Chapter 21 Tegwyn
Tegwyn
Bags drop to the ground, and I whirl around instantly.
Ivy stares straight ahead, her eyes glazed and expressionless, and I wave a hand in front of her face. “Ivy?”
She blinks, vapid eyes turning my way, and her skin is as white as snow.
The hair on the back of my neck pricks on end. “What’s wrong?”
Ivy’s mouth moves, but no words escape. Then she shakes her head and whispers, “I-I’m fine… We…we should go.”
She bends to pick up her fruit, hands trembling as she reaches her fingers out, and I study her closely. Something has spooked her, and I backtrack, trying to ascertain the source of her unease.
But the thought leaves my mind when I peer around the market. People are watching us, and I lower my hood, kneeling down to help her pick up her fruit.
Her rambutans have fallen into a muddy puddle, but we can clean them when we return to the mountain.
The shrill whinny of a horse pierces the silent air, and Ivy falls completely still. I search for the sound.
A mounted member of the king’s guard strides towards us, his beetle-black armour glistening beneath the watery light of the winter sun.
It looks like he’s out on patrol, maintaining order in the city, so I hang my head, trying to avoid his steely gaze. The crowd makes way for him, and I think of a shark swimming through a school of fish.
He utters no thanks to his inferiors, his stony gaze razor-focused as he looks ahead with a haughty chin, and I’ve never seen a viler face. Thin lips, greasy hair, hooked nose...
His mount tramples one of Ivy’s rambutans, and its fleshy white pulp bursts from within.
The horse clears the path, leaving a perfect impression of its iron horseshoe in the patch of mud, and I gaze down at the squashed fruit for a while, thinking of spilled guts.
The king really has these people fooled. Truly and utterly hoodwinked. He’s as Fae as I am. Well, half Fae…
Yet, he sits upon a throne, ruling with a bronze fist.
What would happen if they all learned the truth? Would they rebel against him?
One would think with a Fae king in power that things would be better for the magical folk who call this kingdom home.
But truth be told, things are worse.
We’re still persecuted for merely existing. Our old kingdom turned its back on us. There’s no going back to the faerielands for many of us.
The patrol finally disappears, and my gaze falls on Ivy. She remains stock still, her vacant eyes staring at something I can’t quite see.
“He’s gone. You can move now,” I inform her.
“O-oh…”
Slowly, she rises to her feet, picking her bags up off the ground. Then she departs for the gates, and I stare at the back of her golden head, wondering what has got into her.
I don’t question it further. My only concern now is getting her away from the city.
I’m not surprised when she tells me she wants to leave. We find a peach cart parked in a quiet side street, climbing into the back as we did the day previously.
Except this time, we’re caught. Before I have a chance to glamour the driver, he startles us with a laugh, and that’s how we find our free ride out of the city.
Again, we bypass the guards, and when they lift the portcullis, they don’t bother to inspect the cart on the way out.
It’s much easier to leave the city than it is to get inside, but I count my blessings.
My magic is just about spent after this trip; I don’t think I have a single drop left inside me.
When we return, I will rest for three whole days. If only falling asleep were that simple. My nightmares always have a way of catching up with me in the end.
Randyll—the name of our gracious rider—talks non-stop about his peaches, and Ivy manages to maintain some level of decorum throughout the whole ride.
She has far more patience than I have. If that were me in the front seat, I’d have knocked him off the cart with his very own lute.
I sulk in the back with his peaches, wishing he would shut up for just one second. The only reason why I haven’t knocked him out yet is because we owe him a great debt, and I hate owing debts.
So, the least I can do is put up with his rabbiting.
“We grow all kinds of peaches back at my father’s farm. We have furry peaches, round peaches, spotted peaches, purple peaches…”
“Purple peaches?” Ivy asks, puzzled.
“Yes, of course. Grown on nothing but pure magic!”
I roll my eyes. I highly doubt it. Still, I grab a peach from a wooden barrel, biting into its flesh, and maybe there is some magic involved. Randyll grows some nice peaches.
Ivy feigns a pleasant smile. “They sound wonderful…”
I snort. “They sound wonderful….”
She scowls at me from over her shoulder.
To my utter horror, Randyll passes the reins to Ivy, and now he starts plucking the strings of his lute, singing a song about, you guessed it, peaches…
He’s not just a humble peach farmer, but a bard, too, and an annoying one at that who can’t hold a tune.
By nightfall, we reach the road where Ivy and I started our journey, and I almost kiss the ground for sheer joy.
Thank Maghelena, our merciful Goddess.
“Farewell, my humble hitchhikers,” Randyll waves. “Maybe one day you can come to my farm and see my family’s peaches for yourself.”
“We highly doubt it,” I say through clenched teeth, waving a hand as the lunatic drives away.
Ivy scolds me, waving her own hand. “Don’t be so mean. He gave us free peaches.”
And he did, too.
A whole barrel.
I sigh, reaching the edge of the faerie wilds, noticing the stark contrast with the neighbouring woods on the left side of the road. The trees are tamer there. An owl hoots on its perch, and moonlight bathes the forest in a serene white glow.
On the right side of the road—thick, oppressive silence that presses in on all sides, making you claustrophobic.
Sound seldom echoes in the faerie wilds.
That’s because the trees are smothered in moss and vines, making it hard for light and sound to permeate.
Though sometimes, you can hear the cries of little children screaming in the dead of night—human children who’ve been plucked away from their homes, never to be seen again.
The wilds are more like a jungle than a humble, temperate forest, and I sure hope Randyll isn’t stupid enough to venture onto the Fae side of the road. He’s far too tempting a snack, and if he plays that lute, even more so. Faeries love music.
I shove thoughts of the musical human aside as I push aside a curtain of moss. “So? He’s outlived his usefulness. Now, let us return. We still have a three-hour hike ahead of us.”
As I speak, a poster catches my eye. It’s been nailed to the mossy bark of a conifer, and the human who tacked it there had some nerve.
Some faeries call these trees home. Some of these trees are faeries…
But where I expect to see my scowling, horned face gazing back from the vellum, instead, I find a flaxen-haired beauty with lips to die for. Rosebud lips, for that matter.
The blood leaches from my veins. I’d recognise that heavenly pout anywhere.
“Tegwyn? What’s the matter? Why have you—?"
The breath drains from her lungs when she stops beside me, turning as still as a statue. I can’t look at her, my mind spinning with a million questions.
Why is she on a wanted poster?
She’s been lying to you. How can you be so blind? As if she would ever spill her deepest, darkest secrets with you, monster…
At the sound of Rosemary’s cruel taunt, I tear the poster from the tree, almost ripping it from its tack. The shadows of the forest make their presence known again, curling around me like the claws of death.
My breath comes in quick bursts, and I finally find the courage to look at her. I regret it immediately. As I thought—guilty.
She is hiding something from me, and just when I thought we’d turned a new leaf. Ivy doesn’t trust me, and it hurts more than a hot iron rod.
“Is there something you want to share, Ivy?” I ask quietly, my tone ominous.
She pales, glancing at her feet. “I… have nothing to say...”
And then she’s off, braving a step into the mossy wilds.
I burn holes into the back of her head the whole way home, and the shadows don’t leave my side. Not once.
One way or another, I’m going to get my answers.
No more secrets.