Rogue Fae
Pulling Katu toa halt and tossing the wand aside, Cha vaulted out of the jag and raced to the prince.She doubted he was dead, but if he was only close to death, what would she do?
It would be wrong to just leave him there, she figured.Even a cheerfully amoral creature like herself knew that much.But she also had a job to do and could hardly cart a mostly-dead/dying guy around.What had happened to the staff he’d supposedly summoned anyway?
Approaching him tentatively—even dead snakes can bite—she nudged him with the toe of her boot.Gently.She wasn’t that callous.
He opened fulminous blue eyes to glare at her balefully.“What the fuck are you doing here?”he demanded.
So much for undying gratitude.“You’re welcome,” she retorted.
“I didnotthank you,” he said pointedly.
Rolling her eyes, she surveyed his lanky form.“Can you walk to Katu or do I need to throw you over my shoulder?You’re skinny enough that I could do it, though your masculine pride might suffer.”
He huffed at that, pushing himself up from the decidedly soggy grass.His fine white shirt had absorbed the moisture, along with other best-left-unnamed fluids, and it clung to his lean chest in a way that shouldn’t have been enticing under the circumstances.“I’m not skinny; I’m wiry.”
She snorted.“Pohtaytoh, pohtahtoh.”
“What does that mean?”
“Look, I’d love to chat semantics with you.I’d also enjoy peeling you out of your remaining clothes and giving you a sponge bath.But I have time for neither.Two choices, princeling: stay here or go with me.”
“I could also go my own way,” he pointed out, pushing to his feet without his previous agile grace, grimacing so much as he did so that she took pity and offered him a hand up.
“Grip my wrist,” she advised.To her surprise, he did, a lovely buzz coming from the contact with his skin.
“You could,” she agreed, happy she didn’t sound breathless, “but from my point of view, that’s the same as you staying here.”She grinned.“I’ll remember you always, just like this, outstanding in at least one field.”
He didn’t come back with a witty quip as she expected.Instead, now upright, he turned over her hand, still holding her wrist.“What happened to you?”
She tried to tug away, but he held on.Reluctantly, she followed his gaze, wincing at the state of her hand, which looked as if she’d dipped it in boiling oil for a while, then chopped at it haphazardly with one of Phinny’s kitchen knives.No wonder the fucker hurt.“I got ick all over it, from yon wolfies.”
Frowning, he feathered fingertips over the abraded skin, as red as the monsters had been.Not how she’d imagined him caressing her.Her life sucked unimaginably.“Ichor, you mean,” he corrected.
“No.I meanick.That stuff was disgusting.”She successfully jerked her hand from his grip, turned her back on him, and stalked away.Hobbled, curse it.Throwing up her good hand in the air, which only made that bad arm throb painfully, she called over her shoulder.“Stay or go, pretty boy.It’s all the same to me, but I’m behind schedule from rescuing your fine ass and I have time to make up.”
Unsurprisingly, as she landed in the driver’s seat of Katu, this time holding back the groan of pain, the prince leapt into the passenger seat from the other side.
“Ow,” he griped, fishing under that fine ass and withdrawing both her sword and the magic wand she’d carelessly tossed aside.
“Oops.”She spurred Katu into the middle of the white and spun him in a one-eighty, not above smirking when Prince Charming yipped and grabbed the side.They shot back the way they’d come, taking full advantage of the juice Dy had left them.A glance in the rear-view assured Cha that Dy had set the enchantment to roll up behind them.No sense mucking up the countryside with corrosive pixie dust that wasn’t supposed to be there.“Time to make up,” she reminded him.
“Were we fighting?”he asked, giving a quirk of a smile when she slid him a droll look.
“Funny guy.I’ll take that.Not that.That.” She pointed at the sword when he tried to hand her the pink magic wand.“The other thing you can toss in the back.”
He held onto the wand, however, laying it across his lap as she snatched her trusty sword from him and slid it into the sheath at the side of the center console, then flapped her hand at the renewed sting.
“You should do something about that hand,” he observed.“And the arm.And the leg.You look like shit.”
“Yeah?”She gave him a jaundiced side-eye.“You look considerably worse for wear yourself, Prince Charming.”
The path-box sparkled to life.“Status update, Bandit,” Dy said.
“Peachy keen with cargo intact,” she replied.“I am…” She checked the clock.Well, shit.“A bit over an hour to BX.”
“Howmuchover an hour?”Dy demanded.
