Free Stolen Away by Alyxandra Harvey

arrogant, do you?”
    “Uh.”
Brilliant, Jo
, I thought. I swallowed, forced my brain not to skitter around like a bee at a windowpane. “Where did you come from?”
    “I’ve always been here.” She hovered, letting the light breeze lift her up. Part of me was looking for invisible wires. “You must have been Touched, to see me now.”
    I shook my head as if that would bring order to my thoughts. “Eloise didn’t say anything about you being so small. Is she being held captive by a moth-king or something?”
    Her lips might have been the color of cotton candy, but they lifted off teeth that were sharp as needles, though still not as sharp as the disdain in her bluebell eyes. “Blast that dodgy old poet,” she muttered. “And the bloody Victorians with all their bloody stories.”
    “The Victorians?”
    “Idiots, the lot of them.” She paused, glared at me. “You’re not a writer, are you?”
    “Uh …”
    She sighed, disgusted. “I always get stuck with you nutters.”
    I frowned. “Hey.” Her wings were so thin and translucent, I could see the glow of sunlight through them, like violetpetals. Her hair was a mass of tiny braids. “Um … what does this have to do with the Victorians?”
    “I was tall and stately before them, wasn’t I?” She plucked at her petal skirt. “And I’d never have worn this ridiculous dress. I had proper armor and a sword with opals in the hilt. And then one cursed morning, over a hundred years ago now, I left the rath and some arse of a poet with the Sight saw me. He was so convinced, had believed for so bloody long that fairies were these wee pretty things, that the sheer force of his belief and that of his daft artist friends, eventually shrank me down.” She fanned her wings indignantly. “You try finding a sword small enough to be of any use to me.”
    I was still sitting on the ground, dampness seeping into my skirt. I shivered. “Maybe it’s the flu,” I said suddenly.
    “Don’t be stupid, we don’t get the flu.”
    I rubbed at my face, nearly laughed. “Not you, me. Maybe I have a fever. That would explain everything.”
    She sighed, drifted down to look at me. Even with her impressive wings she was only about a foot long. “This part is so tiresome,” she told me. “Could you catch up? I hate having to convince people that they’re not crazy. Maybe you are, it’s nothing to do with me. And I’m not buzzing about forcing you to convince me you’re real, am I?”
    “Um, no?”
    “Good. Here’s the usual list of rational explanations, none of which pertain here: some sort of drug, it was laudanum back when I got caught; illness; hallucination; trickery; orelse a vivid dream of some sort. I don’t think I’ve left anything out.”
    I swallowed, strangely comforted. “Okay. Know anything about Antonia Hart and why one of your lot would have kidnapped my best friend?”
    “Did you say Hart?” She paled, cockiness fading slightly. “Blast.”
    She was gone before I could ask her anything else, but not before I’d seen the look of stark terror on her delicate face.

Chapter 5

Eloise
    I don’t know how long I sat there, waiting. I’d slipped the pendant back under my collar after Jo’s voice faded away and that felt like it had been hours ago. The contact bolstered me a little, enough that I didn’t feel quite so hysterical. If I knew Jo, she was already researching. I hated that all I could do right now was wait.
    I hated it more when the oak door creaked open and then the silver curlicue grate after that. A guard strolled in holding a small trunk, which he dropped on the rug with a thump. “Put this on, little morsel.”
    I lifted the lid and pulled out a frilly white corset, frilly white petticoats, and a burgundy dress that looked both complicated and revealing. “I don’t think so.”
    He raised an eyebrow, the feather in his hair ruffling overthe black feathers carved into his armor. “Then Lord Strahan will see you naked at his