Page 34 of Her Blind Deception (The Dark Reflection #2)

Chapter Thirty-Four

W hen I reached Gwinellyn, she was staggering to her feet. She seemed disoriented, struggling to focus on my face as I helped her up.

‘Are you alright?’ I asked, quickly scanning her for any sign of injuries. I couldn’t see any blood, and she seemed to be able to move her arms and legs well enough. Aether knew how she’d made it through that fall unscathed.

‘I… I think so,’ she said, wincing as she took a hold of my arm.

‘We need to get out of here. Can you walk?’ I took hold of her arm. She took a few steps and would have fallen if I wasn’t supporting her. I checked her over more thoroughly and still found nothing. Perhaps she’d hit her head when she’d fallen. ‘What on earth were you thinking coming here?!’

‘That you poisoned me and lied to me and played me for a fool. I couldn’t let you keep getting away with it,’ she said, her voice wavering .

There were voices behind us. Yelling. I didn’t know who they belonged to, but I had to assume everyone was an enemy.

‘Well consider me chastised. How are we going to get out of here?’ I considered the lizard beast crouching nearby, snapping its tail back and forth as it watched me. Now I could get a closer look at it, I could see it was wearing a saddle similar to the one I’d seen in the Yawn. My mind ticked over, weighing up different courses of action, hating all of them.

‘Can you ride that thing?’ I asked her, nodding in its direction.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Will it take two people?’

‘I think so. For a while at least.’

Dragging her towards the beast, it flicked its frills out and they quivered as it hissed at me.

‘Don’t bite me,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m with her.’

Steeling my spine and sucking in a quick breath for nerve, I edged within snapping distance, heading for the creature’s back. It curled its neck to watch me, still fluttering its frills, but didn’t try to eat me. With Gwinellyn weakly pulling at the saddle and me pushing her, I managed to get her mounted. Then I grabbed the saddle, counted to three and swung up behind her. My heart was more a flutter than a beat as the beast rose to its feet, its muscles bunching up beneath me.

‘Oh, I don’t like this,’ I muttered to myself. ‘I don’t like this, I don’t like this, I don’t—’

It leapt just as two men in guard uniforms came hurtling towards us, and as they yelled and pointed, we soared into the air. At which point I closed my eyes because I was going to fall to my death and I didn’t want to see it. I strung chains of curse words together from the dark safety of my eyelids as the wind tore at me and I clutched on so tightly that all my muscles began to cramp.

‘Where do we go?’ Gwinellyn called back to me, and I realised I should probably be the one in charge of that, since I was the one who hadn’t fallen from a tower, but peering through a slit in my eyelids I saw Lee Helse rushing past far beneath us, and I screwed them tight again with a low groan, turning my face into Gwin’s back.

‘The Yawn,’ I managed to get out. ‘Let’s head that way.’

We flew for long enough that my legs and shoulders were screaming. It must have been hours. I could peel my eyes open for short stretches if I kept them fixed straight ahead, but inevitably the moment I caught sight of the pitching ground below, I felt like I was going to be sick and had to close them again. When it started to rain, the experience became even more miserable, the cold settling in rapidly until we were both shivering violently.

‘I think he’s going to need to rest,’ Gwin finally yelled over the wind after far too long enduring the misery. ‘We’re dropping.’

Peeking out, I could see we were definitely flying lower to the ground, with trees and houses looming larger than they were at the beginning of our flight. Ahead, the Yawn was much closer than I expected it to be, haunting the horizon. We were far further north than we would have managed by coach, with Lee Helse a long way behind us, far out of sight. I spied a small settlement some way off.

‘Let’s stop there,’ I shouted in her ear, pointing it out quickly before grasping at the saddle again.

We landed a while out of the village, which couldn’t be helped. We couldn’t exactly dismount from a giant winged lizard in the main street. Dusty fields stretched out around us in every direction, turning muddy in the rain. I could have kissed them when my feet touched the ground, if my legs weren’t so seized up with tension that I could hardly bend them.

‘I don’t know if he’ll stay here if we leave him,’ Gwin said, patting the creature’s nose like it was a pet dog.

‘I can’t say I’ll miss him,’ I muttered. I would steal horses if I had to, because there was no way I was getting back on that creature.

We made slow progress to the village. Gwinellyn was frequently dizzy and easily out of breath, having to stop several times to rest.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ she wheezed as I slung one of her arms over my shoulders.

‘You just need a good sleep,’ I said, even as I knew deep down that something was wrong. I had to get her somewhere safe so I could find out what it was.

