Chapter 29 Wake-Up Call
Wake-Up Call
Cha didn’t know if it was the disorienting jolt of the transition from one fae realm to another that woke her, or the fact that Azul was awake in the claustrophobic dark of the cubby. And somehow still staring at her.
She also didn’t know how she knew. He hadn’t moved or spoken.
His shoulder under her cheek was no less bony and forbidding.
She should probably add him being able to see in the dark to his list of preternatural abilities.
Still, she was aware of two things for sure: he was fully awake and alert, and they’d crossed into a different fae realm.
What she wasn’t sure of was which one. She really hoped it was Obsidian, but she doubted her luck there.
“Moonstone.” Azul’s voice came cold and remote in answer to her unasked question.
“I would ask why I have awakened from an enchanted sleep in Moonstone when I’m supposed to be getting married in Citrine, but I expect I already know the answer to that: Arantxa Evermore, generator of chaos. The Bandit lives up to her name.”
And here it was. It some ways it was a relief to have the suspense over with.
She’d been rehearsing this fight in her head ever since she made the decision to smuggle him out.
“I won’t tell you I’m sorry,” she said, turning onto her back and speaking into the darkness.
“Because that would be a lie. I’m not sorry in the least.”
“And you aren’t going to tell a lie.” His voice brittle. “Not you.”
“Not about this. And I didn’t break my promise. I only promised to leave Citrine that night and I did. I never said I’d leave you behind.”
“You bargain like a fae.”
“No need to hurl insults,” she cracked.
He didn’t reply, unless a long, deep sigh counted as one. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he finally asked.
“Saved your ass?”
“Destroyed it, more like. You need to let me out of this… human coffin you’ve stowed me in.”
Cha considered the implications of that order. Why hadn’t he simply let himself out before she was awake? “Hmm,” she pondered aloud. “I have a lot of needs, but that isn’t something I’m feeling.”
“Arantxa,” he ground out. “You are testing me sorely.”
“Am I?” she countered in an innocent tone. “I think I’m protecting you.”
“You’re going to destroy everything I sacrificed for.
” Now he sounded despairing. “Between you selling the Citrine fae agnicurna and making me miss my own wedding, I won’t be able to come back from this.
You’ll ruin me. I trusted you as I’ve never trusted anyone and I will never forgive you for betraying me. ”
A rill of fear ran through her, along with unaccustomed guilt.
She wasn’t afraid of what he might do to her, no, but she found herself terribly afraid in that moment of losing him forever.
Which made no sense as she’d already lost him forever once before.
It had hurt. A lot. But she’d survived. Maybe because she’d believed he hadn’t truly wanted to leave her, that he’d been forced to by circumstance and might have chosen otherwise, given the opportunity.
Now he sounded as if she’d crossed a fatal line and done the unforgivable.
And she supposed she had betrayed his trust, but it was for his own good, wasn’t it?
She was human, as every damned fae seemed intent on reminding her, and tricky fae politics and their internecine wars had nothing to do with her.
The fae were happy enough to conduct their power plays without regard for humans, so why should she care?
Except she cared about Azul. Too much. She’d never meant to harm him, only help him. And she supposed this outcome was typical for her. “Generator of chaos” wasn’t wrong.
She flailed internally, having no idea how to handle this.
She had no way to grapple with relationship things.
This was why she’d always stuck to casual encounters.
The prospect of Azul losing his regard for her—which had always been there, despite everything else—made her heart twist in funny, decidedly unpleasant ways.
She really wished she wasn’t crammed up in this tiny space with him, the scent and feel of him all around her, making her hungry for him the way wafting smell of cooking dinner made you suddenly feel starving.
It didn’t help that she was actually hungry for food and desperately thirsty.
Since they were still in Moonstone, she couldn’t do anything about that.
A thought that only intensified the dread foreboding that she couldn’t do anything about losing Azul again—still?—and this time not due to him and his secrets, but because she’d royally fucked things up.
“No smart retorts?” Azul finally asked, voice drier than her throat. “I’d call it a miracle except this is a disaster. What’s the catastrophic version of a miracle?”
“Why did you tell Lenorae I was ‘no one’?” Cha asked, the question slipping out before she’d realized that had risen to the top of her tumultuous thoughts and feelings.
“What?” He sounded legitimately surprised.
