Chapter 16 In Which I Tell Jordan the Truth
In Which I Tell Jordan the Truth
“Why did you bring me here?” I asked Sahir, when the lights of the town had faded behind us. He turned off the path toward the paddock, where our two horses stood. The starlight silvered their coats.
“I swore an oath,” he said. “To keep you healthy, not just to keep you alive. And I will not break it.”
I frowned at his broad back, the green of his tunic gray in the semidark. He whistled; the horses looked up and started toward us as one.
“And,” he added, “sometimes, we cannot carry ourselves. At those times, it helps to have a friend.”
A friend?
But he wouldn’t look at me. Sparkles trotted up to my side. I saw the familiar glow along her back as the saddle appeared for me.
“It will be better if you help carry yourself, Miriam,” he said. I wasn’t entirely sure if he meant onto the horse, or in the context of the larger metaphor. I nodded, though, and when he came to lift me onto Sparkles, I grabbed the saddle and pulled myself partway up.
I thought I heard him chuckle into my backside and stiffened. But when I straightened in the saddle, he was already astride his horse.
“Did you understand what my good-brother and sister and mother and father said to you, Miriam?” he asked. The horses, unprompted, started toward the path.
“Kind of,” I said. “But I still don’t fully understand all of the Courts. How do they relate?” Tell me about the human torture, I thought. Am I going to get tortured?
“Hmm.” He tapped a hand on the pommel of his own saddle. I watched his nails spark, more like polished glass than keratin. “The Princeling is, ah, like a governor.”
“What?” I sputtered. “This much ceremony for a governor?”
“An important governor,” he added, sounding almost defensive. “Like, the governor of California.”
I actually laughed aloud at that.
He looked at me, startled.
“So the Queen governs faeries who want to torture humans?” I asked, because I couldn’t hold it in anymore.
Sahir bit his lip, a white flash against the warm brown of his skin. “The Queen governs faeries who do not want to engage with humans but will not hesitate to kill them. Faeries do not—well, we used to torture humans. Our grandparents did.”
“Until what, they all died?” I asked sarcastically.
He frowned at me. “Yes. That generation is fading. The last of them will disappear soon.”
“I thought faeries were functionally immortal,” I said—though I remembered Milo telling me otherwise, all those months ago, I’d never confirmed it with anyone else.
“To a gnat, you live for eons, and hunt its children and its children’s children for sport.” He shifted forward on his horse, looking for something up the trail.
“So I’m a gnat.”
He must have heard some threat in my voice, because he answered quickly. “Perhaps a dog is more apt. A dog’s great-grandson might witness the death of its master, and the lore of the master’s birth could conceivably pass through four generations.”
This answer wasn’t much better, but I refrained from further comment on his choice of metaphor.
“But Aram is older than you? He said he remembered…”
Sahir sighed. I wondered if I’d hit a sore subject. “Rijska loves him, and he is very wise. But they both know she will have centuries without him.”
We rode in silence for several minutes. Perhaps he was contemplating his brother-in-law’s death and his sister’s loneliness.
“So the Princeling inherited the role when his father died…” I prompted.
“No,” Sahir said. “We elected him. We elect a new leader every…” He paused, thought. “I suppose every twenty-five human years.”
In the distance, the lights of the Court shone out against the black of the hillside.
“Why is your elected leader called a Princeling?”
“Do you have no stupid traditions in your democracy?”
I chuckled at that, though I also felt a twinge of disappointment. In a book, there would’ve been a fantastic and history-rich explanation. “I guess we do,” I said.
Sahir frowned at me. “I will see that we speak with Roman,” he said. “It is my duty as your knight, and my honor as your friend.”
“We don’t need to,” I said. “We can wait until I fulfill my bargain with the Princeling.”
The look Sahir gave me physically hurt. “Do you think you can wait that long? It has only been three months, Miriam. Can you do this thirty-nine more times?”
I clutched at my stomach. “No,” I whispered, weak and ashamed. “Probably not.”
Sahir didn’t push me any further.
We ascended the path to the Court’s entrance and stopped the horses. I patted Sparkles on the neck while Sahir got down from his horse.
I didn’t hesitate this time to slide into his arms. He caught me, hands on my ribs, and put me down gently.
I gazed up into his eyes, unable to stop the thought that it would be nice, having Sahir around to catch me.
That he followed the rules of my childhood reading: the sense of honor and justice and duty.
My hands slid from his shoulders to his arms. He also had the unreasonably muscled body of most fantasy books.
His fingers slid down to my waist, tightened almost convulsively.
