Chapter 23 A Trap Sprung
A Trap Sprung
Cha went with insouciance, her old stand by. She could brazen her way through anything and this little scene wasn’t any different. She’d faced down fae cops and human cutthroats; she could handle having her stupid heart carved out of her chest.
“Hi Lenorae,” she said brightly. “Yes, I’m here, with my partner, who I believe you’ll recall from when you visited her house.”
Dy waved, a pleasant smile on her face that barely covered her intense hostility, a force she leveled on Azul also with palpable heat. Cha could always count on her partner to be in full solidarity when it came down to it.
Azul, stone-faced, didn’t look at either of them, instead staring off into some middle distance.
“I’m really so glad you could be here for the wedding, Bridget,” Lenorae cooed, tossing back the gleaming sheet of hammered rose gold strawberry blond hair that framed her lithe, fairy-delicate body.
She wore a close-fitting sheath of gems that looked like amber beads, strung together with no visible attachments and which matched her widely spaced eyes.
She was impossibly lovely, of course. The best glamour could fake.
“The wedding is going to be the event of the social season, even for royal fae,” Lenorae continued with malicious glee.
“As a human, you must be excruciatingly aware of your great privilege in being allowed to attend such an important ceremony. I know you feel miserably inadequate in such stellar company. His Highness was determined to spare you the potential humiliation of feeling like a unwashed dog amongst your betters, but I was convinced that his His Highness’s human pet should be here to witness this joyful milestone in his life.
It’s only right, don’t you think? His joy is your joy, after all. ”
Cha, for once at a total loss for words, surface polite or fully snarky, stared at Lenorae, the puzzle pieces shifting and rearranging into a whole new picture.
Lenorae oozed smug and stroked Azul’s arm, drawing his attention back to her. “Isn’t that right, my prince?”
He gazed at her coolly. “No.”
She pouted, but he said nothing more. “I hadn’t expected you to be so ungracious about my wedding gift to you, Your Highness,” she said pointedly. “I went to a great deal of trouble to have your pet here and the least you could do is present me with my gift in return.”
Azul turned to her, his demeanor so cold, so lethally sharp, that he seemed to be a blade made of amethyst. A fanciful notion for Cha, who wasn’t given to romantic metaphors, but if he’d turned that look on her—and she was the farthest thing from a fainting flower possible—even she might have wilted.
She had to give it to Lenorae: the fae had guts of steel that she wasn’t the least intimidated.
“So, that’s what this is about,” he said, whisper-soft as an assassin’s blade in the night.
She actually simpered, insufferably pleased with herself. “I don’t lose, Your Highness.”
“Tell me,” Azul commanded silkily. “What was the plan with your tool?” He gestured at Sunshine, currently sobbing in a pitiful heap at their feet.
“That? It hardly matters.” Lenorae gazed at the minor Citrine fae with something between contempt and puzzlement.
“I’d thought to have your pet cleaned up and prepared for you, a nicely wrapped and presented gift, but that was apparently too difficult for this ninny.
Do what you will with her. She trespassed on your territory and I have no further use for such incompetency. ”
Sunshine wailed and slithered over to Lenorae’s feet, pressing desperate kisses to her stiletto-heeled toes. Lenorae kicked at her, not bothering to temper her strength, clearly, because Sunshine flew back and hit the edge of the dais with a sickening crack.
Everyone turned to look.
Lenorae posed, looking as if she’d drawn attention for her beauty and fashion, not her casual violence against a member of the Citrine court.
Sunshine might have been literally lower tier, but she was still highly regarded enough to have been a courtier worth petitioning.
An uneasy silence fell over the once unbearably noisy room, punctuated only by whispers and Sunshine’s pained whimpers.
Cha was certainly no fan of Sunshine, but this public attack and sudden violence seemed…
unseemly. Lenorae was out to prove something, but what?
And who was this woman? Azul had implied—not quite a lie—that she was human.
Dy’s stripping of her glamour had revealed her to be not human at all, though it wasn’t clear what she actually was.