She turned on her side, even though she still couldn’t see him in the lightless space, because she wanted that sense of looking at him. “When I dropped you off in the neither here-nor-there place. You told Lenorae that I was ‘no one’ and your ‘ride and nothing more.’ Why did you say that about me?”
“I wouldn’t say that name too many times if I were you,” he cautioned.
“Why—is it her real one?” Cha was instantly intrigued. If so, perhaps Dy could put a whammy on the fae woman. Or Cha could save up to have a black magic mage do it.
“Of course not, but it has some summoning power regardless. Unless you want her to find me faster than she will inevitably do, then I suggest you refrain. I’d prefer to remand myself without embroiling you. Yet again.”
Cha thought about that. Maybe that meant he still cared about her wellbeing. Otherwise, why not consign her to the fell hounds and other fae retribution along with him? “You didn’t answer my question,” she pointed out.
“Let me out of here and I will,” he suggested.
“Let yourself out,” she snapped, her nerves fraying. Better to be annoyed than this devastated guilt. “I’m not your maid.”
“No, you’re my human pet. A poorly trained one.”
“Ha ha. Speaking of which, would you take this fucking collar off of me already? I couldn’t find the catch.”
“I thought perhaps you’d grown fond of it. The look does suit you. My feral beast.”
Did she mistake that he sounded affectionate there? She didn’t know which way was up—and not only because of the darkness and the Moonstone transition. “You’re being evasive.”
“I’ll give you two for one, I will answer your questions and take off the collar, if you’ll let me out of wherever we are.”
“In a secret compartment inside Big Betty,” she told him helpfully, additionally intrigued that he hadn’t known.
Usually he seemed to know every damned thing, including that they were in Moonstone.
Was it being in Moonstone? He’d had that one-time telepathic conversation with her in Moonstone and nowhere else.
“Tell me this,” she said, since he hadn’t acknowledged that information. “Why can’t you let your own self out?”
“Because it’s been lined with iron,” he bit out. “One of the few materials I can’t manipulate.”
Oh. Had Cha known that? Dy was forever tinkering with her inventions. “Is it painful?”
“You enchant me into unconsciousness, pack me into a crate like an animal, smash the crate against a wall, and then drop me in this coffin and now you ask if any of this is painful?”
“I hoped you might not remember any of that,” she admitted weakly. It did sound bad, put that way.
“Well, I do remember and I want out.”
“Because you’re in pain?” If he was, she couldn’t justify inflicting more on him.
He let out a groan of frustration. “No. I just can’t do it myself. You have to open the door.”
Interesting. “If and when you get out of this cubby, what will you do?”
He was silent a long moment. “That’s my business.”
“Call me a busybody,” she suggested. “Inquiring minds want to know.”
“Then you shall have to stew in your curiosity.”
“Oh, I’m curious, but that’s not why I’m asking.”
“Oh?” he inquired coolly.
“Oh! Because if you’re just going to hightail back to Citrine to marry Bitchy Lou—clearly against your will, I might add—then I’m not cooperating.” She flopped onto her back again—well, as best she could in the small space—and crossed her arms over her chest.
“You’re keeping me here against my will,” he pointed out.
“For good reasons!” She turned back and poked him hard in the chest so he grunted. “We risked our lives and livelihoods to rescue you. I’m not going to bow down and smile obediently while you race off to undo all of that.”
“I never asked you to take those risks,” he growled, grabbing her hand and holding it in a viselike grip. “In point of fact, I specifically told you not to.”
“Well, I don’t do as I’m told,” she hissed back.
“Believe me, I’ve noticed. You’re the most impossible person in all the fae and human realms.”
“If you dislike me so much, then why bother with me?”
“I have tried not to,” he retorted in snarling frustration. “That’s why I told her that you were no one and nothing but a ride where you could hear. So that you would believe that and go about your mortal life without me.”
“I had no choice but to believe it since the fae can’t lie!
I’d be stupid to not believe the truth,” she snapped back, all the hurt she’d felt over those words boiling out like pus from an abscess.
“So, fuck you for treating me like you cared about me when all the time you saw me as no one and nothing but a ride. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Azul!” She wrenched her hand from his grip and turned fully away, her back to him.
It was a symbolic gesture, largely meaningless since every line of her body was still pressed against his, but she was perilously close to tears and she’d gouge her eyes out before she let him see her cry.
Even if he see and hear her anyway. It was the principle of the thing.