“The guard was jesting,” I whisper, though not quite convincingly. Even with only one fae parent, some halflings can live as long as the High Fae themselves, almost a thousand years, so it’s possible the guard could have been telling the truth. Halflings tend to hold prestigious positions over faeries—guards, tellers, accountants, and so on.
Jeremee leans forward. “Says he survived the palace massacres as a child.”
“That was seven hundred years ago. Times are different now.”
“There hasn’t been a new king in seven hundred years, either.”
“House of Death isn’t invited to the coronation. There can’t be a second Dark Rebellion.”
“What if the Houses are shifting?”
“Who cares? Debt or death, those are our options. Does it matter who the creditor is?” Jeremee shakes his head, pulling away, but I grasp his ringed forearm, drawing him back. “Nothing is going to happen,” I say, glancing at Benji still loudly counting the stones. Jae follows my gaze.
“And if it does?”
Pulling his pointed ear down to my lips, I whisper the treasonous thought I should snip into submission. “Then let them eliminate each other. It’ll be easier for our kind.”
I squeeze his shoulder, his dark auburn hair grazing my knuckles. His gaze locks with mine. “Don’t you understand, Avery? The High Fae will not kill one another first. They will kill one another last.”
I flinch.
“I’m up!” Benji proclaims, and we break apart and watch as the young faerie steps up to the teller. He’s barely tall enough to see over the stone ledge serving as a counter. A wrinkled halfling sits in the niche, quill in hand, only one ring on each wrist, a stack of empty parchment next to his elbow. Like all halflings, his mother was a faerie, his father a fae. If the parentage were reversed, the halfling would’ve been killed after known conception, and the High Fae female severely punished and wed off immediately to another noble House to live in the countryside, far from high society.
He waves the quill. “Hand.”
Benji grips the counter edge. The teller clucks his tongue, grabbing the young faerie’s wrist to jerk him closer. Jeremee stiffens but remains where he is, and so do I. It’s illegal to harm a teller; the sentence is death.
The halfling pricks Benji’s finger. The quill touches the parchment, and numbers and symbols scroll across the page.
“I spent extra hours in the stables this week,” the child says. “Maybe I can get one of my rings removed?”
“Not this week.”
“Next week?”
“No.”
Benji hums. “But it’ll happen. You have less than me and you’re old.”
I bite my lip to stifle a laugh.
The teller raises his fluffy gray eyebrows. “You need to learn to manage that mouth.”
Jae winces next to me.
“This is why faeries accrue so much,” the halfling mutters, putting down the paper. “You earned ten copper coins this week. Three go toward your room and board here at the palace, two toward maintaining public resources, one toward your birth debt, one toward military protection, and one toward the free entertainments and yearly celebrations. That leaves you with twocopper coins. Would you like to pocket them or use them to pay down your debt?”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Benji says.
My heart sinks.
“I’ll repeat myself. You earned ten copper coins this week…”
Jeremee bends down, whispering something in his ear. The child straightens. “I’d like to pay toward my debt, please.”
“See, this is why you have so few rings,” he says.
Jeremee blows out a breath. Benji seems to accept this, skipping to the side as the teller wipes down the quill and shouts, “Next!”
