Page 10 of Light Fae's Love
Quinn pulls back, his smile diabolical. “Have fun,” he says, his breath at my lips.
Then pushes me up to standing, as he flops back down to the pillows with a laugh.
“You shit.” I shake my head at him, but I’m grinning also as I blow him a kiss. Quinn catches it and presses it to his heart—and I feel his heart give a pleased beat beneath his hand, as if I’ve actually kissed it.
I do have to leave sometime, however; with a wave, I’m off down the wrought-iron stairs, leaving his bedroom behind as I navigate through the Hotel to the place I can get a manticore carriage to the Summer Fae Palace.
As I trot down the steps of the outdoor courtyard where the carriages wait for guests, though, I see Lucca’s man, Alleno Massi, is already there waiting for me with two saddled and bridled Summer Fae riding antelopes.
Dressed in his usual charcoal grey Fae assassin’s gear, knives and a rapier bristling about his person, Alleno is up quickly from his casual slouch against the wall. His clear emerald eyes sear with irritation as he scrubs a hand through his short chestnut hair. His full lips frown as I arrive, making the white scar that tears over his chin more pronounced than usual.
Like most Fae, however, Alleno is still handsome.
In a terribly subtle way I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to.
“Ariana! Finally.” Alleno huffs as he hands me Miritain’s reins, the white antelope that I ride on outings with Lucca. “Does punctuality not exist in your world?”
“Do cell phones not exist in yours? You could have texted me to tell me you were waiting.” I wave my phone at him, then put it back in a pocket of my riding pants. “Besides. I’m only twenty minutes late. Where’s Lucca?”
“Already out at our destination. He got an early start at dawn, supervising the wagons,” Alleno says as he mounts up on his dark grey antelope, knowing I’m a good rider and need no help as I mount up beside him.
“Wagons?” I ask, reining Miritain around so we can set out through the porticos, then following Alleno’s lead as he takes a route west from the Hotel along Florence’s cobbled streets. The morning is bright, the August heat sultry already as I see Fae lounging beneath shop-awnings, rather than out in the direct sun.
That’s saying something for Summer Fae, who love the heat. The day promises to be a scorcher; I’m already sweating as we ride, and Alleno hands me an ornate blue glass bottle from a set of embroidered silk saddlebags behind him.
“Here, water. We’re going to be outside a while in the country; this bottle is enchanted to refill as much as you need.”
“Cool.” I open the lid and take a sip, watching it instantly refill before I stash it away in a saddlebag behind me. “So, wagons? Where are we headed? I thought we were visiting the southern quarter of the city today to talk Lucca up with his people.”
“An emergency arose,” Alleno says. He eyeballs me now and clicks his tongue, urging his beast into a fast walk rather than dawdle. “A blight has hit our western gardens and orchards just outside the city. The farmers there have been suffering this past week as the Summer Fae Scholars investigate what’s causing the blight. Lucca’s out there helping today.”
“Let me guess: his father has done nothing.” I lift an eyebrow at Alleno as we pass into the western hills of the city, where tall trees shade the cobbled street and the manors are more spaced out with ornate gardens and walls surrounding the villas.
“King Archivolio Bellari doesn’t care how much his lower classes suffer,” Alleno snorts as we take a road that stretches wide and flat, heading out of the city into the countryside. “But these farms feed half the city. If they fail, an enormous chunk of our populace is going to go hungry.”
“How bad is it?” I ask, frowning.
“You’ll see.” Alleno falls into silence now as we ride.
As the countryside rolls by, manor homes on the outskirts of the city transition to farms. At first, I wonder if there’s anything wrong with those farms, as vast fields of lavender and mustard, mint and edible greens stretch all around us, perfectly hale under the bright Tuscan sun. We pass silver-leaved olive groves and pear orchards, then nectarines, until I see small, electric-blue mushrooms sprouting up here and there.
They grow in little clusters by the roadside; not just in the soil, but sprouting out of trees, climbing up through trailing vines, and just about everywhere. I see how the plants and soil infected by those mushrooms run with shimmering lines of electric blue mycelium. Before long, everything around me shimmers blue in the hot summer day.
And everything that was once bright and green has turned white and scorched.
“Wow. What is it?” I gaze around now, seeing how the farmer’s fields on every side run rampant with shimmering blue, white, and sickly plants. The orchards fare little better, though the trees seem to be holding out, only the fruit on them infected.
“It’s magical, not organic, we know that much,” Alleno says, as we turn down a secondary road, riding past a village waymarker that says Villa Bello. “It took the fields first, then the orchards; as you can see, both harvests are already lost. Our farmers can re-grow them with magic, but if there’s too much delay, we’ll be past the growing season. Summer Fae magic can’t make much blossom in the winter, even with our tremendous abilities.”
“If you lose these crops, the city suffers all year,” I say as I understand. “Can your people trade for what they need?”
“Because of the King’s strict trade edicts, no.” Alleno’s green eyes are dark now. “He forbids trade with many of the surrounding Lineages that might help us, most of them Forbidden since the War of Rome.”
Just then, we arrive at a town square that seems to have a tremendous aid relief operation going on. Massive wagons pulled by manticores are unloading food and vegetable produce, packaged goods, and more, as teams of Fae scientists in white-gold cleanroom suits survey a nearby pear orchard and dying lavender field.
Gossamer tents of the Summer Fae’s colorful butterfly-wing awnings have been set up. The square is busy; Fae from the entire surrounding area receive aid as some also get medical attention, and have samples of blighted crops they’ve brought in evaluated.
Just then, I see my Fae Prince Lucca Bellari hop down from the back of one of the massive wagons, where he’s helping unload crates of food. He sees Alleno and I arrive and hails us brightly.