Child Of Darkness

After a long silence, he said, “Dika did nothing wrong.”

The Dya chuckled, a bubbling, wet sound. “You know our ways so well, do you, that you can school the Dya of this camp on what is right and wrong?”

He said nothing.

“Why would a Faery come into the Darkworld, Tom?” There was no humor in her face, nor the far-off look of a Human with a wandering mind. “Why would he come and seduce our secrets out of a girl stupid enough to give them freely?”

“It was not my intention.” He thought back to that first day, when he’d strayed over the border to follow Dika. He’d seen her on the Strip many times, but they had never spoken. She’d taunted him with teasing glances, and once even dared to toss him a beaded scarf that she’d used in her hair. The hours he’d spent stroking that scarf, pressing it to his face and inhaling the scent of her. Long, torturous nights that drove him from his bed and to the Strip in the vain hope of seeing her.

And she’d been there, coy and teasing as ever as she’d led him on a dancing chase toward the boundary of the Darkworld. A boundary that, it was apparent, she didn’t believe he would cross. But he did cross it, without a second thought, and caught her in the tunnel and took her there, without even knowing her name, against the rough concrete wall.

A shudder he could not suppress went through him at the memory. “I was bewitched. I did not seduce her.”

“And you did not press her for our secrets?” It was an accusation, not a question. “You did not make Faery promises to dazzle her?”

“She loves me,” he said, coldly, haughtily. It was all he knew to be true in this place.

“She is elfstruck.”

“She loves me! And it was she that sought me out!”

The old woman nodded, as if somehow satisfied. “You do not love her?”

He thought of it, carefully considered what she asked. “I do not believe we can love as mortals love. Your love is bound by time. That makes it more constant. Perhaps desperate. But in the way I am able, I love her.”

“Your love is also bound by time.” The old woman looked toward the flickering firelight. From where they sat, they could not see Dika tending the cauldron, but the Dya’s gaze was pulled that way, just the same. “Shorter time than you know. If she were to grow old, withered like a grape left on the vine, would you love her then?”

He could not say. “I would cherish her as something dear to me. It is all I can promise.”

“And that is a promise that you must make to her, and make clear.” The Dya’s voice was sad, but that sadness fled as she turned back to him. “I wonder, though, what your purpose is, coming here. Though we live in the Darkworld, my people have no quarrel with you.”

“I am not here to quarrel. In truth, I do not believe my Queene has so harsh a view of the Darkworld as her predecessor. I am here for Dika.” He looked down at his hands. “I am here because I no longer wish to be a part of the Lightworld.”

“Wishes are what your people deal in, Tom. Not mine.” The Dya fixed him with a cold stare. “You cannot choose to be apart from your kind. You could not survive.”

“I can no longer survive among my kind, either. Perhaps you would let me choose the course of my own future.” He nodded toward the fire. “Perhaps you would let Dika choose hers.”

He had the old woman at a disadvantage now, and they both knew it. “My Queene will be able to take no action against you. You are leaving, and will be gone long before she can find this place.”

“You will be hunted on the surface,” the Dya remarked, not wishing to relinquish her hand so soon.

“You are hunted there, as well. Your people tell fortunes and create elixirs. The Enforcers could not let such a thing go.” He leaned back in the chair, though the iron made him uneasy and his paper-thin wings bent under him, and crossed one leg over the other in a Human gesture. “You will be in a unique position, though. You will have a Faery to hand over to them. A Faery who was close to the Queene, who knew her plans. They may not bother with us on the surface, but they do not like us. You could make a valuable trade and protect your people, if it should come to that.”

The Dya chortled. “And how do you know I would not simply sell you to the Enforcers the moment we stepped on Upworld soil? I thought Faeries knew better than anyone what tricks could be played in a deal.”

“I am aware of what tricks you could play on me,” he stated simply. “And I am aware that your people fear my kind. You will not play me false, lest you suffer unintended consequences.”

She smiled at him, displaying a mouth that was toothless but for two golden stubs that peeked over her bottom lip. “You would find your footing among us, in time, I suspect.”

