Tithe A Modern Faerie Tale Page 0,79

to get them free.

Which was absurd. She was only one pixie girl. She barely knew how to use glamour, barely knew how to use her own wings.

Clever. The word taunted her, the sum of all the things she ought to be and was not.

Think, Kaye. Think.

She took a deep breath. She'd solved the riddles. She'd gotten Roiben out of the court. She'd even more or less figured out how to use her glamour. She could do this.

"Let's go. Please—let's go," Lutie said, settling on Kaye's knee.

Kaye shook her head. "Lutie, there has to be something. If I just think."

They were all faeries. Okay, then she had to think like a human girl. She had to consider things she knew how to do. Lighter tricks. Shoplifting. And she especially had to think about the things that faeries didn't like.

Iron.

Kaye looked back at Lutie. "What would happen if I swallowed iron?"

Lutie shrugged. "You'd burn your mouth. You might die."

"What if I poisoned someone with iron?"

Lutie shifted uncomfortably on Kaye's knee, looking incredulous. "But there's no iron here!"

Kaye took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her mind was racing ahead too fast, she had to slow down, calm down. There might be iron in the Unseelie Court, part of weapons, certainly, although she had no idea where any of that would be kept. It was all over outside here, everywhere.

She looked down at her body. What did she have that was from Ironside? Her T-shirt, panties, boots… the green frock coat was only glamour, after all.

Kaye unlaced her boots quickly. There was definitely iron in them, obscured from directly touching her skin, but there nonetheless. She pulled them off her feet and looked them over. There was iron in the steel grommets, she could feel the warmth, buried under the black plastic coating. There were steel plates buried in the toe of the boots too, although they would be much too big to use unless she could somehow file them down. Kaye took the knife Roiben had handed her out of her frock-coat pocket and began to pry the soles off the boots. There, as the soles were ripped up and off, were exposed shoe tacks, shiny steel nails so small that that they could be swallowed without anyone the wiser.

Kaye took the knife in one hand, a boot in the other, and began digging them out.

Corny was awash in new emotions. He sat on the dirt floor of a massive palace beneath the earth. Courtiers played instruments, and Nephamael fed him fat globes of cloak-dark grapes. Around Corny were creatures, small and large, slaking their thirst, gambling with riddles and a game that involved hurling somewhat round stones.

The world shrank to those grapes. Nothing was better than brushing his mouth over those fingers, nothing sweeter than the burst of each black jewel in his mouth.

"I think you have entirely too much dignity. I command that you dance," Nephamael said to his new prisoner.

Below the dais, a small crowd gathered apart from their regular activities to watch Roiben dance.

The knight's body was a bow string loosed. His silvery hair streamed like a pennant, but his eyes seemed apart from his body, darting like those of an animal that would tear off its leg to be free of a trap. He did not falter, but his movements were sudden, his spirals desperate.

Corny did not want to pity him, so he looked away. A grape fell from the King's hand, but Corny was no longer careful.

The knight danced on as the Unseelie Gentry laughed and japed.

"Too easy. It will take too long to tire him. Whip him as he dances."

Three goblins stepped forward to do as he asked. Red lines opened along his chest and back.

Corny was very glad that Kaye wasn't here now.

"What task shall I set him to for his redemption in my court? I want to keep him. He's been a lucky talisman so far."

"Let him find us a wingless bird that can still fly."

"Find us a goat whose teats are filled with wine instead of milk."

"Yes, bring us a sweet goat like that."

"Boring, boring, boring," Nephamael said and leaned back in the throne. Looking down at Corny, he smiled a smile that was like sinking your teeth into cake.

"You missed a few baubles," he said teasingly. "Pick them up… with your teeth."

Corny looked away from Roiben, not having realized that his eyes had strayed. He did as he was told.

It was hardly a plan, really. Kaye had glamoured herself