Page 44 of Crowned By the Fae King

His ears perked up. "For your family. Of course."

I got back up the couch and stretched with my hands over my head. "Just point me in the right direction. It can be my first act of state, or whatever."

Cass breathed a laugh at that. "The doors are fairly simple," he said with an easy smile, setting one hand on the wall. "The palace is the living center of the Court, and it's attuned to us. Focus your attention on it the way you focus on me, and ask it for what you want."

"I did that with trees," I said, coming over to do as he said. "Some of them grew around people instead of through them. They didn't like that."

"The trees, or the people?" Cass asked.

"Neither of them, really." I looked up at him and flashed him a smile. "Are you helping me, or am I flying solo?"

He flicked one ear. "I expect you'll be able to do it on your own, but I'd like to listen in so I can guide you if I'm wrong."

"Thoughtful," I murmured, more to myself than to him. I turned my attention towards the palace, falling automatically into meditative breathing as I did. Awareness filtered into me. It felt similar to my awareness of the Court, but far less intense, as if the palace acted as a filter. Maybe more like a search engine, I thought, sifting through the information. Rather than everything all at once, the palace responded to my thoughts with smooth consideration, giving me more of a curated experience.

I got the sense that sitting on the throne would be even better—that if Cass had been anyone other than who he was, the best way to find my trapped man would have been to sit on the throne and use it as a guide. Focus, Quyen. "How do I find the treasurer?" I asked in a hushed voice.

"If you don't know exactly who or what you're looking for, search for the traits of the place you want to go, or the person you want to find," Cass said, his voice low and soothing. He sounded practiced; as if he'd talked a hundred people through using magic for the first time. "Someone connected to me, and to the High Court, who touches the coin of the royal purse. Ledgers, maybe. Someone important."

I obeyed, putting together my thoughts as if I was typing them into a computer. The Court of Mercy was alive, but it wasn't a thinking being in the way of a person, and its wants and impulses didn't necessarily align with mine. Being clear seemed better than asking for things willy-nilly. Fae person, important, knows Cass, handles money that belongs to the Court, pays people their salaries…

As I tacked on requirements, the flood of information diminished. It was a little like looking at one of those screens in spy movies, where there's a thousand different video feeds on a floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall screen. As I narrowed the search, feeds blipped out, the remaining ones growing bigger and bigger in my mental space.

Of course, the feeds weren't nice little videos. They were full-body, surround-sound experiences, and doing more than the mental equivalent of seeing them out of the corner of my eye was all-consuming.

"Is our treasurer a blond pretty-boy with a fetish for necklaces?" I asked. My voice sounded far away. I wavered on my feet, struggling to keep my balance when my mind was very much elsewhere.

"That's the quartermaster, yes," Cass said with warmth. "Killaren Oester. He can surely help you do as you need."

Relief flooded through me. "Great," I breathed, leaning against the wall. I want to see him, I told the palace. Make me a door?

It thrummed under my hand, a sensation I felt not in my body but in my connection to it. A dark doorway appeared next to my hand, the stone going misty before vanishing, showing only shadow beyond.

Cass' pleasure wound through me, all heated pride and sparkling admiration. "I told you that you were a natural."

"I guess I am," I said, smiling helplessly. I looked up at him. "See you at lunch?"

"That's the plan," he said, smiling back down at me.

He smiled like he meant it, ears lifting and tilting forward and the corners of his eyes crinkling. It left me on the edge of breathlessness. Who even smiled like that? With no guile; no concern or consideration for what others might do when they knew the secrets of his heart? He was so open. So trusting.

"See you then," I said, because I couldn't keep staring up into his face without my own emotions coming into view, and stepped into my door.

Three-on-Three

Figuring out how to set up my family for life was a lot easier than I'd anticipated. The quartermaster listened to me with quiet attention, his ears cocked forward and expression serene, then settled me in his office and went to go acquire the person in charge of procurement from the mortal world.

It was a nice office, the sort of place that reminded me of lawyer offices in TV shows. The monumental wooden desk boasted a leather-covered top and a series of neat bins for papers, the walls were dominated by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and the leather couch he left me on had brass tacks and smelled faintly smoky. He had a few pieces of art on the wall; vivid paintings of flowers, mostly. They might have been out-of-place, except that the man himself was so shockingly beautiful, an elf right out of Lord of the Rings wearing a set of necklaces that would have been at home on some decadent Egyptian king.

I didn't do well being bored, but Killie clearly wasn't wasting time, and showed back up within ten minutes, two other fae in tow. They bowed, I nodded gravely, and we got to work ironing out the details.

It wasn't that hard, in the end. The fae didn't exactly have business fronts back on Earth, but they did enough "procurement" that they had ways to acquire resources, and those who walked mortal soil were familiar with how the world worked. They could get – or make – cashier's checks, set up regular mail, and with glamor and geas-magic they could play the part of government mooks to seal the deal.

There was a fine line to walk between "enough money for a good life" and "money Quyen could plausibly have," but I came up with a number eventually, complete with college funds for the boys and cost-of-living increases, and I came up with a cover story. Witness protection made people vanish all the time in the real world, and paid good money for it. Telling them that I'd been kidnapped by evil men, seen their crimes, and was doing my best to make it right was true—and it was a story they could tell themselves when they missed me, to warm themselves on the dark nights.

So many people didn't even get the chance to say goodbye. To not only have that final farewell, but to be able to give them the sort of life we would never have had together, was an unimaginable gift from the universe.

I'd only get to send one letter, so I made it count, telling each of them all the things I loved about them, with a separate sheet each for Bà, Auntie, Tuân, and Cadeo. I didn't cry. I wouldn't cry in front of these self-possessed fae. They were people I needed to respect me, and so I wrote my final goodbyes with dry eyes and a calm expression.

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