“Save your money.”
“Yours are two sizes too small! You’ll deform yourself.”
He shrugs, smiling. “It’s okay. Glenn thinks I’m as beautiful as a fox.”
“Is that so?”
“And what do you think?”
We touch gazes for a moment before looking ahead once more. It’s a game we play, as if jests about being under each other can chase away the reality of being beneath the High Fae. A game of teasing words and tracking stares through the thick of the festival throng, of leaving with the same sex but never the opposite. Last month, he split from the crowd with Glenn, and I kept company with a cup of cider. Two moons before that, I found fun in a blushing brunette, though maybe the real fun was tempting her away from him.
“That you have a loud gait for an accomplice.” My pace slows, the stones beneath my feet drifting farther apart in the dirt like lily pads across a pond.
“This is bold,” Jeremee says. “Stealing in broad daylight.”
“You sound like my mother.” The grip of a familiar grief tightens my throat.
“Why, because I want you alive?”
“You want me to do less.”
“Hey,” he says, halting. This far down into the tunnels, away from storage and bunkrooms, the darkness hides the burn in my eyes. “I want you to do less on your own.”
“I can’t be late.” I move around him.
Running those long, tattooed fingers through his hair, he says nothing. I stride down the tunnel, and behind me he sighs, as if resigning himself to my shadow.
We reach a split in the passageway, the right side veering to a different wing of Versara. The tunnel entrance to my left is framed by twisted tree roots, leading into darker, danker depths.
“You’re not coming,” I say.
“Fucking planes,” Jae mutters, leaning against the wall. “Why not?”
“Not risking you or Benji.”
He looks away, crossing his arms over his chest. That always shuts him up. No matter how much Jeremee and I care for each other, we care for his little brother more. His birth and infant tattooing were the first I’d ever witnessed. The Healer delivered him, staying only long enough to ensure that the teller marked both Benji and their mother for services rendered. At the time, I didn’t think it could get worse than the enchanted quill tapping newborn flesh with indentured ink. But everyone must pay to be born, one ring to each House, and mothers must pay even when a Healer leaves before the afterbirth can properly expel. Days later, Jeremee held his wailing brother as my mother and I lowered his mother into the ground.
Jeremee still bears her delivery and funerary debt. Though Benji started work as soon as he could carry a bucket, his six rings still had years to thicken with interest.
“I’ll be right back,” I say, the sentence catching in my throat.
“Five minutes and then I’m coming after you,” he grumbles. “Scream if you need me.”
“You could always wait in the kitchens.”
“No.” My best friend glares at me. I smile back.
“Listen for the scream,” I say.
He groans. “Don’t jest about—”
I duck under the roots and into the tunnel, leaving him behind.
The passage is uneven and small, buttressed by crumbling brick for the vendors who truck goods into the hill upon which the palace perches.
A candle smacks me in the forehead. Swearing, I bat it away, drops of wax and wick bobbing through the air. Someone, some time ago, stole a handful of enchanted candles and sent them across the dark like petals down a stream.
As a little girl, I would squeal when my mother pointed out thelights floating several feet above my head, daring me to catch them. Maybe she was trying to distract me during the frequent moves between the palace and the Peri, the surrounding faerie village, where we’d stay with my father until they fought again. Maybe she was trying to distract herself.
