Page 22 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
“Whether he likes me won’t matter if you win,” Neirin says. “He is bound to honor the rules of his trial once you enter the palacegrounds. But that doesn’t mean he won’t try and stop me from entering.”
“And what are those rules?”
“Do you need everything spelled out for you?”
“Clearly.”
Neirin puts his hands on his hips and fixes me with a bored look.
“Fine,” he says. “Y Lle Tywyll lies at the northern edge of our known lands. It goes underground, but no one who has entered has emerged intact enough to confirm just how deep it goes. Ever since it opened, the teg have been getting sick. The land, too. Those that lived near the fissure were the first to fall. When they did, some of my more noble countrypeople went searching for survivors, but they came back… changed. They’ve become mindless, violent creatures. The disease is spreading fast, infecting the teg more. So the king has started asking our human guests to be our champions.”
I laugh bitterly. “But we’re disposable, right?”
He looks me up and down. “No. Just stupid enough to value a prize over your lives.”
“You keep saying ‘champion,’” I point out. “I’ll be competing against others?”
Neirin shrugs. “Multiple people can claim the prize, so long as they come out together.” He puffs out his chest, mimicking a storybook savior. “‘Champion’ is a more appealing word than ‘sacrifice.’”
“Have you been to Y Lle Tywyll?”
“Absolutely not.” Neirin laughs. “But the reports have been drastic.” His smile wavers and his eyes narrow slightly as he stares at the ground. “I can feel the wrongness, though, a dull ache, like an ill-healed bone hiding just beneath the skin. We all can.”
My stomach turns. “Well, that sounds lovely.”
Neirin takes a jaunty step forward and calls back, “We wouldn’t need a champion if it were easy!”
Suddenly, the road appears before us. It’s a cobblestone path winding north, lined with silver lampposts that bear small flags sporting an unfamiliar emblem of a crown wrapped around the trunk of a great tree. They’re dark now, but I’m certain that later tonight they will flicker to life without the aid of a lamplighter.
“Ready?”
Neirin stops beneath an unlit lamp with his arms crossed, a brow arched expectantly.
I smooth down my nightgown. “I thought there would be people here.”
Neirin taps the corner of his eye. My nostrils flare. Of course—true sight.
“There’s a fruit seller.” He nods across the road, then grins at someone. “With rather fetching wings.”
I whip around, hoping for an outline—a shimmer, some sort of hint—but there’s nothing at all. A shiver rushes down my spine. Until he gives me the sight, Neirin has such control over me. He has just acknowledged a presumably harmless fruit seller but, though he cannot lie, I wonder at all the things he might be neglecting to mention.
“Will you call a steed now?” I ask, trying to sound merely curious and not as if my sister’s life depends on me beating her to court.
Also, I’m quite excited to see the famous horses of the Wild Hunt, if my mortal eyes allow it, though I don’t want to tell Neirin that.
“Of course,” he says. “It’s easy.”
I gesture petulantly. “So, do—”
But a scream in the woods cuts me off.
I freeze, squaring my shoulders. Neirin puts himself between me and the trees, and as I turn toward the forest once more, he grabs my wrist. His grip isn’t tight, but it sets the hairs on the back of my neck at attention.
Our eyes lock for a moment and my wrist goes rigid beneath his touch. “Can you see what made that noise?”
“No,” he says. “But—”
Another scream. Louder, more desperate—terrified.
