Page 31 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire

yn erbyn y llif

(AGAINST THE CURRENT)

My head start doesn’t last long. Neirin’s voice booms through the forest, so laden with pain it shakes the trees at their roots. Pain that I caused him.

As I run, pumping my legs and arms like a machine, the truth echoes in my ears.

I’ve always known Neirin was using me—for entertainment, or to sate his own curiosity—and that was fine.

I was the only one who bore the brunt of it.

But now, I know that he’s been manipulating me—and Ceridwen—to grapple for power, and that goes far beyond us.

Just like the lords in their big houses. Just like the gentlemen in Westminster, and the entitled, and the royals, and the judges, and everyone else who gets to treat the rest of us like ants to be crushed under their boots.

I’ll die before I’m a part of that.

The burn in my chest as I sprint blindly through the forest warns me that I might.

This patch of woods is endless, and Neirin is, for a spoiled, lazy lord—no, even worse—a lazy prince, relentless.

I know he’s behind me. The air crackles with his presence, and the hairs on my arm stand at attention.

Desperation claws its way through my ribs, until the rush of water hits my ears, and a river rises on the horizon.

Morgen.

If I follow it, I’ll find her.

I push myself harder, and without pausing, I leap in.

The current catches me, and I tumble through the silt-muddled water, eyes open but unseeing.

I hold the air in my lungs like a raft against a storm and kick furiously, fruitlessly scrambling for the surface.

As I choke and sink further down, the way back up is lost—as if I’m stuck in a lightless attic and someone has kicked out the ladder.

The world becomes eternal dark but for a looming figure just behind me, racing to catch up.

I’ve found Morgen after all.

But when the undertow finally plunges me into a still pool, it’s not the mermaid I see slithering after me.

The ripples of water in my wake are binding together, roiling against the slowing current.

The shape that emerges is ever shifting, unclear apart from the ribbons of water sweeping together into a mane.

Beneath the mane a snout appears, and two furious red eyes.

Silt clings to a murky body, and water hooves beat against the riverbed.

Y ceffyl d?r. The water horse.

I shriek and accidentally let out the last of my air.

I kick wildly up, up, but the moment my head breaks the surface, I’m dragged back down again. The water horse dives and catches me on its back. My legs flail but are gripped by the weeds and reeds twined and twisting inside the horse, holding me hard in place.

In all my diligent study of Dad’s fairy tales, I forgot one of his more sensible lessons: don’t jump blindly into lakes or you’ll get caught in the weeds and drown.

The ceffyl d?r races around the lake like it’s derby day, and I become an unwilling jockey. Water forces its way into my nose, wrenches my mouth open, burns down my throat to flood my lungs.

My rapier beats against my thigh. My hand claws for the hilt. I wiggle it loose of the scabbard, and the horse jerks, threatening to rip the blade from my grasp.

I make a clumsy slash toward its watery body. It bucks and cries out in pain, but I remain trapped.

I brace myself through a harsh turn and swing my blade once more.

It slices through one of the knots of weed clasped around my right ankle. The water horse makes a keening noise as the tendril recoils, sizzling. I slash again, and that’s one foot free. But the horse bucks furiously, thrashing me back and forth, preventing me from reaching the other.

I’m near blue in the face as I swing clumsily for the weeds on my left leg.

The blade strikes through the thick body of the plant. I fight my way free and push off from the horse’s back. It thrashes in pain and bites the air, and I kick my back legs desperately as I claw for freedom.

My head breaches the surface and I gasp with relief. I grasp the bank and yank myself up, shuddering and yelling unintelligently.

The horse lunges for my weed-wrapped legs, but I manage to wrestle them free.

I heave up water and lie on the bank, waiting for the rise and fall of my chest to slow.

A laugh escapes me. Then three more. I’m a pot bubbling over, unable to stop laughing: at Neirin, at myself, at a horse trying to kill me and every other bloody thing.

More water splashes me as Morgen bursts through, resting against the bank, her chest heaving from effort, no different from me.

