Page 22 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire

rhywbeth prin a hyfryd

(SOMETHING RARE AND LOVELY)

I wake the next morning beneath the blanket, still wearing my blouse and skirt.

I turn onto my side, expecting to see Neirin beside me in Ceridwen’s usual place, but his pillow is gone, and when I reach across the bed the right side of the mattress is cold and untouched.

I sit up, surprised, to find that Neirin has left the room entirely.

The missing pillow has been discarded on the window seat, along with a blanket of silver-spun cobwebs that turns back to dust the moment I look at it.

His absence affords me the time to wash and gather myself before I join him in the empty tavern below. He is leaning against the bar, staring out a window.

“Looking for the human?” Neirin throws a lazy smile over his shoulder.

I lean beside him with my arms crossed. “I wasn’t, but now I assume you want to talk about him.”

He beams, brighter than the light filtering in through the windows. “He’s gone.”

“Gone?” I stare at him questioningly.

Neirin nods, evidently pleased with himself. “I spoke to the landlord on your behalf—paid him a generous sum, too—and he released—”

“On my behalf?” I repeat, incredulous. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”

Neirin blinks, but his cheerful expression doesn’t falter. “I thought I’d surprise you. See? I can be nice.”

I can’t think of a way to explain to Neirin that I don’t really care what happens to Richard.

When I looked at him, I was only seeing myself—and the horror of what could’ve become of me without Neirin’s intervention.

In fact, I really don’t want to tell Neirin that at all, because it will make him unbearable.

“Where did he go?” I ask instead.

“I don’t know.” Neirin’s expression contorts, as though he’s surprised that I’m not heaping praise at his feet. “He was quite ill-tempered, actually, when he was freed—”

I give him a droll look. “I wonder why.”

Neirin shrugs, genuinely uncertain. “He’s free. He said something about needing to go and find his wife, then took off. You’d think he’d be grateful.”

“His wife is probably long dead,” I tell him. “And he’ll probably be trapped into servitude again by lunch.”

Something like awareness flickers over Neirin’s perfect features, then melts as quickly as a dusting of snow. “If he hasn’t figured out, after thirty years of that nonsense, that handing over his name to anyone who asks probably isn’t the smartest move, then he deserves whatever happens to him.”

I resist the urge to laugh at his bluntness, though a smile still works its way onto my face. I don’t know why he wanted to make me happy, and I hesitate to ask in case his reply is something awful.

“Thirty years,” I repeat instead.

He meets my eyes, holds them hostage. “You haven’t even had a chance to live that long yet.”

“And he spent all that time here, cleaning cups,” I say, before a cold realization washes over me. “It’s probably not that different from what he would’ve done at home. I’ll spend that long stocking shelves at the shop before I even know it.”

His face softens. “It doesn’t have to be like that. If you win.”

Neirin hesitates then, like he has something else to tell me.

He glances at the door, then back at me, and somewhere in that brief second I see him decide to keep quiet.

I tell myself it’s for the best, but my curiosity is piqued, and it scratches at the back of my mind as we leave.

I long to know what he’s thinking. I’d like to crack his head open like an egg and scoop the thoughts out onto a porcelain plate.

If whatever he had to say is bad enough to stay his poisonous tongue, then it must be very bad indeed—and so all the more intriguing.

We leave the village early, our progress marked by the changing landscape. The dark pine needles of Peg’s land leak into another cool, green valley and then a barren mountain pass, where rain lashes down and sheer rock rises into the clouds, its seams cutting deep into the earth.

A cyhyraeth wails from the mists high above our heads, warning of a death to come.

Neirin points to the sky. “Not a good sign for you, mortal.”

I swing for his back but trip over a misplaced rock. He catches my arm as my fist’s still balled, and rights me.

Nodding to the sword strapped to my side, he says, “Don’t let the first blood that needle draws be your own.”

I scoff. “Can’t you summon the carriage again?”

“One taste of luxury and you’ve got lazy. Habren Faire, you’re as bad as me.” I make a noise of protest that he ignores. “I won’t summon the carriage, as I don’t know precisely how far the infection has spread. You wouldn’t want to jeopardize my valet, would you?”

I hadn’t even considered the danger we could have put the bwbach in. All I could see was the ease of the carriage.

