Page 119 of A Fae in Finance
One of the guards snickered—a tall one with wings. I wanted to differentiate them, but they all looked a lot like androgynous Elvis in various colors, and I was having trouble.
Sahir stepped forward to stand beside me. The Queen flicked her hand at him. A spark jumped from her fingertips to his chest, and he exploded into vines.
“Do not hide your form from the Queen,” she said. In third person.
“Apologies, Queen,” Sahir said, his familiar voice coming from the center of the vines. He was much stiller than he’d been last time the vines came out, everything drooping like chagrined shrubbery.
“Speak your plea,” she said to Sahir, imperious and still so disinterested. “That I can end the mortal’s life and cease to ponder this.”
“You are a Queen, and a faerie, and fair,” Sahir said. “If you deem her harmless, give us leave to bring her back to the Princeling.”
“No human is harmless to us,” she replied. If she felt that to be true, there was no hope for me.
“Then if you deem her worthy of respect,” Sahir tried. “If you hear our accounting for her and believe she has earned the name Friend of the Fae.”
Shetsked gently, almost sad. “You know that if I let one human walk freely past my borders, more will follow.”
I had the strange distant thought that I was about to dissociate through my own death.
“Then give her leave to attempt a portal crossing,” Gaheris said.
Sahir groaned under his breath. The Queen looked at Gaheris.
“This is hardly a mercy,” she said.
“It is a chance,” Gaheris replied. “If you deem her worthy of it.”
The amount of adrenaline thrumming through my veins could have exploded a pony. I felt every nerve ending, heard the thump of each heartbeat in my chest.
Obviously we’dplannedto hurl me through a portal at some point. I just hadn’t expected that point to be imminent.
The Queen and I looked at each other.
“Well,” she sighed. “If nothing else, it will break the monotony.”
Again a flicker of movement on the face of one of her faerie guards. Again, a decision on my own part to avoid noticing.
“I shall hear from each of you in turn,” the Queen said. She stepped nimbly around her guards and glided over to Gaheris. I tracked every step she took, my head swiveling on my neck.
Gaheris inclined his head, the fires of his hair brushing her forearm as he kissed her outstretched hand. I watched the flames lick toward her elbow. I felt an inexplicable urge to separate them, to protect her.
Sahir whacked me in the thigh with a vine. I glared at him, but the pull to the Queen had been severed. I looked back toward her where she stood facing Gaheris.
“Tell me why you are here, Gaheris.”
He lifted from his bow, straightened, and looked at her. I stared at his profile, his long arms and legs and face, and his thin mouth. I felt overwhelmed by a sense of something—gratitude or friendship or pride.
“Sahir has been my companion for many years, long and short,” he said. “We have exchanged many bargains. I will always assist him, if I am able.”
She nodded, as if she understood. The golden diadem shone in the firelight. “You have come at Sahir’s behest, and with fair recompense for your risk.” She started to turn away from him, toward Lene.
“In part,” he said, sounding anxious; his eyes fell to the floor. The Queen froze, and readjusted to face him head on.
“When Sahir wanted to go to the human lands, I was afraid,” Gaheris continued. “You know the ease with which we can die there. He went for his own reasons, which I shall not share, by your leave.” He stopped and glanced at her, fear and a desire for approbation warring in his eyes.
The Queen nodded again, encouraging him to go on. I stared at her, feeling a burgeoning desire to one day be that powerful. I was well-adjusted, and knew that the feeling was just in response to a lack of control in my own life. Like any well-adjusted person, I pushed the feeling down and vowed never to examine it.
“About a year after Sahir started the job in the human world, he began to speak of a woman who had joined the company.”