“The ceffyl d?r is one of the prince’s guards,” Morgen says. “Really not something to laugh about.”

I keep laughing, staring up at the gap in the trees above and the stars peeking down to say hello.

She splashes water at me. “What’s so funny?”

“Your stars are the same as mine,” I say between wheezing breaths. “How is that?”

“I don’t know, but you need to stop messing around and—”

“Find Ceridwen.” I lever myself up onto my elbows. My last laughs peter out, and I begin to grapple with the weeds tangled around my ankles. “Yes, you keep saying. And I keep falling into traps, and now I’ve lost a week, and I’ve probably lost her as well.”

I rip the weeds off my legs. They leave behind a scorching mark—stripes of red that wind their way up my shins like rope burn. I chuck them back at Morgen. She tries to dodge, but they still hit the side of her face.

She snarls in disgust. I don’t know if it’s directed at the weed slipping slowly down her cheek or at me. Regardless, she hops up onto the bank, sitting beside me, her tail the only part of her left in the water. She shivers at the sudden introduction to the night air.

“I got the truth out of Neirin,” I say. “I understand that you couldn’t tell me everything because of fealty or whatever it is he holds over you: I saw his court, how they bend for him.

” How I almost did the same. I grind the heels of my palms into my eyes.

“But now I know. Please, just tell me everything. Ceridwen had a plan to leave, didn’t she?

A real plan. I know she went to Neirin’s court at some point. ”

“Of course she had a plan. She’s been coming here since she was fifteen.

Ceridwen has been to Neirin’s court more times that I can count.

Taking her there was probably my first mistake, but she wanted to go so badly.

” Morgen’s voice shakes. “She wanted to know if a real ball would be like the ones in her books.”

Yes, that sounds like Ceridwen.

Morgen takes a slow breath. “She just… enchanted them. You remember what she was like before she got sick. She’s everything.” Her words are warm and soft as syrup.

I look at her, at how her eyes shine when she speaks of my sister. She loves Ceridwen. Loves her as anyone would want their sister to be loved.

“I don’t know when Neirin offered her the bargain, only that it happened under my nose, and I failed to stop her.

The day I met you she told me what she intended to do, that she had tricked Neirin for the information, and ran.

” Her eyes are tired. “She’s been so close to death before, and now immortality is within her grasp. What was she supposed to do?”

I shrug petulantly. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe say, ‘Sabrina, I’m off to Fairyland, which, incidentally, I’ve always been able to see and you haven’t. Stay at home, I don’t need you.’”

“You’re behaving like a child,” Morgen snaps.

“So is she. Running away like that, abandoning us instead of helping, forcing me to come after her—”

“She didn’t force you—”

“By virtue of being my sister she did!” I bark.

Morgen’s mouth sets into a firm line, and she stares at me, waiting for the rest.

“Why her?” My breath comes short and shallow. “Why her and not me? I was so miserable, so lonely. All I wanted was an out, for something to come and take me from my life, but she was fine—”

“Don’t say that,” Morgen interjects.

“She was! She was fine, and yet she still got everything!”

“Ceridwen was dying!” Morgen lashes an arm toward me, flicking drops of water in my face.

“You’re so jealous that you truly forgot how sick she was.

Do you have any idea what those months were like when she and your mother were ill, and she couldn’t come to me, and I couldn’t get any closer than the stream?

Would you have let me in, Sabrina, if I had staggered up to your door on fresh legs and told you that I loved your sister? ”

I choke on my excuses, but Morgen doesn’t let me speak.

“Of course you wouldn’t. The day she finally limped back into the woods, hardly able to talk, was the best day of my life.

The moment she took a breath of our air, she got better.

The rattle in her chest disappeared. But she had to go back.

For you. Always for you. I begged her to stay.

Every time she went home she came back sicker, but she wouldn’t stop, not until she knew you were all right.

She never told me how she felt about your mother dying, only that you didn’t take it well and neither did your father.

