Chapter 22 #2
“You’re gonna have to clarify, little goddess, because that don’t mean a damn thing to me,” I told her.
“I’m not a goddess,” she said, shaking her head like that idea was insane but she was the one breathing magic into the air all around us, so it didn’t seem like that bad of a guess to me.
“What are you then?” I pushed but she just shrugged.
“I’m yours.” She bit her lip and my gaze traced the movement, the sound of those words on her pretty mouth seeming all kinds of acceptable to me and I shrugged too, realising I wasn’t going to be getting a clearer answer than that as she didn’t seem to have one, so I let it go.
“Alright,” I agreed, glancing at Cassius as he frowned like he didn’t much like the idea of me claiming ownership over this creature who wouldn’t tell us what she was, but she was the one who wanted to be owned, it wasn’t like it had been my idea.
“So, do you think you can manage the disguise thing?
Her eyes sparked with joy. “And then I could stay out of the coin?” she asked breathlessly. “The whole time?”
“Sure. Two disguises. No coin. What do you say?”
She nodded eagerly and I grinned at the bargain we’d struck.
“It’ll take a hell of a lot to train you to pass for a noble,” Cassius muttered, giving me an assessing look, which said he didn’t think I could do it.
But I could trick a whore into fucking me for free four nights in a row and outsmart all of the royal guards on a daily basis, so this sounded like a piece of cake to me.
“Can’t I just ask for all the knowledge I need?” I asked, looking to Kyra who shifted uneasily.
“Well…knowledge isn’t exactly a tangible thing,” she said. “It’s not like creating clothes or riches. The magic would have to affect your mind. The mind and the heart can’t just be changed like that. They’re too powerful on their own, to infect them with magic would destroy them. It can’t be done.”
“It looks like you have a whole lot of work to do if you expect to be able to enter the pageant then,” Cassius said firmly, seeming all too pleased about that limitation to Kyra’s power. “You don’t even stand properly. Your legs are spread too wide.”
“That’s because my balls are so fucking big,” I joked and Kyra laughed. The sound was almost musical, and I couldn’t help but smile at her as she watched me with that burning kind of devotion again.
“Nobles don’t tend to talk about their balls quite so much either,” Cassius added, though I could tell he was amused too. His grumpy attitude barely lifted from his face. But real deep down, I reckoned he was laughing like a street cat at a fish market.
“Come now, if there’s one thing about me that screams noble it’s gotta be my arrogance,” I contradicted. “No one’s so full of themselves as a man with power. And money buys you power.”
“You have a point there,” he conceded.
“Speaking of money,” I added. “Where is it?” It was all well and good having nice fancy clothes, but they wouldn’t buy my way into the palace.
“I just thought it might be a little hard to carry,” Kyra said. “Unless the palace is hiding inside one of the desert dunes? I assumed we had some travelling to do, but if it’s digging-”
“We need to travel,” Cassius cut her off, giving me a sideways look but I didn’t care if she was a little odd, all the best people were in my opinion. It only served to make life more interesting.
“We could really do with a few camels then,” Kyra murmured. “But I can't create a living thing. Maybe I could create enough money to buy some camels and then-”
“We’ve got camels already,” Cassius interrupted. “It looks like we’ll be using them to carry treasure out of here after all.”
“Well let’s just hope that Egos didn’t have anyone following us. Because if he finds those bodies and ours aren’t amongst them, he will hunt us for the rest of our days.”
“I could make stones look like your bodies?” Kyra suggested brightly. “I could just flesh them up and make them all bloody and disgusting, and then anyone who saw them would take a single look and instantly think of you.”
“They’d think of us because they’d look disgusting?” Cassius asked, his nose wrinkling and Kyra nodded excitedly.
I barked a laugh, smiling widely at her plan and nodding my agreement to it. “That sounds perfect. I could kiss you, little goddess.”
“Okay,” she replied breathily and I raised an eyebrow at her as she bit her full bottom lip and heat rose to her silver cheeks. “I mean, okay I’ll do it. The stones thing. Not the kissing thing.”
Cassius caught my eye and I shrugged innocently.
