Page 35 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
“Have any other champions gone in ahead of me?” I ask. “I’d hate to have competition.” If I can keep him talking, maybe I can get information on my sister.
Emrys’s lips curl to reveal startlingly white teeth. “Many have gone to Y Lle Tywyll, but you won’t have much competition.”
I roll my shoulders back. “Oh? Is it that dangerous?”
The king’s eyes snap up to stare at me like I’m a puzzle he can’t figure out. “Are you simple?”
“No, Your Majesty, merely the best at what I do.”
He arches a brow. “Which is?”
I fix him with an infuriating smile. “Winning.”
Emrys leans forward slightly. He looks to his consort, but she’s staring at the floor and won’t look up, even when he tries to catch her attention. At a loss, he looks back at me.
“You’re very bold,” he says. “Y Lle Tywyll is lethal. You will face no competition because the others are long dead.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because,” the king says with a condescending smirk, “the disease persists, and no one has claimed the prize.”
I run my tongue over my teeth, wondering what I should say to find out if my sister has been here and left, already on the road to her doom.
“Maybe it’s just taking them a while,” I suggest. “No one knows how big Y Lle Tywyll is, after all. They could still be alive in there.”
The king’s eyes open wider. It’s the most emotion he’s displayed so far.
“A girl left here yesterday, bound for the north,” says the consort.
Her voice is high, with a thick, scratchy quality that suggests she hasn’t used it yet today. My eyes dart to her, but she never looks up from the floor, where butterflies crawl at her feet.
“A redhead with a firm heart and a set path,” she continues. “I know not which route she took.”
I school my face into a mask of indifference. “Was she armed?”
The consort shakes her head slowly. “She was brave, but she had no weapon other than her will.”
The stolen ring is heavy in my pocket. My face burns. I hope they cannot see it. I’ve fallen behind her, and now I know that whatever danger she might be in, I have made her even more vulnerable to it by being a petty thief.
“And what did she ask for?” I finally force out.
The king sighs, his interest waning. “Immortality, what else? My Delyth here wanted immortality too, long ago, though she won it through my affection.”
Delyth. It means “sweet.” She looks up for the first time and imploring green eyes find my own, though I can’t begin to guess what she wants. I return my attention to the king, to the show I’m putting on for him.
“Is that all?” I say haughtily, though in truth I have no idea what prize could be greater. “Then I shall simply have to kill her and take a better prize for myself.”
The king tilts his head. The gesture is oddly familiar, but all that comes to mind is a cat. “And for what will you ask, Habren Faire?”
That’s the question. His beautiful consort stands beside him, hardly older than me and yet frozen, tied to one man forever. My sister yearns for the same reward—to spend her eternity with her lover. Delyth is everything Ceridwen stands to gain.
“I’ll tell you when I win,” I say cockily, like my head isn’t spinning.
The king’s eyes narrow, and the tension in the room pulls taut as a tightrope. Then he claps his hands together with near-childlike delight. “Oh, you are interesting, Habren Faire. Very well, I accept. You may enter Y Lle Tywyll with the intent to purge the rot, and if you succeed—if you prove yourself to be my champion—I will grant you your favor, whatever it may be.”
Any interest he had in my show drops like a stage curtain. I suppose that’s as far as my performance can take me until I return victorious, or until I’m spat out as a corpse. I bow and take my leave, but the king’s final question continues to haunt me.
For what will you ask, Habren Faire?
