Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(92)
The king scanned my face. “Indeed?”
I had expected him to doubt me, but something about the polite disbelief in his eyes was a little galling. “He was in love with my sister first,” I invented. “She was a great beauty, with a singing voice that could charm the aurora. When an illness took her, it drove him mad, and he swore he would never marry another but her own flesh and blood.”
“Ah,” the king said. “She had no other siblings?”
I gritted my teeth. “No,” I said. “I wish to kill him, but I cannot do it alone. How could a mortal girl overthrow a king of the Folk? His sole equal is his stepmother, and he has imprisoned her in the Veil, over which only monarchs have power.”
The king nodded. “You wish for me to summon the Veil so that you may rescue your husband’s enemy.”
He had understood this part more readily than I had anticipated, and I wondered if there were stories in Ljosland that followed similar patterns to those in Ireland—mortals embarking on impossible quests for the sake of some tragic romance. No doubt there are—scholars have only recently begun to turn their attention to this country.
“Once she kills him,” I said, eyeing him in what I hoped was a sufficiently moony way, “and I am made the happiest of widows, I can return here, and we can at last be wed.”
He gave a long sigh, tapping his toe against an ice-covered stone. I could see him running through all that had happened and the story I had given him, weaving it into past events like the missing threads in a tapestry, tweaking the pattern here and there as his self-regard dictated. He glanced down at his sword with a considering expression.
And thrust it back into its sheath.
“My darling,” he said. “I have married another, for which I offer my humblest apologies. She is a noblewoman as lovely as the winter dawn. I would prefer not to kill her.” He frowned, looking only somewhat put out by the idea. “Still, you have first claim upon my hand. I prize loyalty above all things; nothing is more noble.”
I did not like the misgiving in his eyes, so I hastened to say, “I am aware the Veil is dangerous. But perhaps you know of other mortals who have gone and returned thence?”
His expression cleared a little. “Oh, no,” he said. “A mortal would likely perish within moments of setting foot upon those blasted sands.”
I nodded in resignation. “It is as I feared. Still, I must try.”
A smile touched the corner of his mouth as he regarded me. “What nobility of character you possess!” he said. “Yes—you would have made a worthy wife.”
I was not at all offended to hear him speak of me in the past tense. “Then—you will do as I beg? You will summon the Veil?”
He nodded. “I would not deprive any mortal of such a quest, which I can see is born of loyalty and self-sacrifice.” A thought seemed to strike him. “What an endearing ballad this will make! Even the most fearsome among my courtiers will weep to hear it.”
“I will make every effort to return to you, my lord,” I said. My voice shook, which no doubt he interpreted as passionate feeling.
He made no reply, but stepped close to me, close enough that I could count the white tips of his teeth through his parted lips, trace the bounds of the shadow beneath his fathomless eyes. Some of the pearls in his hair bore traces of their undersea genesis, imperfectly round and flecked with seaweed. I stiffened but managed not to fall back. Shadow growled so low in his throat that I barely heard it, but felt the vibration through the ice and snow.
The Hidden king tilted my chin up and brushed my lips with his, which sent a wave of cold cascading down my throat, as if I had swallowed glacial meltwater. I could smell his scent—no, scent is not the right word. The Hidden king has no scent, any more than newly fallen snow has; rather, he carries with him tiny eddies of cold like left-behind scraps of winter storms, which sting the skin and make breathing painful whenever he draws too near.
“Good luck, my dearest,” he murmured.
I could not meet his gaze, for it was too terrible to endure at close proximity, but he did not seem to expect this. He stepped back and lifted a hand. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he is less expressive in his gestures than Wendell, who likes to wave his hands about when he does magic in what I have often supposed is an unnecessarily showy way.
Abruptly, a pillar of darkness appeared before us, which was less a pillar than a door that parted the grove, shoving everything to either side. It was a door filled with rippling shadow that I knew—because I had visited that world once, briefly—was wind laced with sand, painfully sharp. I smelled decaying bone, ashes, char.
In the end, I don’t think I could have stepped forward into that abyss had I not been so certain the king would have killed me if I turned back. So I suppose I have that to thank him for.
“Come, my love,” I said to Shadow. The dog gazed at the Veil with the same vague interest with which he gazed at any faerie door, or at least those that promised a certain variety of smells. This, too, steadied my resolve. I paused only to draw my scarf up over my mouth and nose and excavate a handkerchief with elaborate silver embroidery from my pocket, which I held out for Shadow to smell. It had been Queen Arna’s; Niamh had fetched it for me.
I stepped into the Veil with Shadow at my side.
I have never experienced a sandstorm, but I imagine the sensation would be similar. Yet in the Veil, it was less the feeling of sand than of ashes, eternally churned up by a dry, frigid wind. It was strong enough to nearly knock me over, and I adjusted my weight, leaning into it.