Page 34 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire

“I wasn’t going to, at first. I saw your sister come and go.

You’re both braver than I am,” Delyth whispers.

“I recognized her straightaway. She looks like me, and you look like Elin. Your sister called herself Elin when she approached Emrys. That’s part of what made me so certain that we’re kin.

It’s cruel, isn’t it? How history repeats itself.

I wanted to speak to her, and to you, but I didn’t want Emrys to know.

I… because you’re my family, he wouldn’t treat you fairly.

I think he would be quite rude. If he knew you were with Neirin, well—he wouldn’t have let you leave the palace at all. ”

I lift my chin. “He still doesn’t know?”

“He wonders,” Delyth admits. “But I haven’t told him, if that’s what you mean.”

“Aren’t you here to stop me?”

She shakes her head. “We’re too far past that now.

I admit, I’ve been complacent, but it wasn’t my problem to solve.

Until word came from Neirin’s court about your injury, and no word came at all about your sister.

After you left Neirin, I… I knew I had to help you.

I can guide you to Y Lle Tywyll. I’m queen of this land.

I feel it like an open wound, right on the back of my hand. ”

“And yet it took both of your nieces almost dying for you to care about a disaster that’s claimed many in your kingdom already?” I try to hide my disgust and fail. “Maybe a few decades in the palace have changed you more than you think.”

The butterflies on her shift recoil, their wings trembling.

“I want to help you now. Forgive me my hesitancy, if you can—or condemn it. I haven’t left the palace in…

I don’t know how long. I barely speak to anyone that isn’t Emrys.

The world beyond him is small”—she takes a shuddering breath—“but I’m in it, now.

I walked out the gates, and it didn’t hurt.

I’m following you and your sister. Just like you, she didn’t tell me her true name.

I think I’ll have to earn that right. But I’ll give you mine. It was Alys.”

“Was?”

She draws a long breath, and an errant butterfly crawls out of her hair and onto her shoulder. “I’ve been Delyth longer than I was ever Alys. Who are you then, Habren? You have to tell me everything—”

“I can’t return the fifty years you gave away.” I steel myself as her eyes grow wet. “And I won’t give you any stories about me or my sister or my grandmother until after.”

“After?”

“After I’ve won.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Not in the slightest.”

Delyth’s face twists, but she composes it quickly. “Y Lle Tywyll isn’t far, and we have much to discuss.”

I gesture for her to lead on. She steps off the road and walks alongside the lake. I wouldn’t have known to do that.

“Can I…” Delyth trails off, then breathes deep. “… ask one thing?”

I hope she doesn’t ask if Gran was happy. I won’t lie for her sake.

“Do they still have the May Day fair whenever you’re from?

” I nod, and she smiles distantly. “I remember the smell of the cheese bread, and how warm it was in my hands. I used to lie in the grass with my sister when the maypole dance was done, and we’d watch the flags flutter across the sky.

I’d stay there in my Sunday dress until my nose burned and Elin went home.

I’m still there, waiting for her.” Her words drift away on the clouds, and her face goes hard as clay.

“I think about it most around this time of year.”

“You’re the one who left, just like my sister. You’re not the one waiting; you never have been,” I say coolly.

Delyth stares at the ground. “And neither are you, now. You made a decision. You left, too.”

“Gran didn’t have a choice,” I remind her. “She was already married when you disappeared. You kept your secrets from her until it was too late.”

“Please.” Her voice cracks.

We fall into step, and I give a reluctant sigh. “It’s autumn at home. October. But yes, we still have May Day. The village hasn’t changed, not really—I doubt it ever will.”

Delyth laughs, high as birdsong, and fixes me with a solemn, knowing look.

“English’ll drown the town in a hundred years or so to provide water for Birmingham, of all places.

Too many Welsh speakers in one place, and too many mining disasters to apologize for convincingly.

By the time they shut the mines and put all those boys on the breadline, the names of the dead will be so many that they won’t fit on the plaque. ”

She keeps walking while I pause and stare at the lake, trying to imagine some immense body of water in place of my town. All I can see is my little house, ripped from the terrace and sat atop this reservoir like an island. I can’t envision a world where that house doesn’t exist.

“Worst part is,” she continues quietly, “they never even use it. The reservoir just sits where we used to live, and there’s not even a sign to say that we were there. That we loved it so, that we’re still here.”

Something rips inside me, tears me clean in half. I don’t know why. I’ve never liked Llanadwen, but it’s mine. I don’t want them to take it, either.

We leave the lake, trudging over low, marshy hills covered in dead gorse. The wind picks up, and it carries with it the salt of the sea. I think we’re getting close—not just to Y Lle Tywyll, but to the very end of Eu gwlad itself.

When I reach it, this story must end, too. All stories need endings. But first, I must become a hero.

“How did you win immortality if Y Lle Tywyll didn’t exist?” I ask.

If she’s surprised by my curiosity, Delyth doesn’t show it. “The king fell in love with me.”

The ageless king she was afraid to share her family with. The king that took away her twitch for his benefit. I wonder if that’s love, or if it’s something else entirely.

“Ah, well,” I sigh, “that’s off the cards for me, then.”

“Maybe a king is off the cards as you say, but certainly not a prince.”

“Unlikely.” My hand unbuttons my pocket, wanders inside, and prods uncertainly at the dead flesh of his amputated finger. “I maimed him on my way out.”

Delyth giggles. “Oh, he’ll like that!”

I release the severed finger and clamp my mouth shut. Delyth leaves space for me to explain, but I have no idea what to say. Instead, I ask, in a voice so small it hardly sounds like me, “Do you regret it?”

Delyth’s hands twist as they clasp each other. Ceridwen stands like that, when she wants to say something but can’t find the words.

“I can’t profess to know what life would have been otherwise,” she admits. “I assume I’d be the sad, haggard widow of a miner. Sometimes, though, I wonder what I would have looked like with white hair, and when I dream, I’m always with my sister.”

“If you could go back—”

She squeezes her eyes shut. “Don’t ask me that. Please. This is the story I told. It’s the only one I’ll ever get. Don’t make me open another book and find one that’s better.”

“But… what do I do?”

She pauses. Her eyes open and flick up to the watercolor wash of gray, then back to me, and a small smile plays on her lips. “You’ll know.”