Page 50 of A Fae in Finance
“Is that—” I started.
“The portal back to the mortal realm?” He crossed to the portal so quickly that I nearly tripped keeping up with him.
As we approached, I saw a tiny circle of toadstools in the grass. I stopped abruptly. “Milo, I’m—”
“Not ready to see it,” he interrupted. He turned on his heel and walked back toward me, his bulk blocking the shimmering air from view.
I wasn’t sure if Milo was a mind reader or just incredibly irritating.
“Where would you like to go instead?”
“I’m not sure.”
Milo held his arm out for me. “Then let me lead you.”
In the strange sunless light of the Faerie sky, the golden hairs on his arm glinted like metal. I felt a flash of discomfort—but he was being kind to me.
I put my arm in his. “All right, then.”
He turned us back up the path. “You should know the Court,” he explained, as we walked past the sunbathers to the Court’s entranceway. “So you can navigate it.”
It was a good idea, and so of course no one else had suggested it. I nodded at him.
As we approached the tunnel in the hillside, he took on a voice like a sports commentator or a particularly enthused tour guide. “This is the entrance to the Princeling’s Court,” he said. “It’s very old, and carved with arcane magics. Every one of his predecessors for the past six hundred years at least have sat in this Court.”
“Predecessors,” I said. “I thought faeries are immortal.”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am,” he said, like a good southern boy. “They just live much longer than humans.”
“Did you spend time in the—in the US?” I asked. “Your accent—”
Milo nodded, steering us into the hallway, and cut me off again. “This is the central hall,” he said. “It runs through the Court, and if you follow it all the way up, you come out on the other side of the hill, where the river runs. And yes, in Texas. But I’ve been in the Court for ten years now.”
As soon as we stepped into the hallway, the temperature cooled—something I hadn’t noticed previously but that made me shiver now. Milo caught the gesture and slid his arm out from under mine. He slung his arm around my shoulders, pulling me against his side.
I stumbled a step. This was a lot of touching. A twist of fear caught at my throat, an almost animal panic that hurt my teeth. It threatened to paralyze me.
I pushed it down. Faeries seemed to be touchier than humans. I modulated my steps to match his and let his arm hang heavy across the back of my neck.
“What did you do in Texas?”
“I coached kids’ football,” he said. “Nothing as nice as tossing the pigskin with the boys.”
“Maybe foryou,” I muttered. He didn’t say anything. Instead, he ran one fingertip up and down my arm.
“This,” he said, pulling me down one of the hallways, “is the area designated for Court business. You’ve got the scribes’ rooms”—he gestured to a door on the left—“the throne room”—the wooden door inset with jewels, which I recognized from the day before—“the meeting rooms, a bathroom. And finally, down here is the courtyard.”
This corridor was very short and ended in another open archway; this one led into what I thought might be the heart of the Court. When we stepped through it, we were greeted by the same sunless blue sky: a little disk of blue peeking at us as we stood in a well of light several stories down. Windows looked in at us from every direction. In the center of the courtyard, I recognized the cicada-adjacent faerie from dinner last night. He nodded a greeting, opened his mouth, and shrieked.
“Oh,that’sthe guy who screams at irregular intervals,” I said.
Milo nodded. “I know what you want to ask.” He started us back along the corridor. After a few awkward beats, I fell into step next to him.
“You do? How?”Definitely a mind reader.
“Because it’s the human question,” he said.
“Okay, sure. What do I want to ask?”