We drew attention as we entered the town, due mostly to my ostentatious dress—moss green brocade was likely not something seen regularly in a place like this, especially on a sopping-wet woman walking into town on foot. Attention was bad, but there was nothing for it. We just had to be long gone before anyone came looking for us here.

We entered a shabby little inn. A landlady with exhaustion written in creases around her face eyed us with half-hearted suspicion. There was a toddler pulling at her skirts, so I supposed she didn’t have the time to wonder who on earth we were for long.

When I slapped down the emerald earrings I’d been wearing as payment for a room for the night, her gaze sharpened. She picked them up and held them to the light, frowning.

‘If they’re real, they’re more than the room,’ she said.

‘Then it’s your lucky day,’ I replied.

Her eyes combed my dirt-stained dress, the fading girl draped against me. With a curt nod, she pocketed the earrings.

‘This way,’ she said, picking up an oil lamp and calling another child to take the little one.

The lamp stank of tallow, and she led us down the hall with no light weaves to be seen, no enchantments keeping things crisp and clean. The people here likely knew such things existed, but I doubted any of them had ever possessed any kind of magic. The room was small and careworn, but comfortable enough.

‘Comes with breakfast,’ the landlady said as I lowered Gwin onto the bed.

‘And dinner?’

She pursed her lips, but then nodded. ‘Aye, that’ll be fair if the jewels are real. I’ll have them checked before you’re fed, though.’

I cursed my lack of foresight as she left. I should have pocketed all my jewels and gems on my way out. Or even the cutlery. Staring at the closed door, I experienced a moment of crushing panic, like everything that had just happened crashed down on top of me all at once. My next inhale was strangled and shaky. I’d lost my magic mirror, my glamour. I’d fled the capital on the back of a flying lizard. I’d knifed Draven.

Had I killed him?

‘You know, when you married my father, everyone told me that you were wicked and I couldn’t trust you,’ Gwinellyn said, already dropping down against the pillow. ‘I kept refusing to believe it.’

I didn’t know what to reply. I had been wicked and untrustworthy. And for what? It was all ashes now. All I said as I pulled her shoes and stockings from her feet was, ‘We should get you out of your dress.’

But she wrapped her arms around her middle, shaking her head. ‘No, leave it. I’ll only close my eyes for a little bit.’

I didn’t know if that was a good idea or not. As I’d told Draven, I was no nurse. I knew nothing about sickness. But I wasn’t about to force a girl out of her dress if she didn’t want me to touch her. She was mostly dry now, anyway. Instead, I pulled the covers up over her.

‘You ran him through, didn’t you? I saw you do it. Just before I fell.’

My stomach churned as I remembered his blood-slicked shirt. ‘Yes.’

She closed her eyes. ‘Thank you for proving that I wasn’t stupid for believing in you,’ she murmured, so soft I almost didn’t hear it.

I sat on the bed and stared at her for a long time, feeling the burden of her trust as a weight on my shoulders that wanted to crush me. Is that what I’d been doing, why I’d been trying to keep her alive? Living up to a trust she never should have placed in me?

What would she do when she realised the role I’d had to play in her father’s death? Surely, she wouldn’t dismiss that as easily as she seemed to have dismissed the other things I’d done to her.

Later in the evening, we were brought two bowels of a surprisingly pleasant stew, and I managed to persuade Gwin to eat a few mouthfuls. When I asked the landlady for the nearest physician, she said there was one a day’s ride back in the direction we’d come, which wasn’t a viable option. We’d have to push on and I’d have to hope Gwin would hold out for long enough.

I managed to wriggle her out of her outer clothes and her stays, leaving her in a shift, after which she seemed to rest a little easier. I discarded my own dress, sighing as I fiddled with the laces and missing Leela’s help. I wondered whether she was safe, whether she had left Lee Helse when she’d heard I’d gone. My stomach twisted at the thought that she had stayed in the palace because she didn’t want to abandon me and now I’d abandoned her. But she was clever, and she’d surely been preparing since I’d warned her that we were headed for some sort of disaster. I had to believe she could get herself out. I’d never forgive myself if she didn’t.

When I climbed into bed next to Gwinellyn, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. But my body was exhausted, and the fact that we weren’t safe enough to stop and think seemed to keep my thoughts from whirling. I fell immediately into a deep, dreamless dark.

In the morning, Gwinellyn was worse. She was listless, sleepy, and confused about where we were and what we were doing. I had to keep reminding her.

