Page 3 of Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection #2)

Chapter Three

T he boggy’s wings whirred frantically as I approached, throwing itself against the trap so violently it was going to wind up unconscious.

‘Easy,’ I said softly as I crouched down and unscrewed the top on the jar I’d brought for just this purpose. The creature’s oversized head wobbled about on its spindly little neck as it bared its fangs at me, its long, gangly limbs barely losing touch with the ground as it hovered. It was a big one, almost filling the trap it was caught in.

Positioning the rim of the jar above the boggy, I flicked at the transparent skein of magic keeping it captive, dissolving it. The boggy barely had time to blink before I slammed the jar down over the top of it. It hissed in fury and set all four of its arms to work hammering against this new prison as I managed to slip the lid beneath the jar and screw it on tight.

‘You’re lucky I found you first,’ I told it, sighing as I thought about the others still waiting to be released. I didn’t agree that extermination was the best way to deal with the infestation, no matter what the Elders said. But until they saw reason, I would have to keep storing the creatures. Picking up the jar, I walked back through the cavern to stow it away in the little alcove where I kept my lunch. I didn’t want anyone else seeing it and wondering what I was doing with it. Boggies fed on magic, so they didn’t have a good reputation here in the Living Valley, but that didn’t mean they should be eradicated.

Picking up my polishing cloth, I returned to where I’d left off with my duties, approaching Vellya Inatris where she lay resting. Her closed eyelids were faintly purple and her lips tinged with blue as I set to work polishing the smudges off the glass she was encased in, but she looked hardly any different from when she was alive. She could have just been asleep.

‘I really don’t have room for any more of them,’ I muttered down at her. ‘Every single trap has been full this week.’ If she could speak back, she probably would have told me I’d brought my problems on myself by bringing them home in the first place.

‘There,’ I said as I gave the glass a final rub, erasing the last traces of fingerprints and smudges. ‘Much better.’ I straightened up and looked around the cavern at the other prone figures awaiting their polish, each sequestered in an alcove designated just for them. Some were fit with stone benches, others with vines and trees fed on magic as a replacement for sunlight, often embellished with blossoms threaded with veins of white light or butterflies that never strayed. The benches accumulated cobwebs and the plant life dropped leaves, but I had tidied this section recently and everything was still in good order. I caught a glimpse of Tanathil passing through the cavern on his way to the lower levels and he waved enthusiastically. He was chronically late, but so cheerful about it that it was hard to hold it against him.

My footsteps bounced all over the cavern as I trod from one coffin to the next, hoping to get at least this first section completed before visitors began to arrive. The twisting, echoing chamber, with its rough-hewn rock walls, glowing orbs of violet wishlights and dozens of tunnels snaking away into a tangled labyrinth of darkness, was one of the many I was responsible for cleaning. I couldn’t get through them all in a single day, but I tried to reach as many as I could.

I talked quietly to the occupant of each coffin as I cleaned, telling them about the latest news from the world above. I wasn’t sure if the other caretakers spoke to the dead, but I thought it rude not to while they lay so politely, ready to listen. But even if I did speak to them, I never expected them to talk back. Yoxvese magic was remarkable, but did not extend to necromancy. Our dead remained dead, no matter how well we were able to preserve them.

That’s why the stuttering gasps of sobbing made me freeze with shock for a moment. The entrance to the tombs would still be barred. I should have been the only one in this cavern. I cast my eyes around, my gaze darting from one coffin to the next. The dead were as they always were: still and serene as they lay against their cushions, their glass enclosures shining and clear.

‘Hello?’ I called hesitantly.

The sobbing stopped.

I began to walk in the direction I thought I heard it coming from, an alcove containing a white-haired Yoxvesen who had died aged nine hundred-and-forty-two. I looked down at him with a frown.

‘Naertho? That wasn’t you, was it?’

A sort of strangled squeak drew my attention to a small recess in the wall behind the coffin where the stone had begun eroding away.

‘Oh, hello,’ I said. ‘Forgive me, I didn’t realise you were here.’ I addressed this comment to a bent head of glossy black hair. The figure flinched when I spoke. ‘Are you visiting someone?’

The head turned up, revealing a pale, feminine face. The first thing I thought upon meeting her clear, wide eyes was beautiful. The second thing I thought, as I took in her features, so dainty and rounded, was not Yoxvese. And when my magic reached out a curious tendril to her and trilled a warning in my mind, I stumbled back a few steps. Human.

