Page 65 of Foundling

Slinky trilled unhappily, licking the blood from his fingers before nudging his face.

“Sorry,” he sighed, “I know I’m bad company.”

The marten cooed, scrambling up his chest to lay herself over his neck to keep him warm.

“Thank you, my friend.” Attalus nuzzled her soft underbelly as his eyes slid shut. Just those few bites and words were enough to threaten oblivion.

Before he succumbed, he thrummed along the tenuous bond pulled taut between him and Leita. He didn’t know if she could feel it, so very far away, but he hoped she did.

He had to beat this cursed venom. He had to be strong, for her. But damn did he wish she’d come back soon.

Leita’s chest twinged just below her heart. It was a strange sensation, not quite pain, not really an ache. It made her want to take a deep breath, expand her chest, and walk forwards.

Well, she had been sitting for a while.

Taking the excuse, Leita abandoned her desk, littered now with maps, charts, and tomes of numbers about various mining plans. She’d dedicated most of the morning to deciphering it all but with little understanding to show for it.

Would it be wholly unreasonable of her to defer to Inara’s opinion on the matter? She knew she’d asked to have things brought to her in the beginning, but that was before Leita understood the true scope of both the faelands and its Queenship. She didn’t know a thing about finance or mining or running an economy. While she did her best to learn, she wasn’t discovering any latent talents in the subjects.

Bending at the waist, Leita tried to stretch out the discomfort. Perhaps it was something she ate.

Her tour of the new eateries of Fallorian had been—well, Leita thought it a success, but Charis had been tepid, her smile forced. Unsure what she could’ve done wrong, Leita had merely shrugged and considered it a job done.

On Charis’s suggestion, the palace had begun serving the same food as that offered in the city. Leita had thought this was always the case; never one to stand on ceremony, it was usually just Charis, Tamerlan, and a few elders who’d taken to formal dinners in one of the bare dining rooms. “The palace should lead by example,” Charis had said upon her first plate of food some months ago.

Leita herself was happy with a handful of nuts or a cluster of grapes. She rarely bothered with full meals, heading down to the kitchens to grab a quick something whenever hunger found her.

So, she’d been unenthusiastic to find that the food being prepared in the kitchens had changed, and most of it was indeed quite bad. Tasteless gruels, gritty breads, overcooked squash—all of it was edible but unpleasant. Even Charis, polite to a fault, grimaced through each meal.

Leita had to remember not everyone had spent their life in the wilds, subsisting not on magic but whatever they could find.

“We must convince them that consuming food and drink can be a pleasant experience. The better it tastes, the more they’ll eat.” Charis’s logic was sound, as usual. And so Leita had agreed to spices and other more expensive foodstuffs being added to their next shipments from Balmirra.

Inara had huffed and puffed. “And how will we pay for these spices?”

Grinning evilly, Leita had replied, “The Queen of Balmirra owes me.”

She had to hope that as better, tastier food flowed into Fallorian, the matter would resolve itself. Leita couldn’t shove sustenance down every fae’s throat. At least, not without considerable effort.

That should’ve been one less weight on her shoulders. One more problem solved. Just a few more now and she could finally go back for—

“My Queen…”

Leita looked up in alarm, more at Carenza’s tone than words. Her attendant had been sitting comfortably, reading as Leita studied, but her fearful gaze now fixed on something out the open double doors, past the bedchamber balcony. Leita looked too, past the billowy gossamer curtains and marble balustrade, out to the sparkling sea and the horizon.

Not that far out, dipping and banking on an updraft, flew a formation of dragons.

Without thinking, Leita strode barefoot across the chamber to the open doors, standing in the threshold to watch the blatant display.

The fae didn’t claim the sea. Its magic was too deep, too tumultuous. When fae had to sail, they clung to the coast, and the border didn’t project out into the water.

Even barely out at sea as they were, the dragons were able to fly low. In full view of the palace and Fallorian’s harbor.

The chamber doors flew open, Marcades and several guards rushing inside. Charis and Tamerlan followed close on their heels.

“Back away from the open air, my Queen!” cried Marcades.

She couldn’t. Not with the cold, vicious rage burning in her belly.