“Ten.That was the youngest you could board a kid.I was lucky Miss Mulry’s took me on as my family was poor.Scholarship student, you know, on account of my extremely awesome ley-riding talents.”She smirked at him, but he was frowning.
“How bad can a ten-year-old be?”he asked.
She rolled her eyes.“You know me.”
“Yes, I do, and you’re not a problem person.”
“I’m incorrigible,” she confided with a wink.He still didn’t smile.“Oh, come on!I’m badass.I’m the Bandit.I didn’t earn that rep by being all law-abiding.I didn’t think you harbored illusions about me that way.”
“I know not many people would have picked up a rude, stray prince on a rural back ley.”
“You were understandably out of sorts, what with the fell wolves and all.Besides, I thought you were pretty.Never could resist a bit of candy, you know.”
“Softhearted,” he whispered, smiling now.
“See how you are with the insults?”she huffed.“Dy is the softie.Everyone knows it.She’s going to be broken-hearted about Monat.”
“Like you.”
Sighing, Cha wrestled the unexpected surge of grief.She and Monat hadn’t been close, but they’d been friends.She’d been too busy worrying about her own shitty fate before to give way to the very real sorrow over Monat.Even worse would be having to tell Dy.Cha couldn’t think about it too much and keep herself together.Azul was watching her closely, maybe seeing the dank emotions that threatened to sap the ferocity she needed to keep going.
“I’m sorry for Monat’s shitty fate,” Cha said with deliberate lightness, shrugging it all off.“She was good people and didn’t deserve that end, but I was mostly upset that I nearly ended up the same way.Anyhow,” she continued when she saw he was about to insist she possessed some kind of sweet, gooey center, which she emphatically did not, “my mommy didn’t want me, my daddy left early, wah wah.I don’t know about fae, but that kind of tale is more common in human families than the opposite.Getting dumped at Miss Mulry’s Academy for the Magically Gifted was the best thing that could’ve happened to me because that’s where I met Dy.Speaking of…” She frowned at the path-box.“This thing stopped working when I crossed into Moonstone.Can you whammy it better, now that you’re all full of Amethyst piss and vinegar again?”
“I contain neither piss nor vinegar,” he replied in a snotty tone, passing lightly caressing fingers over her hand, telling her without words that he would let the topic go.Continuing the movement, he spun a web of violet magic that formed a net around the path-box.“If Dy is in range, she should answer.Use the amethyst channel.”
“There is no amethyst channel.”
“There is now,” he replied, looking all smug and self-satisfied.
“You know, you could have been a lot more useful before,” she grumbled.
His smile faded, leaving him broody again.Grief and anger, she realized, just like her own demons.“I’m aware,” he said with biting regret.
See?She wasn’t a good person at all.“Sorry,” she muttered, and he waved off the apology.She tapped the path-box until it turned purple—an unearthly shade that didn’t occur in nature, at least, not in the human realms.“Oh, that little display won’t raise brows or anything,” she told him.
“You should probably not use it in mixed company,” he suggested, unrepentant.
“Goldilocks, Bandit here.You out there?”The box shivered with waves of lavender and she threw Azul a look.He shrugged.
“Bandit!”Dy’s voice came through with frenzied relief.“Where in the seven hells are you?”
Cha’s lips actually wobbled with emotion at the welcome sound of Dy alive.“In the Big White, headed for the reverse BX.You?”
“I’m at the rendezvous and you’re nearly three hours late.I was starting to worry!”
Three hours?Azul looked amused at her stunned reaction.“I told you time moved differently in the… ‘big white.’”
“You don’t have to put air quotes around it,” Cha told him.“You are so uncool.”
“Is that Prince Charming?”Dy asked, her voice rising to a screech.“Bandit, if you’ve been—”
“I haven’t,” she interrupted and Azul raised a brow at her, making a shocked face.Well, shehadbeen, but… “It’s a long story,” she amended.“I’ll tell you later.Can we still get through?”
“I hope so.We’ll be hitting the work-around in daylight.”
“We will?”
“Um, yeah.”
