Page 28 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire

dawnsio gyda’r meirw

(DANCING WITH THE DEAD)

The next time I wake, it’s night but not true dark.

It’s the moment just before sunset, when the sky is bruised purple, glowing pink and gold at the edges, and it hangs there without changing.

A note lies on my bedside table. The missive is simple: there will be a ball tonight, in the conservatory, and Neirin suggests I dress nicely.

He acknowledges in a postscript that his idea of nice and my idea are two very different things, but he will defer to my modesty and good taste and call my choice the height of fashion.

I laugh as I go to the wardrobe, wishing there were a way for me to reply quickly. To speak to Neirin whenever I want. I itch for it, for the silly back-and-forths and half-whispered confidences.

An hour later I leave my room wearing a dress with a purple gossamer silk skirt, the same color as a fresh sunset.

Long, sheer sleeves billow to my wrists, but I’m not daring enough to go without my coat to cover them—yet.

The fabric is fine, shining like a spider’s web and terribly dramatic.

It’s certainly not something I would have picked before, but I’m not Sabrina these days. I’m Habren, and Habren is exciting.

Neirin hurries down the corridor in a velvet tailcoat of a midnight hue. It’s littered with button stars and embroidered with silver thread.

“You weren’t at dinner.” He extends a hand. “Will you be strong enough for dancing?”

“Humans aren’t that weak.”

“Are you sure?”

I scowl but take his hand anyway. My skin warms against his, and I think this must be what ladies guard against when they wear gloves to balls.

Neirin leads me down the steps, and we make happy conversation about nothing at all.

Here, in the house, we never talk of serious things, and no one asks who will wash the dishes.

I like it, and maybe I could pretend that it’s always been mine.

“I feel much stronger now,” I tell him as we enter a corridor so narrow that he has to fall behind me and drop my hand. “I’ll be ready to continue our journey in the morning.”

“Oh?” he says. I wish I could see his face.

“It’s been a lovely time.” I shrug. “But that’s all it is.”

“Of course.” I can almost hear the smile in his voice.

“I should say thank you.”

“You sound unpracticed.”

“I hate being indebted to people. But thank you: for saving me after the bell tower, for giving me this time to recover and for keeping your word. I’ve been unharmed.”

“And my people have made you feel welcome?”

I’ve felt like little more than a pet to Mabyn and the other staring teg.

A funny little thing to pass half an hour with, to be dumped in the river when it’s grown.

To Beth, whom I’ve seen the most, I’m almost a threat to her position as the most interesting human in the manor.

But for once I can’t make myself lie, so my mouth remains shut.

“They haven’t, then,” Neirin says.

My face twitches. “Why can’t Beth leave?”

If he could, I think he would lie now. “She stayed too long. If she tried to walk back into her time, all those years could catch her at once.”

“Shouldn’t Beth look like the man in the tavern, then?” I eye him carefully.

Besides Beth, I’ve met three other humans in Eu gwlad: the consort, the soldier, the servant.

The king’s consort won immortality, while the soldier remains stuck in his final moment, unable to slip into the next stage of his life because it’s already been ripped away.

But the servant? The lost man in the tavern had aged. Horribly so.

Neirin grins. “Ah, you noticed. She’s protected here, as are you.”

“So, she doesn’t age in your court?”

“Her face stays young,” Neirin says blithely. “Once she leaves, that might cease to be the case.”

My thoughts snag on his words. Her face stays young. “That’s a strange way to put it. You’ll have to show me how to leave safely.”

Neirin’s brow furrows. “You still plan to leave?”

“I have to.”

His hand brushes the bow hanging at the small of my back, his fingers trailing down the silk tail of it. Then he lets me fall away.

When I glance around, his hands are behind his back, but I felt it. I did.

“What if I could promise you safety?”

“You can’t. I’d only be safe here, with you.”

“Would that really be so bad?”

My mouth goes dry. “The deal we made stated that I’d only stay here if I failed. As an oddity, remember? To entertain.”

“It would be different.” He says it so quickly that it’s clear he hasn’t given it any thought at all.

I wonder if he told Beth the same thing, once.

Staying here, with Neirin, where it’s safe, would be no better than staying all my life in Llanadwen.

It may be prettier, and the food’s better, and at least here there’s someone who would be happy to call me their friend—but I’d still be stuck.

Eu gwlad would be just as out of reach from Neirin’s manor as the rest of the real world is from my town.

