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The fairy king sat up straight, leaned forward on his knees and laced his fingers together. “My, my. Real honesty. That is a welcome change. ”
“Does my refreshing honesty get me any bonus points?”
“It wins you my regard. ”
“And what does your regard get me?”
“It gets you a chance. ”
“A chance at what?”
“Winning her back. ”
Win her. Like she was a poker hand or a door prize. I hadn’t been expecting them to hand her over pretty as you please, but I was taken aback at the notion I’d have to champion my cause to bring her home.
“Win her how?” In a physical challenge I might be okay. A challenge of the wits, I’d stand a sliver of a chance. Fairies were tricksy devils, and you had to think like a crazy person in order to beat them at their own game, but it wasn’t impossible. A test of patience, though, and we’d all be screwed.
“You and your companions will stay with us a brief time. While you are here I will observe you. Once I am satisfied with what I’ve seen, you and I will come to the terms of Miss Rain’s release. ”
“Are you promising me you’ll let her go if you and I can come to an agreement?”
Ah, the careful selection of the word promise. When it came to the fae, there were two words you had to take pains to use only if you absolutely must: thank you and promise. To thank a fairy meant they would hold you in their debt for as long as they chose. A thank you was tantamount to saying I owe you big time, and fairies didn’t take that shit lightly.
Promises were equally loaded, because a fairy’s word was everything. They never lied. Sometimes they would skirt the truth so expertly it would feel like a lie, but it never was. Words had to be chosen with painstaking care when speaking to a fairy. So I had picked the word promise for good reason.
Aubrey knew it too because his beautiful face lost the amused mask it had previously shown and was now tightly drawn with displeasure.
“I said, do you promise—?”
“I heard you. ”
We stared at each other while he considered my question. Then he smiled again, and as before, I didn’t like the gesture one bit. Something told me I was going to be played at my own game. “Yes, Miss McQueen. I promise I will release Miss Rain should you and I come to an agreement of terms. Does that make you happy?”
“Right now it does. I don’t think I’ll be saying the same thing when it comes time to discuss terms, though. ”
Aubrey’s smile didn’t flicker for an instant.
Oh yeah. This was going to hurt me way more than it hurt him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The rules to coexisting with fairies, as taught to me by Calliope:
1) Do not say thank you, EVER.
2) Do not accept gifts. Accepting a gift is acknowledging the fae has given you something, therefore one day they may call upon you to give them something. Nothing comes for free with a fairy, so unless you want them to take your firstborn one day, don’t let them give you anything shiny.
3) Do not eat anything the fae offer you. As much as this one might suck, same rules apply as in number 2. Food is trickier, though, as it was commonly used as a way to bind humans into the fae realm. Once you ate with them, there was no turning back.
4) Compliment them as much as possible. Fairies are more sensitive than a Hollywood starlet who has gained weight. They cannot get enough of hearing how beautiful, clever and marvelous they are. The more you compliment them, the more likely they are to do what you want.
5) Last but not least…spend as little time with the fae as possible, especially on their turf. Everything is different within their borders, from the phases of the moon to the laws of physics. Time itself functions differently in a fae reality.
This last rule was heavy on my mind when a hob—a brownie—guided Holden, Desmond and me to our assigned chambers in the palace. Obviously the shifting-moon-phase issue was getting to Desmond and was acting as both a gift and a curse. A curse because he was clearly in a monumental amount of pain, and a gift because in spite of how close he was to the brink, the weird phases of the moons were keeping him from shifting forms.
At any given moment though I knew his tenuous hold would break.
We were on borrowed time, and the man in charge of doling it out was a fairy king who wanted to play with my head. Hopefully that was all he wanted to play with, because my uterus wasn’t going to be any good to him.
