Page 108 of A Fae in Finance
She stood up on the branch, heedless of the way it wobbled, and walked back toward the trunk. I watched her sure steps until she was swallowed up by the darkness.
A few moments later, she appeared between two trees and joined us in the clearing.
Sahir stepped away from me. I tried not to have any feelings or opinions about his moving, but in his absence, I felt the cold even more acutely.
Instead, I went back to the packs and grabbed the four bowls and spoons they’d brought. We all sat around the fire, cross-legged on the ground.
Gaheris ladled each of us a bowl of stew, rich with purple potato-like chunks and silvery beads that tasted like peas. We topped it with the purple spread.
For the most part, we ate in silence. I watched Lene shift on the ground, searching for a more comfortable seat.
“Won’t the Queen’s soldiers see the light of our fire?” I asked.
“We would not light an unwarded fire,” Gaheris replied. “Unless they stumble upon us, they will not notice even the glimmer of our wards.”
“But maintaining silence will be safer,” Sahir said, a quiet reproach.
To entertain myself, I came up with a list of questions for Roman, ranging fromHi Roman, do you know a way for me to go back to New York?toHi Roman, what are your top tips and tricks for magical mayhem?
I couldn’t maintain any level of fear or misery; I mostly felt hysterical. It didn’t really matter, in the end, what Roman said. I couldn’tletit matter. I knew that these faeries—my friends, I was forced to acknowledge—had only taken me on this wild-goose chase to bring me out of a depressive funk. Maybe, at most, to give me some more clarity over the molecular changes wrought by faerie food that made my escape impossible. They’d done as much as Thea and Jordan ever had—more, even, since Thea and Jordan only ever brought me candy and said mean things about exes, due to the fact that it’s passé to go on quests for wise old magic-wielding mentors in New York.
And I couldn’t stop the same miserable, loathsome thought that had squirreled its way into my head since the first time I touched magic. Maybe my friends were putting themselves in danger, ferrying a human through the Queen’s territory, for absolutely no reason. Maybe there was a world where I lived happily in Faerie, if I could only figure out how to articulate what I wanted.
After dinner, I helped Lene scrub out the bowls with dirt while Gaheris banked the fire. Sahir had disappeared into the tent. I kept glancing toward that tent flap, longing for a windbreak. The air had gotten colder, and I was shaking.
Gaheris went into the tent first; Lene and I followed after, bringing our packs in, too.
I didn’t have time to wonder where I would sleep, because she jerked her chin toward Sahir, who sat on one of the two middle bedrolls. Gaheris lay on the other middle bedroll, and Lene went to his other side.
Which put me next to Sahir.
I looked at him. His expression was implacable. I shivered again, still cold. Then I crawled onto the bedroll he’d set up for me and kicked off my shoes. I kept my socks on, slid under the thin top blanket in my clothes, and squeezed my eyes shut.
“Why don’t faeries have space heaters?” I whispered.
Sahir’s words were so quiet I might have imagined them. “Humans cannot endure inconvenience.”
“Hypothermic death isn’t inconvenient,” I hissed, warmed a bit by the force of my own irritation.
His brown eyes gleamed in the darkness. “I always find your offices too warm,” he said. “Perhaps faeries have warmer blood than humans.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “That is very interesting scientific theory,” I said, gritting my teeth to keep them from chattering.
I’d expected some sort of magical warmth, but the blanket was apparently heated by my body and nothing else. I continued shaking and curled in on myself to conserve heat.
As my body had the same ambient temperature as a refrigerator, this did nothing.
I opened my eyes to find Sahir staring at me, his face inches from mine.
“Do you need me to warm you?” he whispered.
“You’re offering to be a bed warmer?” My voice stayed light, amused. My body vibrated beneath the thin blanket he’d laid out for me.
“You’re shaking.” He’d propped himself up on an elbow, a dim silhouette in the tent. I glanced past him, at Lene’s and Gaheris’s prone forms. And then another shiver racked my body, so hard I felt my stomach muscles clench.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said through my teeth.
“I am sworn to your health, Miriam,” he growled, eyes flashing. “So I ask again. Do you need me to warm you?”
