Page 40 of Vale of Dreams

“They don’t serve revenge here. Only that absolute swill in your glass.”

“What happened to the Meriadec I met twenty years ago? The one who was ready to die for the cause? To, quoting your own words, ‘introduce the human guillotine to Brocéliande’?”

He narrows his eyes. “That Meriadec was abandoned by your lot. That Meriadec was left to fend for himself in another famine-ravaged kingdom. Just as the famine was spreading, your lot lost interest in us. And when Auberon imagined he might be faced with another revolt, he started killing anyone he thought of as disloyal. Burning villages. Mass executions. Half the people I know died in Auberon’s torture dungeons. I spent four years in the forest, hiding from the King’s Watch and living on acorns and pigeons. And now you want me to die for my cause? That’s the thing, Nivene. For all intents and purposes, I did die for the cause.”

I wince at his words. No wonder Raphael was so desperate to get his sister out.

“We didn’t lose interest,” Nivene whispers. “Auberon closed the borders. The only undercover contacts we could maintain in the Fey Realm were in France. Brocéliande became impossible. We could only get back in here when Nia found an ancient ley portal.”

Meriadec narrows his eyes. “Is that right?”

“Fill me in. What did we miss after the borders closed?”

“You must know about the start of the famine?”

“Yes. We have demi-Fey knights who escaped Brocéliande after it started.”

“Right, so all the crops failed, and the commoners were starving. No one knows why, but Auberon scapegoated the demi-Fey and their allies. He called them enemies of the kingdom. Of course, the famine had nothing to do with the demi-Fey. Sometimes, nature just turns rotten, doesn’t it? But Auberon was clever. People were ready to turn on him. They knew that those in Perillos castle ate lavishly while they starved, so he directed their rage elsewhere--at the demi-Fey. They caused the famine, he said, with their mixed blood, polluting our land, an offense to the gods. They conspired against us. They conspired with human allies to destroy us all. And when most of the kingdom was half-dead with starvation, he promised to invade the human world. They’re the real enemies, aren’t they? And France is now Auberon’s breadbasket.” He shrugs. “At least we’re not eating grass anymore. We have France’s wheat.”

I touch his arm. “Speaking of those demi-Fey agents from Brocéliande, one of them is looking for his sister here. Have you heard anything about a fortress just for demi-Fey prisoners somewhere in the kingdom?”

Meriadec shakes his head. “I don’t think they keep many demi-Fey prisoners alive.”

My heart sinks.

Nivene leans in closer to Meriadec. “Listen, Meriadec, we have a real chance to get close to Auberon and his son now. Really close.”

He snorts. “I’ve heard that before.”

Nivene grabs my shoulder a little too hard. “Talan wants this woman to be his mistress. His maîtresse-en-titre.He’s going to look for her in a few days, if we get her cover story straight.”

Meriadec stares at me in disbelief, his jaw dropping. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s true,” I say. “And trust me, I want that monster dead.”

He snatches Nivene’s drink again and takes a long sip. “Tell me everything.”

“Sure,” Nivene says. “I’ll just get us another round of those terrible drinks.”

CHAPTER 14

For three days on my new farm, I’ve been waking at sunrise, feeding the chickens and the two pigs, mending the fence, and cooking meals.

Meriadec found us a small, abandoned place in the most isolated part of Lauron. There’s no one around for miles—just our tiny timber-frame cottage nestled on snowy rolling hills, with a thatched roof and smoke coiling from a brick chimney.

Meriadec believes that we have to really get into our characters, to play the role for real.

I grip a few weeds, tugging them out of the earth, and breathe in the clean air. The wind nips at my cheeks and fingers.

The moment we arrived here, we prepared the cottage thoroughly, setting it up to be my childhood home. We went through our cover stories, talking them over, polishing every detail.

Meriadec says a cover story should be as close to the truth as possible. On our way here, he spent a day interrogating me about every painful detail of my real life before coming up with our fake family dynamics. Naturally, my fake family involves having one parent who’s a complete train wreck and another I never met.

We set up the house, taking care to leave empty bottles of mead lying around, and then we started playing our respective parts. By the time Talan arrives, the dynamics will be perfect. If anyone in his retinue scouts ahead, they’ll see exactly what they expect to see: a small, dysfunctional farming family harvesting mostly rotten vegetables from the wintry soil.

Now, as I sit in the dirt in our fields,a subtle thaw spreads through the air. The snow has been melting the past few days. As I gently pry an onion from the wet earth, the cold soil stings my fingers. I inhale the rich scent of the earth and hold up my find. There aren’t many edible onions. Most of them are covered in a dark mold, rotten from the inside out. But this one is actually good, and I feel immense satisfaction when I drop it into the near-empty basket.

“Nia! Nia?” I hear a voice calling.

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