Truthseeker

Thirty-Six

“When did you know?” Strained curiosity filled the Unseelie prince’s voice, as though he strove to make light of being discovered, and fell just short.

Lara gave a deprecating laugh. “Not until just now. Not until I started thinking what could be done with illusion. I just don’t understand why. What do you get out of starting a war between the courts?”

“Power.” Merrick shrugged. “You should have seen that much, Truthseeker. What else does any ill-favored son covet?”

Kelly, unexpectedly, muttered, “A father’s love, usually. It’s all very Oedipal, or something. Lara—”

Lara hissed a warning, trying to silence her friend. Merrick’s gaze flickered to her, then back to Lara, a dismissal that caused Kelly to draw offended breath. “Tscht!” Lara said, and splayed her fingers backward, trying again to cut Kelly off without ever taking her own eyes from Merrick.

His attention, though, was drawn to Kelly a second time. “You mortals have a saying, I think. One that suits my situation. ‘Better to reign in Hell,’ is that not what you say?”

“Not most of us.” Kelly subsided as Lara shot a despairing glance over her shoulder. The wadded-up skirt Kelly held against her face was black and wet with blood, and something in the way her mouth pinched told Lara that sharp commentary was meant to distract Kelly from her injury. But the truth wasn’t a shield that could protect her, and so Lara was desperate for her silence, not wanting Merrick’s regard to linger on her.

“For most of you,” Merrick said softly, “there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others between yourselves and absolute sovereignty. For me there are four. It’s a surmountable number, and most easily achieved through war.” His voice sharpened. “A war that should have been met within hours of my ‘death,’ were it not for mortal interference.”

“Mor—I didn’t get to the Barrow-lands for almost two weeks.” Lara turned back to Merrick, her hands clenched with worry.

“But Oisín made his prophecy and stayed Emyr’s hand for those critical few days until my dear brother could bring you from the mortal world to ours. How is Dafydd?” he added, voice gone oily and smooth. “Shall we see, Truthseeker?”

He made a familiar gesture, fingers clawing the air to rip a shining door between one world and the next. Lara’s breath caught and she started forward, but Merrick lifted an imperious hand. “Do you know what a scrying spell is, Truthseeker?”

“It lets you see across—” “The Barrow-lands” was how the sentence was meant to finish, but Lara swallowed it along with bitter recognition. “Across space,” she said instead, and Merrick’s smile turned pointed with approval.

“Very good. It’s no small feat to turn the worldwalking spell to a scrying window, but let us see what’s to be seen. Think of Dafydd, Truthseeker. Think of your love.”

Anger and fear stung Lara in equal parts. Merrick knew more than she did, as if he’d been watching them all along. The frequency of the nightwing attacks struck her, and she thought perhaps he had been, right from the moment she’d crossed into his world. She didn’t want to give him an even greater advantage by playing his game, and yet …

She’d escaped the Barrow-lands through a twist of magic she had no idea how to command, much less replicate. Merrick’s torturesome offering could far too easily be the last chance she would have to see Dafydd ap Caerwyn. She crept forward, gaze locked on the glittering window between worlds.

The image on its other side swam, blurring with the thickness of melting glass, then slowly came clearer, focused on a single man. Dafydd lay in a bed of ermine, impossibly pale against the soft black fur. He didn’t move, not even to breathe, so far as Lara could tell. She muffled a cry, inching closer, and became aware that she was almost within Merrick ap Annwn’s reach. She froze in place, unwilling to risk his presence even when distance from the window lost details that might have eased her heart.

His surroundings were semi-familiar to her, the Unseelie palace’s black opalescent walls reflecting light from the scrying window. A white-haired woman moved into the image, tall and confident in her moon-silver armor: Aerin, who in no way belonged at the heart of the Unseelie palace. She knelt beside Dafydd, then slipped an arm behind his shoulders, helping him to sit, and offered him a drink from a goblet like the one Ioan had shared with Lara.

Childish envy made Lara’s eyes hot. She dashed the heel of her hand against them, trying to turn misery into anger. “She shouldn’t even be there. What’s she doing there?”

Answers flooded her without Merrick speaking aloud. Aerin was one of Dafydd’s oldest friends; Ioan might well have sent for her, or even stolen her the way he’d done Lara herself, so that someone Dafydd knew would be there to care for him. Someone of his own people, rather than an unknown Unseelie. Ioan might even be wary of showing himself to Dafydd; he had no way of knowing that Lara had already betrayed the secret of his change to the younger Seelie prince.

And the more hateful answer was even more obvious than those. They were lovers, Dafydd and Aerin, perhaps even meant to wed someday. Lara was an ephemeral thing to them, barely lasting a moment. She could never offer what Aerin might: a lifetime of intimacy for a man whose years spanned aeons.

