Black Veil

Featuring Drustan and Nuala

“How many?!” The round-bellied blue-eyed doe said in disbelief.

Drustan grinned at Nuala’s surprise. “Ten now, not including the rest due this season.” He was sitting with his brother’s mate - a concept he was still finding difficult to get his head around - nestled in the clearing that was alive with blooms and butterflies and singing birds. It was a fairytale grove, with a feather-blessed Princess at its centre. He still couldn’t believe he wasn’t dreaming.

“How do you even keep up with that many? This one is tiring me out and she’s not even out yet,” she said, reverently nosing her flank.

“She?” Drustan questioned with a quirked brow.

Nuala shrugged and gave a slight smile. “I just have a feeling. Don’t tell Lonán, I want it to be a surprise.”

Drustan smiled too, but in the back of his mind he was still terrified of what their fawn meant. His brother had broken a sacred vow to claim Nuala as his mate, and that meant death for both of them if the herd ever found out. He was risking death himself just by aiding them, not that there weren’t plenty of other secrets he harboured that would give cause for the herd to lynch him.

Nuala’s ears tilted, “What’s wrong?”

The stag shook his head, “Nothing. Nothing you could do anything about anyway,” he added with a sigh. “Being King isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” he added with a wan smile.

The creamy doe huffed, “Nonsense, I’m a Princess and your heart is bleeding feels out all over the place. Let me take a look at you,” she said, wriggling closer in an undignified manner that only pregnant does were capable of.

If he hadn’t promised Lonán he’d watch over Nuala for the afternoon, he would make his excuses and go. Nuala meant well but there was truly nothing she could do to heal a broken heart. Offending a pregnant doe - especially his brother’s pregnant doe - was not on his list of crappy things to accomplish today. He gave a resigned sigh and let her poke and prod at him.

“Hmm,” she peered into his eyes, concern darkening her sky-blue gaze.

“Hmm?” Drustan questioned, leaning back slightly. “What does ‘hmm’ mean?”

“Hmm, as in hmm, I’m not sure... let me just...” She trailed off as she began to glow and it was all he could do not to stare in astonishment. He knew she was blessed with the visage of Áillte, but to actually see her magic with his very eyes was awe-inspiring. No Princess had glowed like this in all his years. She was almost too bright to witness, and he slitted his emerald eyes against it. “No, open them,” she murmured, her voice almost not even her own. He obeyed without question, and suddenly the brightness in his eyes was spreading deeper.

Something inside him balked, shrieked and screamed and grabbed hold of his heart and demanded he run. It screamed in his ears. He heard no words but he knew what it wanted. NO MORE. RUN NOW. With a gasp, he was on his feet before he even realised he had moved. Nuala looked up at him, a mixture of shock and fear in her eyes. His heart thumped in his chest, a sick feeling coming over him. “What... what was that?”

Nuala swallowed, and cautiously got to her feet. “It’s... there’s something inside of you Drustan... it’s...”

“It’s what?” He asked breathlessly. What could possibly be inside him? What would make him want to run from a Princess?

“It’s a darkness, Drustan. It’s... a curse. I don’t know what it’s trying to do but... I’ve seen something similar before... Twice,” She was quivering. “Once on my journey, just after I was blessed, an old stag in Oakfern had a darkness in his mind, attached to his heart like yours. And the other... the other was old and weak but I found it in my own mind. Both of them were broken, fading, like strangleweed that’s been pulled from a tree. Yours is...” She swallowed and met his eyes with trepidation, “Yours is alive, Drustan.”

That chilled him to the bone. How could he have something like that inside him and not know? “How?” He asked, voice strained.

“Black magic,” she said, ears saddled apologetically, “A witch has altered your memories, like she did to me, and my Oakfern friend... It can’t be the same one... Berach said she’d died...” Nuala shuddered at the memory.

“And how do I get it out?” Drustan asked, his voice hollow as if expecting the worst answer.

Nuala flicked her ears back and forth in indecision, “I think... I think I can try and unravel it but I don’t know if I can get rid of it completely. It’s strong, Dru, stronger than any black magic I’ve ever seen. You felt what it did when I cast my light over it. After I was blessed, I could chase away the old shadow in my mind as easily as chasing a butterfly into the sky. This one... this one has teeth and claws and it has them all sunk into your mind.” She quivered. “I don’t know what trying to remove it will do.”

A slow realisation was coming, one he didn’t want to put truth to. “It’s altered my memories?” He asked, and she nodded, “Can it make me think I saw someone, someone dear to me?”

Nuala nodded again, “Yes, the witch that caught me made me think she was my mother. I forgot about it completely until I banished the shadow, but she had me trapped for a season after I fled Glenmore.”

Drustan’s jaw shifted as he gritted his teeth. This witch had only needed an evening with him, but if she had been powerful enough to pretend so flawlessly to be the red doe he so coveted, and that time had been enough for him to get all that she wanted from him.

