Read Online Strangeness and Charm: The Courts of the Feyre by Mike Shevdon - Free Book Online Page B

which were already wet with dew. She frowned again and they were dry.
      "Lovely night, isn't it?"
      "Fuck!"
      When Alex peered beneath the tree she could see a shadowy figure was leant against the tree trunk.
      "Does your father know you use language like that, Miss?" Tate's voice was low and clear in the stillness of the summer night.
      "You near enough frightened me to freaking death. What are you doing creeping around like that? You could give someone a heart attack."
      "I'm not creeping. I've been here all the time. You, on the other hand…"
      She placed her hands on her hips. "I couldn't sleep. I needed a walk." Alex's expression dared him to contradict her.
      "A walk that required you to erase your footsteps?" said Tate, glancing back at the lawn.
      She followed his gaze. "It looked so smooth. I didn't want to spoil it."
      "What I can't figure out, Miss, is why you bother lying to me when you know I can hear the difference," said Tate.
      She looked at her feet and then up at the shadowy outline under the tree. Even now she knew he was there he was still difficult to see. It was hard to tell where Tate stopped and the tree carried on. "Yeah, well. It's easier than telling the truth, ennit."
      "Ennit?"
      "Isn't it? Is it not?" She laughed in the dark. "I can't believe you're correcting my grammar."
      "Where were you going?"
      She looked across the moonlit meadow. "Out. This place is doing my head in."
      "Were you planning to come back?" he asked.
      "Sure, yeah. Got nowhere else to go, have I?" She looked at her feet again, and then up at the gnarly figure against the gnarly trunk. "Were you spying on me? Is that how you knew I was out here?"
      "No."
      She shook her head. "Now who's lying."
      "You think anyone can walk in or out of the High Courts of the Feyre without someone knowing about it?"
      "Did I trip the alarm?"
      "Better than alarms," he said.
      "You were following me."
      "I was waiting for you."
      "Are you gonna tell Dad?" she asked.
      "Tell him what?"
      "That I was sneaking out."
      "I thought you were going for a walk?" he said.
      She tried to make out his expression under the shadow of the tree, but it was impossible to read in the deeper shade near the trunk.
      "Yeah, right," she said.
      "Let's walk then." He separated from the trunk and walked out so that the moonlight slid across his shoulders. The bleached light made his long hair seem grey.
      "How old are you?" she asked, moving out into the light alongside him. They began walking gently around the perimeter of the lawn.
      "That's a very forward question, Miss."
      "Don't ask, don't get. That's what Mum always says."
      "Does she, indeed?"
      "So how old are you?"
      "Very." He said.
      "How old's that?"
      "What's the oldest thing you know?"
      "What, like animals and stuff?"
      "Anything."
      "The Earth. That's the oldest thing, ennit? Isn't it?" she corrected herself. "Or the sun. That's older, I s'pose.
      "I am younger than the sun," he said, "and the Earth."
      "Well yeah, everyone is, aren't they."
      "Not so old after all then." There was a low sound that might have been soft laughter.
      "What about… that tree." She pointed to an oak with a huge canopy at the edge of the grass.
      "I remember it as a seedling."
      "Really?"
      "Perhaps."
      "What about my house? My mum's house, I mean."
      "That is not even as old as the tree. There was a time before the houses were built when all that estate was farmland, much as you see beyond." He nodded at the fields laid out under the moon. "Before that, not even farms."
      "That's harder to imagine, somehow," she said. "It's like my house ought to be older."
      "It's what you grew up with," said Tate.
      "What did you grow up with?"
      "Forests. The deep woods and silent streams that were there long before mankind forced itself on the landscape."
      "How old are