Dafydd took a wracking breath, doubling against Aerin’s side. Hope leaped in Lara’s heart: he was alive, at least, and she hadn’t been at all certain he would be. He’d been so weak, so close to burned out entirely, all for the sake of protecting her and her world. A life like his lost for a planet full of mortals who would neither know nor care would be criminal, and that ache rang true in Lara’s breast. Aerin helped him to lie down again, smoothed his hair, and stood, leaving the scrying window’s frame.

Lara whispered, “No. Follow her.” Dafydd was sleeping; he would remain that way without her worried supervision. The window, at Merrick’s command but at Lara’s wish, trailed after Aerin until she entered another room, more grandiose and brighter than the one she’d left.

Ioan ap Annwn stood alone in that room, looking through a window of his own. Lara imagined he looked over his city, and wondered how many of his people had returned. Not enough. If even one was lost, not enough had returned.

Merrick made a startled sound as Aerin said, “Ioan,” and for an instant Lara’s gaze strayed to him. She’d told Dafydd of Ioan’s transformation, but Merrick, true son of the Unseelie king, hadn’t known about it. He must have expected a man as pale as Dafydd to appear in his scrying window, and a strange twinge of sympathy jolted Lara. He had been traded away and now it was revealed to him that he had been replaced more thoroughly than he ever would have dreamed. No one would take such a change of fortunes easily.

His crimes, though, had been developed well before he had made this discovery. Lara tightened her stomach muscles, trying to literally harden her heart, and turned her attention back to the window between worlds.

“He’s dying,” Aerin said in response to something Ioan had said. Then she shook her head and sat gracefully, as though she wore a court gown rather than armor. “Worse than dying. His fire is gone, Ioan. Everything that makes him Seelie is burned away. He’s … mortal.”

Something akin to disgust filled the last word, but Lara’s hands went icy with hope. Mortal meant a life span like hers, a lifetime that could be shared. Her heart hammered with a painful, misplaced joy. If she could return to him even briefly, then she might convince him to come home with her, where they could be together without magic or monsters to confuse their future.

Selfish, she whispered to herself, but repugnancy crossed Ioan’s face as well. Wouldn’t it be better, she reasoned, to make a home and a life in a world where everything was mortal, than to always be an object of pity and disgust in the land that had once been his?

“I can open the door,” Merrick said. Truth shivered through it, proof of his royal blood. “You could bring him back here. It would be the end of everything you tried to do in the Barrow-lands, but it would be a future for both of you.”

Without thinking, Lara breathed, “Open it,” and the window winked back to Dafydd’s chambers. Light exploded everywhere, gold and blinding, but she ran forward, staying just out of Merrick’s reach as she dove across worlds.

She hit the black mother-of-pearl floor with as much dignity as she’d landed in a sandbox weeks earlier, but this time she was able to roll to her feet and run to Dafydd’s bedside. The furs were soft, so soft she wanted to bury herself in them and hold Dafydd forever. She could, she promised herself. She could hold him, but not here. His skin was cool beneath hers as she caught his hand and brought it to her lips.

Like a fairy tale, his eyes opened at her touch. They were brown now, such an ordinary mortal color, and confusion rose in them as he frowned. “Lara?”

“Come with me. Merrick’s holding the door open—” She glanced over her shoulder, making certain it was true. Merrick stood in her world, grim with concentration against a backdrop of stones and mountain grass. He made a gesture: hurry, and she twisted back to the exhausted man on the bed. “Dafydd, you used too much power. You burned out your magic, but you’re alive, and you’re … you’re mortal, Dafydd. Come with me,” she whispered. “We can be together in my world for the rest of our lives. But we have to hurry. It’s a terrible thing to ask without any warning, I know that, but there isn’t much time.”

“I’m not … I’m not sure I can.” Dafydd laughed thinly as Lara scooted her arm under his shoulders like Aerin had. “I barely remember what happened, Lara. I’m very weak.”

“I know. The nightwings, the hydra—” Lara shook her head. “I’ll tell you everything later, but if Aerin comes back—”

“She won’t stop you.” Aerin’s voice, cool as glass, came from the doorway. Lara flinched toward it, awed all over again at the woman’s tall beauty. She’d set aside her armor in the little time that had passed, and looked the part of a queen in her castle, garbed in white that spoke of a bride’s gown. “He would only be a reminder of what we’ve lost,” she said. “It’s better for all our people to make a new start together.”

Ioan entered behind her, putting his hand under hers. He was resplendent in black, groom to her bride, and his handsome features were pinched with sorrow. “This war has offered us that much, at least. We’re no longer enemies, and reparations are being made to the Unseelie people. Emyr is reluctant, but dares not stand against the rising sentiment of all our peoples. Take Dafydd,” he murmured. “Make a good life. Do not come here again.”

Lara, heart breaking, whispered, “We won’t,” and helped Dafydd to his feet. He hesitated, looking toward the brother he didn’t know and the woman he did, and then drew strength from somewhere, straightening himself to walk, unbowed, through the door that Merrick held open.

