We held each other’s gaze for a long moment. I saw everything that was boiling away inside me reflected in her eyes: my worry, my love for Geordie, the fierce need to protect those I loved. Then I nodded my head to her and stepped away.

Galfreya

Tatiana’s court lay one step sideways from the Harbour Ritz Hotel in the world of men, but this afternoon the court’s council was in one of the small conference halls of the hotel itself, its members gathered around a large round table set in the middle of the room. Guards stood on either side of the door to keep outsiders at bay. Inside, the small group sat around a table uncluttered by paperwork or any of the paraphernalia one would find in the business meetings of men. The only commonality was a plastic bottle of spring water in front of each individual.

We’re like Arthur’s knights, Galfreya thought, except while everyone gathered here could certainly fight, they were none of them warriors. And perhaps, it could also be said, they weren’t nearly so selfless and clear of heart as those knights of old. Or at least as the knights were remembered and revered in legend. Humans always fared better in Story than they did in real life. Story allowed them time to polish their better traits and cover up their baser ones with a glitter of words and edited takes on truth.

Fairy were probably more particular than humans when it came to their reputations, but they were only concerned with how they were perceived in the ever-present now, in the footprints they left on the world itself, rather than how they were remembered in Story.

Fairy were rarely interested in participating in Story. When it caught you up in its pages, especially here in the real world, it was a messy and dangerous business. And there were no guarantees for a happy ending. It was too much like History, dusty volumes stuffed away in some dark corner of a library, and fairy had no patience for anything so cut and dried.

No, Galfreya decided, their only resemblance to the Pendragon’s men was how they were gathered at the sacred circle of a wooden table to consider the fate of their world. In their company, they had no knights errant, no ambitious purveyors of their place in Story. All they wanted was for this crisis to be over and done with so that they could return to their normal lives.

Except that wasn’t going to happen. Not unless they came up with a miracle.

Looking around the table, Galfreya didn’t see the makings for such in the grim faces of her fellow councilors.

When she’d first come into the room, she’d been surprised at the small size of the council Tatiana had called. Were they really so few now? she’d thought. But then she realized exclusions had had to be made.