It was easy to slip from the Palace unnoticed, when you knew
exactly what to do. A mistake could get you returned to
precisely where you did not wish to be—confinement, boredom,
the duties of a Royal Heir—but she'd learned from her
mistakes in the past. Now, it was nothing at all to duck her
governess and gain her freedom.
It was especially easy on this night, when so many Faeries
poured in through the Palace gates that the guards would not
concern themselves with the ones going out.
And this was why Cerridwen did not object to yet another
royal party. She'd complained on the surface, just enough so
that her compliance would not arouse suspicion. And her
governess had dressed her hair and helped her into her gown,
all the while ignoring the expected grumbling and protesting
that she had become so used to over the past twenty years.
Twenty years. Really. Who still had a nursemaid at twenty
years old? Not even the Humans kept their children as
children for that long!
Twenty years, this night, and a party to celebrate it. A
party to celebrate one more year that the Royal Heir was not
dead. What importance was an heir, really, in a race that
did not die, or, at least, did not die naturally? There
would be another party like it, and another, and another,
always with the same Faeries, always in the same, boring
pattern. A feast, then dancing, and conversation with the
few faeries she was allowed to know, all of her mother's
friends and advisors. How many evenings of her life had
already been wasted in awkward chatter with Cedric, her
mother's faithful lapdog, who never said or did anything
interesting, lest he offend Her Majesty? Or Malachi, who
glowered and stared in the most uncomfortable way, who, it
was rumored, was not even a quarter Fae, but was kept
because of some bizarre devotion to her mother?
"It is not a waste," Governess would say sagely while she
pulled and pried at Cerridwen's tangles. "If it is the will
of the Gods, you will never die. You cannot waste that which
is infinite."
It did not make Cerridwen glad to know that her boredom
would be infinite.
After she had been cleaned and dressed and made to look far
more fine than usual for these occasions—which aroused some
suspicion on her part that quickly faded when she remembered
her plan to escape the party altogether—she had dutifully
followed the guards that would escort her to the ball. Then
she had promptly allowed herself to become separated from
them by the chattering throng of arriving guests, and her
escape was made.
It had not been hard to disguise her leather breeches under
her gown, and when she reached an alcove, covered over by a
tapestry of her mother, the Great Queene Ayla, slaying her
father, the Betrayer King, she ducked behind the heavy
fabric and shucked her dress, pulling on the shirt that
she'd folded and hidden in her bodice. She kept her wings
bound—where she was going, they did not know her as the
Royal Heir to the throne of the Faeries, nor as a Faery at
all. Among them, she was Human, and the ruse suited her.
The blowsy Human shirt—a ruffled, silk thing she traded with
Gypsies for—would have covered her wings without their
binding, but she had worn them bound since before she could
remember. She felt almost naked without them secured to her
back. Into her sleeve, she tucked a scrap of a mask. It
would guarantee her entrance tonight, to a gathering much
more desirable than the one she'd been expected to attend.
She left the dress and her shoes in the alcove. Better to go
barefoot than break her neck in those flimsy slippers. She
took a deep breath and slipped from her hiding place, but no
one noticed her. As she wound her way through the crowd,
deftly avoiding her abandoned and confused guards who
stumbled, helpless, against the flow of bodies moving into
the Palace, she pulled her hair over her shoulder and worked
it into a loose braid, making sure to cover the wisps of
antennae that sprouted from her forehead. By the time she
reached the Palace gate, she could have been any Human slave
being sent by their Faery master on an errand in the Lightworld.
Cerridwen spotted two such slaves following their owners
into the Palace. In a time before her mother's reign, they
all said, this would never have been tolerated. Queene Ayla
herself did not care for the practice, either. It brought
the Fae races too close to Humans, blurred the dividing line
between them. No doubt the Faeries who brought Humans into
the Palace tonight would either be turned away or have their
names marked down somewhere to note that they were out of
favor with the Queene.
Cerridwen's fists clenched at her sides as she marched away
from the Palace. Her mother's hypocrisy never failed to
ignite fury within her. She was half Human, and yet she
criticized full-blooded Faeries for consorting with them?
And she kept a Darkling at her side, yet railed against the
Darkworld, as well?
The flames cooled as Cerridwen realized how far she had
already traveled from the Palace, and how close she was to
the freedom of the Strip. Already, she could hear the sounds
of it echoing through the concrete walls of her prison
world. She came to the edge of the Faery Court, nodded to
the guards who stood dressed in her mother's livery, and
broke into a joyous run toward the mouth of the tunnel.
The Strip was the neutral ground between the worlds of Dark
and Light. A huge tunnel, reaching far over the heads of the
creatures on the ground, with dwellings and places of
commerce stacked on top of each other, the Strip was home to
those who took no side in the ongoing war between Lightworld
and Darkworld. Mostly Humans, the fascinating ancestors of
Cerridwen's mother, and, she sometimes reminded herself with
pride, of herself. Gypsies, who considered themselves apart
from Humans, who claimed kinship to immortal creatures long
ago. Bio-mechs, still Human, but fitted with metal parts.
Then, there were those that were not so fascinating, not so
much as they were repulsive or frightening. Vampires, with
their thirst for the death of any mortal creature. The
Gypsies that even other Gypsies would not consort with, who
lured creatures away from the safety of the Strip to harvest
their parts. They pulled stinking carts, hawking their
wares, eyes and teeth and horns, and nameless, slimy things
that no one, at least, no one that Cerridwen could think of,
would want. She could not fathom why any Human would chose
to live in the Underground with the very creatures their
race had banished below. After the destruction of the Veil
between the world of the Astral and the world of mortals,
the Earth had to be shared. The Humans had taken more than
their share by driving the races of the Underground into
their sewers and cellars. Why some of the Humans would
follow the creatures into their skyless prison, Cerridwen
could not explain.
