“War between Amethyst and Obsidian, with the other realms taking one side or the other.”
That didn’t sound so bad to her.
“Worse than the war that originally fractured the veil between the fae realms and the human ones,” Azul added in a philosophical tone.“Likely with enough wild magic to completely destroy all mortal life.”He smiled placidly when she gave him a sour look.“But I’d do it for you, darling.Allow me to sweep this minor obstacle from your path and let’s not worry about the fate of the world.All that matters is our love.”
“You’re not funny,” she told him with a scowl, covering up the stupid stutter of her heart at the mention of love, which wasn’t possible, as they’d barely met and were as meant for each other as a fish and a bird.“How about a solution somewhere between us dying here or destroying creation in an effort to avoid death?”
“Your wish, my command,” he replied easily, uncoiling with inhuman grace from the passenger seat and leaping nimbly from the carriage, deftly avoiding the ley line and strolling toward the line of Obsidian warriors as if out for a walk.Cha marveled that she’d ever thought him less than fully fae.Even with the glamour, he radiated a charismatic light all his own.
“Bandit,” Dy said through the path-box, “what is he doing?”
“I don’t know but let’s hope it works.”Cha eased Katu forward in Azul’s wake, drawing the Cinnabar sword and keeping it ready, in case he needed back up.
Azul posed there, hipshot, looking unbearably sexy—Cha even imagined a shadow of violet wings in the air around him—waving his hands as he spun some story.Or perhaps sang a song?The Obsidian warriors sagged, their spears drooping, then one by one crumpled to the ground, apparently asleep.Azul dragged a couple of the big men off the ley line as if they weighed nothing, then gestured Cha forward.He leapt in as she pulled up.
“What did you do?”she asked right as Dy asked the same question via the path-box.
“Sang them a lullaby,” he answered calmly.“It won’t last long now that I’ve stopped singing, so we should go.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice.”Cha fired Katu ahead, Big Betty right behind.The depot sparkled with promise, bustling with business.“Not much farther to go.We should be in the clear.”
For the second time, she jinxed herself with her big mouth.A flood of law-hounds poured out of the depot, headed their way on newly laid ley lines.“Fuck me,” she commented.
“It’s almost like you should stop saying stuff like that,” Azul said.
“Amen, Prince Charming,” Dy put in.
“Don’t you two tag-team me,” Cha bit out, understanding a bit more how Dy felt on the rare occasions Cha and Phinny agreed.“Dy, make yourself useful and put on the lightning.”
“We can’t outrun them,” Dy protested.
“You don’t have to.That’s why you have me.”She grinned at Azul.“Ready to make yourself useful?”
“I thought I already did.”
“You did and you will.Don’t glamour us until I say so.Hiding the dirty pics, Goldi.”
Dy’s sigh came through audibly, but she also swept into Cha’s mind, potent and poised to act.
“Time to go cross-country, boy-o,” Cha told Azul.“This is when it gets interesting.”
He sighed dramatically.“Every time you say that I—seven hells!”
Katu pitched over a gully, nearly expelling the unprepared prince, Dy’s impromptu ley line uncoiling bare arm’s lengths ahead of them.It was fast, but rickety-fragile, being spun up so fast on unfriendly ground.Cha whooped, drawing attention as they emerged from Dy’s protective illusion.“Can you pied-piper them?”she called over the wind of their passage.
“Can I what?”
“Don’t you know any human tales?”
“Why would I?”
He had a point, but she growled in frustration.“Use your magic song thingy to get them to follow us instead of Big Betty.”
“I think that’s not a problem,” he replied, craning his neck.“They’re following us—and gaining fast.Why does this feel oddly familiar?”
“Just like old times,” she agreed.An unexpected surge of nostalgia hit her that she and Azul already had old times together.“Only I doubt there’s a convenient sudden canyon down to an Obsidian mine nearby.”
“My heart breaks.”