‘Mae!’ I shouted, my voice echoing against the rock walls. ‘Tanathil! There are binders here!’ I knew the odds were that they wouldn’t hear me—they would be too far away, seeing to their own sections. But I had to try to warn them.

The human didn’t move to come after me. She instead clamped her arms over her head and cringed down lower to the floor, rocking back and forth as she began sobbing again.

It gave me pause.

I had never encountered binders before. The Living Valley was well protected and the sheer limestone cliffs surrounding it, as well as the thick forest and myriad of creatures that inhabited it, meant humans were only ever really seen near the fringes. But even if I’d never seen a human, I knew of them. Ruthless murderers who carried off the forest folk to be slaves, to have their magic stripped from them, to die with empty veins in dark cells.

But this woman didn’t look like she was about to bind anyone. My magic reached out again, drawn by an irresistible curiosity despite my attempts to restrain it. It tasted the emotions rolling off her like waves and found the dark, bitter flavour of despair. No aggression.

‘Please don’t kill me,’ she whimpered, her face still covered.

‘Me? Kill you ?’ I repeated, raising my eyebrows despite myself. My magic trilled again, like a shiver going through my mind, and prickled me with pity. Unless she was uncommonly skilled at masking deception, she wasn’t about to do anything more than sob.

‘How did you get in here? Are you alone?’ I asked. Perhaps she was no threat at this moment, but if she had companions, they could be.

‘I was lost. I was sheltering in a cave and… and walked deeper into it than I meant to.’ The words were shaky and muffled, but hummed along my magic like words of truth, the singing of a cool mountain stream. ‘There’s no one else with me.’ She took a few gasping breaths, as though trying to steady herself, and lifted her head, turning red-rimmed eyes on me in an expression that was at odds with the sobbing. Grim, determined, ready to accept whatever fate she seemed to expect I was about to dole out. ‘No one is coming for me.’

I couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for her then. She looked sure that she’d met her doom in me. And as I scanned her face, I noticed more than her beauty. She looked thin and fragile, with blue shadows beneath her eyes and an exhaustion about her shoulders like a threadbare cloak. Her hair was snarled with knots and there was dirt ground beneath her ragged fingernails and smudged into her skin. Perhaps I’d never seen a human before and couldn’t know how devious they were, but she surely looked like the least threatening thing I’d ever seen. Without thinking, I bobbed down beside her. She shrunk away but didn’t hide her face again.

‘What are you doing in the Living Valley at all?’ I asked softly. ‘Humans aren’t welcome here. Are you here to steal magic?’

She shook her head rapidly. ‘N-no. I mean no harm. Someone was going to kill me. He brought me into the Yawn and said he was going to cut out my heart.’ Her voice broke and she inhaled a shaky breath. ‘So I ran.’

It was an odd story. I tilted my head as I regarded her, still tasting for deceit. Humans were known to be cunning. I should take her to the Elders and they could decide what to do with her.

Her gaze flashed to the coffin behind me, to the prone figure beneath the glass. ‘Please don’t hurt me,’ she whispered, fresh tears springing to her eyes.

‘I won’t hurt you, but this is a tomb,’ I said when I recognised the expression on her face as horror. ‘You can’t stay here.’ When the tinkling of bells began to ring through the chamber a moment later, announcing that the tombs were opening for the day, I stood and made a hasty decision. ‘We’re going to have to get you out of here before someone else sees you.’

She swiped at her eyes and looked up at me warily, her mouth curved with apprehension, her brow scrunched tight.

‘Wait here. I’ll be right back.’ I darted off, hurrying back through the cavern until I alighted on the hollow where my belongings were stowed away. I tugged out my cloak, revealing the unhappy boggy sitting in the jar beneath it with a spindly finger up its nose. It hissed at being suddenly exposed and began hammering at the glass again, nattering away in a high-pitched squeak. Well, if I was smuggling secrets, I may as well take them both at the same time. Snatching up the jar, I headed back to where I’d left the human, half hoping she had disappeared. Helping her was a terrible idea. Worse, a dangerous one. I imagined the Elders frowning down at me if I was found out, shaking their heads at yet another demonstration of recklessness.

But as soon as I caught sight of the girl again, my curiosity overpowered my doubts, as it always did.

I held out the cloak. ‘Put this on.’ She rose to her feet, still eying me warily, but took the offering and clasped it around her shoulders. Her skin looked impossibly pale against the dark fabric. I yanked my gaze away from her and stared down one of the tunnels as the sound of voices whispered through the cavern. Without thinking, I reached for the hood of the cloak, meaning to pull it up over her head, but she recoiled, eyes wide like she thought I was going to slap her. ‘The hood,’ I said, my voice a hurried whisper. ‘Pull it up.’

