Page 35 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire

byd y dynion

(THE WORLD OF MEN)

Delyth and I stand atop a windswept coastline, buffeted by dagger gales cast down from dark, silver-laced clouds.

The sea below us is murky gray, roiling against sharp cliffs.

I squint into the white haze of the horizon, eyes straining against the cold air and the great expanse of the violent ocean, which stretches past comprehension.

“How far does it go?” I ask.

Delyth’s long hair whips my face as she turns to answer. “I don’t know. No one that’s still here knows.”

“You used to be human,” I say. “Where has your curiosity gone? Did you lose it somewhere on the way to eternity?”

She bites the inside of her cheek. “You have my sister’s sharp tongue.”

“What’s in the rest of this world?” I say instead. “Is there an Ireland that way with leprechauns and a Greece somewhere south that’s still ruled by gods on a great cloud?”

Delyth shrugs. “Why don’t you go yourself and tell me? It’s never occurred to me to look for more, but what you seek now is not at sea.”

I think she’s lying. I think Delyth knows it. A girl who runs away to Eu gwlad is never happy staying still, not when there are new adventures to be had.

A narrow path has been worn into the headland like it’s been split by an ax.

It’s so steep that one slipped step would break even the strongest neck.

At the base of the plummet, the headland dips sharp into a small pebble beach, and there, cocooned between stones turned jet by the sickness, lies a house.

The building is small, almost shy as it curls against the rock, no more than one room with a steepled roof and some steps leading up to an open doorway.

It reminds me of a school, or a chapel made of shabby stone.

The house is the one thing left that isn’t covered by coal and dust, but its steps and the doorway spill darkness like an open mouth, leaking it out onto the beach.

This isn’t what I expected. It seems too civilized, too polite.

It feels like before. Like it existed before the hands and tools that could bring it into creation—before the teg, before us.

Y Lle Tywyll must be the same. This darkness beneath our feet has always been there.

Y Lle Tywyll waits inside that house. I move toward it like I’m not afraid.

We start down the steep path. Dead white grass borders it, like a dusting of snow over the pitch-dark cliffs.

The path to the house is treacherous and even in my fine boots I almost lose my footing twice, my heart flying to my mouth.

I’m aware of Delyth at my back, but I don’t take my eyes from the path and my slow, careful progress until the end is in reach.

I’m on the first step when a fairy bursts from the house.

I lurch back from its hands, but it doesn’t have a chance to reach me.

Another figure collides with its back and they both land with a sickening crack.

Delyth yanks me away by the arm. It takes us both a moment to realize what we’re looking at.

“Neirin?” I say incredulously.

His head snaps up. He uses his lanky form to keep the fairy pinned as it thrashes against him. There are shadows under his eyes, and his complexion is wan.

My eyes bounce between him and the fairy, until I realize it isn’t a fairy at all.

It’s a man. He’s covered in coal dust, and shards of rock jut from the side of his head, from beneath his clothes, tearing at a bloodstained uniform.

Even still, blood pools beneath him, leaking from an ever-open bayonet wound.

The soldier.

He lifts his head and snarls at me. There’s nothing left of the boy I met in the woods.

He jostles Neirin violently, bucking him off.

Neirin hits the stones on his side, and the soldier scrambles atop him.

Neirin shouts with effort as he braces his arm against the soldier’s throat, keeping his biting mouth at bay.

My hand instinctively goes for the rapier hilt, but it freezes when the blade is half free from the scabbard.

I may not know his name, but I know the soldier.

He told me of his war and his lost dreams; we shared a fire together.

He’s a person, a real person beneath the coal and the curse.

I haven’t had to kill anyone I know before.

The soldier’s fingers, turned to claws by long shards of sharpened coal erupting from the tips, slash at Neirin’s side. He cries out, snapping me from my paralysis, but not fast enough. The coal digs in, through his coat, trying to burrow into his very flesh.

If I don’t act now, it’s Neirin who will be hurt.

After everything, it might surprise you as much as it horrifies me to find out that I don’t want him to get hurt.

Before the claws can pierce any deeper into Neirin, I plunge the blade into the soldier’s lower back.

I yank the blade free quickly. The soldier shrieks and thrashes, falling away from Neirin.

