shards upon the ruined walls, fluttering in the breeze from the gaps in the stone. The ornate carvings that had so impressed him were ruined, hacked to pieces, timbers split.
“What have you done?” Talfryn stared like a man waking from years of slumber, unable to remember how he had gotten there.
“Revealed what Cwmmaen has truly become.” Conor looked around the devastated hall and then across to Hyledd.
Gone was the beautiful woman to whom he’d been introduced. Her hair hung lank and unkempt around her sallow face, dark smudges beneath her eyes. Her dirty garments sagged from her rail-thin frame. The sumptuous feast before them had been reduced to slop not even fit for the pigs, old meat and bread covered in mold. Conor’s gorge rose at the realization they had been eating the rotten food.
“My daughter,” Hyledd whispered. “Briallu.”
Talfryn reached for his wife. “Hyledd, darling, we have no daughter. Only sons, remember?”
She shook her head. “That’s impossible. She was just here.”
Talfryn looked to Conor for help.
“She was a spirit. In Seare, we call them the sidhe. We have been enwrapped in her glamour, unable to distinguish the illusion from reality.”
“I—I can’t remember,” Lady Hyledd said. “Everything feels so distant.”
“I remember everything up to the point I arrived here,” the bard offered. “How could that be?”
“You have been under the influence of the illusion for far less time. The longer you spend believing the lie, the harder it is to see the truth. You have been here only a day. Me, less than a month. I can only guess it happened sometime after Talfryn left, so he wasn’t as deeply ensnared. Lady Hyledd, what is the last thing you remember?”
“I don’t know.” She moved closer to her husband, and Talfryn put a comforting arm around her. “I remember leaving for Penafon as planned and the few days we spent there, but when we returned, all was as it should be. How?”
“Perhaps Briallu put the glamour in place so you wouldn’t notice anything amiss when you returned, my lady. I take it Ial was with you?”
“Aye. And six other warriors.”
“But that was nearly two months ago!” Talfryn said. “We’ve been under this illusion—this glamour, you called it—for this entire time?”
“It seems so,” Conor said. “We should take a look at the grounds.”
Hyledd rose from her chair and swayed for a moment. “I won’t be left behind. Not here.”
“Wife, remain here until we know all is safe. Ial, Aeron, stay with her, please.” Talfryn scanned the room. “Where are my other men?”
Conor watched them process the revelation. If he’d not already witnessed the sidhe’s power, he wouldn’t believe it either. At last, he understood all the strange feelings he had experienced since he arrived: the wildly varying moods of the household, which seemed to echo Briallu’s; the fact Conor had had so little direct interaction with the guardsmen; how easily he’d been swayed from his most deeply held principles.
Shame washed over him. Even knowing the sidhe thrived on the baser instincts of men and exploited them, he’d betrayed Aine. Was that why Briallu had been determined to sway Conor and stir up dissent with the guardsmen—to make herself strong enough that they’d never break free?
One look at the courtyard explained the disappearance of the other guardsmen. Their rotting corpses lay where they had fallen, crawling with insect life. Conor covered his mouth and nose with his hand in a futile barrier against the stench. The only signs of life outside the hall were the two stunned grooms with a handful of horses.
Conor pushed down his distaste and bent to pluck an arrow from the nearest body. He ran his fingers over the fletching, noting its construction. “Do you recognize this? It’s not Gwynn, nor Aronan. Certainly not Seareann.”
Talfryn took the arrow from him with surprisingly steady hands. The prince was taking the revelation better than Conor would have expected. “I saw similar ones in the Sofarende camp. It must be Norin.” Then he looked at Conor with shocked, empty eyes. “How did this happen? What happened?”
Conor turned away from the horror before them. “If I had to guess, I would say the Sofarende attacked while you and Lady Hyledd were away, and the sidhe placed a glamour over the place so no one would notice anything amiss when your lady wife returned.”
“And now I understand why Comdiu insisted I await you in the Norin encampment. Without you, we might have wasted away beneath the glamour.”
“Comdiu had far more than that in mind. I