Page 43 of Escape from the Green

"Orgasms are gifts, not favors. Nice try."

"Fine. Then I like a good adventure. And it's been a while since I saw the humans. It's always fun to see what kind of trouble they have gotten themselves into every couple decades or so."

So now I owed two fae I didn't even know favors.

But for Amy, hell, I guess it didn't matter if they wanted my firstborn. Though I had a feeling their interest in me ran more toward protection than anything. Maybe asylum. Or simply bragging rights.

"So, Smoke," Sal tried again a few hours later.

"No."

"You don't even know what I was going to say. Maybe I was going to say I like that new knife you made yourself."

"Were you?"

"No," he admitted, shrugging it off. Like water on his Salamander skin, everything seemed to roll right off this guy. "I was gonna say that it didn't exactly escape me that that is my piece of Unakite in your hair," he told her, hand reaching out, snagging one of her braids with a pink and black stone hanging from it. "Always were such a little thief," he told her, but his tone was warm, affectionate even. "You trying to attract the one, Smoke?"

"I'm saving it to trade next time it is safe to travel to Tenray Square," she countered. But the words fell flat. To me at least. I think the warm inside under all her ice wanted to have a piece of him, even if all she wanted him to think was that she used him for sex.

"Yeah, heard that place is a bit rough lately. Well, rougher than usual. You run into some trouble there?"

"Nothing I couldn't handle," she told him, but her voice had taken on an edge. Like maybe it had cost her. Like maybe it had been a close call.

"Handle, yeah. But that wasn't the question, Smoke."

There was a moment of stony silence before Smoke shot back, words lethal, "Get over me already, Sal," before grabbing a low tree limb, swinging herself up.

"Nah. Don't wait for her," Sal said, shaking his head. "She's following. Just from above." He jerked his chin up to where the limbs were swaying. High. Really, freakishly high. But, I guess, if you wanted to travel The Green without ever being seen, learning how to swing between trees was a vital skill. One she was very practiced at. "It's a careful balance," he said oddly as we fell into step with each other.

"What is?"

"Pushing her," he supplied. "You gotta do it, or you don't get dick from her. But if you push just the slightest bit too much, she flees."

"You two know each other long?"

"She returned my brother's egg to my parents a couple summers ago. Ten maybe?" he said, scrunching his face up a bit. "They were grateful enough not to limit their thanks. So anytime she needed to disappear for a bit to let some storm she created blow over, or when the winters proved too long and she was close to starving, she stopped in, rested, refueled. Can't tell you how many times I saw her show up so bloody or so skinny she was minutes from death. That woman has been through hell. Not that she would tell you what kind, mind you, but some scars speak for themselves. Like yours," he added, nodding toward my back.

"Can't even trust Light fae sometimes," I hedged.

To that, Sal snorted.

"Especially the ones who play both sides against the middle, hm?" he asked as something cracked above us, making both of us stiffen, heads jerking up. But there was no damsel in distress to save. Just a woman who had learned a long time ago to catch herself, save herself, soften her own landing. She huffed out her breath as she hauled herself up from where she'd caught a branch on her way down, resettling on a limb before disappearing again.

"She ever gonna come down?"

"When food comes out, I'd bet," he said, shrugging. "She's skinny again. Her pride won't let her say it, but she's hungry. She won't miss a meal. Judging by your bag, you got a stash. I got one too. She will come down to eat."

I mulled on that for a moment, the idea of the hard-as-stone woman above us hanging around simply because her belly was empty and her pride was too fragile to admit that aloud, that she wasn't always able to feed herself, that the long winters months could take their toll.

"So is it a girl?" Sal asked as our paced slowed, all of us seeming to sense it was time to hunker down.

"Is what a girl?"

"What would make someone like you - someone better never to bring attention to himself - take on the Dark Court, unsettle the balance between it and the Light. It's got to be a girl, right?"

Figuring he would see the truth for himself within another day or so, I shrugged. "Yeah, it's a girl."

"That all you're gonna give me? Come on, Smoke isn't exactly a great conversationalist. Someone has got to pick up the slack."