When he lands, he stares up at me through the lone crack that remains in the coal covering his eyes.

Black blood leaks onto the stones, and I stand over him, hand shaking around my rapier.

He got stuck in Eu gwlad while looking for a moment of quiet before his death.

I hope he found it, because he’s already long gone.

I slash the blade across his throat. It doesn’t take long for him to go still, though his remaining eye stays open, unseeing.

“I’m sorry,” I say, though I know the soldier can no longer hear me.

I let out a shaking breath. Someone places a hand on my shoulder. Delyth, I realize. I almost forgot her. Neirin sits up sharply, but he doesn’t rise, his hand pressed to the new wound on his side. His chest heaves as he looks between me and the dead soldier.

“I…” He takes a deep breath. “I was trying to catch him for you. Just in case it could be… fixed.”

I’m glad he didn’t try to say anything funny or clever. I think I would’ve hit him. I may have saved Neirin, but that doesn’t mean I forgive him. I can’t bring myself to look at him, and I don’t want to look at the soldier any more. I force my eyes up to the ocean.

“You followed me,” I say tersely.

“You weren’t exactly subtle about where you were going.” Neirin nods to my pocket. “Plus, you have my finger. I rarely go anywhere without it.”

“You tricked me. You called your water horse on me and I almost drowned.”

Neirin lets out an exasperated groan. “He was supposed to bring you back. You caused the problem by fighting.”

“Apologies,” I say tightly. “Next time you want to abduct me, I’ll politely acquiesce.”

The dimpled smile he gives me is almost enough to risk making that statement true. He rises slowly, like he doesn’t trust his own legs.

“But why are you here, Delyth?” He jerks his chin toward her. “How has our mutual friend managed to enchant you, too?”

Delyth gives him a deathly glare. “She’s my niece.”

“Great-niece,” I correct her.

Neirin frowns. However odd this is for me, I think it might be stranger for him. Delyth is his sister-in-law, after all.

“Well, this is a very charming reunion.” I cross my arms and nod to the soldier. “What happened?”

“He was like this when I got here, wandering the beach. I don’t know when Y Lle Tywyll spat him back out, but there was nothing human left.

” Neirin stares down at the soldier. “I recognized him and… I wanted to restrain him and await your direction, but he ran back into the house.” He nods toward the door.

Delyth exhales a shaky breath. I follow her gaze to Neirin’s mutilated left hand, and the earth slips out from under my feet.

The stump of his missing finger is poorly bandaged, the wrapping doing little to protect him.

Black mars its veins and there, at the center of his pale flesh, a small piece of rock protrudes, tumorous and vile, bursting from fine bones.

“It can happen that quickly?” I whisper.

Neirin flexes his fingers around the infection. “We’re at the heart of it. It’s only fitting, isn’t it? I sent you and your sister to die for me, and now I’m going to die for you instead.”

Some things are the same in both worlds, and a wound left open to infection is always a danger. This is partially my fault, I realize, my body going numb.

I stutter over my words. “You—you can’t die.”

Neirin’s the one constant in Eu gwlad, so certain of his own power and timelessness.

The very idea of anything being able to end him is unfathomable, and yet, there it is on his arm.

The same disease that’s claimed so many of his equally ageless kin and torn apart his land.

He was so careful to avoid it, to send my sister and me in his place, only to run right into Y Lle Tywyll chasing after me.

“I never said I can’t die,” he replies. “Merely that I didn’t plan on doing so until…”

I meet his gaze. “Until?”

He shoots an uncomfortable glance at Delyth.

“Don’t mind me, I’ll…” She gestures toward the sea and provides no further explanation before she walks toward the shoreline.

I take a step toward the house, pausing only when I reach the doorway to look back at Neirin. His movements are labored as he tries to reach me, and I know the disease has run more than skin-deep already.

“Well, are you coming?”

I hold out my hand, and we both realize the truth. The worst has already happened. There’s nothing left in here for him to fear. “Dropping dead won’t make me forgive you,” I say.

“I know,” he replies. “I was hoping an apology would do that.”

“You haven’t made it yet.”

“I’m building anticipation.”

Neirin’s fingers are light when they find my own, gentle. I give him a final heave over the threshold, then release him quickly.