She was pushing a cart of food and treats, and she was clad in her usual strips of gold fabric, an outfit I wasn’t much of a fan of personally. As Minerva’s army General, the Queen knew I was in a vulnerable position. She’d spent a few decades exposing me to a concentration of magic and manipulative tactics of sex demons, sirens, and similar creatures whose mere purpose for existence was persuasion, so I wasn’t receptive to Siena’s attempts to seduce me, which seemed never-ending.
“So who’s the lucky bird?” Siena bit her lip and raised an eyebrow in anticipation. “Come on, you can tell me. This is my forte.”
“What are you up to?” I wanted to change the subject as fast as possible.
“Oh, come on,” she trailed her black nail gently along my arm. “I wanna know. Whoever she was, she put a smile on your face that I haven’t seen before. I bet I could do the same if you’d take a ride…” She leaned up to whisper in my ear, which only served to make me tense and wildly uncomfortable.
The good thing about sex demons was that they could sense when their advances were falling flat. After a moment, she pulled away and returned to leaning on her cart.
“I’ll get you one day, pretty boy,” she winked.
I relaxed when she moved away from me and sighed. “So, what are you up to with that?”
“Hm? Oh, the reaper from the fae world is here to speak with the Kings. This is for her.”
I felt myself perk up considerably when she mentioned that. I hadn’t met the reaper, and I knew she wasn’t a Seelie, but she was still a fae, and they had sent her to help take care of my home. “Are you on your way to see her now?”
“Yes. Are you looking for dessert, General?” she smirked.
“Can I come with you?”
The sex demon shrugged. “Sure, come on. You’re no fun.” She pouted and resumed pushing the cart. I made a point to walk next to her so she couldn’t insinuate that I was trying to look at her ass.
“How long is she here for?”
“Not sure… at least a few hours. It depends on what the Kings need from her. Have you met her?”
“No, not yet.”
“Reapers are a strange breed. I like Myrcedes, of course, but she’s different. They’re mostly loners. Serriah’s like that.”
“What is she again? A brownie, or-”
“An elf.”
“Right.” I wasn’t usually a fan of elves, but I told myself that she deserved the benefit of the doubt, as well as my utmost respect.
Siena knocked on a large door before opening it. “Yoo-hoo! Serriah! I have some food for you.”
I followed the sex demon into a small meeting room with a table in the middle and about eight chairs around it. Sat on the far side of the table was a woman who looked young, but I didn’t trust that. Elves were particularly youthful. Her ears were sharp enough to be considered weapons and peeked through the thick curly locks of hair. Her skin was dark brown, but her eyes were gold, like mine. Fae eye colors were usually golden, brown, blue, or white, but gold was the more common shade. Something about sharing an eye color with the unfamiliar fae comforted me. I knew no matter where I was, I was still the same creature with the same home, just like she was.
“And a visitor,” the elf added.
“Yes!” Siena grinned. “This is Kal-”
“You’re the General,” she interrupted the sex demon. “The one they banished?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes. Kalian.”
“Nice to meet you,” she nodded. “Serriah.”
I nodded back at her. Siena looked back and forth between the two of us before giving an awkward smile. “Well… I’ll be going then. Come find me if you need anything else, Serriah. I don’t know when the Kings will be back, unfortunately.” She nodded slowly, and both Serriah and I looked at her until she backed out of the room and shut the door.
When we were alone, Serriah looked at me patiently.
“Would you mind if I asked you about the state of things at home?” I asked. I’d only had more questions after my conversation with Pukk the night before.
“No.” She got up and walked over to the cart, filling a plate with smoked ham and some fresh vegetables.
“No, as in… no, I can’t?” I blinked, feeling nervous for no discernible reason.
“No,” she chuckled, sitting back down, paying me no more mind than was necessary. “No, as in no, I don’t mind. Sit. Eat. Ask.”
“Oh, alright.” I grabbed a plate and a bit of food and sat down a few chairs away from her, not knowing where to start. “What’s going on there?”
“Nothing helpful,” she spoke in between bites. “The council has been deadlocked. And now, one by one, fewer and fewer of them have been showing up to meetings or making public appearances. The citizens of the realm don’t know why, and they don’t care. They feel abandoned and scared. Many of them dislike having an elf in charge. You understand that, don’t you?”
I froze and looked up at her, tense. “I-I don’t know what… have I done something to offend you?”
She shrugged, not a trace of anger or malice in her face. I was impressed with that. “Not recently.”
I waited in silence for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. “Then, when?”
“About twenty-five hundred years ago, I think? When Minerva tried to impose restrictions on elven living, travel, and reproduction.” I looked down at my plate and felt her eyes on me. “Yeah, it wasn’t a good time.”
“How do you know about that?” I looked at her curiously. Elves lived life spans only a few decades longer than humans. It was the only saving grace from that debacle that no one whom it affected was still around to talk about it. “How old are you?”
“There are records all over the universe of histories that