‘You’ll feel better when you’ve eaten something,’ I soothed, and she smiled weakly, leaning against the headboard of the bed. When I went into the inn’s dining room to find her some breakfast, I caught sight of a pair of travellers having a murmured conversation over a newspaper. I approached their table, and it felt like my scars throbbed as they looked up, taking me in, pity flickering in their faces.

‘I don’t suppose you’d mind if I quickly borrowed your paper?’ I asked.

One of them shrugged and handed it to me, before they returned to their conversation as though I barely even existed. I stared at the front page headline .

Attempted Regicide: Assassination Attempt Foiled, Queen Missing

‘Seems like chaos in the capital at the moment,’ the man who’d handed me the newspaper said. ‘We’d all be best preparing for lean times ahead.’

‘There’s always a bit of unrest when the crown changes heads,’ the other one muttered. ‘Don’t let him scare you, love. It’s not going to come to a war.’

‘Might be doing us a favour if Oceatold march though. I’ve been hearing strange stories about the new king and queen,’ the first replied, and the other just waved him off, shaking his head.

‘So the king’s alive?’ I asked, scanning the page, afraid to ask in case I might be wrong.

‘Looks like.’

I inhaled shakily, shut my eyes tight for a moment.

‘The queen’s likely as not run off with some new fellow,’ the man continued. ‘Hardly seems like she can wear the title she’s been given.’

They both jumped when I slapped the newspaper back down with more force than necessary. ‘Thank you,’ I said, smiling coldly, walking away before I said something that I shouldn’t.

I shouldn’t have felt this heady hit of relief that Draven was alive, so strong it made my legs weak, made me feel like I was made of air and light. It would have been better for me if he’d died. But if anything had become clear to me in the past few days, it was that I was a complete and utter fool. So I felt the relief all the same.

When I managed to coddle and drag Gwinellyn back out of the town, the lizard swooped down and landed in the dirt right in front of us, as though it had been waiting and watching. I hadn’t wanted to ride it again, and I didn’t want to contemplate what the people in the town would think if they saw it, but Gwin was so weak that we didn’t seem to have any other choice. I belted her to the saddle with straps I stole from a lonely feed shed and made her show me how she communicated with the beast by tapping at its flanks with her feet and shifting her weight. When we were in the air again, I forced myself to keep my eyes open, chanting all sorts of prayers and obscenities while I hung onto Gwinellyn and hoped she wouldn’t lose consciousness while we flew.

The Yawn drew closer and closer, until finally I spied the crooked finger peaks and the silver ribbon of river, following it until I spotted a tendril of smoke curling above the trees, so welcome a sight I felt like laughing.

We landed at the edge of Baba Yaga’s clearing, narrowly avoiding the trees. She was already waiting for us, her arms folded as I unstrapped Gwinellyn from the saddle. The girl stumbled as her feet hit the ground, and I pulled her up against me.

‘Right on time,’ the witch said as we staggered towards her. ‘I’m glad to see you so committed to paying your debts.’

‘I didn’t know where else to go,’ I admitted.

She pursed her lips, flicking her keen amber eyes between us. ‘And what of your husband? Is he following close behind you?’

I looked down, the anguish that had been roiling just below the surface of my calm briefly surfacing to grip my chest and contort my face.

‘Rhiandra stabbed him in the stomach,’ Gwin said soberly.

Baba Yaga’s eyes widened and a delighted smile stretched her mouth, exposing her yellowing teeth. ‘Excellent!’ She reached out and clasped my hand, still grinning, but as she searched my face, the glee fell away. ‘Pah!’ she spat, releasing my hand. ‘I see your ovaries betray you yet again.’

‘I guess that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s dead, though,’ Gwin added. Her voice was weak.

‘No, I’d be surprised if it did. Bring her inside, iaral.’

I staggered after the old woman, dragging the increasingly limp Gwinellyn. ‘Why does she call you iaral?’ she whispered, before groaning with pain as I stumbled. ‘What does it mean?’

I shrugged wearily.

‘Because she is a scared little chick,’ Baba Yaga called over her shoulder. She swung open her front door and stood aside to let us pass through, gesturing to the table as she did. ‘But missing some of that fine plumage today, I see.’

‘Please, for the love of Madeia, don’t ridicule me. I’m tired,’ I pleaded, my voice cracking slightly. I hauled Gwinellyn over to the table and pulled out a chair to sit her on.

Baba Yaga patted the tabletop. ‘Lay her flat.’

‘On the table?’

