Page 101 of By the Fae

Someone waved. Abby. I wasn’t sure if I should wave back, but I did anyway.

He’d been researching ways to keep me alive as long as him. And he’d come away empty handed. No wonder he ran.

No modern ways . . .

. . . without causing terrible and irreversible consequences.

But

Did this mean he loved me as I loved him?

Off to the side, Seth-Goldie gave a‘hurry-it-up’hand rolling gesture.

I cleared my throat.

If he found a way, would I want that? To live as long as him?

Centuries more?

My family would get old and die and I would stay the same. For years. And years.

Years and years with Goldie.

A lifetime with him.

Ten lifetimes.

With him.

Was that what I wanted?

I opened my mouth to speak, to introduce the game, and fought back a sob.

Yes. I wanted that.

More than anything.

One lifetime with him wouldn’t be enough.

I needed to find him. Maybe I could help.

“Hi, everyone,” I said into the microphone. Feedback rang through the hall. I pulled the mic away from my mouth. “Hi, um, my name is Holly, and for those of you with human eyesight and are unsure if you’re seeing things, I can confirm I am, in fact, also human.”

The audience laughed in that polite, nervous way they often do.

“And I’d like to introduce you to our game. Working title is The Yield Key.”

Murmurs broke out, the tone excited.

My speech went well. It was difficult to tell for sure, but all my one-liners landed, nobody spoke over me, and nobody got up and walked out midway through. Already it had gone better than any of the versions I’d envisaged.

I opened the floor to questions. Several people in the front raised their arms. I pointed to one guy in a purple shirt and tie, and a runner handed him a microphone.

“Hi, Holly,” he said. “First off, I just wanted to say I love the concept.” There were rumbles of agreement. “It’s clever and quirky, and the graphics are beautiful. I heard you designed the game with a fae. Is that correct?”

“Well, sort of,” I said. “It was both our ideas, both our input, but he built everything you see here with his,” — I wiggled the fingers on my free hand in front of me — “fae magic.”

The audience laughed again.

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