Page 31 of Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection #2)

Chapter Thirty-One

T he songs of grief were the most painful to sing. They rang through the caverns in hollow echoes, thrumming with the magic of sunartham, the spirit that joined all life together. Energy doesn’t just vanish, the songs whispered. It only changes. The magic moved and flowed together, reminding us all that we weren’t separate, we were all formed of the same whole, that the dead weren’t gone but with us always.

But that was little consolation when faced with the sight of Gwin’s body laid out beneath glass. Not that I could look at it to see.

Beside me, Mae and Tanathil held hands, gently swaying in time to the song, their eyes closed as they sang. Goras stood opposite me, his arms folded tight across his chest, his face grave. He blamed himself. He wished he’d killed the intruder on sight.

But I was the one who knew how dangerous she was when Gwin revealed who she was. And I’d let her get close anyway .

‘Who will make the energy pledge of preserving our friend?’ Elder Meira asked as the singing reached a lull.

I stepped forward, my head lowered. ‘I will.’

My magic stretched out a hesitant tendril, gently reaching out to the glass, enveloping it. The singing rose again, surrounding me, prickling my skin with sympathy and support. The pledge took hold as a gentle tingling in my palms that would fade to almost nothing in a few days.

‘Rest soundly knowing your body is safe, Gwin, and may your spirit return to the soil and the stars,’ Elder Meira sang, and her words were echoed by the community of Faerendor throughout the cavern as the song came to a close. The magic began to retreat, seeping back out of the air and taking that soothing sense of unity with it. This would be the hardest part, the part when everyone filed out of the caverns and left her here.

Elder Meira lingered by my shoulder, like she might speak. But she didn’t. When she moved on, the rest of the crowd drained away behind her, some of them whispering words of sympathy as they passed that I didn’t respond to. After a while, Goras followed them. He’d want to see Ignis. That’s how he dealt with pain. Daethie went with him. Mae and Tan stayed longer, sitting on the bench alongside me, slumped forwards, heads hanging low. I stared at the plaque at the base of the coffin, where normally there would be an inscription listing family and ancestry. All this one said was ‘Gwin.’ Not even a last name. None of us knew it.

‘Do you want us to stay?’ Mae’s voice cut into my thoughts after a seemingly endless silence, and I realised both she and Tan were standing.

I shook my head .

She leaned down and hugged me. I closed my eyes, clasped her tight for a moment, the sorrow sharpening. When she straightened, there were fresh tears on her cheeks. She drew away as Tan squeezed my shoulder, and they both retreated into the tunnel that would take them to the surface.

I stared down at my hands, turning them over, feeling the prickle of the pledge. It would keep Gwin exactly as she was now for as long as I continued to honour it. Every coffin in the tombs was protected with such a pledge. Our lives were long. Some of us spent hundreds of years loving someone, and to continue living after a loss of that magnitude was difficult. The pledge of preservation was a promise to never forget, a channel for our grief.

Because grief was just love with no place to go.

I stood and finally forced myself to look at her. She was so still, her eyelids now forever hiding those eyes that had been so quick to see good, to shine with curiosity or understanding or trust. I’d been swallowing down tears the entire ceremony, but now they finally escaped my control and fell.

It had never felt so wrong to see a face beneath glass before. She was too young, too sweet, too good, to be dead. But she was all the same.

Mae had dressed her in human clothes, wanting to honour the life she’d had before I’d found her just around the corner from where she now lay. But looking at her in that moment, I hated that choice. It was that previous life that had killed her, that wicked woman with a face full of scars who had come to find her. Her stepmother. I hadn’t realised she’d been responsible at first. She’d left so suddenly, and Gwin hadn’t seemed upset by anything that had passed between them. But within the hour, she’d fallen to the floor, her heartbeat silenced, her breathing still, and nothing even the most gifted healers could do made a difference. There had been a tang of enchantment about, the sort that came from human magic, strange and wrong and nothing we could work with.

I scrubbed my hands over my face, trying to get a hold of the tears, but they kept coming. I should never have left her alone with that woman. I should have taken better care of her.

Her skin was so pale. It was wrong. Every time she’d looked at me, she’d blushed pink. And her hair was never so smoothed and tamed, it was always straying around her face. She’d twisted it when she was anxious. I had a sketchbook full of drawings of her, and in none of them was her hair so obediently pulled back like this. Slowly, I lifted the glass case of the coffin. It swung back on silent hinges. My fingers went gently to her hair, freeing a lock from behind her ear. It sprung out to curl around her cheek, where my fingers lingered.

I wished I’d kissed her when I had the chance. I’d been wanting to kiss her ever since I found her. And she’d wanted me to kiss her. I knew she had. But she’d been so fragile, so worried about her place among us. I hadn’t wanted to put that kind of pressure on her while the whole community was watching and assessing her. I’d thought there’d be more time.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, stroking her cheek. ‘I should have been braver.’ Without thinking, I leaned down and pressed my lips against her forehead. So close, I could taste the lingering bitterness of enchantment, sending a shiver creeping over my skin. I turned away, suddenly focused. I would go to Baba Yaga. She was the one who’d sent the woman into the Living Valley, who’d given her the means to do this. I would hold her to account for it .

There was a gasp behind me. I spun around.

Gwin jolted up, her hand to her chest, heaving in panicked, wheezing breaths.

I stumbled back. My heart was pounding. This wasn’t possible.

