Page 28 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
I think of my own face, the dissatisfaction it fills me with each morning in the glass. “I don’t take kindly to being mocked.”
“I wasn’t mocking you. You mustn’t assume everything is an insult.”
“In my experience most things are.” I look away from him. “How did you find me?”
“The trees saw your every step and whispered them back to me. You were easy to follow. Humans have a certain… smell.”
I scowl. “Like dirt, I’m sure.”
Neirin laughs softly. “You’re like your valley—all washing lines and baking bread. He, however”—he nods at the soldier, still sound asleep—“stinks of grave dust.”
We stare at the soldier in silence. A dream shakes the brittle branch of him, so close to falling from the tree.
“Leave him alone,” I say without looking at Neirin.
“I should be saying the same to you,” he bites back. “We have a deal, Habren.”
“He is helping me reach Llys-y-Ellyllon.”
“You really think he knows where it is?” Neirin laughs a little too loudly.
I grab Neirin’s arm and yank him to the riverbank that borders the clearing so that he won’t wake the soldier.
He laughs. “Is this what being manhandled is?”
“Behave.” I drop his arm and ball my fists. “You don’t need to accompany me to court. I’m perfectly fine without you.”
His smile is wry, knowing. “And what will you doifyou get to court? You aren’t one of us; you can’t even see properly. If you had listened, I could have told you that was a hag calling out and not your sister.”
My whole body goes boneless for a moment, arms limp at my side.
“I don’t have a sister,” I say through the lump in my throat.
“I do so love watching you lie, but you clearly have a purpose far more urgent than winning a prize.”
I gape for a moment, then shake my head. “You said you lost me around the river! How could you possibly—? You can’t lie—”
“I wasn’t lying. I did lose you around the river.” He beams at me, then flicks his wrist sardonically. “AfterI listened in on you and the mermaid discussing your sister at length. Then you went running after a hag yelling about sisters. It also helps that, even before we met, I saw another human storming quite determinedly in the direction of Y Lle Tywyll.”
I lunge at him, but he sidesteps me adeptly. “So why didn’t you offer my sister this deal? Why did you follow me?”
He purses his lips, thinking, then shrugs. “Your sister has sight. She had no need for me, and she made that very clear before she went on her merry way.”
It strikes me like a slap. Not only has this foppish ellyll had the run of me, luring me into a deal to protect my sister, but he tried the same trick with Ceridwen, and Ceridwen had been smart enough to see through him. Shame mingles with rage until I’m made mute. I’m supposed to be the clever one—I was the one who listened to Dad’s stories—but at every turn my sister has bested me in Eu gwlad, while I didn’t even know we were competing.
“Strange that one of you has sight and the other doesn’t. Perhaps I’ve picked the unlucky sister,” Neirin says plainly, giving voice to every poisonous thought in my head.
Even Neirin, who calls me fair and acts as if I am fascinating, would still prefer Ceridwen.
A choked, angry noise escapes me. “Don’t compare me to my sister!”
The silence that falls is a thornbush and we are the insects left impaled by a shrike. We wait to see who will bleed out first.
“Then why do you wish to save her?” Neirin asks.
“Because she’s my sister.” There’s nothing else I can say.
“Fine.” He glances away from me. “I know the burden of being lesser.”