For a long moment, she contemplated him, then called for Dika. The girl could not have been far, certainly not as far as the stew pot, for she appeared, as if a shade summoned from the Ether, at their side.

The Dya pointed a gnarled finger to Cedric, and did not look at the girl. “Dika, Tom wishes to stay with us.”

“Oh?” She tried to sound disinterested, either for the Dya’s benefit, or for his.

“What say you in the matter?” The Dya turned and fixed a critical eye on her granddaughter. Her mind was made up, that Cedric could tell. But Dika did not realize it.

Cedric saw the turmoil behind her eyes and almost smiled. But he did not wish to offend her, or the Dya. He could wait a moment to express his happiness.

“I think that if…Tom…wishes to stay with us, it is not our way to refuse him.” She said it as though it were an answer she’d been taught.

The Dya nodded. “That is what I thought, too.” She turned to Cedric. “Well, Tom, it seems we can welcome you into our clan. For now.”

“For now,” he agreed. He had no doubts that, should there come a time that handing him over to the Enforcers became convenient, they would do so. But that time was not now, and he would deal with the Enforcers if they came for him.

“I am tired, Dika,” the Dya said, rising to her feet. “Bring me my dinner inside.”

The old woman held out her arm, and Dika helped her rise, casting a look to Cedric that implored him not to leave. He waited until they were gone, then rose, brushing the feeling of the iron from his body.

When Dika emerged, she looked for him, held out a hand with her index finger raised, and hurried to the cauldron, where she dipped a dented metal cup into the pot. She rushed this back into the wagon, and did not emerge for a long while.

As he waited for her, he settled into the curve of one of the ancient tree’s wide roots, and closed his eyes. If he ignored the cavern ceiling high above, he could almost imagine how it would feel to be outside once again, to feel the wind, to speak to the trees. He would have to live as a Human, but it was a small price to pay for the freedom so long denied him.

And what of the price she will pay? the tree asked cheerfully, in the quiet way trees had of invading Faery thoughts. To give up her one life bound to a lover who cannot love her in return? Doesn’t seem fair, that.

Then the tree, apparently pleased to see something passing through the forest above them, began to speak of rabbits. Dika emerged from the wagon, looked about, confused, until she saw him, and ran toward him, her face alight.

Cedric forced the tree’s unsolicited opinion from his mind and met her halfway.

“I can’t believe it!” She threw her arms around his shoulders, kissed his face. “I can’t believe you really are here.”

“I am here.” He smoothed her black curls from her face. Unfathomable as it might have been to him previously, he wanted nothing more than to never return to the Lightworld, to stay here, with these strange people, to insinuate himself into their company. “There is something I have not told you about my life in the Lightworld.”

Where to begin? Would he tell her how many years he’d existed? That he’d seen women as old as her grandmother born and dead ten, fifty, a hundred times over? Should he tell her of watching the Earth slowly shift apart, of walking the Human world and watching them “discover” the magic in plants to cure sickness, the sun to tell time?

No. All of that could come in good time. Now, she needed to hear this, without any embellishment or Faery tales to dazzle her. “In the Lightworld, I am not an ordinary…man.” What a strange word when applied to himself. “I am an advisor to the Queene of the Faery Court. Her closest advisor. And recently she has charged me with a very important task.” He wondered if the stories of jealous Human women were true, and if this would seem to her as ridiculous as it did to him, or enrage her. “She wishes that I should mate myself to her daughter.”

“Oh.” She did not meet his eyes.

“I will not. She is a mere child.” He stumbled over this, as he wasn’t certain Dika was much older than Cerridwen. He wasn’t sure how Human age worked, really. “She is old enough to find a mate, but she has been coddled and spoiled. I do not wish to spend an eternity with her.”

Dika looked up, a glint in her eyes that was caught between amusement and anger. “And me? Would you wish to spend an eternity with me?”

He opened his mouth to answer, and realized it was a trick. He could no more spend an eternity with her than she could spend one with him. “If it were possible, yes.”

“Then you content yourself to living with me until I am as old and withered as the Dya?” She came closer now, and gripped the front of his robes to pull their bodies together. “Will you still love me then?”

