Veil of Shadows by Jennifer Armintrout

not sit on her throne for long. Less than an eyelash.s weight in time,”
    Amergin mused. “And her King, far less than that. Was it terribly violent in the Underground?”

    “Violent, yes.” It was a shameful thing to admit. “Violence of our own making.”

    “If Mabb had not moved against the Humans so quickly, if she had not spread her forces so thin…” Amergin waved his hand. “Ah, but after Paris, there was no hope for any of us, was there?”

    Cedric.s mind wandered back to that time, in the city where the Humans had risen up from under the ground and overtaken the immortals who had put them there. And Mabb had been so certain of herself then.

    “It was her vanity that trapped you, and kept you trapped,” Amergin continued.

    “As your new Queene keeps you trapped, old man,” Cedric told him, putting a warning in his voice. It did not bode well for him, if even one so wise as the White Knee could be kept under Danae.s thrall.

    “And as yours keeps you trapped. You do not see it yet.” Amergin increased his pace and walked on, as Cedric stopped, tried to find what it was in the man.s words that bothered him so.

    He looked back to Cerridwen. It had been torture to keep ahead of her, ignore her stifled sobs when the guards shoved her or when she tumbled onto the rocky ground. But it was for both of them that he did not go to her aid. If he were bound, treated like the prisoner he still was, no one would speak for him, perhaps not even Amergin, and then there would be no one to speak for her. If he could somehow move Danae to spare her…

    It seemed more hopeless than it had before as he watched the seemingly endless line of Fae trooping across the hills they had already trod. Danae would be overwhelmed by so many coming to her for aid.

    The loss of two would ease that burden somewhat. Even the loss of one. Yes, that was an argument she would never buy.

    Cerridwen.s robes were stained with blood from the many times she.d fallen to her knees. She walked hunched over, arms tied behind her, the picture of pain and defeat that Bauchan would have relished presenting to his Queene. He thought of Caesar parading the Gaul King around those eons ago. The Human Druids had not been pleased at that.

    She looked up, caught his gaze, and the accusation of betrayal in her face pierced through him. For a moment, it seemed so real that he almost went to her. Then, he remembered the Empath. Was it possible that Cerridwen played a role to trick the Fae spy?

    He knew then what Amergin had meant, and he had known it since he had knelt with her beside Malachi as he died, watching her become something other than what she had been when she had run to the Darkworld. In that tunnel, he had seen a glimmer of something in her that he could care for. Stupidly, he turned his back on that spark, and it had burst into flame, raging away at his defenses. He had not seen the damage until it was too great.

    “Cedric, are you coming?” Amergin called, as though he did not know what a profound revelation had been born from his words.

    He knew. There was no way such a thing could have escaped his notice.

    Again it took a strength Cedric actually found pride in to turn away from Cerridwen and not run to her aid.

    She would forgive him for this. She would have to.

    The old Druid had been correct when he.d said they would not reach the settlement until nightfall. He told the time almost as well as one of those shiny Human clocks Mabb had coveted. The evening star had only just appeared when they reached a copse of trees that Cedric did not remember.

    “The old oak forest?” He reached out in wonderment to touch the bark of one of them, his agony over Cerridwen momentarily put aside. “But they were gone centuries ago!”

    “As I was?” Amergin responded. “After the Humans were banished, the trees sprouted again, from nowhere. They thrived off the magic here, and now look at them. As if they.d never gone.”

    Under the