So, we leave the cyhyraeth and the rain behind, and the pass gives way to marshland.

The very ground seems to breathe through the patches of water, shifting and roiling against us.

High grass tangles around our legs. Neirin links our arms, and we move as one.

Here it is as hot as summer, the sun bright as a lighthouse beam.

Crisp air finds us on the edge of the muggy marsh, and trees welcome us once more. Their canopies fade golden and become burnished with apples. Autumn, in this one corner of the world. Maybe we’ll stumble into winter if we just keep walking.

“Where have you gone?” Neirin asks.

Sprites dance and dive about our feet, and when my attention returns to Neirin, he is staring at me with one of those silly smiles on his face. My stomach flutters in time with the dragonflies’ wings, rebelling against the common sense I’m reciting like a ward against him in my head.

I step away from Neirin, toward a small grove of apple trees. We have no reason to touch each other, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting. Even hitting him would be better than nothing. I pluck an apple from a tree.

Neirin turns, and I lob it at him without warning. He catches it.

“Nowhere I haven’t been before.” I take my own apple, rub it on my sleeve. Prepare to lift it to my mouth.

His hand shoots out and catches my wrist. It’s a feather manacle, one I could break easily, but I don’t.

“Maybe you’ll be stuck with us forever in exchange for one bite.”

I smile wryly. “No one owns the forest. Who would keep me?”

“I would.” Neirin’s eyes find mine.

I swallow a lump in my throat and tell him, “I’d find a way out.”

I raise my arm. His hand doesn’t fall away, but he doesn’t stop me, either. I take a bite, leaving an uneven mark in the shape of my crooked teeth on the hard flesh. His eyes dip to my lips and stay there all the while.

“Now, that I don’t doubt,” he says.

There’s a furnace beneath my skin. I snatch my arm back to douse it, and I overtake him, though I don’t know the way.

The air here is crisp as fresh paper. Red and gold blanket our steps, every leaf crisp underfoot.

Rain never rots them, and no more leaves will fall.

This forest is artifice, but I kick up the carpet with my boots and jump on piles of leaves, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t at least a beautiful fantasy.

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a russet doe passing between the trees.

I still and watch her with interest: her head is high, certain.

She knows that she is safe here. At her heel is a baby—pale white, stumbling.

An albino with even whiter spots. If the fawn lived in my half of the world, it would be hunted.

Mounted on a wall by an aristocrat or stuffed and studied by a scientist.

The fawn looks at me and I at him. He only blinks and follows his mother, as if I were never there. Maybe I never truly was.

Neirin nudges me. “What do your thoughts cost?”

“Far more than you can afford.”

“Then will you share with a friend?”

“Are we friends now?”

Neirin gives a flat smile, as if I’m the daftest person he’s ever met. I probably am, in my way.

I finally look up at him and grin, feeling like someone I’ve never had the chance to be before. Someone I’m not embarrassed by. “I’m thinking only how wonderful it is that all this exists just beyond my garden wall.”

“Isn’t that a bit saccharine for you?” Neirin says as he takes a light step away.

Even that delicate motion is enough to scare the fawn and its mother.

They bolt, leaving us alone in the woods once more.

I tut as I follow Neirin, but it’s feigned irritation.

I’m enjoying myself—enjoying his company—far more than I should.

I’m supposed to be afraid, worried for my sister.

Guilt scratches at the back of my mind, but I soothe it quickly, telling myself that I haven’t forgotten my purpose—and, besides, who can fault me for having a little fun along the way?

Ceridwen’s been enjoying herself all these years in secret.

That joy doesn’t last long. Neirin pauses at the tree line and points to something ahead.

“What is that?” he asks, voice thin enough to strike fear in me, too.

I hurry to join him at the edge of the forest, squinting against the sun.

I follow the path of his hand as he points to a field of wheat that ripples like a crashing wave.

Beyond it, biscuit-box cottages run in neat rings around a bell tower.

No smoke billows from their chimneys, the fields are untended, and the white bell tower that crowns it all is shot through with pure, lifeless black, which seeps up from the ground into the cracks between the bricks and creeps its way to the top.

I don’t answer Neirin’s question. I don’t need to. The truth is obvious. It’s Y Lle Tywyll, clawing its way to the surface.