“It’s just up here.Turn in that drive.”
“Which drive?I don’t see any—oh.”The landscape beside her, which had been the usual countryside standard farm, field, livestock, cottage, barn, field, etc., rotation, wriggled as if water had flowed across it, then morphed into tall gates made apparently of red roses, set into an opaque wall of a crimson so deep a hue it appeared black.Cha was no genius, but even she could catch a clue after a while.The pet human figuring out that she might not see magic like a fae did, but she could tell that this thing where a color looked kind of black and shimmery meant magic in spectrums beyond her mortal understanding.“Ruby magic, huh?”she commented, trying to sound nonchalant as the gates glided open with soundless grace.
Azul glanced at her in faint surprise, momentarily losing his pose of studied boredom.He was tense, she realized, assuming hauteur and practiced indolence as a mask to cover his anxiety.She marveled a moment that she knew this about him so clearly, then set it aside.
“As you say, darling,” he answered with a dip of his nose that seemed longer than it had before, maybe only because he was looking down it so effectively.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”She had a bad feeling.
“What Iwantdoesn’t enter into the decision.”Taking her hand, he kissed it, holding her gaze.“Remember that, Arantxa.If I could do as I wished, things would be very different.But I can’t, and so they won’t.”
Katu sawed a mournful agreement, smoothly following a flowing ley line unlike any Cha had ever experienced.“What is this place?”she asked, mostly wondering aloud.
“Somewhere neither here nor there,” Azul answered absently.“And here we are.”
“In nowhere?”
“Precisely.”
They glided to a halt on a circular drive, apparently isolated in a meadow of bloodred poppies.Cha opened her mouth to ask—and closed it as a palace shimmered into existence.It hurt her eyes to look at it and she shaded them, then had to avert her gaze.“I don’t like this,” she muttered, gripping Azul’s hand as if she could hold onto him forever.Not that she wanted him forever.Did she?“Come with me.We’ll figure something out.”
He smiled sadly, cupped her cheek with his free hand, then pulled her to him, the scent of sun-warmed blueberries teasing the edges of her senses.“I cannot,” he whispered.“You will indeed be a cherished memory, though far from fleeting.”
Abruptly releasing her, he leapt from Katu and tossed her the Moonruby wand.“Be careful with that.”
“The thing barely works.”
“I believe you’re mistaken, Arantxa darling.”He grinned, then turned as if someone had called his name—though Cha had heard nothing.A woman stood on the steps of the palace, strawberry pale hair flowing nearly to the ground.She was breathtakingly lovely and Cha hated her on sight.Well, she would have, if she hadn’t hated the woman on principle already.“Lenorae,” Azul said, bowing formally.
“Your Highness,” she replied, clasping delicate fingers together.“We have much to discuss.”
“So it would seem,” he said, inclining his head graciously.
Lenorae frowned at Cha.“Who is this?”
“No one,” Azul answered smoothly.“My ride and nothing more.”He flicked his fingers and he, Lenorae, and all of it disappeared, leaving Cha sitting in Katu on a slow black country lane, surrounded by nothing but farm.No poppies in sight.
“Well, goodbye, Prince Charming,” Cha said, having planned to snarl the words in sheer offense at the abruptness of his departure, but her voice broke halfway through and—to her utter chagrin, she sobbed, tears suddenly pouring down her face.
No one.My ride and nothing more.
“Get a hold of yourself,” she said out loud, fiercely through the tears.“Since when do you cry over a guy, Cha?Especially one you knew for four fucks.You knew he was candy from the beginning.Enjoy the sweet; move on when it’s gone.”
Except this hurt like he’d been more than that, like he’d been a meal.Like he could have been forever, and how absurd was that?Cha wasn’t a forever kind of gal.Certainly not with a real fae prince.She was the lowly fish trapped in her little pond, gazing at the beautiful winged creatures and knowing they’d always be beyond her.
With a breaking heart, she swallowed the bitter reality of Azul’s feelings for her, of what he’d said within her hearing, quite deliberately.He could have poofed her a moment before that, so he’d wanted her to hear, to know the finality of his words.She was no one to him.A ride and nothing more.That was the truth.
Because he couldn’t lie.
~43~
Truth and Consequences
The rendezvous withthe fence Phinny had arranged for them was satisfyingly shady.No fairy spires in sight, no glittering dust of any color, except for the back alley slow black Katu prowled along.Parking Katu, Cha slid out, approached the smaller, human-sized door next to the big one for cargo rigs and knocked.An eye-level window slid open and Cha offered the passcode Dy had sent.
She slipped through the barely opened door that turned out to be thicker than her body and greeted a cloaked and hunchbacked person of indeterminate gender who’d answered.“Heya, Bandit.Call me Igor,” the person said, mostly shrouded in the filthy cloak, but showing enough of their pitted face for their wink at the ironic name to be obvious.“This way.”
As she followed Igor, Cha took in the busy shop, which appeared to be engaged in filing off the identifying characteristics of any number of magical artifacts.It was dirty, painfully loud, and smelled of old food and unwashed humans.Everywhere she looked, something illegal occurred, and Cha breathed a sigh of relief.This was her element, where she belonged.
