Page 73 of A Fae in Finance
Then, affecting a level of chill I’d never once in my life actually experienced, I sat back, hands on my knees. “Well, thank you,” I said. “I was getting hungry.”
At this, she laughed. “You are often hungry, Lady of the True Dreams.”
I couldn’t help it; I smiled back at her. “That may be true, though faeries seem to eat as often as humans.”
She handed me a glass and a bottle of something sparkling.
“Champagne?” I asked.
“I do not know what that means.” She grasped the hem of her shirt. My breath caught. She rose up on her knees, moving like a cresting wave, and pulled her shirt over her head, revealing a thin white camisole. Her hair caught and then fell around her shoulders in a glittery spill.
“The drink,” I said, my voice hoarse. “What is it?”
She saw me staring. “It’s faerie-made cider.”
I poured generously and handed her the first glass, reaching into the basket for the second. She took it, then stopped and pointed a finger upward. “Before I forget,” she said, and rotated her hand clockwise, so quickly it blurred. Something spun out from her fingertip and shot upward, then cascaded down around us like a fountain of silver. “I do not think the Princeling would listen in on me,” she explained. “But there is no reason to tempt the Crone.”
“Can they just listen to anything that happens in Faerie?” I asked, pouring myself a glass of cider and trying to make a politely bored face, instead of a desperately curious face.
She shook her head. “It is much broader than that; they can listen anywhere unprotected.” She read my expression. “Your bedroom is protected, lady. They grant our people that dignity. But I will share no more.”
“Of course,” I said. I put the bottle of cider down in front of us, next to a loaf of bread. “I don’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position.”
“I am in an uncomfortable position now,” she said, and slid backward off her knees. She crossed her legs. She’d come closer to me in the process, her knee almost touching mine. I sank back, too, shifting my weight onto my thigh. That brought us closer still, two leggings-clad legs suspended in the minute space between us.
“Would you like something to eat?” she asked, setting her glass down.
“Yes,” I said, watching the line of her throat as she leaned forward to pick up the plate of cheese.
“Sometimes I dispense with the bread entirely,” she said, in a low voice like she was confiding some grave secret.
I giggled at the absurdity of it all. Her answering smile was brighter than all the stars above, brighter than the silver shield that fell like rain around us. “Me, too,” I whispered.
She picked up one of the jams and dipped a piece of cheese into it, her eyes on mine. They sparkled, reflecting and refracting the silvers in the sky. She held the cheese up, and my lips parted automatically.
Slowly, she brought the cheese to my mouth, and I took a bite, staring at her. I barely tasted it—just a jolt of something sweet, and a note of something sharp. She brought the rest of the slice to her own mouth and bit into it. I watched her lips part, the flash of her teeth. I felt myself leaning forward without conscious intent.
“Try the cider,” she said, picking up her own glass.
My heart was racing. Could she hear it?
I took my glass, and we tapped them together. “To a successful capital raise,” she said.
“Agreed,” I said, stomach dropping. She was myclient. What was I doing?
I shifted away from her, into a cross-legged position. I felt her eyes on me and resisted the urge to pull at the waistband of my leggings, worried I had sat in an unflattering way. I brushed my hair back instead.
Maybe she caught the thought behind the movement; maybe she had brought me here for a purpose and intended to see it through. She reached for my free hand. “Do they tell you that you are beautiful, in New York?” she asked, her warm fingers tracing my knuckles. Every touch made me tense, like a ballerina in a wind-up box, waiting to spin free.
“I’m not,” I said, out of habit.
She pulled away and took another sip of cider. I watched her lips on the rim of the glass. “We disagree, lady.”
I copied her. The cider fizzed on my tongue, bubbled down my throat. “Youare beautiful,” I said, unable to stop myself. “Like moonlight. I go on my fire escape some nights and look at the moon, and it makes me long for something I can’t describe. That’s what you’re like.”
She rose to her knees again and set her glass down. “I do not think you are very common, are you, Miriam?” The silvery light caught in the hollows of her bare shoulders, the divot of her collarbone at the base of her throat.
I opened my mouth, but she cut me off. “It is no matter. You are rare to me.”
