Chapter 12 In Which I Receive a History Lesson from the Gray Knight
In Which I Receive a History Lesson from the Gray Knight
The Gray Knight put me back on my horse, and the rest of the retinue rode ahead, much faster than us. “They have other councils to attend,” she explained.
The sky flushed pink and gold, night setting in.
Our horses slowed further, and we rode next to each other at an easy pace, our knees bumping every few strides. I couldn’t look at her, embarrassed by the closeness but unsure how to move away.
“Would you like to stop here, with me?” the Gray Knight asked. She sounded more unsure than I’d ever heard her. I glanced at her, but she had her eyes fixed on the road ahead of us. “There is something I would show you.”
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips.
My stomach rumbled. If I said no, she would take me back to the Court. And I was hungry. But…
“Sure, I will stop with you,” I said carefully. “And see what you want to show me.”
She leaned forward and said something to her horse, who stopped and turned off the path. Sparkles followed.
We rode for several minutes, the way grassy and easy for the horses to traverse.
The sky had deepened into a velvet blue and stars twinkled overhead, swirling into new patterns like our own personal pictographs.
I’d grown used to Sparkles’s even gait, and it was becoming natural to shift with her as we moved.
Thick-trunked trees dotted the area, branches swaying in a breeze that felt exactly calibrated to cool my temples without mussing my hair.
The horses stopped on the riverbank, where a cascade of smooth stones in descending size order sloped at a perfect angle into the clear shallows.
The Gray Knight dismounted, then lifted me off the horse as usual.
This time she lingered, holding me against her, her hands around my waist and my toes barely touching the ground.
I put my hands on her shoulders. Our eyes met, hers silver and implacable in the night.
When she let me go, I stepped away, startled and flustered. I stared down at the rocks, searching for something to say. “Is everything in Faerie so… perfect?” I asked. “So beautiful and well-made?”
She shrugged. “It is all designed,” she said. “So of course it is designed well.”
I tried to think of this riverbank like that: a cage designed to keep danger out. But it was so difficult, with the streams of starlight in the sky and the birds in the trees.
“You said you wanted to show me something.”
She pulled a basket from the air in front of her and set it on the ground.
I watched, too surprised to help, as she laid out a blanket on the largest stones at the edge of the grass and knelt, taking perfect plates of sliced hard cheeses and jam and bread and setting them on the ground.
After a moment, I knelt, too, and held out my hands. She glanced up and smiled. It hit me with the force of a swift fall, the moment where your stomach braces for impact before you’ve even hit the ground.
But she didn’t appear to notice the way I knelt, laid bare by confused longing. “You are always offering aid,” she said. “I desire only your company.”
Swift inhale. Slower exhale. I pulled my last remaining thread of composure up my spine.
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 my client. 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. “You are 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.”
She took another piece of cheese off the plate and settled herself once more, this time so close to me our shoulders touched, and her thigh rested under mine.
I took a smaller bite, and so did she. The tang of it stayed on my tongue. When she brought the cheese back to my lips, she smiled and pushed it into my mouth, her finger resting against my lower lip. “We have shared food,” she said. “It is almost as if we had kissed.”
I could feel the muddle of my own thoughts, the strain as muscle fought mind. I wanted so badly to lean in to her, to press my lips to hers, to flatten our bodies together. Even just to tilt my head to her neck and breathe her in.
You know nothing about this woman.
I swallowed, hard. “You wanted to show me something, my lady.”
“Ah. Yes.” She stood gracefully and held out a hand to help me up. I took it, and she pulled me upright with ease. I watched the muscles in her arm flex.
We walked toward the edge of the water, the silvery dome keeping pace with us, and stopped at the edge, standing together on the smallest pebbles. “Take off your shoes,” she said, kicking off her own. I toed out of my boots, then socks, following her lead. I dropped my cell phone into a shoe.
She stepped into the water, and I followed. It was cool but not unpleasant around my toes. She took another step. So did I. And another.
As much as I wanted to go along with this, unburdened by questions or concerns, a part of my mind wondered about the plan. Were we about to wade in up to our chests, ruining our clothes, and then splash around until we got hypothermia?
I stumbled.
She glanced at me and took my hand in hers. We waded in to our calves. Our thighs. Our hips, mine submerged before hers.