“Thanks.” Eli wriggled free. He wasn’t sure it was as simple as that, but maybe Rey’s lifewassimple, compared to messy mortal affairs. “So you’ll do it?”
Rey drew back, his expression darkening. “You’re trying to trick me into agreeing.” Eli sat there, staring at him, until he sighed. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Why?”
“Because it might be impossible,” he said. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe it’s better to show you.”
“Show me?” Eli turned to look back at the cart. “You don’t have it hidden in there with all that nonsense?”
“Nonsense? The magical soap is actually useful, believe it or not, even if it isn’t really magical. And no, I didn’t throw it in my cart. I hid it in a spring.”
“Oh, yes, that’s much safer.”
Rey squinted at Eli. “You aren’t much like your ancestor, you know. He had the respect to treat me like a proper spirit.”
“And he was killed,” Eli said, getting to his feet. He held out a hand. “Swear to help me return the king of the Wild Hunt’s sword, then. Right here, right now.”
Rey stared up at him, looking like he might turn into a fox and bolt off at any second. Then, to Eli’s surprise, he took his hand.
“If it’s possible,” Rey said. “Then yes, I swear.”
“Good.” Eli released him. “Then let’s get started.”
Chapter
Four
Eli de Valois had to be the strangest noble Rey had met in his life.
For a while, he was certain Emeric held that title. Emeric de Valois was an unusual fellow, straddling the line between the real world and the one the Starian spirits traveled. He left gifts in tree hollows for the Green Man to find and served as a knight in King Tristan’s mortal army before Tristan had become the king of the Wild Hunt. Despite seeing beyond a veil most Starians preferred to keep tucked away, he had been a cheerful, amiable man with a fondness for small creatures. He had a gentility to him, a polish that even his fellow nobles couldn’t quite accomplish, and Rey had fallen in at his side like a lovestruck puppy.
Then it had all gone wrong, and Rey found it was easier not to seek out nobility in mortals again.
Eli, on the other hand, had about as much polish as a brick.
“What on earth are you doing?” Rey asked, standing next to Unicorn while Eli straddled a crabapple tree. It was too high for Eli to reach the upper branches, but too thin to climb properly, which left Eli scrambling inelegantly as he shook crabapples down to the grass.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Making love to a tree?”
Eli rolled his eyes, shook a few more branches, and then dropped down. “They’re not normally this ripe right now. You want any?”
“Crabapples? Gods, no.”
Eli shrugged and bit into one raw, then proceeded to fill his pockets with as many as he could manage. When his pockets were stuffed, he returned to Rey, paused, then dug up a lump of grass at his feet.
“Onion grass,” he said. Despite the dirt still clinging to it, he shoved the grass in a pocket with the crabapples.
“You know I have food in the cart,” Rey said, wondering just what an onion-spiced crabapple would taste like.
“Good for you, but no thanks. Can’t have any.” Eli patted Unicorn, who sighed and started walking again.
“Why?” Rey eyed Eli from Unicorn’s other side, trying not to be too obvious. Now that he had a better look at him, Eli did seem a bit skinny, and he had dark circles under his eyes that could have been from hunger. “I don’t mind.”
“I’m sure you don’t, but I can’t. It’s part of the curse.” Eli bit into another raw crabapple. “No taking food any mortal offers me. No shelter, either.”
“So, like a knight,” Rey said. “Or a squire, actually. It was a thing in old Staria—in order to become a knight, you had to live on your own merit for a year.”
