Page 62 of A Fae in Finance
Touché. Perhaps not my subtlest moment.
“No, I don’t think I was poisoned.” I sighed. “I’ve been sick a lot, but I’m sure it’s just stress.”
She thrust her hand toward me, thumb pressed to her pinky, and her three middle fingers curled. A bolt of gray magic hit my tray and settled in a fine mesh over the buttered toast.
“Youwerepoisoned,” she said, standing. The noises around us cut out; a buzzing filled my ears as I stared down at the bread on the plate.
Magic dusted the whorls and crevices in the crumb in a fine gray powder.
“Wait, what?” I pushed the tray away from me, but the Gray Knight had already stridden away, to the serving line.
“Kamare,” she said, in a booming voice so loud the entire room turned to stare. “You dishonor our Princeling with your treatment of his guest.”
“The Princeling dishonors us with his choice of guest,” the snake-scale lady countered, so smoothly she must have been preparing for this confrontation for weeks.
I stared at the toast, waiting for the poison to jump off the butter and down my throat.
“Do you serve the Princeling and his Court?” The Gray Knight stopped in front of Kamare, the table between them.
As it had once before, a weapons belt appeared at her waist, slung low over one hip. Instead of a gun, she had her hand on the hilt of a long thin saber. Its pommel glinted like diamonds in the flickering lights of the room.
“Does the Princeling serve his people?” Kamare countered. “Will a factory serve us, who do not need mortal money and do not value gold? What can they give us, if we open the winding ways to our kingdom and let the humans in?”
“The Princeling has brought choices, Kamare. The opportunity to stand beneath the sun and the moon. That was his promise and it will be his gift. But not for you, I think,” the Gray Knight said, drawing her sword.
I stood up, stumbling over the stool, and started toward her. “No, wait—” I said, sprinting past a table full of startled faeries.
She brought the sword up in a sharp slicing motion, and down—I hurled myself at her, catching her arm.
She stopped. Not because I was strong enough to hold her. That much was immediately obvious. She stopped because she wanted to.
I panted, my left hand clutching her right wrist, my body pressed to hers. I leaned up to look into her face; she stared over my head, at Kamare.
“The human spares your life, though you would not have spared hers,” she declaimed, in the tones of a particularly dedicated town crier at a Renaissance faire.
Son of a bitch, I thought. She’d baited me into it. She wanted the other faeries to see me stand between her and one of them.
I glanced past her at the other people in the room. A few had their mouths open in shock. As I watched, one faerie with blue skin and gray eyes reached over and pushed on his companion’s jaw.
“The human is weak,” Kamare snarled. “And when my Queen takes your Court, she will wear a necklace of the human’s teeth.”
In the rush of the past few weeks, I’d nearly forgotten the Queen and the threat of potential invasion. This wasnotthe way I’d wanted to be reminded of her.
I let go of the Gray Knight and whirled to look at the woman who’d tried to kill me. Her face was twisted with hate.
“Perhaps the human is stronger than you,” the Gray Knight countered. “As our guest requests it, I will not kill you.”
I sagged in relief. Murdering people who didn’t like me seemed like a bad PR move.
“By the authority of the Princeling, Kamare, you are banned from the Court,” the Gray Knight finished.
I waited for somebody to say something. No one did.
Seconds passed as we all stood there, Kamare behind the table, the Gray Knight and me in front of it. The two of them stared at each other.
“Fine,” Kamare said, like they’d been having some kind of conversation. “But when my Queen brings her army upon your Princeling’s Court, you will remember this day.” She took off her apron, threw it onto the bowls of porridge on the table, and stormed out of the room.
The Gray Knight put her arm around my shoulders. “That was brave of you, to come between my sword and its target,” she said loudly at the air above my head. I stood stiff beneath her, trying to ignore our audience.
