Page 6 of The Court the Fae Forgot
Even as I tried to convince myself of that, the feeling of eyes on my back made my skin prick. The moment I turned around, any fantasy where what had just happened between the fae and me would be forgotten was immediately destroyed.
Because the fae, it seemed, was not gone yet after all.
His carriage waited behind him, the door flung wide to carry him away from the memory of our meeting that I prayed was as painful for him as it was for me. He didn’t move to mount it, however.
His gaze, as before, remained fixed on me.
Something had already changed in the moments, minutes, hours—god knows how long I was writing in pain on the mud-streaked square—since we first had the misfortune of laying eyes on one another.
The glamour around him was dazzling now, making him shimmer like a mirage. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now, I wondered how I’d missed it. He glowed with the magic’s power, as if his large, muscled frame wasn’t already enough to paint him as an unmistakable figure in the passing crowd. The crowd moved between us now, no longer fixated on the fae as they were before—their heads bowed and eyes downcast as if trying to avoid the same fate that I’d faced.
I couldn’t blame them. I could still feel the shadow of the pain that tore through me the last time our eyes met.
I should have been following their suit, should have been keeping a carefully trained eye on my sister before she decided to lose herself again, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away.
Not yet.
Not when the fae watched me back, as if he was studying me as carefully as I was studying him. It was a trick, of course, I was sure of it. There was no way he didn’t know that this was his doing, this bond of pain we now shared brought on by whatever terrible power now emanated from him like a poison seeping into the very air.
We might have stood that way forever, an eternity stretching between us as we tested each other’s determination not to break the other’s gaze if something else didn’t break it for us.
The light shifted for a moment, the sun breaking through the clouds just as it began its journey toward the western sky. It caught on the metal face of a medallion hanging around the fae’s neck, nearly blinding me for a moment. That alone might’ve not been enough to force me to break our gaze, if it wasn’t for what I saw engraved on the medallion itself.
It was a phrase, simple enough on its own.
The Sun Only Sets To Rise Again.
I didn’t know what it meant, but even if I’d dared to ask, by the time I’d registered what the medallion said, the fae was gone. He’d disappeared in the press of the crowd, his towering figure vanishing as quickly as it had come, the only memory of him the loudly trundling carriage quickly making its way toward the outer edges of town.
If I hadn’t been in real danger of losing Ada again, I could have stood cemented to that very spot until long after the last glitter of that gilded carriage had disappeared. It was with shaking arms that I retrieved and started lugging the massive bag of fine-ground flour toward the bakery. I found Ada there, much to my great relief. She stood on tiptoe at the counter, her fingers splayed out on the glass where they left greasy prints to either side of her face. She fogged up the glass with every excited breath she exhaled.
Normally I’d have been right up there with her, not standing quite so close as to elicit a second scolding for leaving my own prints on the glass, but certainly enough to get jostled out of the way while trying to figure out if I could haggle the prices low enough for an extra pastry with sugar glazing. Today, however, my mind struggled to stay focused on a single baked good long enough to consider what I might want. It would be useless to, anyway. Not only had I already promised all my pocket money in exchange for Ada’s silence, but from the way my stomach knotted each time my memory brought me back to my encounter with the fae, I doubted I’d be able to swallow so much as a single bite.
It wasn’t until the bag of specially-milled flour finally slipped from my hands to explode in a haze of white powder that I was finally dragged back into the present. I let out a loud swear and dropped to my knees, my muttered apologies falling on deaf ears when I realized, finally looking up from my new place kneeling on the floor, that no one was actually standing close enough to warrant an apology.
In fact, the usually bustling bakery was empty aside from me, Ada, and the baker standing so far back from the counter that she’d practically begun climbing into the wood ovens on the opposite wall.
The bell above the door jingled as it was thrown open, but the moment my eyes met the woman stepping through it, I saw her face pale. It went from a jolly red to sickly grey in the short span of time it took her to turn heel and run.
It would take an idiot not to understand what was happening here.
I looked down at the half-filled bag of flour tucked between my knees as my stomach knotted even tighter.
So much for hoping the town might let the incident with the fae be forgotten.
I swallowed back the lump in my throat and picked up the remaining flour with a new sense of urgency. My only hope now was to get me and Ada out of here before news spread to whatever tavern my father had surely holed himself up in. My definition of luck was quickly disintegrating. I knew it was pointless to hope my parents would never hear about the incident, but I could hope for enough time to pass that my body, if not my mind, would have time to recover before I had to face further consequences.
The baker had finally summoned the strength to peel herself away from the wall to start wrapping up the pastries Ada pointed to. She kept a close eye on me as I came up to deposit the sad sack of flour on the counter, her fingers moving so quickly that I didn’t think she actually paid any attention to the fact that the small amount of change Ada had placed on top of the glass wasn’t nearly enough to cover the heaping stack of baked goods she sloppily wrapped before dropping the package into my sister’s greedy hands.
Faces had started to gather outside the window, their eyes wide and lips moving in unheard whispers as they looked me over with a sort of judgement I’d never seen in them before. The weight of their stares pulled my shoulders up under my ears as I put my back to them, grateful finally for the hasty way the baker’s hands now reached to weigh the bag of flour.
She paused, however, emboldened by the gathering crowd outside, and allowed her face to scrunch up in a displeased grimace.
“A half bag of flour? That is much less than we agreed on,” she said gruffly, though I didn’t miss the slight flicker in her gaze, as if she couldn’t bear to look me in the eye.
“I’ll make up for it next month,” I assured her, glancing back at the spilled flour on the ground over my shoulder. “It was an … unusual … day.”
She pursed her lips, her glance following mine for a moment before combing back over the scared faces still peering in. Whatever she saw there made her hands shake a little as she reached into her purse for payment.
