Free To Catch a Queen by Shanna Swendson Page A

forth as she watched people approach and pass by, and all the while, she absently stroked the shawl around her shoulders. It might have been woven from spider silk, it was so filmy, but the colors were more intense than anything in nature, and they seemed to shift. Even if he didn’t need to use it to buy Jen’s freedom, it would make an excellent welcome-home gift, he thought.
    Her eyes lit up when he approached her booth, and he felt bad for not being a real customer—that was, until she said, “Get your own brownie here, sir. You can release him when you need his services, then put him under enchantment and out of the way again when he’s done his work.”
    “That’s not really something I want right now,” he said, suppressing a shudder. “But I was admiring your shawl.”
    She glanced down at it and ran a hand along it. “Yes, my first brownie made this for me.”
    “What do you want for it?”
    “It’s not for sale,” she said, wrapping it tighter around herself. “Does this look like a clothing booth?”
    With a surprisingly strong pang of remorse, he took the figurine out of his pocket and held it out to her in the palm of his hand. “Would you perhaps be interested in this?”
    “Ooooh,” she breathed, her eyes growing wide as she leaned down to look at it. “How did you ever enchant one of those?”
    He started to correct her mistaken impression but thought better of it, instead closing his fist around the figure and pulling it away. “Trade secret,” he said vaguely. “But I might be willing to trade for your shawl.”
    “May I see it again?” she asked eagerly, almost greedily. He opened his fingers just long enough for her to get a glimpse, then closed his hand again. She shut her eyes, and her face showed her internal struggle before she whipped off the shawl and thrust it at him. He handed her the figure and hurried away from the booth before she realized that there was no enchantment on the angel figure—at least, not that he knew of. He couldn’t take that for granted any longer.
    He pulled back on the leash when Beau got too far ahead of him. In this crowd, he didn’t want to trip anyone. A moment later, he saw why Beau was so eager when he glimpsed red-gold curls in the crowd. How had he not noticed Sophie earlier? At least, he thought it was Sophie. He craned his neck to see around and between the people in front of him. She was shorter than most of the fairies here, but as slightly built as she was, she still looked more substantial, more real, and that made her stand out in the crowd. Meanwhile, as bright as her hair was in the regular world, it was dim compared to the unreal hues the fae folk sported.
    He eased up a little on the leash to let Beau follow Sophie. He wanted to see what she was up to at the market. She paused every so often to speak to the people working the booths or to passersby, but mostly she kept moving like she was looking for someone. What surprised him was how little attention she got. She was the queen of these people, and he couldn’t imagine the queen making an appearance in such a public place without causing a bit of a stir. When he’d been with her in the Realm, everyone seemed to know at first glance exactly what she was.
    Frowning, he put his hand in his pocket to grab his clover keychain and took another good look at her. Nope, there was nothing there. Should there have been? He’d barely seen her in months, and in those rare times he hadn’t bothered to look with his enhanced sight to see if there was something magically different about her.
    She did have a bit more of a glow about her than an ordinary human, but she wasn’t wearing a tiara not visible to the naked eye, or anything like that. If there was something about her that said “queen,” she must have hidden it, the fairy equivalent of a movie star wearing dark glasses and a baseball cap.
    But he knew what she was, and she was just what he needed. He closed the gap between them