Uh oh.“Just as well” was always a bad sign, though she could hardly blame him for thinking so, with her certifiable gushing.“We could pick up again later,” she invited, hopefully enough thatthatsounded like a question.
He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, looking off into some distance as they trotted back to the slow black.His white shirt had parted more—no doubt from her ravaging hands—and the lights of the ambrosia station made his skin gleam like pale blue moonlight.“No, it would be a bad idea.I had been thinking, but… no.”
Cha restrained herself from suggesting a myriad of filthy thingsshehad been thinking that perhaps had also been on his mind.“It’s not a bad idea.It’s a great idea,” she insisted, really wishing the word “great” would stop coming out of her mouth.“It’s just bad timing.”
“It is bad timing—and I’m taking Katu’s interruption as a sign,” he replied grimly.
“It was a coincidence.”
“There are no coincidences.Omens are important.”
“You sorcerers and your omens,” she grumbled.
“Only a non-sorcerer would dismiss the importance of such a precisely timed omen.”
She couldn’t think up an argument to that other than “nuh uh,” which—aside from being pointless and juvenile—wouldn’t be accurate, as it was true.Cha was always on the side of luck and coincidences, while Dy was forever chiding her for ignoring very real portents and omens.They’d been arguing about it since their school days and hadn’t come to an agreement yet.Therefore, for once in her life, Cha seized the opportunity to keep her mouth shut and not dig herself in deeper.
She still had time and opportunity to make “later” happen.At least now she knew Azul wanted her as much as she wanted him.If Cha knew nothing else, she knew how to rig the game to win.She wasn’t a champion for nothing, especially when the prize was so very enticing.
She could still win this one.She just had to find the path no one else had.
~27~
Prince Charming Has Left the Building
Reaching the slowblack, Cha gave Katu a last round of chin skritches and kissed him on the head, murmuring to him what a good kitty he was, then sent him back into carriage form.
“Speaking of being a sorcerer,” she said to Azul, as they both slid into their seats and he carefully re-holstered the magic wand, in neat tandem with her stowing her sword, “back at Giant Jo’s, you didn’t need the wand.You hurled those sparkly blueberry fireballs on your own, without any assistance.Or singing.”
“And look how well that turned out,” he replied grimly.“If not for your rescue, I’d even now be married to Lenorae and—” He waved a hand in place of words when his voice abruptly choked off.
“Why don’t you have a lodestone?”it occurred to her to ask.
“I don’t need one.”
Very clipped answer from the broody prince.She could only hope he wrestled the same sexual frustration plaguing her.They glided with maddening slowness back to the Black Thirteen.
“Dy has one,” she said conversationally.No big deal.Just chatting.No way was she going to sit in silence and think about that kiss while he ignored her.“A lodestone, that is.His name is Warg.Nothing attractive about the creature, but she’s attached to him.And, obviously, as ahumansorceress, she needs him to work magic without frying her brains.”She let that dangle meaningfully.
He gave her a long, cool look.“What are you implying?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Seven hells,” he bit out.
“You can trust me,” she insisted, watching the oncoming traffic, thinking his curse was for the proof she’d thrown in his lap that he was far more fae than he’d made himself out to be.That was the only explanation for his being able to work native magic without a lodestone.She eyed a substantial caravan of big rhino rigs, waiting for them to lumber past before she released Katu to climb the ramp, and told herself she wasn’t being a hypocrite by using those words with him when she’d given that little speech on trust being earned.
“Not that,” he spat.“That!”
She followed his pointing finger in the other direction and goggled.The landscape just beyond the ambrosia station seemed to be crawling toward them.“What is—”
“Demons,” he answered before she even finished.“Ginger imps.And, call me paranoid, I believe they’re headed for me.Go.”
They would have to be on slow black when the ginger imps attacked.Famous last words coming back to bite her in the ass.Despite the rhino blockade, she pushed Katu forward as fast as the side ley would take them, which was still slower than they could walk.Once she hit the fast black, she could dodge and weave around the caravan, though there’d be some hurt feelings.Better than dead-them though.
“Faster,” Azul demanded, a hint of real fear in his voice.
“Ican’tgo faster on the slow black,” she said through her teeth.“Got to get to the on ramp.”