She did, obscuring those telltale human ears and shadowing her face enough that she might avoid drawing attention. Might. If we kept to the dark and everyone visiting the tombs was preoccupied with other things this morning.

Her gaze dropped to the jar and the desperate prisoner, which reminded me that I still needed to sneak it out as well.

‘Could you carry this?’ I asked, holding it out to her. ‘It needs to stay hidden, too.’

‘What is it?’ For a moment, something flickered in her face that wasn’t fear. Her brows lifted slightly, and she almost, almost , smiled. The draw of it tempted my magic towards her again, because wonder was as rich and sweet as honey.

‘It’s just a boggy. It won’t hurt you.’ She took the jar and gently tucked it away under the cloak. ‘Stay right behind me. Don’t stray or stop, and try to keep your head down. Humans aren’t welcome here, do you understand? There are some who would kill you on sight.’

‘I understand,’ she said, clutching the cloak tighter with her free hand.

‘Then come on.’ I took a breath. Wondered if I was mad to do this. Then began to walk through the cavern as though everything was normal and I was just showing a visitor through. The girl followed close behind, and I spared a glance back to make sure her hood was still hiding her ears. Her face was angled down, just as I’d told her. Blood and salt, this was reckless. Never mind the boggy, what was I going to do with her? A human ? If anyone caught us, there would be no more chances for me. I’d be exiled, forced into the human lands to take my chances alone.

But I led her into the tunnel that would take us to the world above all the same.

As the echoes of voices approaching us drew closer, I stretched my magic out to the cloak and drew the shadows tighter around her face. Wishlights darted above us, playfully chasing one another through the dark and hardly staying still long enough that anyone could see us clearly.

‘What’s your name?’ I whispered to her, because I suddenly realised I didn’t know it. If I was going to risk so much for her, I should know it .

‘Gwin,’ came the soft reply, barely skating over the sound of our footsteps.

Then we rounded a bend and a trio of visitors were directly ahead of us, and I almost groaned when I realised one was Elder Meira, her long stride and ice-blue hair easily recognisable.

‘Elias,’ she said as she saw me, slowing her gate.

‘Elder,’ I said, touching my fingers to my chin and sweeping them out again in the sign of respect, but doing my best to keep walking as I did.

‘I hear you have secured an audience at Song.’ She stepped into my path, forcing me to halt. ‘An audience does not mean endorsement. It’s for the sake of your mother that we will hear you.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ I muttered, too tense to feel the anger such a comment would usually invoke as I tried to edge around her. Meira’s gaze rested briefly on Gwin, and I pulled the shadows closer around her face, hoping it wasn’t obvious enough that the elder would take a closer look. But as much as she thought me a maker of trouble, she had no reason to suspect I was trying to shuffle a human straight into the Living Valley. Her eyes slipped over the girl and she nodded in acceptance before stepping graciously out of our way.

‘Do not shame your kin,’ she called after me. Gwin stumbled over her feet, reaching blindly, and I automatically steadied her with a hand on her arm, hurriedly releasing the shadows so she could see again and shuffling her along.

We didn’t pass anyone else on our ascent, and as the sound of falling water began to fill the tunnel, I let out a sigh of relief. Daylight penetrated the curtain of water as it cascaded over the mouth of the cave, misting the air, and I beckoned Gwin to the narrow path that led around it and out of the tombs. She eyed the waterfall, but followed without protest, and we broke into the day beyond without incident. From there, we could avoid encountering anyone else.

‘Quick. This way,’ I said, immediately heading for the tree line, and it took me a moment to realise Gwin wasn’t following. She was stopped just beyond the entrance, with the mouth of the dark opening looming over her small form, the mist cast by the cascading water haloing her in strokes of rainbow as she craned her neck and gaped up.

‘Where am I?’ she asked, her voice hushed. I followed her gaze to where the ground sloped away before us, forming the floor of a deep ravine choked with forest that stretched as far as the eye could see. The ravine wasn’t what dominated the landscape, though. It was the jagged row of soaring limestone pillars clawing at the sky, mountains whose connection with the earth below was so spindly that they seemed to defy nature to stay standing. Some weren’t connected to the ground at all and hung suspended in the air, floating islands of greenery that only those with wings could reach.

‘Still in danger,’ I said, backtracking to where she was standing. ‘If anyone finds out I’ve brought you here, there will be serious consequences for both of us.’ It was as much a reminder for me as for her, but I led her into the trees anyway, half bewildered by my decision to do so.