But she was coughing and shaking, and her eyes were so panicked as she tried to clamber off the coffin. I went to her immediately, folded her in my arms without thinking about how or why. I lifted her out, hastily stumbling away like death might claim her back again if we stayed too close to that plaque with her name. I reached a wall, slid down it, cradling her to me as I rocked her back and forth and told her it was okay, she was alright. Relief and fear and confusion tangled through me in a heady mixture that was part elation, part adrenaline. She was shaking so violently, and just to breathe sounded painful and difficult, like she’d lost the knack. Because she’d been dead a few moments ago.

Finally, her breathing evened out. Her trembling subsided as the warmth came back to her skin. I didn’t let her go. I spoke to her in a ceaseless murmur, telling her where she was, what had happened to her, what I thought was happening now. I didn’t know why whatever magic on her hadn’t killed her. I didn’t know why it had broken the moment it did, how she had been revived. It felt like a twist on preservation magic, like she’d been kept in suspended animation, something that I didn’t even know was possible. Eventually, she calmed enough to straighten, to look at me. The blush returned to her cheeks.

I couldn’t resist. I kissed her. Without thinking, without deciding whether it was right or wrong to do it, I kissed her.

And she kissed me back .

Her hands went to my face, hesitantly, her lips unsure, but my hands were in her hair and I was kissing her like I’d lost her, because I had. Her hair was so soft in my hands as I cradled her to me, and she tasted like sunlight. When she was trembling again, I broke the kiss, pressed my forehead against hers.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t help myself.’

She laughed, a bubble of almost-hysteria, and then she kissed me again. And this time, there was no hesitance.

When I managed to stop kissing her, to let her just breathe, I cradled her close, my chin on her hair, my hand stroking down her back. ‘Are you alright?’

‘Good for someone who was dead,’ she said. Her voice was hoarse, raspy. My arms tightened around her involuntarily. I didn’t want to think about her laying in that coffin. Never again. ‘I have to tell you something,’ she said. ‘Something I should have told you already.’ She looked up at me, bit her lip, dropped her gaze again. ‘My name isn’t just Gwin. It’s Gwinellyn Daucourt. I’m the crown princess of Brimordia.’

My hand stopped stroking. I drew away from her, tilted her face up so I could see it. There was uncertainty in her eyes, but determination, too. Bravery. Her jaw was set, like she expected me to fling her away. ‘That’s why that woman was trying to kill you,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘If I’m dead, she’s queen. Alive, I’m a threat to her reign.’ Her gaze moved past me to stare at something that wasn’t there. ‘I thought she wouldn’t. When she stranded me out here… I just thought she wouldn’t go as far as trying to kill me.’ Returning her focus to my face, she smiled. ‘You’re not angry. ’

Choking back a laugh that felt dangerously close to tears again, I brushed the backs of my fingers down her jaw. ‘How could anyone ever be angry with you?’

Her smile brightened, creasing her eyes and making them glow, before slipping off her face. ‘I have to go back.’

I was already shaking my head. ‘She’ll try to kill you again.’

A shudder seemed to run over her, and she drew in closer to me. ‘I think there’s more to it than what it seems. I have a feeling I need to go back and find out.’

‘You were dead this morning. There’s no way you’re in any shape to go anywhere.’

‘But I have a chance to do something!’ Without warning, she got to her feet, staggering a little, but brushing off my hand when I tried to balance her. She seemed suddenly agitated, her hands going to her head. ‘Don’t you see the bigger picture here? I’m the princess. I could wear the crown myself, and I’ve been hiding away like that means nothing. But if I go back, I could change everything for you, for all of you. I could stop the Guild from sending binders into the Yawn. I could change the laws around magic use. I could tell them all how wrong they are about you all.’

‘Okay, okay, just please sit down before you fall down,’ I begged as she wobbled again.

She seemed to think about tearing off through the caverns for a moment, but thankfully she slid down the wall to sit by my side. ‘I have a responsibility,’ she continued, softer now. ‘To my country. To everyone who lives in the Living Valley. To you. I can’t keep hiding and pretending I don’t. Not when I could do so much good and repay you all for what you’ve done for me.’

‘You owe me nothing, Gwinellyn,’ I said, tasting the new name in my mouth. She was a princess. It was a strange thought to grapple with. But when I thought of the way she’d climbed onto the back of the wyvern, sitting bold and straight like she’d been around them all her life, it made perfect sense. I thought about how she had been faced with suspicion since she’d been here and she’d met it with understanding. I thought of how she had thrown herself into our way of life and tried to learn all she could, how she hadn’t let her fear guide her or her misconceptions rule her. I didn’t know anyone who should be a princess more than Gwin.

I took her hand. ‘I feel like I want to lock you up in my room again,’ I said, and she blushed so furiously, those fervent eyes turning shy, and I wanted to kiss her again. ‘But I guess being the heir to a kingdom would hold a lot more sway than my worry.’

‘I’m sor—’ she began, but I held a finger to her lips.

‘Don’t start apologising,’ I said. ‘Not for doing what you think is right. Just let me come with you.’

‘You can’t,’ she said with a sigh. ‘My people call you fall spawn. My courtiers and council will already be suspicious of me after I’ve been gone this long. They’d kill you, or capture you, and declare me mad in the bargain. Let me see how I’m received first. Let me see what my stepmother has done while I’ve been gone.’ There was too much sadness in her face, in her eyes, as she spoke about going back. My magic could taste it rolling off her in waves, salty and slightly bitter. She didn’t want to go back. There was no joy for her in the thought of home.

I didn’t like it. I didn’t like her plan. But I had no right to tell her she couldn’t do what she thought was right and I didn’t know her world. I had to trust that she knew what she was doing. ‘I don’t like the thought of you going alone,’ I said finally.

She rested her head on my shoulder. ‘I won’t be alone. I’m going to take Valoric with me.’