“Whatever it takes, Nuala, I want it gone. Whatever it is, get it out of me,” he said, resolve set in every feature.

The doe nodded nervously and gestured for him to sit with her. His heart was slamming in his chest, a sick feeling in his stomach as the lingering feeling of that slick oily darkness inside him began to intensify again. Nuala’s glow returned, and he steeled himself not to balk again. The same voice came again, and he pinned his ears back and tried to block it out. The warmth of Nuala’s light pushed against it, gently at first and then with more and more pressure as she struggled to move it.

Drustan let out a cry, and Nuala’s light crescendoed to a blinding height. It felt for all the world like she was ripping off a scab that had stubbornly been hiding an open wound. Fresh and metaphorically bleeding now, the truth came slamming back to him.

A sudden rustle above his head made him duck instinctively, and he looked up to see a raven perching itself on a bare tree branch a half-dozen bounds ahead. It tilted its head, beady black eyes boring into him. It was an unsettling creature, ravens never being good omens, and Drustan looked away with a huff.

The raven was quickly forgotten when, from between the trees, stepped a doe. Small and dark, wide fawn-like eyes fixed on him. Something began to seep into his mind, what he knew now as black magic. It crept into his thoughts, sifting through memories and pulling up visions of the doe he’d just been thinking about: Scarlet. Like an image rippling in a stream, she became out of focus, disjointed and wrong. The darkness of her pelt turned red, she became taller and more beautiful. Soon she was not the dark little witch, she was Scarlet. He felt his heart lift, but his present self screamed not to believe it.

He watched as she came through the snow towards him, as if gliding like Áillte herself across the alabaster lake of snow. Everything about her was perfect, ethereal, dream-like. He couldn’t do anything to escape, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t look away from those eyes. They had him, like a fly trapped in honey. At the time he was sure she was real, that her scent was perfectly Scarlet’s, but in his new memory of the event he could smell the real doe, and feel the scent of Scarlet being forced into his mind. The real doe stood at the treeline, projecting the illusion of Scarlet in front of him, invading his mind to make his senses see and hear and smell something that wasn’t real.

The illusion looked at him, not with the emotion he expected but with the emotion he’d always wanted, fabricated from early dreams of the unattainable red doe of earlier years. He’d always wanted to see her smile, and that’s exactly what the witch gave him.

A passenger in this horrid memory, his present self roared and cried and thrashed to get away, and some part of his past self was doing the same, but the witch had hold of every part of him. She pushed down his fear and pulled on his desire and manipulated him like he was made of mud.

“Scarlet, this isn’t you”. He breathed, knowing in his heart what he saw was wrong but being unable to disbelieve it. All he could see was her, the world may as well have disappeared for all he saw of it. Óganach himself could come down the the clearing and he would still only see her. He was enthralled, enraptured. The witch’s dark magic has invaded his mind and that was the point where she had assumed control. The black mark Nuala has just ripped away had been covering the truth, it had sown his memories of the encounter so convincingly into his real memories that he would have sworn until his deathbed that this had happened exactly the way he had seen it.

Drustan reeled as the rest of the evening unfolded, wanting not to relive this but having no choice.

He grasped helplessly at his self control only to feel it slip away, the strange compulsion to think of nothing but her overtaking him. She closed the gap between them and the stag gladly threw away the last of his resistance to the strange invasive feeling. The illusionary doe ducked under his neck, the witch pushed the feeling of her brushing the length of her flank along his into his mind, and then the touch of her muzzle on his cheek.

They’d never touched before, so whatever memory the witch was using to simulate Scarlet’s affection must have been dragged from other pieces of his memory with other does. The witch had filled his head with an amplified scent, a true scent he had sampled in the past but never so strongly. It felt wrong, artificial, and his past self had realised that.

He stepped back and she only melted against him again. “Please, Scarlet, stop,” don’t stop, “We can’t. This is just rut. This isn’t... this isn’t right... for us. You have to know me. I have to know you. We can’t share everything and nothing... if you knew...” The brush of her flank along his was unravelling his resolve, his voice came weak and breathy. The witch was pushing her magic in deeper, clouding more of his mind, blocking off the thoughts that knew logically that none of this made sense. She pushed and pushed until he was gasping, desperate to get away, “If you knew how many secrets I have to keep... how many lies I have to tell... You don’t want this... You don’t want me.”

“Drustan,” The illusion whispered in Scarlet’s voice. Internally he screamed and tried to get away. It was her voice but they weren’t her words. “How can you say that? How can you say this is wrong? Don’t you want me?” The witch called on any feeling of guilt she could find, and it crashed hard into his heart.

