He slid her a look.“Recall that there is discretion involved, Arantxa.Out there, I’m not even fully fae, or even mostly fae.”As he spoke, his appearance shifted subtly, his ears rounding, his sharply elegant features softening, the iridescent blue of his hair and eyes dimming.He still looked like himself, but also much more like the frivolous human noble playing at being fae that she’d first thought him.The change was a bit disconcerting.
“I always thought glamour was supposed to make people prettier,” she grumbled, sending Katu down what looked like a stately drive through a manicured park, “not the reverse.”Though evening had fully fallen, the light remained bright enough to make her squint.She had to admit, if only to herself, that she could not have endured full daylight in Moonstone.
Azul picked up her hand, turned it over, and kissed her palm, sending a sensual susurrus through her body, arousing that which had been fully sated not long before, her lustful self shaking off the sleepy bloat and sitting up with renewed interest.
“I appreciate the compliment,” he said, with a sly smile.“But ‘glamour’ in the original sense meant enchantment.It’s only the humans finding the fae beautiful and enviable that gave the word the sense of making something more attractive.”
“Well, losing the wings is definitely the wrong direction, but that could be my personal kink, as you say.So if glamour means enchantment, does that mean they are actually gone, not just invisible to human eyes?”
He considered, and she knew his expressions well enough to know that he was calculating how to explain within the constraints binding him.“Yes,” he answered, grinning when she glared.“Invisible toalleyes, however,” he corrected, “and touch, as you know.”His smile turned intimate, reminding her of when she’d thrown herself at him and generating that answering pussy sparkle she no longer had time to indulge, no matter how alert and now yammering for satisfaction her lustful self might be now.Probably they’d never get to indulge again.And didn’t that just figure.Fuck her life.
~39~
Sex, Lies, and Ley Lines
They left thewalls of Azul’s estate behind very high walls topped with what appeared to be razor-sharp chunks of amethyst, guarded by a faceted, gothic wrought-something gate that opened at their approach and faded invisibly into the walls behind them—and plunged into the whiteness of the Moonstone landscape.
Azul directed her through the rural leys and soon they hit the Moonstone Throughway.Cha eyed their erstwhile sanctuary dwindling in the distance in the rear view, vanishing to a dot, then quickly gone.
“Something wrong?”Azul asked, turned partway in the passenger seat to watch her.
Cha shook herself.Bad enough that she was having all these weird, softhearted feelings; no need to compound that with spinelessness.She produced something that felt close to her usual insouciant grin.“Just very ready to put Moonstone behind me.How long to the border, do you think?”Even at the blazing speeds on the fast white, she agitated to go faster.She also kept wanting to look over her shoulder for pursuing Sugarplums and puttoes.
“Less than an hour, subjective time,” he replied, patting her on the knee.He meant it to be soothing, she knew, but the gesture mostly served to annoy her by making it so clear that he saw through her bravado.
“Ifwe don’t hit trouble.Or traffic.Or troublesome traffic,” she commented darkly.
“We won’t.”
“You’re so confident?”
“I do have increased power still.Enough to do that much for you.”
“Forus,” she corrected.But he only smiled blandly.Yeah, he could clearly handle anything that came at him here.“The fae realms just aren’t for humans,” she said on a sigh, feeling every cautionary tale about humans lost to the fae in the chilled marrow of her bones.Marrow that at least hadn’t been sucked out of her cracked bones by Sugarplums.
“I tried to warn you.”
“Yeah, well, you’re in excellent company with all kinds of people of my acquaintance then, from my parents and siblings, to my teachers and professors, to my lifelong best friend who I can only hope is still alive.”
“You have a family?”he asked, sounding more interested than she’d have predicted.
“Did,” she answered on a shrug.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“For what, that I had them or that I don’t anymore?”
“Interesting question.I always thought humans liked their families and so were sorry to lose them.”
“Don’t the fae like their families?”
“I could be biased,” he answered after a pause, gazing down the sparkling white ley line.“I don’t like mine, for obvious reasons.”
She absorbed that, wanting to ask more, knowing he likely couldn’t say.Plus, he looked sad, so she didn’t want him to dwell.Bad enough that he was headed into this fucked-up wedding scenario.He didn’t need to ponder why his clearly awful royal family had sacrificed him to a situation so terrible he’d run from it.She understood Azul well enough now to know he wouldn’t flee unless he had no other choice.
“I didn’tlosemy family,” she told him, her attention on the flow of the ley line, internal gaze focused on the past, “not to mortality anyway, if that’s what you’re thinking.It’s more that they lost me.I was a problem child,” she continued, glancing over to find him raptly listening.“Always getting into trouble.They were happy to send me to Miss Mulry’s and have done.Not just happy—relieved.”That had stuck with her more than anything, the utter relief on her mother’s face as she said goodbye and went back to the hired carriage that brought them there, Cha’s younger siblings already arguing about who got Cha’s room.
“How old were you?”