Because it meant I was taking her to my home.

The trees shivered in recognition as we passed through, greeting me with a rustling of leaves, and for a few minutes we walked without speaking as I ran through questions in my head. She seemed so frightened that I didn’t want to scare her with an interrogation, but it still seemed impossible that she was here.

‘Are you alright?’ I asked Gwin when I caught a sense of alarm sparking off her.

A moment later, she fell to her knees with a small gasp, dropped the boggy in the jar, and began rummaging around the base of one of the trees, grabbing greedily at the bright blue flowers springing from the soil there. The jar rolled across the earth, tumbling the boggy around like a log in a river.

‘What are you doing?!’ I quickly captured her hands, pulling her away from the flowers as she tried to shove what she’d managed to grasp into her mouth. ‘Stop!’ Kneeling before her, I shook the remains of the flowers out of her hands, only for her to start trying to lick at her fingers. ‘Gwin! You can’t eat the flowers of the amirach plant. They’re dangerous.’ But I could tell the warning had come too late for her to heed it. She moaned, still trying to get her fingers into her mouth, her gaze locked on those bright blue petals.

‘I’ll just have a little,’ she whimpered.

‘You’ve already had them,’ I said, my heart sinking. Her eyes finally flicked back to me, and I could see the edges of sickness in them, now. The hint of addiction. I knew humans traded in them, ground them up into powder and poisoned themselves slowly with them. And I’d seen amirach addiction before. Her gaze slid away from me again.

‘But they make everything else go away,’ she said, the words barely audible. ‘I don’t have to remember.’

‘I want to help you,’ I said, ‘but if you eat those, I can’t.’

‘Why do you want to help me? You… you don’t even know me. ’

Why did I want to help her? The Elders would say it was because I couldn’t resist a lost cause. But it wasn’t that at all. ‘Because you need help.’ I rose to my feet and offered her my hand. She looked at it for a moment, before dropping her gaze to the floor, taking a shuddering breath and rising to her feet on her own. I folded my fingers in over my palm, reminding myself that she was human. She probably found me repulsive. I ought to find her repulsive, too. Her people had been hunting and killing mine for a long, long time, forcing us from our lands, stealing our magic. But the reminder didn’t strike the chord it ought to. After all, I had never lived through any of that. I was young, and for as long as I’d been alive, the Yoxvese had inhabited the Living Valley and been happy enough to stay there. We were safe, protected by the land around us. The hatred didn’t live in me the way it might in others.

She was very, very lucky I’d been the one to find her.

‘This way,’ I said, scooping up the jar and the boggy and renewing our pace.

She seemed to be breathing deliberately as we continued, her gaze fixed on the path before her, her hands fisted in the cloak. It must be difficult for her to walk away from those flowers. I had to get her somewhere safe before the cravings took hold in earnest. When they did, there would be no pulling her away.

We approached a small wooden door cut into the cliff face. The blooms on the surrounding greenery turned in our direction to beam at me, and as I opened the door the vines around the opening stretched a little closer, trying to get inside. Peering into the dark interior, I listened for the sounds of movement within. It was empty. I knew it was empty. The others would be on patrol or deep underground, seeing to their duties, like I should have been. What I would do with her when they all returned, I wasn’t sure.

‘You live here?’ she asked as I led her inside. Shafts of sunlight cut through holes drilled in the rock, illuminating the central living space, a large, circular cavern carpeted in thick moss where we would sit on the floor and share a meal.

‘Not alone.’ I picked my way around the room, heading for the narrow opening that lead to my own quarters. ‘But you’ll be safe in here.’

When she followed me through the door into the room beyond, I saw it with new eyes. The pile of pillows and rugs where I slept was dishevelled, more a nest than a bed, seeded with books I’d been leafing through before sleep. The sound of water trickled through the air from the spill of a spring seeping through the wall, gathering in a deep pool for bathing. I tickled the wishlights in the corner with magic and they shivered to life, lending a violet glow to the papers scattered across the floor, scribbled with notes and sketches. Ducking low, I shuffled them into a pile and shoved them on a shelf.

But she wasn’t looking at the mess. Her gaze was fixed on the pool with a longing so keen I could see it. She drifted over to it, seeming oblivious to everything else, and ran her fingers through the streams of water trickling down the wall. ‘Oh, it’s warm,’ she sighed, rubbing the water up her arms.

