If anger is a storm,what is guilt?
Tremors, the unsteady shaking of the ground beneath my feet. The roof rocking overhead, sconces rattling on the walls, like a giant had passed by and made the ground tremble with every step he took. It gnawed on me like a dog worrying at a bone and bled into my surroundings as well. I would see the ever-graceful Lileas trip over something not yet in her path, then stare with confusion where it had not been. Jamie would run to the doorway and cower in fear, as the world around shook for no apparent reason. The wilder, more beast-like fae darted for cover or ran about in a manic fashion, like a cat during a storm, their fur or feathers or hair standing on end with fright.
I did this. Faery responded to the guilt and uncertainty in me.
I must take Lord Elidor’s life.
He was a murderer and attempted murderer; he had slain my mother and tried to kill me as well. His deeds could have cast all Faery into that land of dust and nothingness Amadan had showed me so many times. How fitting it was that his death should spare us that fate.
But I had to kill him, and that was quite another thing.
I had always been a healer, but Elidor was like a diseased limb, which must be removed for the body to thrive. Yet I still felt death as a mortal does. I had only ever killed by instinct, without a plan. Did I have the strength to knowingly, deliberately, take a life?
Mortal kings have their advisors for reassurance, confessors, priests who will absolve them of the difficult choices they must make. But I could seek no such absolution among the Fae. We of Faery do not fear damnation; it is either a forgone conclusion or, as I suspect, it is nothing, an illusion no more real than gold that turns to dry leaves in the end. Yet I still longed to know my deeds would not leave me sullied for all time.
For that, I believed I must cross to the other side of the Veil.
I had never passed through the Veil from the Faery side.
Once I had stood in Carterhaugh and looked through a tree, the passageway that led to Faery. Through it, I had seen a bonny glen, more welcoming than any place I had ever known, where every flower of the springtime bloomed at once. Now, as I stared across the Veil at the mortal world, it seemed faded, not fully there, as if by pulling myself away from it I had removed some of its substance. Nor did it tug on me, drawing me towards it the way it had once.
Faery, on the other hand, did not want me to go. Rain poured down more like tears, falling steady and slow from a cloudless sky. The trees around me drooped, their limbs hanging to the ground, shedding their leaves like molting birds. The mulch squished beneath my feet and clung to them, as if by doing so it could prevent my departure.
“Do you want quakes and tremors to rock you endlessly?” I asked, and felt a bit silly for it, as if I were speaking to myself. “Allow me to leave my guilt behind in the mortal realm. They have more use for it there.”
I turned from Faery and closed my eyes. “By oak and ash, yew and willow, by the blood of my mother Una and the kinship we share, you know where I must go.”
All at once, a howling wind picked up around me, tearing at my hair and clothing, threatening to knock the crown from my head. It scoured my skin and pulled at my limbs and sounded as if my world were being rent in two. I cried out in alarm, and a light flashed, so bright I must throw my arms in front of my eyes.
And then—silence.
Followed by birdsong.
I stood in an ordinary mortal garden. Grass lush as the finest velvet carpeted the ground, and all around me bloomed the flowers of late summer.
Buzzing bees there were, caterpillars and ants, even a small rabbit who went hopping away. A thick arbor stood amid it all, canopied with woodbine and draped with vines. The hedges were thick, grown taller than the top of my head; trees of alder, birch, and pine clustered all around.
I know this garden. Why do I know this garden?I looked around it, and saw wild celery growing, as I had harvested for the Baroness de Lyne.
I was in her manor. The garden, specifically, the one place Amadan had told me would be safe for me. My eyes cast about for the shadow fae,hisshadow fae, as I thought them now, whom once I had seen on the walls of Malcolm’s bedroom. But the creatures had long since fled.
The ground was firm beneath my feet. I felt steadier than I had in weeks. Until the scent of the iron hinges wafted towards me and, from further away, the stench of incense and the cross. I heard church bells ringing and they assaulted my ears.
From the other side of the door came the sound of footsteps, and a shouted “My lord!”
“Never mind, Ivor,” said a familiar voice. “I heard a rat in the garden is all. I will see to it myself.”
The door opened and there stood my shepherd king.
Resplendent in dark velvet, he had hung a thick chain upon his chest. His handsome face was now bearded, his curls neatly combed and trimmed. His waist had thickened somewhat, and he looked nearly ten years older, shoulders rigid as with the weight of new responsibilities.
He remained the finest mortal I had ever seen.
My pulse picked up and my belly stirred. I reached out, wanting to touch him, hold him, but for the surprise I saw in his eyes.
Mab’s tits!I still wore the Faery Queen’s seeming.
That was a mistake. I ducked behind the arbor, muttering under my breath. “Thistle and thorn, petal and rose, let him see me as the girl he knows.” As I straightened, my figure plumped out and my height shrank, while my hair lightened to a ruddy gold.
