Page 11 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
“I know what ‘leaving’ means!” I stomp my foot as punctuation. “You are going to tell me where my sister is and how you know her, and you are going to tell menow.”
“You haven’t even asked my name.” The mermaid pouts. “It’s Morgen, by the way. Ceridwen was always the charming one. The nice one. That’s why I talked to her and not to you.”
That stings more than it should. I ought to be used to such observations by now. I’ve done nothing to change the world’s opinion of me and I don’t want to. And yet, when this idiotic mermaid looks at me in disappointment I feel it from my muddy boots to my knotted hair. My reputation has managed to cross realms, somehow. I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or proud—I’m leaning toward proud.
“I don’t care,” I tell her blandly.
Morgen huffs. “I ended up in the stream behind your house five years ago, and I saw you both. Ceridwen was hanging up sheets and singing to herself, and you were busy arguing with your neighbor. Her hair was like coral. I knew I had to speak to her. I threw Dwp at her window that night, but both of you came, not her alone. You looked right at Dwp and didn’t see him, but Ceridwen did. I popped my head up from the brook and waved. You closed the curtains without noticing a thing.
“She’s special,” Morgen continues. “But you’re a child of man. Square in the shoulders and too practical by half.”
My cheeks heat. “Yes, I’m perfectly ordinary, I’ve been told.”
“Ceridwen has sight,” Morgen says. “She can see us wherever we are, and she can come and go as she pleases.”
“I’ve managed to make my way here,” I remind her. “Whereverhereis.”
Morgen gives me a dubious look. “Any animal can fall into a cave, even if it doesn’t have the eyes to navigate it. Humans stumble in all the time. The woods by your house are thin.” She waves her webbed fingers ominously. “You don’t have sight. Anything you see herewantsyou to see them…” She trails off and glances around, then looks back at me with a notch between her brows. “I’m glad you found me, but you must know, you weren’t supposed to come. We’ve been planning this since Ceridwen was able to get out of bed. I had a note to send to you downstream explaining everything once we were settled.”
“What?”
The word is sharp as it leaves my mouth. I think of Ceridwen last night, saying she would consider getting married to keep us afloat—tosaveus. She lied. My sister had no intention of staying. Dad was gone and soon she would be too, leaving Gran and me to struggle and scrape and starve, and she’d have some mermaid I’d never met be the one to tell me.
I swallow my rage. “So the moment Mam was cold in her grave and Ceridwen was well enough to walk into the woods, she began planning to leave us? I thought she was in danger!”
“Ceridwen is my love,” Morgen says as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “We want to be together.”
Her words bounce off me like rain on an umbrella and a thousand questions fill my mouth, but only the beginning of one makes it out.
“How does…” I trail off, staring at Morgen’s tail.
“I have legs when I come to land,” Morgen snaps. “It’s very rude to ask a mermaid about her tail.”
“Why?”
“Why?Because if I stay too long on land, I could lose it!”
“All right,” I mutter as an apology. “Where is my sister?”
Morgen gives an awkward laugh. “Well, that’s why I’m glad you happened upon me, Sabrina. Wewerehappy—”
“If you’ve lost my sister in these woods, I’ll fillet you like the salmon you are.”
Morgen tuts. “I haven’t lost her! I know exactly where she is, I just can’t get to her. She’s too far away from water, I would lose my tail. ’Course, she knew that and went anyway—”
She breaks off mid-sentence, eyes trained on my hand. Cold rage comes down over her pretty features. I follow her gaze and quickly understand why.
“That’s her ring,” she says, breathless, her eyes bouncing between the band and my face. “Youstoleit.”
“I did not,” I say indignantly and far too fast. “This ismyring.”
She stutters. They can’t lie, these fairies of old; all the stories agree on that. So I’ve got a decided upper hand there.
“You’re lying!” she exclaims, utterly incredulous.
I pull an affronted face. “No, I’m not.”
“I was with Ceridwen when she got that ring,” Morgen practically spits at me.