“I will love you for as long as I am able.” He knew now what had taken so long in the caravan, what the Dya’s muffled voice had been saying. “You know that I am merely an inconstant Faery, with no heart for Human love.”

“I know this,” she said, rising on her toes to touch their mouths together. Her breath moved over his lips. “I wanted to know that you knew it.”

Four

Cerridwen did not go to her mother that night. She didn’t have the stomach to, after the scare in the tunnels, and after she’d left without telling Fenrick goodbye.

Fenrick. His face tumbled over and over in her memory. She brought her fingers to her lips to better remember the touch of his mouth. In the safe darkness of her room, her refusal of his advances made no sense. Why had she not let him do what she had secretly wished he would do—what she had been wishing he would do for the long weeks since they’d met?

She was a coward, she decided. And she did not like cowards.

You are furthermore being cowardly by not going to your mother and facing whatever punishment she has in store for you, a nasty voice taunted in her head, and she blocked it out.

She would face her mother. After the Great Queene made her morning audience, before the Royal Heir’s day became another endless series of dutiful appearances at her mother’s side.

It was so she could learn the way to be Queene, or so everyone told her. When would she ever need such knowledge? The Queene that had ruled before her mother, Mabb, had only fallen when slain by her brother.

Cerridwen did not like to think of her gone father murdering his own sister, so she put that from her mind.

But Fae were an immortal race, and, despite her mother’s half-mortal blood, she had never grown older once she’d come of age. No one would kill Queene Ayla, worshipped as she was. And if someone did, well, there were others who were more qualified for—and interested in—ruling the Faeries. Cerridwen would happily quit the Faery Court altogether.

These thoughts, and thoughts of her impending punishment, and thoughts of Fenrick—she tucked his knife under her pillow and rested a hand on it—kept sleep from her. By the time it arrived, it seemed only to pay her a short visit before Governess was shaking her awake, muttering angrily about her mother wishing to see her.

Cerridwen sat silent through Governess’s torturous grooming, though she scrubbed her skin raw and pulled at tangles mercilessly. She was thinking of a plan.

Cedric had made a bargain with her. Had he kept to it? What if he had not? Should she barge into her mother’s chambers and tell her exactly where she had been, stand defiant and argue that it was her right as a grown Faery to go where she pleased and do what she wanted? Or would it be more prudent to stay silent, play the wide-eyed innocent if her mother already knew of her stray into the Darkworld? She’d overplayed wide-eyed…perhaps outrage would suit her. Wait and see if her mother knew about the Darkworld, about Fenrick.

She smiled at her freshly brushed and scrubbed reflection in the mirror. No matter what took place this morning, she would not let her mother get the upper hand. She would pretend to be the dutiful daughter for a few days, perhaps a week. And then she would resume her life as normal, and as she pleased.

The morning audience was over, but the guards led her to the throne room and not to her mother’s chambers. Courtiers clustered outside of the doors, whispering behind their hands at the sight of her. This was not unusual, and she ignored it, lifting her chin as though she could not even deign to look at them.

“Congratulations, Your Highness,” someone called out, and this bizarre exclamation was met with a smattering of applause and few huzzahs. For the most part, though, the Courtiers kept up their malicious whispering.

“Congratulations?” she muttered under her breath, wondering what she’d done to be congratulated on, what foolish new story her mother had concocted to excuse her absence.

The guards standing at the doors pushed them open, while the guards at Cerridwen’s back kept the Courtiers from streaming in. A private audience between the Queene and the Royal Heir in such a formal setting? This would certainly set the whisperers gossiping at a frantic pace.

Her mother sat on the throne, an uncomfortable-looking rock thing covered on the sides by clumps of quartz. She dressed in less formal robes than she would don before her evening audience with the Court. The morning audience was when everyday business was proposed to the Queene. In the evening she would hear more important petitions.

The rest of the room was empty, not even a guard remained. But her mother’s faithful mortal servant stood at her side and showed no signs of leaving. There had long been rumors that he was the Queene’s Consort, and the thought of it, once she had come to understand the term, made Cerridwen ill.

