Page 35 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

“Hello,” I rasped.

Black, beady eyes appraised me before a smile bloomed on the sprite’s face, revealing a set of jagged white teeth.

“This animated gnat is Eilir.” Maksym crouched into my periphery and flicked a leaf atop the sprite’s head. “Their Radiance is the principal emissary of the denizens of the Lastlight Woods, and one of the sprites who discovered your camp and saved your life.”

My attention bounced between Maksym and Eilir, who was still grinning at me, unblinking.

“Oh,” I breathed as a sliver of reason threaded its way back into me. “Wow.”

I knew then why the buzzing of the sprite’s wings had sounded so familiar, yet I hadn’t been able to place it. Chances were, I wasn’t in a condition I’d like to remember when they found me, but the pieces were there, shrouded somewhere in my mind.

“A lady of few words,” Eilir chuckled as they flew a path around Maksym, much like a gnat would in the height of summer, evading the king’s swat.

“A lady of an incredibly unpredictable number of words.” Maksym rose and started back down our original path, deeper into the second level. “Come now, Miss Wynn. I don’t have all day.”

The sprite tutted, its leaves rustling as it shook its head. “Always missing his manners, that one. Here, I’ll help you up.”

Eilir extended one of its tiny hands towards me, branchy fingers splayed out to a size that was barely the area of my palm. I set my hand over top and expected to do most of the work, but the fucking sentient twig hauled me off the floor.

One buzz of its wings, and I was staggering to my feet in an awkward sweep, almost toppling straight over as I gawked at the wisp of a creature.

I wasn’t large by any stretch of the imagination, but I wasn’t exactly small either. You couldn’t be a waif and be an active service member.

“There you go,” Eilir said before gesturing ahead to where Maksym was already dozens of paces ahead. “After you, Princess Enora.”

“Thank you,” I sputtered.

A soft, wind-like chuckle trailed after me as I hurried after the king, and it took everything in me to suppress a bout of panic-induced laughter.

Not only was I in Grimmoria, following behind its king and mulling over my execution or marriage, but I was now a point of humor for a fucking sprite.

They were sworn up and down to be extinct in all our texts in Odessa, a race from a bygone era who’d seen their numbers decimated through centuries of war and the drain of life that eventually ravaged the Wastes.

But Maksym had said Eilir was one of the sprites who saved me.

Meaning more of them existed. I just couldn’t fathom it.

“Miss Wynn?”

I tensed and found the king was no longer striding ahead of me.

In fact, I was about ten paces away from plowing right into a half-wall that framed a set of stairs. I hadn’t noticed the king or the sprite turning down an offshoot hallway.

They waited at the opening, an unmistakably impatient look on Maksym’s face.

“Sorry,” I mumbled as I hurried over.

The king had the audacity to roll his eyes as he turned and kept on down the significantly more compact hallway.

This one was decorated with various tapestries that depicted dark fae warriors in a concerning variety of brutal acts. Beheadings. Dismemberments. Even the middle of someone being drawn and quartered by beasts with the appearance of horses touched by death.

The victims in all depictions looked remarkably like high fae, with their shades of golden hair and verdant eyes.

I knew, of course, that the dark and high fae had spent most of their history in and out of wars with each other, but my imagination supplied the brutality.

Not that we didn’t have our own tapestries in Odessa that were grotesque in their own ways, but they tended to be locked away with our most historical artifacts.

“Are these your ancestors?” I asked.