Page 68 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
“And yet you would force me into a cage to keep you company.”
“It’s different now.” He reaches for my hand.
“Now?” I back away. “Why, Neirin? I’m still the same girl you’ve tricked from the beginning.”
Neirin’s lips part, but no sound comes out, and the silence he creates develops a life of its own. It grows until it fills the space inside the barrier, ensnaring us in gnarled roots and tight branches that neither of us can break.
We don’t need to. The answer has been there all along.
Neirin wants me. Wants me to stay, wants me to entertain him, wants someone to talk to who’ll really talk back. He wants to keep me by his side.
I clamp down on the urge to laugh or punch the air, because of course the first boy ever to like me is just as bad as I am. Possibly even worse.
He’s caught me in a perfect portrait, in a pose I don’t remember choosing but have become stuck in. I hate it. But for the first time, I see him just as clearly as he sees me. If he had his way, we would be here in his manor, bickering and laughing at his court, fixed in our portrait, forever.
I thought that if someone ever looked at me and found something to like, that I would fall in love. But I always assumed I’d have had the time to become the person I am meant to be by then. If Neirin has his way, things will change for him, but this is all I will ever be.
I want to change. I don’t want to be forever the angry, jealous girl who stole her sister’s ring. I want to be so much more than that.
“How long have you known my sister?”
When I finally look at him, he’s seething. His head is lowered, and his coal-dark eyes burn like embers.
“Five of your years,” he finally admits.
Ceridwen was fifteen when she first came here, younger than I am now.
My eyes squeeze shut. “You were the trickster Morgen spoke of.”
He stills. “Pardon?”
“She didn’t name you,” I say, quickly coming to Morgen’s defense. “But if she’s of your court, I imagine she can’t, can she.”
Neirin says nothing, only holds my gaze with a ferocity that should make me shrink away. But my fury matches his own. Maybe surpasses it twice over. Then, his lips turn up, and he gives a slow, sardonic clap.
My fury isdefinitelydouble his.
“Well done, Habren Faire,” he says. “Yes, your sister made the same deal with me months ago. But she didn’t need true sight—unlike you. I’d come to the forest’s edge that day to meet her, but she left without me. She got all the information she needed and then broke our deal, which is when you found me. She never gave me her name. She always went by another. You’re not the only liar in your family. So I took precautions with you.”
Pride in my sister burns in my chest. “Why didn’t Morgen tell me that my sister knew you?”
Neirin shrugs. “Morgen’s tithe to the court stayed her tongue. Your sister tricked both of us, I think. She pretended to bargain with me, and kept Morgen in the dark so I couldn’t get the truth from her. And then I found you, running through the forest, begging for everyone to look your way, and I thought I could let her try first, and then just… try again.”
The urge to tear the skin from his face hits me like a train. I can hardly move, can hardly breathe.
“I miscalculated,” he adds quickly, fixing me with an imploring gaze. “I thought you hated her. You act like you hate her, as though she’s a great burden. I kept you here to keep you safe. Honestly, I was barely thinking about your sister when you were injured at the bell tower. She didn’t occur to me in that moment.”
I wish I had an answer for him, but his fickle wants and desires are opaque to me. I shake my head, disbelieving. “Is that supposed to be a kindness? You let my sister go off to Y Lle Tywyll alone and unarmed.”
Neirin hesitates, then his whole body sags. “You and your sister are not what I expected. You aren’t stupid like other humans. I understand that now.”
“Youunderstand?” I shove his shoulders, and he stumbles back, grasping a nearby tree to right himself. “You don’t understand anything! We aren’t like you and your brother. There is no worldwhere I can win without her, no life I could live without her being a part of it.”
I keep hitting Neirin with balled fists, pummeling his arm as he doubles over. What shocks me most is that he doesn’t fight back. He lets me scream and kick and rage at him, and he doesn’t say a word.
When I tire myself out, he quietly steps away, unharmed, and leaves me heaving for breath. I brace my hands on my hips, air burning my lungs and my throat raw from shouting. He watches me, his head hanging a little lower than I’m used to, and he steps forward with one hand outstretched.
“It’s different now,” he repeats. “Now that I—”