You were both acting recklessly, picking fights you couldn’t win with anyone who looked at you, and just as it was all calming down and she was ready to leave, your father picks the biggest fight anyone could imagine. ”

I draw my arms around myself, shivering.

Maybe I became angrier after Mam died, and maybe I lashed out at anyone I could reach, but maybe I deserved a bit of understanding, too.

Some of the care that Ceridwen had found in Morgen—and I had found in Ceridwen.

Weak as she was, she was there for me, and now I know she stayed even though it was making her worse, when all this was waiting for her.

I can’t tell if it’s guilt or love smothering me.

Maybe it’s both. Maybe they cannot be separated from each other.

“Every day that she stayed in your world she drew closer to death,” Morgen says plainly. “She’s free here. And she didn’t want to leave you, but she knew if she stayed in your world she’d have to marry a man, and that would kill her as certainly as any disease.”

My face contorts in confusion. “What?”

“That was your plan, wasn’t it? To marry her to a rich man? With no regard for how she feels, for how those village boys make her skin crawl.”

“But…” I search for the words. “That’s just how it is. You marry a man.”

Morgen looks at me as if I’m simple. “It doesn’t have to be, and it won’t always be.

Ceridwen was born too early, and if she doesn’t come with me, your plans and the rules of your world won’t just kill her, they will snuff out the light at the very core of her.

You’d do that, Sabrina, and you wouldn’t even think twice. ”

“I didn’t know she felt that way. I… didn’t know it was possible.”

“What?”

I search for the words. My sister loves.

She’s loved me dearly, and Gran, and our parents.

She loves Morgen now, too. And without knowing it, I wanted to take that away.

To force Ceridwen into a gilded cage, just as Neirin would do to me.

Horror churns in my gut at the thought. All along, I was convinced that Ceridwen was safest at home, in her bed.

I was wrong. She was probably more terrified there, stuck in our room, than she’s ever been in Eu gwlad.

“The months when she couldn’t get out of bed must have been frightening for you,” I say as gently as I can.

“I’d never been scared before that,” Morgen says. “I imagine you felt the same—twofold, for your mother as well. I couldn’t fathom being more frightened, until Ceridwen told me she was going down to Y Lle Tywyll and that she was doing it for me. I never asked her to, please believe me, Sabrina.”

And I do. I believe her wholly.

“If I find her,” I say quietly, “I’ll have to leave her here, won’t I?”

Morgen’s eyes melt like butter. She nods.

I’ll return to Llanadwen alone, and Ceridwen will stay with Morgen, and she’ll start a new life. Childhood will end when I find her.

I love her enough to kill it.

“I thought you’d gone mad when you jumped into the water,” Morgen tells me. “You gave me no warning.”

“Sorry. The next time I’m being chased by the ellyll prince I’ve just mutilated, I’ll send a calling card. He’s the trickster you mentioned, isn’t he?”

“Yes, and you mutilated him?”

I pull a face. “Just a finger.”

Her wide eyes track me as I fight to stand. “He’ll be after you now.”

“I suspected as much.”

“I want to come with you,” Morgen says, “but I can’t. The water is polluted north of here.”

I glance upriver. The water looks ordinary, even with sight, but there’s one person I can trust in Eu gwlad, and that’s Morgen. She would follow Ceridwen anywhere, if she could.

“I’m close, then.”

Morgen nods. “It’s a day’s walk that way to the edge of our land. You’ll find Y Lle Tywyll there.”

I look to the forest ahead—to the blackened tree roots in the distance, so like the rot creeping up the wheat of the abandoned village. The hairs on my arms stand on end. I brush myself off, though I can’t do anything about the wet clothes or the bone-deep chill that leaves me shivering.

“Will you make it alone?” Morgen calls. “I could follow you on foot a little while—”

“I must!” I yell back. “Don’t risk leaving the water.”

“Just save your sister!”

She could be dead already. I shudder, but I cannot allow myself to think of that. My promise runs as deep as my marrow. I will find my sister, and I will save her.