“Is he going to stay?” she asked, and cursed herself inwardly. She’d already gotten her back up, as she had sworn to herself she would not do.

Her mother nodded, seemingly unperturbed by her daughter’s strident tone. “Come closer, Cerridwen. You do not stand awaiting your execution.”

It certainly felt like it. Normally, her mother was in a full rage before the doors closed, screaming down the walls over whatever transgression Cerridwen had committed. This solicitous nature made the skin on her neck creep.

“You missed an important announcement last night,” her mother said, still in that maddeningly kind tone.

Was this the time, then, to burst out in her own defense? To break her bargain with Cedric? She opened her mouth to protest.

Her mother shook her head. “I do not wish to hear your excuses. I was angry with you, but now that anger has passed. I trust you will not leave the Lightworld again.”

And that trust was woefully misplaced. “Of course not, Mother.”

“Cedric brought you back to the Palace?” Though phrased as a question, it was a statement of fact, so Cerridwen did not answer. “Did he tell you anything of what occurred at the feast?”

Cerridwen shook her head slowly.

Taking a moment to rephrase her question, her mother asked again, “Did he tell you why he had come looking for you?”

“I was unaware that he looked for me.” The traitor had spun the story in his favor! How like a Faery male. “I thought his own business had brought him…to where we were.”

Beside the throne, Malachi spoke up. “Likely, it did.”

Her mother ignored him. Of course, the one time he seemed to be on Cerridwen’s side, the Great Queene Ayla would consider his opinion beneath her. “He looked for you because of the announcement I made. Last night was a celebration of your coming of age. I had hoped you would have been proud to show the entire Court the fine Faery you have grown into.

“Instead, you showed the Court the reason I had to make a very difficult decision. I know you cherish your freedom, Cerridwen. I know you feel you are stifled by life at Court, but if life at Court had truly clipped your wings, you would not have been able to fly from the Palace at a whim.” She stood and came down from the throne, down from the dais. Malachi stayed behind, watching the exchange from beneath his dark, furrowed brows.

“I fear I have not taught you the discipline you need to grow into your full potential as the Royal Heir. And I’ve come to accept that I am not the one to teach you. The influence of someone more experienced with Court manners and life, but someone who has also managed to balance the demands of Court with the demands of a happy life, is what you need.” Her mother reached out, touched Cerridwen’s face briefly. “That is why I have chosen Cedric to be your mate.”

Individually, all of those words made sense to Cerridwen. She knew what it meant to choose something, knew what it meant to choose a mate. She understood that, occasionally, Faeries decided to bind their lives to each other for reproduction and mutual gain.

What she did not understand was the concept of someone making this choice for another person. The idea that her mother had chosen a mate for her. And that the mate she had chosen was…Cedric.

The room seemed far warmer than it had a moment before, and her feet did not rest easy beneath her. She pressed a hand to her stomach and took a step back, hoping her balance would return. She closed her eyes, but it only made the feeling worse, so she opened them again.

“It seems that, despite your confidence, the Royal Heir does not see it from your perspective,” Malachi said and laughed bitterly.

“Shut up!” Cerridwen shouted, hearing the tears in her voice. That he had uttered his opinion, that he’d been privy to this humiliation at all, was more than she could bear.

“I did not make this decision to punish you!” Her mother held out her arms, as if to comfort her.

Cerridwen backed away. “No!” Her breath burned in her lungs, and no words, no matter how hurtful she might be able to make them, would put out the fire. “No! You do this to…to push me off on someone else! To get rid of me!”

“Cerridwen, please.” Queene Ayla did not look so queenly now. Just pathetic and sad in her daughter’s eyes. “You cannot understand—”

“No, I cannot understand!” Cerridwen’s fists pounded her thighs of their own volition. “I cannot understand how you think I could love him. That I could…lie with him. It’s disgusting!”

Her mother’s expression grew hard at this. “To become Queene, I had to do a great many difficult things.”

“I do not wish to become Queene!” Her shrill scream rang off the stone walls of the throne room. “And yes, you did a great many difficult things! How difficult was it to kill my father? If he were still alive—”

“Your father is not still alive, and thank the Gods I saw to that!” Her mother’s words, dark with rage, rang out even over the loud crack of her palm colliding with Cerridwen’s cheek.

