Page 77 of A Fae in Finance
But I didn’t sleep. I lay awake, clenching my eyes shut, rolling back and forth across the mattress with my left leg anchored in place so I didn’t disturb the cat. I hadn’t even done anything wrong. My work had been fine; Jeff was just upset I hadn’t been online. And he was the one who’d sent me away to begin with.
When I finally did sleep, I dreamed of the Gray Knight, her silver hair and silver eyes and silver tail. She propped herself above me on her forearms and glowed brighter and brighter, until I shut my eyes against the light. She kissed along my cheek, my lower lip, the line of my jaw, until I was writhing beneath her. But when I opened my eyes, it was Sahir above me, his curls hanging down around his face, his lips red with kissing.
I woke up panting in the middle of the night, bolt-upright and wild-eyed.
It took me a long time to sleep again after that.
Chapter 13
In Which Jeff and I Discuss Marketing Tactics
I dressed with care in the morning, choosing clothes with less cat hair on them, and swiped mascara on my lashes before I left the room. Not for the Gray Knight, obviously. For me. I knocked on Lene’s door, but she didn’t answer, so I went to the dining hall by myself.
There were a few groups clustered around the tables. I went to the serving area, where my erstwhile poisoner Kamare had been replaced by a short man with wide cheeks and bulging eyes. He didn’t look invested in my existence one way or another and put a bowl of porridge on my tray with a nodded greeting. The second faerie, as ever, said nothing. Milo dropped a fruit cup on my tray, grabbed a second one, and followed me to the nearest table.
I sat down, resigned to his presence.
“Hi,” he said, sitting across from me. “How are you?”
Having now taught greetings in human class several times, I couldn’t help but see the absurdity in the ritual. It was a nicety, a shared tradition, and a little bit inane.
“Still kidnapped,” I said, intending to snap my mouth shut. But decades of lectures on politeness from my mother forced my tongue: “Otherwise, I’m fine. How are you?”
He nodded, spearing a vivid green melon ball with a two-pronged wooden fork. “I thought you might say that,” he said. He waved at someone over my shoulder. I turned to look and saw another human-type person walking toward us.
“You thought I might say that I’m kidnapped?” I asked, my tone more baffled than I’d intended.
He rolled his eyes. “No, that you’re fine, since that’s what you keep telling us to do in class.”
He popped the melon ball into his mouth and chewed openmouthed. His eyes were somehow… less shattered than usual today. The darker blue and gray veins that sometimes divaricated his irises had shrunk into themselves, leaving more pale blue.
I’d almost asked him once about the Princeling’s claim. Had he wandered into Faerie a madman? Had he just wandered in, period? But his mental health wasn’t my business, nor was his treatment plan relevant information for me. If some people did psychoanalysis and some people decided to live in pocket dimensions, I certainly wasn’t qualified to determine which was more effective.
Milo finally swallowed his very well-chewed mouthful of fruit. If he’d waited much longer, a will-o’-the-wisp might’ve swept down from the ceiling like a baby bird and—
Eugh.I cut off that train of thought.
He cleared his throat. “Do you think you’re going to go to the press?”
I hadn’t even considered trying to draw media attention since the first days in Faerie. Once I’d made my deal with the Princeling, any other actions felt underhanded.
So I picked up my own fork and bit into a similar green melon. “No.” The melon tasted closer to raspberry than honeydew. “I don’t want to make people even more prejudiced toward faeries,” I told Milo, who probably didn’t care.
The person he’d waved at stopped next to our table. I looked up.
“Hi, Chad,” Milo said, nodding at the new guy. “Do you want to sit with us?”
Chad sat next to Milo and picked up his own fork. Milo looked back at me. “I heard you were one of those Faerie-lovers.” He plucked a disc of blue fibrous plant matter from his bowl and bit into it.
I glanced at Chad, wondering whether I should be cautious. But I needed to talk to Milo. “That raises a lot of questions, Milo. Like who you heard that from, or what it means. But more importantly”—it wasn’t more important to anything except my wounded pride—“why didn’t you tell me you were human?”
It had been almost a month since his aborted tour of the Court, and I still felt embarrassed and confused when I saw him. I put the fork down and picked up the spoon, looking at the porridge now.
“I honestly didn’t realize you didn’t know,” he said. “I mean,Iknow I’m human.”
“Well, of courseyouknow,” I said.
He only looked at me, an expression of slight bemusement on his very handsome, very modern, very American quarterback face.