He grasped as the vestiges of his resolve, however much he wanted to, he owned it to her not to give in. “Scarlet... I can’t... we can’t... I’m not... If you knew...” The witch intensified the warmth he imagined with her resting against him, and met his eyes. It has been his first mistake, to look into those eyes. Once he had, he was doomed. Looking into them again, the feeling of hopelessness reigned free. He could do nothing to break her power while she had him locked like this.

“Tell me, Drustan. Let me help you. Let me ease your burden,” fake feelings of desire came over him as the witch toyed with his mind some more, tapping into his memories and reordering and recolouring them to suit her narrative.

Drustan was gone, lost in the power of the witch. He had to do what she asked, there was no escape. The compulsion to tell her everything, his secrets, was at the forefront of his mind, blocking everything lee out. “That day, when you saw me arguing with BóAnn... I... She... Her fawn isn’t mine. We hadn’t... It’s the guard’s... Jackdaw’s. I was furious... partly because of my own jealousy - I loved her - but mostly because what it would mean for Raeghan... if the herd knew... Why... why would she risk his life? I can’t... I’ll never understand.”

She rewarded him, letting him feel relief at telling her, when all he really wanted to feel was fear. “Love blinds us, makes us do foolish things, hurtful things. Makes me do foolish things. Makes me hurt you.” She told him anything he wanted to hear, to cement his loyalty.

“This isn’t a game for me, you know that don’t you? Us, this? You’re the most intelligent and most beautiful doe I know. If you’re playing with me you have to stop, because I won’t be able to.” He told her. None of his words were fake or untrue. Whatever the circumstance for telling her, the witch could not force him to tell her what he didn’t believe.

“I don’t want to hurt you anymore, Drustan. It hurts me too.” He felt the darkness take complete hold, embracing his mind and moulding to him as if it were one.

“I’ve been falling in love with you since the first time I saw you; the more I know about you the further I fall, I’ve never wanted anything more than for you to see that,” he whispered, his heart bleeding with the truth of it.

“I see it Drustan. I see you, all of you,” she crooned, pulling on emotion more basal than love. Like any stag, flushing his mind full of rut hormones could undo even the most logical thinking.

“Not all of me,” he whispered in anguish, strained with the effort of holding himself back from her, “You still don’t know everything... You can’t know everything...”

“I want to, I want to know all of you. I want you to know all of me. How else will we truly be together?” She crooned, her voice caressing through him with the most tantalizing of touches.

It was like trying to stop on an icy pond, he just kept sliding. He knew he shouldn’t tell her and every fibre of his being screamed for him not to but he had to, The darkness wanted him too. The darkness told him it was okay. His voice was a whisper, strained and hushed. “My mother... before he died she... she told me... she told me something about my father... You can never tell... The herd can never know...” He leaned in closely, his words hardly louder than his breath as he told her. The secret that had plagued him since his mother’s death.

He told her everything.

Drustan came back to himself, gasping for breath, tears streaming unbidden down his face. What had happened, what had really happened, made him want to rip his own heart from his chest. How could he fall for the tricks of a witch? How could he put everyone he loved in danger? He was stunned, shocked, appalled with himself. He was a despicable fool. What he’d done would ruin them all.

Nuala spoke, and he shied, forgetting she was even there. “I pried it loose... but it’s still there. The more I push the deeper it hides. Drustan I’m sorry I can’t... I can’t fix this.”

He stared at her, eyes burning both from his tears and the blinding light he’d been subjected to. “Nobody can fix this... I’ve done something terrible.”

Nuala carefully reached out to comfort him but he leaned away. “Dru, what happened?”

She hadn’t seen what he’d done, the darkness was a shapeless form to her but to him it was crystal clear. It was a mirror of his mistake, standing in his mind and reminding him what he’d done. He could almost hear it laughing.

Shaking his head, he got to his feet.

“Please Dru, you have to talk to me about this,” the princess pleaded.

“No, Nuala, this is my mistake and mine alone.” A rustle of leaves behind them signalled the return of Lonán, and Drustan wheeled and rushed past his brother without a word. Crashing into the forest, the vibrant green leaves all around him cast playful dapples across the forest floor, and it was as if the world was mocking him with a serenity that he would never be able to have.

The dark mark roiled and churned in his gut, no longer having a hold on his memories but it could still play havoc with his heart. He knew the truth now, but what could he do about it? It was just a matter of time. He’d thought Scarlet was the one who had hold of his secrets, and he’d thought there could be nothing worse than being betrayed by her, but now he knew it was a Blackwood witch. Blackwood had his secrets, they had Glenmore’s weaknesses ready to exploit at any moment, and he’d been the one to give it to them.

The black veil was lifted and he could see what he’d wrought. He’d ruined his relationship with Scarlet, accusing her of something she’d never done and never would do, and he’d set the herd on a collision course that they could not avoid. They were doomed before this, but now the precipice was looming and he may as well be the one to push them over.