She expected the blow to her pride to be greater than the physical pain, but the intensity of the sting shocked her. Tears sprang to her eyes, and though she wanted desperately to stop them falling, they poured onto her cheeks.

“I hate you,” she spat, and turned to flee the room.

Her hand still throbbing from the slap, Ayla stared at the closing doors her daughter had fled through.

“You did not have to strike her so hard,” Malachi said quietly from his place on the dais.

Ashamed, Ayla could not face him. “I should not have struck her.”

The sound of his descending footsteps echoed through the empty hall, but they did not drown out the searing memory of her daughter’s invective. “No, you were well within your right to strike her. I’ve wanted to, myself, on occasion.”

“I am a poor mother.” Self-pity was not becoming of a Queene, and Malachi certainly did not allow her to wallow in it in his presence, but she did not care at the moment.

He took a breath, his mouth close to her ear, and placed his hands on her shoulders. “You are stubborn. And prideful. So is she. But you cannot truly judge yourself a poor mother, as you had none, and I cannot judge you one, either.”

“Twenty years have slipped through my fingers like water. Try as I might, I cannot hold on.” She closed her eyes. “I am a fool to think that Cedric will be able to hold her, either.”

“You are fool to ask it of either of them,” Malachi agreed with a gentle squeeze. “I will put an extra guard at her door. No doubt she will run away again.”

“And this time, for good.” Shaking her head, Ayla turned. “Perhaps she is right. Perhaps, if her father were able to have a hand in raising her…”

Malachi frowned down at her, and the frown deepened the faint lines on his brow. “If Garret had lived, he would have killed you and her both.”

She had not meant Garret. It surprised her how easily Malachi confused their daughter’s parentage himself. But now was not the time to correct him. “Cedric did not return last night. He was not at my morning audience. Do you think—”

“I think he is still angry with you. And I think you would do well to avoid each other for a while. But he is too loyal to ignore your orders for long. He will return.”

Malachi spoke of loyalty as though it were something foul. It seemed strange to her that he, of all the creatures in the Lightworld, would have this opinion. He’d been wholly, unquestioningly subservient to his One God—he still was, she knew, having overheard his whispered prayers—and content to stay that way, it seemed, mourning his separation from that life of duty. If he looked down on such a quality in Cedric, she could only surmise that it was because Cedric’s devotion was to his Queene, a being Malachi knew as imperfect and prone to mistakes.

In truth, Ayla would not have preferred the same slavish dedication from Malachi. It was one of the things she treasured most about his company; he did not find her infallible. The adoration and confidence the Courtiers all showed her seemed to disappear at the worst of times, and Malachi would not disagree with her then. But when the Court loved her, he became critical, lest she forget how tenuous her grasp over her kingdom was.

As they were alone, she let him take her into his arms. Closing her eyes, she remembered a time not so long ago, when she had run through the perils of the Darkworld for him. There were moments she wished she could escape to that time again, to not know of the dangers that had laid ahead of them or of the hardships they would endure. To not have the worries of running a kingdom, raising a daughter, being under constant scrutiny…feeling suffocated by duty.

There were times that that escape seemed possible, when they lay together in the dark, limbs twining, skin sliding over skin. Though so much had changed over time, that never had changed, and she was glad for its familiarity.

His mouth moved against her ear as he spoke and he did not speak to her as her advisor or her friend. He spoke to her now as her lover, her life mate, and without judgment in his tone. “If I do not understand your choice in this, I do not doubt you mean only good. Do not grieve the loss of my faith in you, for it is still strong.”

The doors of the throne room scraped open without a warning from the other side. Ayla and Malachi stepped apart quickly, their reaction honed by years of practice.

Though the doors were barely parted, a slender figure slipped into the throne room. Flidais, a member of Ayla’s council, recently charged with the important task of Lightworld defenses, ran down the polished aisle, toward her Queene. She bowed with uncharacteristic agitation before hurriedly asking, “With your Majesty’s permission, might I be granted an audience?”