any idea how to actually wield it in a fight. He paused, his gaze flicking between my face and the blade. ‘Good will borrowed from Baba Yaga keeps you alive right now,’ he said, his voice low. ‘It will sour quickly. You will do as I say, or you will be treated as an invader.’

I assessed him critically. I couldn’t charm him, not looking like this. Slowly, I put away the blade. He gave a sharp nod, then swung back up onto the creature’s back and offered me a hand.

‘I will walk,’ I said firmly, and without having the slightest idea where I was going, I marched off into the valley, almost holding my breath as I waited to see if I’d gambled right, or if I would wind up slain from behind. There was a rush of wind behind me, and I tried to keep from cringing as the creature swooped through the air above me, before doubling back to hover just above my head, its great wings creating a hurricane of dirt and debris.

‘You are going the wrong way,’ its rider called.

‘Then you lead,’ I yelled back. ‘I can wander around myself while you hover above me, or you can make this whole process a lot quicker by helping me find my way. The sooner I see her, the sooner I leave.’

I kept walking. A few moments later, the creature touched down before me, and the rider jabbed his finger to my left. ‘That way.’

I thought about mock-curtsying. Decided against it and went for a beaming smile instead. ‘Oh, you’re so helpful. Thank you.’

The rider harangued me from the air as I walked in the direction he’d pointed out, occasionally swooping in to cut me off if I made a wrong turn or harass me to move along if I slowed my pace to look at something. I began to brace myself for whatever condition I was going to find Gwinellyn in. What would I do if she was a captive, perhaps even a slave? Her own fool fault for wandering this far into the Yawn in the first place. Why couldn’t she have just stuck to Cotus’s cabin?

We drew closer to the base of one of the strange, floating mountains, and I resisted the urge to duck my head and cringe down at the feeling that it was about to topple onto me. Even seeing now that it was indeed attached to the ground, it didn’t stop being impossible. The shape of it was ridiculous, at least a hundred times wider at the top than at the bottom. In the low light, I could see hints of the inconceivable staircase I’d seen in my vision winding around it, lined with lights that wouldn’t stay still. Music began to swoop around me, voices and strings and pipes rising and falling in a melody that made all the hair on my arms stand on end.

My minder landed before me again with much bluster, kicking up dirt and fluffing out wings. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered as he dismounted.

‘Alright, but I want my chicken foot back,’ I said, extending my palm. He frowned so deep he seemed almost cross-eyed, before plonking the charm onto my open palm, then striding away. I made to follow, but the winged lizard darted in front of me and bared its fangs, making that wicked hissing sound again. I stumbled a few steps back.

‘Friendly place,’ I muttered, folding my arms.

I waited. And waited. And waited . Tried to sneak around the lizard while it was poking its head into a bush, only to have it snap its jaws very close to my face in retaliation.

And then I heard Gwinellyn’s voice. Indistinct at first, but drawing closer.

‘Please Goras, I promise I had no idea.’

‘Stop interrogating her. You’ve asked the same question three times now.’

Three figures emerged from around the mountain: the rider, a man with a mop of messy bronze hair and the girl of the hour. I drew my hood tighter around my face. She had a tentative smile in place as she scanned me, seeming puzzled.

I stepped forwards. ‘I’m so glad you’re safe.’

The curiosity slipped from her face, replaced by a popped-open mouth and a gasp. She stopped mid step and touched her hand to the arm of her bronze-haired companion, who immediately turned to her. He was the one from the vision I’d had, I suddenly realized. The one at the staircase.

‘What’s wrong? Who is she?’ he asked.

‘I think… she’s my stepmother,’ she said, and there was still enough of a question in the statement to suggest that she wasn’t sure. ‘She’s definitely alone?’ She posed this question to the rider, who nodded.

‘We can send her away,’ the other one said. ‘You don’t need to talk to her.’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But I think I want to. I have questions.’

‘I’m not here to hurt you,’ I said. ‘I want to explain.’

The bronze one shot me a look, his expression grim. ‘I taste steel on you,’ he said. ‘A blade. Turn it over.’

Taste steel? Slowly, I drew the knife again and handed it over to the rider, who accepted it with a grunt.

Gwinellyn turned to the bronze man and smiled sweetly up at him. ‘Can you please give us a little space?’

His brow creased, but he nodded and withdrew, pausing only to nudge the rider, who had seemed content to stay rooted in place within arm’s reach of me, glowering. They seemed to have a brief conversation through nothing but facial expressions, before the rider unfolded his arms and allowed himself to be led a distance away, where he planted himself anew to glower once more.