Well, besides some kind of winged demon.
Notably, she’d been red. As, Azul was being compelled into this marriage, and had been from the beginning, and the only fae realm more powerful than Amethyst was Ruby, then it followed that Lenorae was fae of the Ruby realm.
But why all of this elaborate circling around each other?
Azul had gone back to Lenorae once already.
Cha had been right there when she dropped him off into his fiancée’s lap and he told Lenorae that Cha was nobody.
Somehow he’d gone from there and to the Citrine court where it appeared that he wasn’t captive at all, but …
maybe hiding out from the bride he’d escaped once and voluntarily gone back to, but the actual wedding was not yet accomplished and at the same time still pending.
Had Lenorae’s appearance to send Cha after Azul been a ploy to draw him out of hiding for exactly this moment and confrontation?
Cha would bet money that was exactly the case. If so, however, Azul could have saved himself a lot of trouble by dropping a few more hints about what to expect from this court appearance that had been ostensibly to take Sunshine down and had become… whatever this was. If Azul had even known.
Cha well remembered how Azul had initially described Lenorae when he first hitched a ride, fleeing the altar.
Elegant. “Perfect manners. Intelligent, very well educated. Witty, excellent conversationalist. Impeccable breeding. And …sweet. Gentle. Accommodating and graceful. He’d apparently believed that—and that woman he’d described was nothing like the preening, vengeful demon-in-disguise currently tormenting him with Cha’s presence.
The question was: how should they play this gig? She felt like she was gambling high stakes in a game of poker where she didn’t know which cards were wild. Dy met Cha’s gaze, her own similarly baffled and frustrated.
Azul leveled one last look at the weeping Sunshine. “Go,” he told her softly.
Sunshine didn’t need to be told twice. She fled without a backward glance at any of them. Azul looked to Lenorae, who simpered prettily at him. “Now that you’ve delivered my pet—such a well-considered gift—we can be going.”
She laughed, like tinkling bells and starlight.
“Oh, you wish, Your Highness, but I’m not letting your cold feet delay our wedding any longer.
I’m sure even Your Highness is well aware that your human pet and its friend cannot linger much longer in this realm.
Unless you want to feed them and keep them here forever.
” She gave Cha a falsely sympathetic smile.
“You know what fae food and drink does to mortal flesh… or do you?”
“Bad things?” Cha guessed.
Lenorae’s amusement faded. “Humans should be seen and not heard.”
“And fae bitches who have to extort their bridegrooms to the altar don’t really have much of a pedestal to stand on,” Cha snarked back. Yeah, it wasn’t her best retort, but under the stressful circumstances, she’d give herself a little grace. She turned to Azul. “Your Highness, what is your will?”
A flash of Azul’s usual humor came and went in his brooding gaze and she knew he was tempted to quip that she’d never been particularly interested in his so-called will before this. But he also understood what she was asking: how was he getting them out of this? Or, failing that, what could she do?
“We’ll have the ceremony as quickly as possible.
Then, after the wedding, you can go home,” he said gently.
He patted Lenorae’s hand on his arm. “My bride is correct that you cannot linger in Citrine long. You shouldn’t have come here to begin with.
” A hint of his previous annoyance lingered in his voice.
Cha felt even worse about having fallen into Lenorae’s trap at that point. Azul had been successfully avoiding this wedding and now he had no choice but to comply, at the risk of Cha’s life, and Dy’s along with her. Still, they could maybe still get out of this fix.
She just needed a little time to think. That’s all it would take. The strategy would come.
Any second now.
Lenorae positively beamed at Azul, as if she hadn’t forced him into this situation.
She kissed him again, possessive hand on the back of his neck, and Cha fought not to visibly seethe.
“I’m so happy, my prince,” Lenorae purred at him.
“The ceremony will be at midnight tonight and then we’ll dance until dawn, and make love all day. ”
“Sounds dreamy,” he replied.
Cha wondered just how long it was until dawn—and how to break Azul out of Citrine before the clock struck and turned her prince into Lenorae’s captive spouse.