He had the unfair beautiful fringe of dark lashes that for some reason only blesses men.
They shadowed his cheekbones as he stared down at me, his lush lips slightly parted.
“Thank you,” I whispered, that thought whirling: He can catch you; he can always catch you. And the unwelcome follow-up—that I wanted to be able to catch him, too, and was currently about as useful as an easel in a hurricane.
I pulled away, and his hands fell from my hips to his sides. I turned abruptly and kissed Sparkles on her warm nose. She nickered, huffed in my face.
“Bye, Sparkles,” I said.
Sahir and I walked inside together.
I focused on the floor passing beneath our feet, the sound of my breathing in my ears.
“Thank you,” I said again. “For helping me go outside.”
We stopped in front of my door. He took a step toward me. I leaned against my door, stared up at him. “You are welcome,” he breathed.
I glanced at the dent in his upper lip. At the lush curve of his lower lip. I couldn’t stop. He had a thin line, a scar, on the dimple in his chin. His throat worked as my eyes followed it down to the crest of his clavicle, half-bared by his disarranged green tunic—
Nope.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Thank you,” I managed, like a broken robot. I could hear the click of his heel as he took a half step closer, feel the warmth of his body inches from mine.
“You said that,” he whispered, his breath hot on my lips. His cinnamon smell surrounded me.
I inhaled.
He pressed his forehead to mine.
“Good night, lady,” he said, and was gone.
Safely in my room, I sat up in bed, Doctor Kitten beside me. My resident will-o’-the-wisp had taken up his preferred spot on my nightstand, curled into the nest I’d made for him from an old T-shirt. He glowed a warm, soothing bedtime yellow.
I needed help. I thought about Thea and Jordan. I wouldn’t call Thea for advice; she was loving, lovely, and not very practical.
Jordan, however, was an engineer who wrote Dungeons and Dragons campaigns in his spare time. If anyone would have practical and well-reasoned advice off the bat, it was him.
“We have to call Jordan,” I said. Doctor Kitten mewled in agreement.
I scrolled through my contacts for Jordan’s name and clicked on it before I could think too hard. It was one a.m. He might not be awake.
But he answered on the second ring. “Mir?” He sounded groggy.
“Jordan?” I said.
“Are you okay?” He paused. “I haven’t heard from you in a while.”
“I’m fine,” I said, staring at my empty hand. “Work is just hard.”
I hadn’t even checked my email when we got in. I had been offline for six hours. For all I knew, something was on fire.
“This job is terrible for you,” he said. I could hear his voice change as he shifted closer to the phone. “Is it worth it?”
“Yeah, I mean…” I trailed off. Heaved a deep breath. “Jordan, I have to tell you something and I need you not to panic.”
“Okay,” he said, slowly. His tone had lost its sleep-rough edge. “What is it?”
“Swear not to tell anyone, not even Thea,” I added. “I have to tell her myself. When I’m ready.”
“Are you pregnant?” he asked. He sounded baffled. “When did you even have time—”
“No, shut up!” I said, suddenly so exasperated I couldn’t be nervous. Which had probably been his goal. “I’m trapped in Faerie, Jordan, and I need your advice about going on a quest to find a way home.”
As if he knew I needed him, Doctor Kitten uncurled himself from my side and stepped into my lap. I hunched around him, breathed heavily into the phone, and didn’t speak again. For several seconds, there was silence between us. Then I heard Jordan take a few slow, deep breaths.
“Ah,” Jordan said, his tone even in the way that meant he was suppressing panic. “Well, that would certainly explain why you’ve been completely avoiding us.”
Something in my stomach unclenched.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“How’d that happen?” he asked.
I splayed out on the bed and told him the whole story.
At the end of it, Jordan hummed thoughtfully. I sat up again and leaned back against the headboard.
“I can see why you didn’t tell any of us, but the point of your friends is to lighten your burdens, you moron.” He sighed.
I made a vague noise. I couldn’t speak yet.
“Well, what’s Faerie like, then?” Jordan asked.
“It’s—” I stopped. I hadn’t allowed myself to think about it, really. “It’s different.”
“No way,” he gasped. “Faerie, the pocket dimension populated entirely with magical people and famously separated from the human realm for at least a hundred years, is different?”
“Oh, shut up,” I muttered. But that wasn’t what I wanted to say to him. “It’s like you’d expect,” I tried again. “Everything is slightly brighter. And there’s a colony of vampire nudists, I think, who skybathe on the lawn most days.”
He snorted. “Of course that’s what you notice.”
“I’m mentioning it for your benefit,” I snapped. “But what do I do about this quest, Jordan?”