‘How else do you expect me to examine whatever is making her moan so?’

With some manoeuvring, we managed to lay her down, and she lay like a corpse, her skin clammy and pale. Without the slightest warning, Baba Yaga took a pair of scissors to her skirts and cut the fabric, tearing it apart layer by layer with little grunts of exertion.

‘Curse these fashions,’ she grumbled as she hacked away at the stiff underclothes until she finally exposed pale skin. Gwinellyn flinched as the air hit her skin, but otherwise gave no other indication that she even noticed she was being stripped. I focused on the smooth expanse of her stomach, blotchy and purple with bruising and fluttering in fast, shallow breaths.

Baba Yaga examined her with squinted eyes and gentle, probing fingers.

‘How did this happen?’

‘She fell. The beast outside caught her, but she hit a beam on the way down.’

‘Hmm. She’s bleeding inside. Luckily the bleed is slow, or she’d be dead by now.’

I gently picked up Gwin’s hand and squeezed. It was ice cold. ‘Can you help her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then please, please do it. Save her life. I’ll give you whatever you ask for.’

I thought I caught the hint of a smile at the edges of her mouth. ‘No cost for this. But pay close attention.’

She began moving about the room, taking down a few bunches of the herbs strung from the ceiling before rifling through the shelves of her kitchen. ‘Feed the fire. We need to warm the air,’ she ordered as she unscrewed the lid of a jar and peered into it with a frown. I steeled myself, clamping down on the fear that flooded my blood when I drew to close to fire and did as she bid, poking the coals with an iron rod resting by the fireplace, before heaping wood on top and blowing until my cheeks ached and flames were stretching high.

Baba Yaga was walking a circle around the table, wafting the smoke of burning sage as she went and mumbling under her breath. I chewed my lip as I watched her .

‘To clear the air,’ she explained when she caught my eye. ‘Fear blocks healing, and she’ll have much of that to do if she wants to live. Now, take the mortar and do as I say.’

I sat by the enormous, black mortar and pestle she had placed on the ground and sorted through the jars dumped nearby, reading their labels as she sprinkled salt at one corner of the table and water at the opposite one. She issued instructions, calling for pinches of dried yarrow and nettle, dandelion and parsley, powdered astragalus root and ginger to be added to the mortar.

‘Now fetch the copper cauldron from the larder, draw water from the well and set it to boil. And do so quietly.’ She lowered herself into a chair, placed her hands on Gwinellyn’s abdomen and closed her eyes.

She sat like that for a long time, until she seemed almost like a stone gargoyle perched above a sick bed to scare off the approach of death. I tried my best to make as little noise as possible as I lugged water from the well outside, filled the heavy copper cauldron and suspended it from the hook above the fire, but even when I stumbled and sloshed water over the ground, she didn’t so much as twitch.

When I’d done as instructed, I held vigil in an armchair, feeding more logs into the flames and rubbing my stinging, gritty eyes. Gwinellyn tossed and turned beneath the witch’s hands, and the room was filled with the sound of her shallow, gasping breaths, interspersed with low moans that made my chest tighten to hear. I fought to stay awake, gripped with an irrational fear that her soul would slip away if I closed my eyes, but sometime in the small hours of the morning, I fell asleep.

I woke to Baba Yaga’s hand on my arm. My eyes sprang open and my heart jolted to a gallop as I leapt to my feet, my eyes fixing on the table. ‘No, please—’

‘Hush, child, or you’ll wake her. She will live.’

Relief burst inside me, bright and cool and sweet. I approached the table and leaned over the still form, seeing the slow rise and fall of her chest, the return of colour to her skin. She was covered in a blanket and her head now rested on a pillow.

‘Come, take the air with me,’ Baba Yaga said, beckoning me out the door, and I followed her. The fresh night was a welcome relief after the stuffy, smoky air of the hut, and I stretched my arms and back, leaning into the stiffness spawned by the long ride here and the hours sitting tense in the chair.

‘How did you heal her?’ I asked, looking up at the stars blinking down at us like the clear, bright eyes of the night.

‘By convincing her body to heal itself, albeit at a much faster pace than would be possible without magical intervention. There is still more to be done until she is well, but I have snatched her from the threshold to the shadow realm for now.’ She sounded tired, and I cast my eyes over her, noting her drooping posture, her heavy-lidded eyes.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t have born it if she’d died. It would have been my fault.’

‘Yes. It would have been.’

We were both silent for a time, listening to the wind rustling the leaves of the trees.

‘You need to harden yourself to him now, iaral,’ she said finally.