She pushed her way across the wide tunnel, toward the stand
that sold sweet Human bread, and the smell reminded her that
she had not brought anything to trade with. She reached to
her hair, where Governess had pinned a jeweled ornament. It
was worth too much to trade for simple bread, but the
sticky, spiced scent teased her empty belly. Tonight, she
would be generous.
A soft, tutting sound came close to her ear, and a voice
whispered, "You know better than that, Cerri."
She jumped and laughed as she turned. "Fenrick, you
frightened me!"
As he always frightened her, a little. And thrilled her. He
smiled, and his teeth stood out, brightly silver against the
blue-black of his skin. "You should be frightened of me.
You, Human, me Elf—we are, after all, mortal enemies."
"Mortal enemies," she agreed, good-naturedly, but she wished
he would not make such jokes. They were enemies, more than
he knew. Between Elf and Human, no love was lost. But the
animosity between the Faery Court and the kingdom of Elves
went back much farther than their confinement in the
Underground.
He took the hair ornament from her hand and made a soft
whistling sound as he examined it. "This looks like Faery
craft. It fairly burns my skin to touch it."
"I found it in the mouth of a tunnel to the Light-world." It
was not a complete lie. She had found it in the
Lightworld.
This impressed Fenrick; his pointed ears lifted as he
smiled. "So much bravery for such a small thing! No doubt
you'll be at the front line when the great battle comes."
The great battle. They often mocked it together, the lust
for blood and war and victory that both the Light-world and
Darkworld professed at length. It was speaking out against
such ideals that had gotten the Elves expelled from the
Lightworld in the first years since the Great War with the
Humans. And it was what had gotten Fenrick's father expelled
from the Dark-world Elves only twenty-five years previous.
Fenrick had grown, as Queene Ayla had, in the hardship of
the Strip.
Strange, Cerridwen thought, that it made her mother so angry
and hardened at Humans, so different from Fenrick, who
embraced the difficulties of his childhood and held no one
unduly accountable.
Fenrick motioned to the stall owner and handed over his
trade—a few water-stained packets of sugar from the Human
world above, a booklet of paper scraps held together with
coiled wire, and two or three small, coppery coins, also
Human in origin—and waited for the thick-armed man to assess
the value. He nodded, unsmiling, and broke off a large chunk
of the sticky sweet bread for Fenrick.
Fenrick held up his hand. "For the Human. She was willing to
part with something much more valuable for it."
At this, the shopkeeper's eyes widened in disbelief, and he
made to pull the bread back, but Cerridwen snatched it and
she and Fenrick ran laughing into the crowd at the center of
the Strip.
When they stopped again, near one of the tunnels to the
Darkworld, she meant to thank him for the bread. But Fenrick
spoke first, and she used the opportunity to bite into the
delicious Human confection.
"You look different tonight," Fenrick said, gesturing to her
face. "You're wearing paint on your eyes. Trying to impress
someone?"
She had forgotten to remove the cosmetics Governess had
applied for the royal party. She swallowed carefully, the
sticky bread sliding down her throat in a raw lump. Then,
she put on a wicked grin, the one she had practiced in the
mirror until it looked both teasing and good-humored.
"Perhaps. Or several someones. The night is long."
He took a step forward, then another, until they were so
close that his chest brushed hers. His gray tongue darted
over his blue-black lips, his unsettlingly yellow gaze fixed
on her mouth. He leaned down, and she did not know what to
do, other than to flatten against the slope of the tunnel
and move the bread to her side so that he did not crush it
between them. His mouth covered hers—how often had she
thought of this happening in the weeks since she'd met
him?—and it was exactly like, yet strangely nothing at all
like, what she had imagined it would be to be kissed. She
heard a small noise from her throat before she could stop
it; it was a shame, she wanted to appear experienced and
unaffected.
When he moved back, it seemed to have been finished in a
blink of an eye. For another blink, she waited, wondering
what he would say, if this was when he would declare some
feeling for her. Her heart stuck in her throat, or it might
have been the bit of bread, but while she gaped at him
wide-eyed, his serious, intense expression changed into one
of laughter.
"Come on. The night isn't that long." He tugged on
her hand and she followed him into the tunnel, bracing
herself against the stench of decay that lingered in the
Darkworld.
So, that was not what he meant by the kiss, though she did
not know what he had meant. It did not matter. She
could laugh and dance and be young, unencumbered by the
strictures of Palace manners, the seriousness that pervaded
every facet of her life in the Lightworld.
She let him take her hand and pull her deeper into the
Darkworld, and she thought she could already hear the pulse
of the music that awaited her.
"Your Majesty?"
Ayla looked up, away from the revelers who crowded the Great
Hall. Cedric, seated at her side, turned his attention to
the guard who had approached her, as did Malachi, who stood
at the foot of the dais, in deep discussion with two other
Faeries on her council.
Angry as she was with her daughter, she would not show it.
Nor would she show any concern, though in the back of her
mind it crept in to spoil her annoyance. "Yes? Have you
found her?"
"No, Your Majesty. We did find a dress, which her servants
have confirmed belonged to her, and shoes." He cleared his
throat, obviously nervous to have to speak to his Queene
thusly. "Is it possible that she has left the Palace? We do
not wish to presume—"