‘The man who took me said you wanted him to cut out my heart.’ Gwinellyn said after they’d gone, studying me intently. There was something bright and sad brimming in her blue eyes. ‘And then he just left me in the woods to die.’

‘I only wanted him to say that so you’d be too afraid to return. I never intended for him to hurt you,’ I said, scrambling for the story I’d rehearsed in my head and finding it in pieces. ‘I know it sounds mad, but I was trying to protect you. There are dangerous people in the capital right now. They don’t want good things for you.’

She frowned down at the ground and shook her head. ‘I know you think me weak and na?ve, but you can’t truly expect me to believe that.’

Madeia save me, I was making a mess of this. I surged forwards and took one of her hands. She jolted, clearly not expecting that, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her companions stiffen. ‘ Listen to me, Gwinellyn,’ I said desperately. ‘There’s a man sitting on the throne who wanted to use you to get there. I just wanted you out of his reach until I could find a way to contain him.’

She frowned but didn’t withdraw her hand. ‘You remarried? You’ve just erased my father completely, haven’t you?’

‘No, that isn’t what I was doing,’ I lied. ‘It’s complicated.’ She was quiet in response to that, like she was waiting for me to explain, but I didn’t know what else to say. How could I possibly explain?

She scanned my face, catching on my scars. ‘What happened to you?’

I wasn’t sure to say to that, either. I dropped her hand. ‘They’re burns,’ I managed to choke out. There was a heavy silence after those words, and I could almost feel her making assumptions, connections. I let her, waited to see if she would have the gumption to push for more. She didn’t.

‘The man didn’t actually do a very good job of convincing me you wanted me dead,’ she said finally, the hint of a faint smile on her mouth. ‘Not when he came back to the cabin to leave food. It also didn’t help that he told me you’d keep sending supplies for me and were going to bring me home soon.’

I blinked, stunned. Curse Cotus. He was lucky she hadn’t waltzed straight back into the palace. The point had been to scare her into staying away.

‘I’m so sorry for leaving you out here for so long,’ I said finally, and to my surprise, her smile widened.

‘I’m not,’ she replied. ‘Let me show you something.’

With a glance in the direction of her unofficial bodyguards, I followed after her as she led me around the mountain, towards the sound of music.

It seemed like some kind of market. Orbs of light flittered about overhead, darting between lean-to stalls and tents. The ground with bustling with dozens of the pointed-ear folk, many with hair in impossible shades and skin adorned with vibrant ink. A circle of them sat in the center of the busy space, creating that strange, swooping music with voices and instruments, and the air seemed to shimmer around them.

‘What is this place?’ I asked.

‘Isn’t it incredible?’ She didn’t lead me into the fray, stopping a good distance away to watch. ‘All this time I thought those who lived in the Yawn were evil and monstrous, but there’s a whole society here. And they took me in even after all my own people have done to them.’

‘It’s not what I expected when I came to find you,’ I admitted.

‘Why did you come to find me?’

‘I wanted to make sure you were alright.’ The statement rang with sincerity, because it was true.

‘I am,’ she said, exhaling a sigh. ‘Better than I’ve been in a long time, actually.’

We stood in silence and watched the market. My attention caught on a little boy singing to a flower and I watched as it slowly seemed to grow, to bloom.

‘If you knew I wasn’t trying to kill you, why haven’t you tried to return?’ I asked. I couldn’t help myself. It made no sense to me. Even though she had done exactly what I had hoped and prayed she would do, I still couldn’t quite believe that she had actually done it. She was giving up an entire kingdom, a birthright, to play around in the woods. She had essentially let me snatch it all away from her without so much as a peep.

‘I... I like it here,’ she said. Her eyes flashed to the bronze male, who had followed along with the rider to stand nearby. He was still watching us with an intense expression, like he was worried I might eat the little princess.

I started to laugh. ‘Oh no,’ I said, my shoulders shaking. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve given up an entire kingdom... all for a boy? Don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love?’ She didn’t say anything, just watched me cackle to myself, shaking my head. Oh, she had. With some muscled bronze. And now she had no plans to come back and take the throne she was born to sit upon. She was just going to let me keep it so she could stay in the woods and devote her life to trailing along behind him with a child on each hip, cooking his dinners and cleaning his house and warming his bed.

‘His name is Elias.’ By now, she had turned bright red. ‘He draws. And is kind. And he cares for the tombs. They keep the dead in glass coffins so they can continue to love them beyond death. Isn’t that incredible?’

