Page 43 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire

dyma lle dwi’n eich gadael chi

(HERE IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU)

The next morning, we pile into Neirin’s coach and take a rather awkward but blessedly fast drive to the palace. He and I sit on one bench; my sister, her lover, and our great-aunt sit opposite. Ceridwen has always been pleasant to everyone, but the glare she directs Neirin’s way is lethal.

“I thought we agreed to forgive and forget,” he tries, after a few minutes.

Ceridwen laughs humorlessly. “I do forgive you—for sending me to die. That doesn’t mean I have to like you after all the trouble you’ve given my sister.”

Neirin blinks, his smile faltering like he hadn’t considered this complication. I catch Morgen’s eye and snort. She still looks slightly bemused, both at being on two legs and with Ceridwen again, and at sharing a carriage with her prince.

“You couldn’t have tidied the story up a bit?” Neirin says in my ear, though everyone can hear him.

I give him a curious look. “Why? Don’t you want everyone to hear about your daring exploits?”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly…” Neirin trails off, searching for the right word.

“Go on,” I say. “You weren’t what exactly?”

“I can tell you what you were,” Ceridwen says, “but it’s rather impolite.”

“Let’s not fall out.” Neirin holds his hands up. “We always used to get along so well when you’d visit before—and let’s not forget who lied to whom in the first place.”

Ceridwen ignores him in favor of shooting me a conspiratorial look. “Explaining him to Dad will be fun.”

I snort. “And the mermaid?”

“I think your father will like me,” Morgen says with a smile. “Everyone does!”

I laugh—I can’t help it. I think Morgen may actually be right.

This time, we enter the palace through the golden front door. The courtly teg gather along our route, smiling and toasting our success. Ceridwen rolls her eyes at me. We both know these creatures wouldn’t blink in our direction if we hadn’t made ourselves extraordinary.

We gather in the throne room, the paper-doll court shifting for a better look at their heroes.

Delyth lingers behind us. With their ears covered, she and Ceridwen pass with ease for two of the ellyll.

Morgen holds Ceridwen’s hand, undaunted, while Neirin’s fingers brush mine in the folds of my skirt, then dance away.

Garlands hang overhead, and lights twinkle like stars everywhere we look. Celebration is in the eyes of the court, though the king is silent. He has his champions, but his brother stands alongside them. Neirin is rigid under his gaze.

“You lied,” the king says to me. “About many things.”

“Human.” I tap my ear. “I was telling a story. I thought you wanted to be entertained.”

Emrys narrows his eyes. “Are they the same thing? Stories and lies?”

“Not if you tell them well enough,” I reply.

“This tale has a boring ending. I suppose my brother has managed to romance you into forfeiting your boon to him?” Emrys sinks lower in his chair, but the sharp way his gaze darts to Neirin betrays the crafted, bored expression on his face.

“He certainly tried. I was far too stubborn.”

At my side, Neirin’s hand dances back to brush against mine.

Emrys lets out a loud sigh. “Fine. Your success is obvious; make your requests. The redhead first. She’s honest.”

I don’t need to look at my sister to know she only sees Morgen when she replies.

“I want a home by a lake, so Morgen can spend her time with me and never lose her tail, I want to run my own house, take her as my wife. I want to be healthy—free,” she says, “but I can do all that myself. All I ask from you is a long life, so I never leave her.”

“And eternal youth and beauty,” I interject. “Don’t give him any loopholes.”

“I want to live as long as Morgen, which will be a very long time indeed,” Ceridwen amends. “And I want to be young, and healthy, all that time.”

Beauty is something she already has in abundance. It’s something she will always have, even if she were to grow old.

“It is done.” Emrys waves a lazy hand.

Ceridwen staggers back like she’s been hit and clasps her chest. She draws a long breath and glances at me.

“Do you feel different?” I ask.

“I… don’t know,” she admits.

“It comes on slow, then crashes in like a storm,” Delyth says. “You’ll feel terrible tomorrow.”

Emrys’s eyes flick to her, then to me and my sister. “Is it not unfair that you assisted them, wife?”

Delyth moves past me and stops at the foot of the dais. “I only walked my niece to her potential grave. I neither pushed her in, nor lifted her out.”

She speaks like the teg. Of course she does. My great-aunt has spent more of her life among them than with her own people. Emrys’s lip curls in amusement.

“And what would you have done if my brother used this girl to take the throne?” he asks.

“The same thing that I did anyway,” Delyth replies. “I would’ve walked out the front door. Perhaps you would’ve come with me, perhaps not.”

He considers that, then tilts his head. “The door was never locked.” Then he turns to me. “What do you want, then, Habren Faire?”

I feel Neirin and Ceridwen watching me, certain that they know what I will ask for—an eternity with them, a life spent as eternally sixteen, roaming this forest at Neirin’s side and returning to Ceridwen’s lakeside cottage for dinner when I can.

But Delyth looks on me too, and Delyth knows the truth.

“Freedom,” I say, and a lull falls over the assembly. “No more, no less.”

Emrys scoffs. “Something I can give you. What trick is this?”

“No trick,” I insist. “I want what everyone else here has. I want to be free to come and go between Eu gwlad and my world safely no matter where—or when—I exit and enter. Maybe some gold, if you can spare it.”

Neirin speaks low in my ear. “Habren—”

I step away from him. “I don’t want to be immortal. I don’t want to be like this forever. I want to know who I’ll be at thirty and meet people who never knew me at sixteen. For that to happen, I need to be free.”

Neirin grabs my hand and turns me toward him. “What does that world have to offer you that I cannot?”

“I don’t know.” I hold his gaze, imploring. “But I want to find out.”