It blinked out behind them and Dafydd dropped to his knees, exhaustion greater than pride. Lara fell with him, trying to support him. Relief mingled with joy and terror and sent her heart hammering. A life with her; he had chosen a life with her, and no amount of worry could undo that. But now he turned his gaze slowly upward to examine Merrick ap Annwn. “You were dead.”

“It was a trick.” Merrick’s lip curled. “A trick that has not played out how I meant it to. I meant to be the crowned head that it seems Ioan ap Caerwyn now is.”

“But we were brothers.”

“No. I was a hostage to my father’s good behavior, and no amount of time could have made me more than that within your father’s court. What else was I to do, Dafydd? Spend all of history waiting to sip from a cup that would never come?”

“You—” Dafydd stumbled on the word, turning a weary gaze to Lara. “Is he right? Does he speak the truth?”

Lara bit her lip unhappily. “Dafydd, he—”

“Lara.” Kelly, at her side, pressed the staff into Lara’s hands, and said, very steadily, “David isn’t there.”

Illusion shattered.

It came apart like crystal hit by stone, fragments rupturing around her. Dafydd’s image schismed and became glittering bits of light before it fell apart. Lara cried out, reaching for the bits of an imagined life, and choking on sobs when they cut her fingers and faded away.

So close, it was so close to what she wanted that she had invested her own truth in it, made it almost real. Her talent had always told her when someone else was lying, as long as they knew they were lying. Never, never in her life had she wrapped truth so carefully that even she couldn’t tell she was lying.

Truthseeker’s gift, she thought, double-edged. Strong enough, now, to make it possible to lie to herself. A little stronger, and maybe Merrick’s illusion would have become reality. Maybe Dafydd would have crossed worlds with her, mortal for the brief time he had left.

And then she, not her world, would have been responsible for his death. Lara shuddered violently, wanting to curl up, curl in, to hide from truth and life itself. But anger flared, a small bright ember that forced her to her feet. Illusion, such a strong illusion, so carefully based in something so close to truth, had almost turned her into a monster, the same way it took star-filled night skies and made them deadly.

Merrick ap Annwn blanched to see her face.

His window between worlds was still open, its closure nothing more than part of the story he’d shaped for her. The story she’d shaped for herself, with all the parts and parcels laid out for Merrick to use. Her envy of Aerin; her awe of the Unseelie palace; her impression of Ioan, who had taken the place Merrick sought as his own. He stepped back, hands lifted, and Lara advanced on him, blazing with rage.

“You shouldn’t have let me go. You should’ve made certain there was nothing that would break the illusion, because now I’m going to do whatever it takes to follow you. I’ll find a way, Merrick. I’ll expose you to your people, to all of them, and you’ll never rule in Annwn.” The world’s true name rang like gunfire, louder even than the crystalline shattering of illusion.

“But only royal blood can open the pathway,” Merrick whispered. “Where I go, you cannot follow. I’ll have my victory, and you’ll be here, lost with your power, alone without a lover, while Annwn becomes my own. Good-bye, Truthseeker. Good riddance.”

He twisted and leaped for the door, its golden outlines rupturing as he passed through. Lara bellowed, “No!” and ran forward, willing her truth to be the only one. Power flared in the staff, responding, finally, to her passion. No, he would not escape her; no, the door would not close; no, this would not be the end of the life she’d dreamed of having.

Music thundered, endless crescendos, and the collapsing door shivered, then froze.

Kelly, behind her, shouted, “Lara!” and in her voice was all the things to be left behind. Family. Friends. The job she loved, the world she knew. Lara went as still as the door, then turned back, breath coming short.

“Don’t look like that.” Kelly came forward, bright-eyed but smiling past the cloth she still held wadded against her cheek. “Don’t look like that. You’re going, I know that. I just wanted to say good-bye.”

“I might not be able to come back.” Falsehood rang in the words and Lara fought the truth before admitting it in a whisper, regrets swelling: “I probably won’t come back. The time difference … even if I came right back it could be years. Your wedding, Kel. I’m going to miss your wedding. I can’t—”

“If I’m getting married.” Kelly’s voice broke, then cleared. “I will someday. And I’ll put a fairy princess doll in your place. Okay? I’ll think of you.” The tears she’d held back spilled down her cheeks. “I’ll think of you all the time. Now go on.” She gave the trembling doorway a sharp nod. “Go.”

Lara laughed, quick crack of a sound edged with loss, and stepped forward to crush her friend in a brief hug. “Thank you. Tell my mom what happened. I love you, Kel. Live happily ever after, okay?”

Kelly’s smile flashed through tears. “You, too. I love you, too, Lar. Now go on. Go rescue your prince. I’ll see you later.”

Unexpected, gratifying truth flared in the promise. The fist around Lara’s heart loosened a little, and she stepped backward, closer to the door. “Count on it.”

One more step, and she walked between worlds.