The Broken Ring
“You take him; I’ll take her.”
“Shouldn’t…I charm her?”
“No. She’d be suspicious.”
The two faeries hid among the leaves, watching the young couple
walk hand-in-hand down the path below them. The strangers had broken the ring, disrupting
the faeries’ path home. Now the Law said they must face the Council.
“Come on.”
With a buzz of gossamer wings, the two zipped ahead of the
couple on the path. In seconds the wings disappeared, the bodies expanded, the
delicate, androgynous fae features widened and sharpened and hardened. A man
and a woman, exquisitely beautiful and draped in fine clothes the same shifting
hues of the forest, now stood in the path. Their movements a little too quick,
their step a little too light, their eyes a little too golden, they advanced
toward the merry human couple.
“Hello, strangers!” the human man called when he sighted
them afar. “Where are you bound?”
The faery woman smiled, her teeth small and sharp. She smelled
gold. The Council would be pleased when these ring-breakers were captured with
an extra bounty in their pockets.
“Where the road takes us,” she said, her voice chiming like a
brook over stones. She fell in beside the human woman as the couples caught up
to each other. “Where are you bound?”
“For home.” The woman looked sharply under her brows at the
faery. “Fritz,” she said.
The human man broke off his bright conversation with the faery
man and turned to look. A sharp scent of suspicion rose from the human woman.
“Now!” the faery woman hissed, though it was too early, and her
companion seized the human man as she lunged at the human woman.
The struggle lasted only a moment, before the two faeries,
loaded now with gold and prisoners, bent their steps toward home.
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