‘Unusual,’ I said, my mind ticking over. Glass coffins. How dramatic.

‘Elias says that it’s because they have long lifespans and can end up loving one another for hundreds of years. He says they use magic to preserve them so they can keep visiting…’ Her babbling trailed off as I began laughing again and she turned even redder. She shot her gaze to the ground, hands clasped before her, tracing circles on one with the thumb of the other. ‘But it isn’t like that with us. He... we.... I haven’t...’

‘Oh, but you will,’ I said, sobering up, and something vicious woke in me, something that wanted to ridicule this na?ve little creature for being such a fool as to let me exile her out here, for choosing love over her birthright. I wanted to scorn her for the gentle, open heart that let her make that choice. ‘Tell me, why does he love you? Does he tell you that you’re beautiful? Does he love your hair and your eyes and your pretty pink lips?’

She said nothing, just continued to play with her hands.

‘Because men fall in love with beauty, sweet girl, but beauty is finite. One day you’ll grow old and haggard, and then the love will go. And trust me, you don’t want to see how a man treats a woman when he doesn’t love her. He becomes an entirely different beast to the one singing your praises while you’re young and pretty.’

‘You’re wrong,’ she said quietly.

‘Well, you’d better hope so, because it’s bad enough to give a man your youth, but another thing entirely to give up a kingdom for him. I can only imagine that sort of regret,’ I said with more resentment than I would have admitted to. She finally looked up from the ground, and her eyes were unbearably sad. It stripped all the mockery from me.

‘I know why you must see the world that way,’ she said and I could see her gaze flickering over my scars. It made me shrink down a little deeper into my cloak. ‘What has been done to you would make anyone bitter. I wish I could say something to change your mind. But I think it might be the sort of thing you’ll only believe by seeing it.’ She smiled, then, a small, encouraging smile, and it made me feel worse than if she had insulted me. ‘You should stay here a while, let me show you the Living Valley and the Yoxvese. They might even be able to do something for... you.’ She stumbled over the end of her sentence, clearly still unsure how to handle my scars, and I was suddenly fiercely grateful for what Draven had done for me. Because this would have been my life, a life of people tiptoeing around me, of averted gazes and delicate euphemisms and pity.

‘I’m glad you’ve found comfort here, but there won’t be an Elias for me.

Besides, why live in the woods when I can live in a palace? Speaking of which—’ I swallowed against the dry tightness in my throat and dunked my hand back into the satchel. My fingers poked around until I found what I was looking for. Withdrawing my hand, I held out the apple. It was so plump and red and glossy, almost bright with a sheen of moisture, like it had been freshly plucked from a dew-brushed tree. ‘I brought this from the palace orchards. I thought you must be missing your gardens.’ My heart was pounding so hard that I thought she must be able to hear it. I was light-headed and could scarcely breathe. Surely, she would know there was something wrong. Surely, she would see my distress and refuse to take it. I had already drugged her once, had dumped her in this cursed place, had left her here for better or for worse. Surely, she wouldn’t trust me now.

But her eyes weren’t looking at me. She was staring at the apple with a hunger that I recognised. For a moment, I could almost see her father in her eyes.

‘That’s kind of you,’ she said. My heart dropped. She took the apple and brought it to her lips, closing her eyes to inhale deeply. ‘Mm,’ she sighed. ‘It smells so sweet. Apples don’t grow here. I didn’t realise how much I’d missed them until now.’

‘Really?’ I croaked. ‘I’ve never liked them.’

She opened her eyes, brushed a lock of hair away from her face, and delicately bit into the fruit, her white teeth flashing against the red skin. A flash of bright pain tore up the arm that had shaken on Draven’ s deal, like a band snapped against my skin, the moment she swallowed. Inhaling sharply, the smell of magic burned my nose.

I stumbled a few steps backwards. ‘I’m glad I’ve seen you and know you’re alright, but I can’t stay,’ I mumbled. She was acting as though she’d forgotten I was there, offering no reply to my words. I didn’t know how long I would have before she fell into her sleep. I didn’t know what her new friends would do when she did.

I didn’t want to stay and watch the consequences of my actions play out.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her bronze Elias take a few hesitant steps towards us. Gwinellyn’s attention was entirely on the apple, now. She was tearing into it with an intense focus, each bite followed by another so fast she could hardly have swallowed the last, her eyes bright with hunger, juice dripping down her chin and hands.

‘Goodbye,’ I whispered, as I backed away further, and when the lizard rider shifted in readiness to follow me, I turned and let him shadow me back the way I’d come.