It wasn’t my fault that I tended to have this effect on women – if that was even what she was.
She certainly looked mostly Fae but the unnatural colours of her skin and hair, and the constantly changing features of her face made it impossible for me to say whether or not she was attractive for certain.
I tended to like my women a little more fixed in solid form and a lot less rainbow coloured.
Besides, she’d grown a penis not that long ago which wasn’t really a plus for me personally, though I could think of a few guys in The Den who would have liked that feature.
Especially if she managed to make it a little bigger next time.
Either way, I had a princess waiting for me who was supposed to be the most beautiful woman ever born.
And though I doubted she was anything quite as spectacular as that, I was going to fix my attentions on her for the foreseeable future.
The princess was going to fall in love with me so fast and hard that she would barely be able to catch her breath between the kisses I laid on her untouched mouth.
“Let’s get back to those camels then. I want to see my treasure,” I announced, my attention catching on Kyra as she ran a finger along her bottom lip absentmindedly while her gaze rose to take in the trees surrounding us.
My pulse skipped as I watched her, something about the way she was drinking in the sight of everything like she’d never even seen it before entirely captivating to me.
It made me look more closely at everything too, taking in the vibrant colours of the palm trees which towered over us and the way the dappled sunlight filtered down on us from above.
The scent of the fresh flowers blooming in the grass seemed sweeter as she inhaled deeply, and I found myself following her lead.
The sound of the waterfall permeated the air alongside birdsong, which I hadn’t even noticed until I paused to pay attention to it.
Cassius cleared his throat loudly and I snapped around to look at him, giving his arched brow an innocent shrug as I turned away, moving back towards the falls.
I ignored him as he continued to give me an irritated look, the feeling of his gaze upon the side of my face all too accusing.
But he had nothing to worry about there.
Kyra may have been stunning in appearance and alluring in all kinds of unknown and forbidden ways, but I wasn’t utterly without restraint or common sense.
No. I definitely wasn’t going to be attempting any kind of advances upon her.
I’d take my women a little less silver, as usual, and keep my cock well away from creatures who wielded magic so unnaturally.
I still had no idea what my so-called Blessing really was or what she might be capable of, and I wasn’t going to be letting my guard down around her any time soon.
For all I knew, if I got her near my cock, she’d accidentally turn it into an onion.
“I don’t think he noticed,” Kyra muttered to herself as she started following us. “It’s not weird. It’s normal...well if I don’t reply then how can we have a conversation? No, they haven’t noticed, I-”
I turned to look at her and a blush lined her silver cheeks as she fell silent, her golden eyes widening as they fell on me.
The moment stretched as we held eye contact and I just drank in the strangeness of her as I tried to get my mind around what was happening here.
Magical entities didn’t simply appear out of nowhere.
Even magic-bearing creatures were rare these days, most of them reduced to nothing more than whispers and rumours which circled down to us from the past. The lost gods had taken the magic with them when they abandoned our kind, but it looked like they’d forgotten this piece of it when they went.
“You’re very pretty,” Kyra breathed as she looked into my dark eyes.
I nodded. “I know.”
“I’m not sure it’s a compliment coming from her,” Cassius said with something of a taunt in his voice, and I smiled widely as I turned my attention on him instead.
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you, mate.”
“Oh wait,” Kyra said slowly, shaking her head at herself irritably. “I meant ugly. I keep confusing the two.”
I frowned at her as she passed me by because she hadn’t fucking meant ugly. I was the opposite of ugly. There wasn’t a single ugly thing about me aside from my arrogance and even that was charming most of the damn time.
“No, you were right the first time,” I corrected her, but she laughed like I was the one who was wrong and waded out into the pool before the waterfall, heading back into the cavern so that she could create the decoy bodies for us. I caught Cassius sniggering at me too and narrowed my eyes.
“She’s confused, she doesn’t think I’m ugly. No one thinks I’m ugly,” I insisted.
“ She does,” he said lightly and I cursed under my breath.
Cassius fished his sword out of the water on our way to the falls, strapping it to his hip tightly like that would be enough to stop me from lifting it again whenever I fancied.