Veil of Shadows Read Online Free PDF

intelligence and capable of rational thought. As though she were not a child. So rarely did that happen, the feeling was still a novelty. She was but twenty, while Cedric—and most Faeries—were untold hundreds or thousands of years old.

    Unbidden, her mind returned her to the night she.d left the Palace, intending to betray her mother.s plans to the Elves. She.d been so besotted with the Elf she.d met on the Strip, she.d followed him into the Darkworld, had pretended to be fully Human just so he would not be repulsed by her. Now, she understood what Faeries meant when they said someone was elf-struck. Sickening.

    But that night, before she.d stupidly taken flight from the safety of the Palace walls, Cedric had made good on his promise to tell her all that was discussed in her mother.s private Council. Of course, he had made that promise only to keep her from causing a further scene in the Throne Room, in front of the entire Court. But he had come to her and told her the dire news—that her mother intended to attack the Elves rather than wait for them to unleash the Waterhorses, horrors of the deep that had been summoned to destroy the Faery Kingdom of the Lightworld—and he.d done so without warning her that she did not wish to hear, or that she would not understand.

    A pang of homesickness gripped her stomach and stole the breath from her lungs. How she longed to be back in the Palace, in her chambers, in her own, comfortable bed. To feel

    Governess.s cool hands on her forehead, soothing her to sleep after a bad dream. To know that her mother slept safely down the hall.

    That, she missed more than anything, because she had not appreciated it then. She.d hated her mother, had raged at being treated like a child. And though she enjoyed being spoken to as a capable Faery who was full grown, she would have gladly remained a child-princess forever if she could have her mother back.

    Only when Cedric asked quietly, “Are you crying?” did Cerridwen realize that she was. She wiped her eyes and shook her head, rolled to face away from him.

    This was not a nightmare that she could wake from to find Governess at her bedside, ready to soothe away her fears. “Cerridwen,” Cedric began, but he said no more. He laid a hand on her arm, patted her uncertainly.

    She wanted to shrug it away, to isolate herself once again with her misery, for it had always helped in the past. Now, though, she could not stand the thought of being alone with such grief, though it could not be truly shared.

    So, she let him keep his hand there but did not acknowledge him, and she cried herself quietly to sleep.

    The ship sailed in the early dawn. Exhausted, Cedric had not noticed the sudden churning of the water beneath them, or the subtle feeling of movement. Perhaps it had even soothed him into deeper sleep. He would not complain. Only rest would ease the trials of their flight from the Underground, and all that preceded it.

    No, not all. Some wounds would never heal, only seal off with time, waiting to split open and spew forth their pestilence again. He carried several of that kind. The freshest had not yet begun to close, and the pain was constant, even when he thought of other things.

    When he.d first boarded the ferry and looked over the side rail into the ocean, he.d imagined the bodies of the Gypsies floating in their watery graves. He.d seen Dika.s face, too, unscarred but ashen blue, her hair floating around her submerged head.

    When he.d come aboard the ship and watched the Faeries with their packs, for a moment he.d seen the panicked faces of the Gypsies as they had fled to the center of their camp, ready to leave the Underground entirely. A trip none of them would take.

    He wondered if he was as doomed now as they were then, but unable to see it. The entire Kingdom of Queene Ayla was destroyed by Waterhorses from the deep, from beneath the sort of ocean they now traveled upon. And the ship.s hold reminded him of the