Page 106 of A Fae in Finance
I tripped over a tree branch, and Sahir caught me by the arm, his fingers digging into my flesh. “Walk better,” he instructed, a man born to be a teacher.
I opened my mouth to retort and got a faceful of dirt. I tried to breathe but couldn’t.
There was a weight on the pack on top of me. I flailed my arms.
“Stop moving,” Sahir hissed. The weight lessened, and I tilted my head to the side, gasping. His hot breath ghosted across my cheek. The curtain of his hair filled my line of sight and the sharp cinnamon smell of his shampoo filled my nostrils.
He used one hand to pull his hair away so I could see that he’d flung himself nearly on top of me and then levered himself onto all fours, crouched over my backpack.
Lene wriggled up next to me, flat on her stomach with dead leaves caught in her whiskers. “Get to cover.”
“Where is cover? Cover from what?” I whispered. I went to lift my head, and Sahir’s hand clamped down on the base of my skull.
“It’s Kamare,” Lene said, digging the claws of her left hand into the earth. The flex of her lightly furred fingers left long furrows in the ground.
“What?” There was a branch beneath my neck, jabbing into my carotid artery.
“The faerie who tried to poison you,” Lene clarified.
“The lunch lady?” I asked blankly.
Sahir’s sigh ruffled my hair and the leaves beneath us.
I abstained from further clarifying questions, my heart pounding against the leaves below me. Slow minutes ticked past, and my left calf started cramping.
Finally, Sahir’s fingers loosened. I propped myself up on my elbows—inadvertently whacking Sahir in the stomach with my pack. He exhaled in a low and displeased huff. The warmth behind me disappeared, and I rolled over to see that he’d stood up.
When I glanced past him I saw that Gaheris’s hair was extinguished; he’d huddled into the trunk of a nearby tree, eyes shut and skin shockingly well camouflaged.
“I didn’t notice anything,” I whispered.
Sahir rolled his eyes. “Of course you did not notice anything,” he said. “There were twelve faeries. They moved with the wind and stopped when it died. They appeared to have one tracker, but from the sound of his breathing, he is experiencing a head cold.”
“I believe that his head cold prevented him from smelling us,” Lene chimed in.
Gaheris finally stood and came toward us, trembling on stick-thin legs.
“The Queen’s soldiers distress me,” he said. “They have hungry eyes.”
I closed my own eyes. “Sahir,” I said. “How much more walking before we find Roman?”
“About three hours,” Lene said, when Sahir didn’t reply. “If we walked at our usual speed. With you?” She looked me up and down. “Seven. We will camp tonight an hour from the sacred site, so that you can present yourself well to Roman in the morning.”
With this encouragement, I brushed the dirt from my knees and gestured for her to lead the way.
By late afternoon I was crying softly, limping along several paces behind Gaheris.
The blister on my left foot was bigger, but the two on my right foot had somehow both developed between my big and second toes. This can-do attitude earned them a place of pride in my mental litany of complaints.
“Have you dreamed of our quest, Miriam?” Gaheris asked. “Guidance would be to our benefit.”
I jerked to a halt. “What?”
Sahir glanced from me to Gaheris and back to me. “Well, it is a fair question.”
Several horrible realizations clicked into place.
“Isthatwhat ‘Lady of the True Dreams’ means? That I have prophetic dreams?”