I almost played stupid, asked who she was talking about, denied the truth of her words, but in that moment there was no goading in her tone, only concern, and I felt touched that the gnarled old witch would care about me.

So instead, I sighed. ‘It’s not that simple.’

‘I had guessed as much. He has burrowed his way very deep into you. You must dig him out.’

‘I would like to point out that I did run him through with a blade. If anything could suggest that I’m trying to shake him loose, it should be that.’

She snorted. ‘An instinctive reaction. It will take more than an accident to kill that boy. It will take cunning and intent.’

‘Why do I have to kill him at all?’ Even I could hear the whine in my voice.

‘Because you must learn to clean up your messes, Rhiandra. Until now, you have been a girl in a woman’s body, selfish and impulsive and vain. If you are to make good on your deal with me, you cannot wreak such havoc in human affairs.’

‘What does Draven have to do with our deal?’

She laughed softly. ‘One day you will learn not to make deals without fully understanding what you are agreeing to. Now, let us tend to the princess so we may rest. The wound in her belly may be healed over, but her body must be encouraged to replace the blood she has lost. I have no more strength for such a casting. We must rely on herbs.’

She left me, but I didn’t follow, and she didn’t insist. Perhaps she knew that I needed a moment to myself. Just a moment to let the weight of all that had happened crash down upon me.

I’d lost everything.

All I’d done, all I’d strived for, was lost to me now. I could no longer pretend I was a queen, if I had ever really been one .

I was in hiding.

Draven would hunt me.

Sharp memories flashed through my mind and a tide of emotion rose, clogging my throat, filling my mouth.

The way he’d gripped me, trusting that I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to hurt him.

The unflinching way he’d told Gwinellyn to jump.

The feeling of the hilt in my hand as I drove the blade through flesh. The shock on his face, the pain.

You’re mine and you’ll never be done with me.

‘I loved him.’ The confession burst into the frozen air as puffs of mist.

The trees didn’t bend.

The ground didn’t shudder.

The mist dissipated within the space of a heartbeat.

The millions of stars looked solemnly on and my words went unmarked by every single one.

‘I loved him,’ I said again, my voice cracking. My eyes stung, then burned, and then tears were spilling down my cheeks and I was sinking to my knees like the weight of my own body had suddenly become too much to carry. ‘I loved him, I loved him, I loved him, I loved him, I loved him,’ I sobbed, as though every time I’d bit back the words they’d just sat behind my teeth, waiting for this moment to finally escape. I rocked back and forth with my arms clutched around my waist, sobbing and shaking and letting everything I’d beaten down bubble up and out of me, every emotion and every weakness that for months, years, I’d crushed beneath the weight of my fear.

I’d known that no good came from love. But I’d loved him anyway.

‘Idiot, idiot, idiot,’ I hiccupped, scrubbing angrily at my eyes. I sucked in some great, shaking breaths as I clamped firmly down on my composure again, stiffening my spine, swallowing my pain, suffocating the whimpering of my broken heart.

I wouldn’t fall apart. I wasn’t beaten. I dredged up that memory, the one that had changed everything. Draven in the Winking Nymph, reaching out to grab my hand, those cold eyes taking in the sight of my face, knowing what was about to happen to me. Choosing to let it happen to me.

It won't be the last you'll see of him.

The anger, the rage, was a sweet relief, and I clung to it, reformed myself around it.

I thought I’d exacted my revenge on those who’d done that to me. It seemed I was wrong. There was one more who would bleed.

He would bleed for what he’d done to me. For everything he’d done to me.

After all, Draven himself had taught me to value vengeance, and there was no one more deserving of mine.

Eventually, I followed Baba Yaga back inside. If she noticed that I’d been crying, she didn’t mention it. We ate a modest meal of bread and cheese together, which I could barely chew for exhaustion, before we woke Gwinellyn to feed her a tea brewed of the herbs in the mortar and to rub her arms and legs with mustard seeds to encourage her sluggish blood to move. She accepted our ministrations with only the barest trace of consciousness, falling back into her stupor as soon as I lay her back against the pillow .

‘Shouldn’t we move her somewhere more comfortable?’ I asked, tucking the blanket in around her slender shoulders.

‘It will do her no harm to stay where she is. You sleep now, child. Take the bed. I’ll keep watch over her.’

I should have refused, but the ride had been long and fear had sapped away any strength I might have had to argue. I tumbled into her lumpy little bed in the cupboard of a bedroom, instantly falling into sleep.