The Fae King Can't Lie, and He Says He Wants Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Gate at Brockley
Nia walks into the fae court as its new human Witness, calls a lord's true-but-lying sentences out in front of everyone, and hears the King who cannot lie say he wants to keep looking at her, until she reads the clause that forbids it and he knocks at her door.
My phone died the moment I stepped through the stone gate.
It was four forty in the afternoon, the field above Brockley was grey with frost, and then it wasn't a field at all.
The air turned warm and smelled of woodsmoke and cut apples.
Behind me, the Door stood open on the cold.
"Clause One, miss," said a small brown man in a green apron.
"Touch it any time and you're back in Brockley, and nobody here may stop you."
"Good," I said. "I read it twice."
"I'm Hob. I'll carry your bag."
"I'll carry my own bag, thank you."
He grinned.
The hall of the Thorn Court was a hill turned inside out, with roots for rafters and lanterns of green glass.
Four hundred people of every colour of eye stood along its walls and watched me come in.
I had put on my yellow raincoat on purpose.
I am five foot ten, I was wearing boots, and I have never once been invisible in a room.
At the far end sat a man on a throne made of grown thorn.
He was lean and pale, with white-blond hair loose past his shoulders and a scar through one eyebrow.
He didn't smile, and he didn't look away.
"The Witness," Hob announced. "Nia Pritchard, of Cardiff."
I took the stool at the King's right hand, the one the Treaty set aside for me.
I took out my notebook.
Nine years of magistrates' courts had taught me one thing.
Everybody tells you the truth, and the truth is always shaped.
A fae lord in leathers was already speaking.
He looked about forty, with red-gold hair and a signet ring, and he was smiling down at an old farmer in a wet cap.
"I am Casimir Marrow, Master of the Hounds," he said. "I've listened to your trouble, friend."
"I have taken nothing from your land."
"I have not touched your well."
"My Hounds will not drink from it."
The farmer's shoulders came down in relief.
He took the paper that Casimir held out and reached for the pen.
I stood up.
"Don't sign that," I said.
The hall went quiet in a wave, from the front to the back.
"Witness," said Casimir, pleasantly. "You are new."
"I am. Sir, ask him what he did with the stream."
"I have said nothing false. I cannot."
"You said you took nothing from his land and that you haven't touched his well."
"Both true," said Casimir.
"You dammed the stream above it in October. The well is dry, and you've never once said otherwise."
"I do not lie."
"I know you don't. Clause Nine. No fae shall deceive a human by silence or by true word."
I turned to the farmer.
"Every sentence he gave you is true," I said.
"He built them to make you think your well is safe, and it's empty."
"If you sign, you sign away the water."
The farmer looked at the paper.
He tore it in half.
Somebody at the back of the hall began to laugh and was hushed.
Casimir looked at me for a long moment with eyes the colour of old amber.
"Well," he said.
"Witness is right," said the King.
His voice was low and not loud, and it still went all the way to the back wall.
"Mend the stream, Casimir. The Hounds will carry the farmer home."
Casimir bowed, and I watched his jaw.
An old woman in a silver crown of braids sat in the first row, well back from the others, with her hands folded.
"A fine start," said Morwenna Marrow, the Lady Regent, in a voice like warm milk.
"Might we ask the King how he finds his new Witness?"
I had heard about this part.
Nobody in the Hills can say what isn't so, so the court asks the question and waits to see what the man cannot hide.
The King turned his head and looked at me.
He took his time.
"I have not stopped looking at her since she walked in," Emrys Rowanfell said.
"I would like to go on."
There wasn't a sound in four hundred throats.
I felt it climb my neck and settle behind my ears.
I thought, with a clear cold part of my brain: he can't lie.
Every word of that is true.
"Then take her oath," said the Regent, smiling.
He came down off the throne.
He held out his hand, palm up, and I laid mine in it, the way the Treaty says.
His skin was warm and dry, with a hard line of callus at the base of his fingers.
His thumb turned my wrist over and rested on my pulse.
Heat ran up my arm.
"Say it," he murmured.
"I will hear what is said in this hall, and I will say what was meant," I said.
My voice was steadier than I was.
His thumb moved once across the inside of my wrist.
The court breathed out.
Hob found me in the corridor afterward, holding out a folded paper and not meeting my eye.
"The Treaty, miss. Clause Four. You'll want to read it before he sends for you."
I read it standing in my new chamber, under a ceiling of living ivy.
"The King shall not take the Witness to his bed, lest her testimony be bought."
"On forfeit of his crown, and of her name."
I was still reading it when someone knocked, three times, very softly.
"Nia," said the voice I'd heard fill a hall.
"It's me. I don't lie, so I came to tell you the truth."
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