Free Veil of Shadows by Jennifer Armintrout

saying?” Cedric.s bitter chuckle sounded as though it would gag him. “I had no idea you were so naive.”

    If he had looked into her most private fears, he could not have found words more able to wound her. “I did what had to be done!”

    “Yes, I.m sure Danae will accept that at our trial—if she bothers to have one!”

    Their anger filled the silence with hollow, rasping breaths. As if she.d brought that coiling, insidious mist with her from the dream world, something nebulous expanded in her, pushed out words that did not need to be said. “What do you think Danae will do to me? Imprison me? Execute me? Permit her to do it! I would welcome anything that would take this burden from me!”

    “A burden you created!” he snapped back.

    At once, the heady vapor that had fueled her rage fled her. She was empty, nothing but a husk of sorrow again. She.d forgotten that she.d felt this way before the exhilaration of Bauchan.s murder. Would it always take being the instrument of death to fill that void she.d created?
    She.d felt at peace again when she killed Flidais, but it had not lasted. And the Elf, that death had given her the illusion of putting things to right. With each death, the wound in her grew deeper, and the balm did not deaden the pain as long as it had before.

    Cedric had heard her restrained crying, and a soft, masculine sigh rumbled between them. He did not apologize for what he.d said; no Fae would recant what they believed to be a true statement, not if they valued the sentiment of it too much. Instead, he said, “You would not welcome death.”

    “You cannot know what greeting I would give such a sentence.” You did not kill your family with your deception.

    “I should not have laid all of the blame on you.” A thud, a rustle. He tried to move closer.
    “You are to blame, for some. But there were more lies at work than a Faery no older than twenty could have dreamed up on her own. You may have hastened the end, but you weren.t the only instrument in that respect, either.”

    The noise of his movements continued. He was nearly beside her now, but she held still. She would not meet him. “It is easier to blame myself for my part, than to point a finger at those who were ultimately wronged most.”

    She felt the heat of him beside her, and she wanted to lean on him, to feel the reassuring presence of him against her body. But he.d hurt her, and he.d been so angry only moments ago. She could not use him as her refuge now, as she had in the nights since they.d come aboard the ship.

    “There are so many things that are not in our control in our lives. We cannot hold ourselves responsible for them.” He sighed and leaned back on the wall. “You killed Bauchan, and Flidais. You lied to your mother. But your lies did not make Flidais betray her. You did not make Bauchan come to the Court with ill intent. You did not loose the Waterhorses upon our people.”

    She rocked herself from side to side, tried to sit up, but the motion yielded no result save for exhausting her. She lifted her head and tentatively laid it in his lap. She did not want to take such comfort in him if she had no guarantee that they would not part once things had been settled with the Upworld Queene. And she did not wish to admit that that knowledge frightened her more than any sentence that Queene Danae could pass against her.

    “You say that, because it is easy for you to say it and feel that you.ve done me some service by your words.” Her breath heated the fabric of his robe beneath her cheek. “But if I said them to you, you would not believe them.”

    “I have nothing that I blame myself for,” he answered too quickly, with too much false confidence. “I am fulfilling my vow.”

    “To me.” She did not know where these words came from, for she could not have thought them herself. “You fear that you failed someone else.”

    He took in a sharp breath, and the muscle of his thigh tightened beneath her