Page 8 of The Fae’s Treasure

Her eyes. They’re a hazel with a green hue, and her hair is the shade of sunlight on turning leaves, a rich red that gleams.

She is in every way different to my last paramour, with pale skin, lines instead of swells, and a certain worry in her features. Most immortals don’t wear such looks of anxiety. We are timeless. We know our tasks. In the Autumn Court—we are often quite bored. Saz was my excitement.

Too much excitement.

“This thing just piddled on my shoe!” Bonwit hisses, holding the puppy out and looking aggrieved. “Take him, and go fetch your faeling!”

“I... I don’t know how to charm a human or even to use stealth with them.”

“That’s nonsense, it’s in your blood, man!” Bonwit shoves my shoulder with his—well, as near as he can get to it, seeing as he’s a handful of inches shorter.

He’s right. It’s in my blood.

But for some reason, the sight of the woman hurriedly preparing a bottle for my son with such tired worry in her eyes makes me feel as though she is not the human for me to practice my native deceptions on.

“Please, Bonwit,” I mumble, feeling an awful coward. I should storm in, take my son by force, and wipe her mortal memory of the encounter. And instead, I’m afraid. I’m afraid to fumble this, lest I hurt him, or risk his life, or his soul, or... so many things.

I am a coward. A princely, lordly coward who always has his servants do his dirty work.

Bonwit seems shocked by my humbled expression and my plea. “All right, then. We’ll have to wait a little bit. It’s best to wait until she’s asleep and just slip the child out.”

“All right. It’s awfully late for humans to be up, isn’t it? I thought they retired a few hours after the sun set, so as to save their candles and grease?”

Bonwit gives me a pitying look. “Do you never, ever pay attention when your cousins talk about the human realm?”

“I do not pay attention when anyone in my family speaks, at all,” I admit, and we laugh, settling into the shadows. To mortal eyes, that is likely all we seem to be.

“Humans have electricity, motor cars, electric cars, flying planes that cross entire oceans, and little boxes that contain thousands of tomes of ancient and modern knowledge. They want directions to a distant town? It’s in the box. They want to know who will play in the next cricket match? It’s in the box.”

“They match crickets?”

“A amadán,” Bonwit groans under his breath. “You really haven’t paid attention to much of anything in the last dozen centuries, have you?”

I shrug. “What are these boxes called?”

“Mobiles or cellulars. Sometimes just phones. Or computers. Or laptops.”

“And they’re all the same thing?” So humans aren’t little stumbling pups. They’re confusing and surprisingly knowledgeable about everything, it seems.

“I’m not sure,” Bonwit admits. They have different sizes.”

“And what do they know of fae nowadays?”

“They think we’re all girls in tiny dresses with sparkling bums.”

That almost makes me laugh aloud, even though my entire body feels like a knot in a thunderbolt, waiting for the conditions to be just right before I can explode.

“Or, they think we’re all these cruel, vicious royal types with insatiable sexual needs.” Bonwit snorts and gives me a bemused look. “You look the part, I suppose, if cruel sex fiends had such pretty hair.”

“Stop it,” I sigh, starting to plait my almost waist-length red locks.

They’re a similar shade to the woman who holds my son hostage.

Or perhaps she cares for him.

I wish I knew. That’s a power I don’t have, to see into minds. Clairvoyance, I’ve heard it called, or second sight, or all sorts of other names.

“Think you prance about in lofty castles. Wish they could get a look at your ‘estate.’ Tumbledown is the word.”