I wouldn’t abandon my remaining family for anything, let alone such a small prize.

“If it’s to be the road come morning,” Neirin says eventually, pulling me from my own head, “I shall ask you to dance with me tonight.”

A door opens, leading into a large marble room with a piano tucked into the corner and a domed glass ceiling.

Tables laden with rich food have been pushed to the sides to make way for dancing, and the teg gather in the formal attire of centuries past and yet to come.

Panniers butt up against crinolines, and French hoods are worn with the tightest skirts I’ve ever seen.

Neirin stands in the center of his little world, bathed in the glow of this false evening and holding out a hand to me.

I toe the threshold, arms crossed over my fine coat and dress. “I doubt we know the same dances.”

“I can waltz,” Neirin says confidently.

“I can’t.”

His faces crumples with confusion. “But… that’s your time period.”

I hold up my hands in surrender. “You need to stop reading romance novels. Waltzing is for rich people with a penchant for parties and lots of time.”

Neirin’s lips part. “Humans worry about time a great deal.”

“We don’t have much of it, I’m afraid.”

“How strange. How lovely.”

“There’s nothing beautiful about time and how much of it goes to waste,” I tell him.

“When you have less, things matter more,” Neirin counters. “Less food makes what you do have taste better.”

“Spoken like someone who has never gone hungry.”

He holds out his hand again. “Come on, Habren, show me how to dance like we’ve got mere hours left.”

“We do only have hours left.”

“Then don’t waste them.”

Even I can’t argue with that.

“Let me.” He moves behind me and takes the shoulders of my jacket. I help him shrug it off.

“Wait.” My eyes fall on the iron ring upon my hand. We both stare, but I try to seem casual as I tug it off and tuck it into a pocket. “Wouldn’t want to burn you again, would I?”

Neirin crosses the room and lays my coat over the piano bench.

Then he returns to me, and I take his hand.

He moves us into a waltz position, but I don’t let him lead.

I drop my grip on his shoulder with one hand and hitch up my skirt instead.

The piano takes my side. The music turns racing, loud.

There’s a fiddle somewhere that I can’t see.

Before Neirin can say another stupid thing, I surge forward and take him with me.

Mam taught me to dance. On good days, I’m half as all right as her. And for all Neirin’s otherworldly grace and long limbs, he can’t flail and turn like me. He can’t clumsily jump from one foot to another or take the corners of the dance floor in wide, crashing arcs—but he learns as we go.

Other teg join us. Some spin solo, others move in groups of five.

I try to force Neirin into another lap of the floor, but instead the hand on the small of my back falls away, and he turns me under his arm and doesn’t stop.

I spin like a top—hair flying, ribbon trailing, perched high on my toes—and I’m going to fall, I really am, and I don’t mind at all.

But then I stop. Face-to-face with Neirin, our hands still entwined above our heads.

I stagger even closer toward him. Neirin’s eyes drop to my parted, panting lips, and though he’s the only person to have ever looked there, I know in the pit of my twisting stomach what he’s thinking of doing. I want to let him.

“You belong here,” he says simply.

“In Eu gwlad?”

A part of me—and I hate to tell you this—wants him to say that I’m special after all, and that I belong in Gwlad Y Tylweth Teg, just like my sister.

Neirin shrugs. “No, here. In my court. With me.”

I give a small laugh. Right. “Like Beth? Completely at your mercy?”

“No!” He balks, offense contorting his face. “I like you.”

“You liked Beth once,” I remind him.

“That was different. You’re far more interesting,” he says, sounding a little irritable, though he quickly covers it with a smile. “Don’t you want to know why I like you so?”

I consider lying, but once again I can’t.

The truth is, I want him to like me. Not because he’s Neirin and he’s beautiful and irritating, but because so few people have ever liked me.

God, how lovely it would be if one day someone saw my plain face and the lines around my mouth and decided that, somehow, I was exactly what they wanted.

So, I nod, and I hold my breath.

“It’s your cunning,” he says. “That ferocity, that vitality. The way you can’t sit still, not even for a moment. Like you can’t wait to get where you need to be.”

I grimace and turn to the open portico door. The glass panes wave in a light breeze, and the trees beyond the river bow toward us. I wonder if his reasons for liking Beth all those years ago were so horrible.

“I’ll bring you a drink.” His hand lands on my waist and lingers there.

I refuse to look at him. “Nothing strong.”