My resolve to monitor her cracked a little more. I had the sudden, fierce desire to sketch her, standing there with her hands in the water, the violet light darkening her eyes. ‘It’s for washing in. You can bathe, if you’d like. ’

She bit her lip, and her eyes flicked around the room, suddenly seeming to take in her surroundings, lingering on the bed.

‘I’ll wait outside,’ I said quickly. ‘Are you hungry? I can find you something to eat.’ And then I’d have to figure out what I was going to do with her.

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, her eyes downcast. I lingered for a moment, wondering again whether I was being a na?ve fool. Just because she seemed harmless didn’t mean she was. She might use the time being unobserved to fashion an escape plan and tear off into the Living Valley to wreak havoc. But I withdrew from the room anyway, closing the door behind me. It felt unnecessarily cruel to force her to bathe under my watch, and there was nowhere for her to go from that room.

Wishlights darted overhead as I walked through the dwelling to the heavy, woven rug that hid a trapdoor in the floor. Unscrewing the jar, I wrenched up the door. Immediately, the nattering of a dozen angry voices filled the air, along with the whir of wings. I shook the boggy out to join the rest of them, and he dropped drunkenly into the dimly lit space below, his wings catching him at the last moment. Other boggies began fluttering over to him, poking and prodding at him and jabbering at each other. Closing the door back down, I replaced the rug with a sense of misgiving. I really needed to release them soon.

Pushing aside the curtain that obscured the place where I kept my clothes, I focused on the most immediate problems. I had to find Gwin something to wear. She couldn’t put back on the scraps of fabric she’d been dressed in before.

And then? What would I do? Hide her here forever? Take her to the Elders? I couldn’t let her go back to her own kind after she’d found her way through the caverns. She could bring an army of humans with their weapons and their blood magic straight into the heart of the Living Valley.

Grabbing some clothes, I crossed back to the door and placed them in a pile on the floor. ‘Gwin?’ I said through the wood. ‘There are clothes here. If you want them.’ She didn’t reply, so I left them there and went to find her something to eat.

When I’d assembled a plate of fruits and dense, seeded bread, I sat in the living space to wait for her. My fingers immediately began to itch for charcoal and paper. I resisted it for a while as I absently picked at the food, but eventually I gave in and settled myself in with a sketchpad already full of renderings of plants and boggies and a few half-finished portraits. Opening to a fresh page, I began sketching immediately, trying to capture the image in my head before it slipped away. It emerged quickly: the curve of a face, the shadow of a slightly parted mouth, eyes wide beneath snarls of hair and the heavy hood of a cloak.

At the sound of footsteps, I quickly stowed the sketchpad away. Gwin stood at the door, dressed in the clothes I’d left for her. Her damp hair dripped water down the creamy silk of the tunic, which she had belted around her slender waist and rolled up at the sleeves. She’d rolled up the cuffs of the trousers too, since she was clearly much smaller than I was. Without the dirt that had been smudged into her face, her skin was even more pale, the shadows around her eyes darker by contrast. She was almost painfully beautiful.

‘Here,’ I said, gesturing to the food. She approached cautiously, her gaze darting to me and then away again as she picked her way across the floor and sat cross-legged nearby. Gingerly, she picked up a berry and slipped it into her mouth .

‘Who tried to kill you?’ I asked as I watched her eat, failing to imagine a reason why someone could ever want to kill her. She was the most unthreatening creature I’d ever come across, human or not.

She smoothed her thumb over the skin of an apricot, staring at it like it might hold the answers to the universe. ‘My stepmother.’

‘Why?’

‘She… wanted me out of the way.’

I waited for her to add more, but she didn’t. I supposed stepmothers might not like having the children of a previous marriage around.

‘I have nowhere to go,’ she added quietly. ‘I’m sorry that you’ve had to help me.’

‘I’m not,’ I said without thinking. She glanced at me with eyes rounded with surprise. ‘You’re safe here for now,’ I added quickly. ‘If you want to rest, you can.’ Her shoulders were sagging with exhaustion, and her hands were trembling slightly. I wondered how long it had been since she’d taken amirach.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You’ve been so kind to me.’ There was a note of disbelief in it, and I had the impression that kindness was not something she expected to be given.

‘Go on,’ I replied, nodding towards the door. ‘Use the bed. I’ll wait for you to wake, and then we will figure out what to do next.’

With a small, grateful smile, she rose to her feet and returned to the room. When the door shut behind her, my doubts emerged again. After a moment’s hesitation, I rose, crossed the room with quiet steps, and locked the door behind her.