“This is absurd,” Emrys remarks.

“I wholeheartedly agree,” Neirin replies.

“Why are you surprised?” I lay my hand on his cheek. He leans into my touch on instinct. “I told you I wouldn’t be caged.”

“Am I a cage now?” he says bitterly.

“No! No, but…” I glance at the limits of the court, and the small, long lives of those who live there. “But I deserve to know what the world has to offer me. It might be terrible and lonely, but it’s mine to discover. Just as the person I will become is mine to make.”

“Well, I expected you to take immortality.” The king slumps low in his chair.

I give him an absurd look. “What if I’d asked for wings? Or to be invisible?”

“That would be stupid,” he says plainly. “You can have some damned gold, and I can give you freedom of movement between our worlds, but without immortality, it won’t be as seamless for you as it will for us.”

“How so?” I lift my chin.

“You will continue to age both in your world and ours. As time moves differently here, and as you will be bound to both our time and mortal time, it might be… sporadic. It could stop and start at will, slow and speed up. You will have true sight—going beyond even what my brother has given you—so when you return to your world you will notice things that slipped by you before. And these things will notice you, too.” He pauses.

“It will not feel like the place you left. There will be no true home for you, here or there.”

I consider that warning and shrug. “I’ve never really fit anywhere, so it’s a small price to pay.”

“As for your ability to move through mortal ages—there’s a caveat.”

My heart stills, and Mam’s face swims before my eyes. A thousand schemes pop into my head: ways to save her, Dad, even Gran. I wait for him to continue.

“You can only go forward,” he tells me, “never back. You can jump around your time and the years to come as much as you like, but anything before your current year, that is beyond you.”

A lump swells in my throat. “Why?”

“The past is dead,” Delyth says in his place, her eyes holding mine with a weight I almost buckle under. “Only ghosts can go there.”

I shake my head. “But it isn’t dead. You’ve all said all along that time happens here at once, why—”

“Because you’re human,” says Emrys, softer than I would expect from him, “and you will only ever be human. With true sight you’ll be able to pluck the strings of time when you leave here and always find your way back, but you cannot break and mend them as we can.”

No matter how badly I may want it, the past is the one thing I can never have. I must carry all that grief still, like a useless limb that I can’t bear to cut free. The life we had a year ago is dead, buried. The girls we were then lie alongside it in the grave.

Ceridwen touches my back. “Please, think about what you’re doing. Immortality would be easier, better.”

I shake my head. “I know what I want.”

I expect her hand to fall away, but her fingers just cling tighter to my dress.

Emrys rubs a hand over his forehead. “I suppose there’s one more consequence of this.”

“Duw, what else?”

Emrys sighs. “The consequence is for me. If you can come and go as you please, I assume you’ll continue following my brother around, so I’ll have to see you again.”

I bite back a laugh, which is probably the smartest thing I’ve ever done. There’s no need to anger Emrys if we are doomed to spend the rest of our lives running into each other occasionally. I hope it’s very occasional indeed.

“I don’t follow him around; it’s quite the opposite actually,” I assure him. Neirin tenses at my side. “But I… have things to fix at home first.”

I think of Dad. I may not be able to go back and save him from the police, but he still has the rest of his life to lead, and Australia suddenly doesn’t seem so far away. I could bring him here, to the place his stories came from—but there’s someone else I need to see, too.

“Fine,” I say. “I accept the gift.”

Emrys’s nostrils flare. My skin prickles and my eyes start to water, itching almost painfully.

I squeeze them shut, but there’s a bright, burning light behind my lids that pounds like a heart, then disappears.

When I open my eyes again, there are colors I haven’t seen before and still, to this day, cannot describe.

There’s a knot in my chest. Slowly, it starts to unwind.

Emrys waves me off. “Go humor my brother and get out of my sight.”

I want to say gladly, but the word dies when Neirin and Ceridwen grab my arms in unison and force me to face them.

“What have you done?” Neirin demands.

“You should have taken immortality,” Ceridwen snaps, then she softens. “I can’t watch you die.”

“You won’t,” I tell her, then turn to Neirin. “And neither will you.”

“I don’t understand,” he admits.

“I have plenty of time. I’ve won immortality once, haven’t I?” I beam at them. “I can do it again. For now, there’s a whole world out there—two, in fact—and I’m going to see it all.”

“You’re insane.” Ceridwen shakes her head. “That’s a stupid risk—”

“And if I can’t win immortality when I’m ready”—I grab at her hand—“then I’m not afraid to fade away, so long as I do it on my terms. I want to travel. I want to find new places to call my own, to change and become someone I like.”

What I don’t tell them is that I think I might be halfway there already.

Neirin takes my other hand. “You can do that here.”

“No,” I say quietly. “I can’t. And you can’t, either. I want to know what the world has to offer. My world. I’ll come back. And if you still like the woman I am at thirty-two just as much as the girl I was at sixteen, you can have me. Forever.”

I can’t read the emotions that flash over his face, but I’m sure it’s the most Neirin has ever felt in a single moment in his entire life.

My sister, though, she’s easy to understand.

There’s sorrow in her softening eyes, an awareness that it will be years before we lie in bed together again, before she brushes my hair as I tell her stories.

But resolve sits in her tight lips. She knows I will come back when I’m ready, and this time she will be waiting here, in Gwlad Y Tylwyth Teg. Waiting for me.

“You’re going to leave now, aren’t you?” she says.

I nod.

Ceridwen takes a shaky breath. “Where will you go first?”

“You already know,” I tell her, and the small smile on her face tells me she does.

We leave the throne room together, our great-aunt rushing down from the dais to follow. Emrys yells after Delyth, but she doesn’t seem to hear him.