Grey Folk

Chapter 15

Emory's office felt more comfortable now that Midge was seated as a welcome guest upon the wide, black leather couch lining the southwest wall, rather than being rushed through it as an unwanted intruder.

Then she swept her eyes back up to Emory and had to smile. Perhaps the term 'welcome guest' was pushing it, based on that black glare. Still, he didn't frighten or intimidate her. She merely pictured him as a small raccoon, hissing mad, but not really willing or able to do very much about it, and perhaps under the dark mask, not all that mad in the first place.

"This is comfortable," she voiced her thoughts with an approving nod, and Emory's shoulders relaxed slightly from his perch on the desk.

Rita sighed in blissful delight and lolled back against the pillows, clutching her belly, bulging from jam bars and tea. "Your baking is improving so much, Emory."

"My baking needs no improvement," he bit out as if the very idea revolted him. "Midge, why wouldn't you trust me with all of this? I've been letting you stay here, I haven't done anything to you and my village has been feeding you. Surely you owed it to me to confess all you knew, let me prepare for the inevitable fae queen incursion."

She supposed she could not blame him for being upset. The last half an hour had been spent filling in Emory on details of her life in the Faewild that Rita already knew. "Emory, it wasn't personal. In the Faewild, nobody ever trusts anybody, and they are always right. Rita understood that. Which is... perhaps ironically why I felt I could trust her sooner."

"Oh, nothing personal, then," Emory said in a sarcastic mockery of Midge's tone.

"Really, it wasn't," Rita said, kicking her hooves to bring herself lurching back upright. "If you were the faun and I was the Shadar-kel she'd have told you instead, right Midge?"

"Right," Midge said, though she wasn't as certain about that as Rita seemed to be.

"Hm." Emory's feet slipped down to dangle over the edge of the desk so instead of a raccoon, he more resembled a child sitting on a chair that was too high for him. "I suppose how you describe the Faewild is the opposite of how it was in the Shadowfell, where I came into maturity. A Shadar-kel's word is their bond."

"Oh, no, a Fae's word is their bond too," Rita said merrily, crossing one soft-furred thigh over the other. "Have I ever promised you anything, Emory? There's certainly a reason I haven't."

"Hm. Well I'm glad you've had the luxury of avoiding it."

"I have as well," Midge said. "Now that I think about it, we never even had to promise loyalty to Queen Titania. Whenever one of us popped out of the Great Kiln, she would just send us right off to the kitchens to be assigned. Perhaps now that I am free, we can use that little oversight against her." Even as she spoke, Midge watched Emory warily. She didn't know him, had spent barely any time with him, yet she still felt as if she could read him, and right now she read the expression of a man about to reluctantly step over the edge of a cliff.

His dark eyes fixed upon her and he came to his feet, pushing up and away from the desk. He ignored Rita's soft query of, "Emory?" and paced across the large office until he stood before Midge. She was so tall and he was so small of stature that she could comfortably meet his gaze, even while seated.

"Don't bother to protest," he said, voice glum. "I've got orders."

Whipping out his dagger in one blinding flash of movement, he brought the blade slashing down, and Midge cringed back, but a blow never fell. Instead the dagger sliced a clean line across Emory's skin, and bright red drops began to burble up and flow down the curving edges of the blade, slide into the well at the dagger's hilt, and glow an even brighter ruby.