Chapter 18 Rogue Fae
Rogue Fae
Pulling Katu to a halt and tossing the wand aside, Cha vaulted out of the jag and raced to the prince. She doubted he was dead, but if he was only close to death, what would she do?
It would be wrong to just leave him there, she figured. Even a cheerfully amoral creature like herself knew that much. But she also had a job to do and could hardly cart a mostly-dead/dying guy around. What had happened to the staff he’d supposedly summoned anyway?
Approaching him tentatively—even dead snakes can bite—she nudged him with the toe of her boot. Gently. She wasn’t that callous.
He opened fulminous blue eyes to glare at her balefully. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded.
So much for undying gratitude. “You’re welcome,” she retorted.
“I did not thank you,” he said pointedly.
Rolling her eyes, she surveyed his lanky form. “Can you walk to Katu or do I need to throw you over my shoulder? You’re skinny enough that I could do it, though your masculine pride might suffer.”
He huffed at that, pushing himself up from the decidedly soggy grass. His fine white shirt had absorbed the moisture, along with other best-left-unnamed fluids, and it clung to his lean chest in a way that shouldn’t have been enticing under the circumstances. “I’m not skinny; I’m wiry.”
She snorted. “Pohtaytoh, pohtahtoh.”
“What does that mean?”
“Look, I’d love to chat semantics with you. I’d also enjoy peeling you out of your remaining clothes and giving you a sponge bath. But I have time for neither. Two choices, princeling: stay here or go with me.”
“I could also go my own way,” he pointed out, pushing to his feet without his previous agile grace, grimacing so much as he did so that she took pity and offered him a hand up.
“Grip my wrist,” she advised. To her surprise, he did, a lovely buzz coming from the contact with his skin.
“You could,” she agreed, happy she didn’t sound breathless, “but from my point of view, that’s the same as you staying here.” She grinned. “I’ll remember you always, just like this, outstanding in at least one field.”
He didn’t come back with a witty quip as she expected. Instead, now upright, he turned over her hand, still holding her wrist. “What happened to you?”
She tried to tug away, but he held on. Reluctantly, she followed his gaze, wincing at the state of her hand, which looked as if she’d dipped it in boiling oil for a while, then chopped at it haphazardly with one of Phinny’s kitchen knives.
No wonder the fucker hurt. “I got ick all over it, from yon wolfies.”
Frowning, he feathered fingertips over the abraded skin, as red as the monsters had been. Not how she’d imagined him caressing her. Her life sucked unimaginably. “Ichor, you mean,” he corrected.
“No. I mean ick. That stuff was disgusting.” She successfully jerked her hand from his grip, turned her back on him, and stalked away.
Hobbled, curse it. Throwing up her good hand in the air, which only made that bad arm throb painfully, she called over her shoulder.
“Stay or go, pretty boy. It’s all the same to me, but I’m behind schedule from rescuing your fine ass and I have time to make up. ”
Unsurprisingly, as she landed in the driver’s seat of Katu, this time holding back the groan of pain, the prince leapt into the passenger seat from the other side.
“Ow,” he griped, fishing under that fine ass and withdrawing both her sword and the magic wand she’d carelessly tossed aside.
“Oops.” She spurred Katu into the middle of the white and spun him in a one-eighty, not above smirking when Prince Charming yipped and grabbed the side.
They shot back the way they’d come, taking full advantage of the juice Dy had left them.
A glance in the rear-view assured Cha that Dy had set the enchantment to roll up behind them.
No sense mucking up the countryside with corrosive pixie dust that wasn’t supposed to be there. “Time to make up,” she reminded him.
“Were we fighting?” he asked, giving a quirk of a smile when she slid him a droll look.
“Funny guy. I’ll take that. Not that. That.” She pointed at the sword when he tried to hand her the pink magic wand. “The other thing you can toss in the back.”
He held onto the wand, however, laying it across his lap as she snatched her trusty sword from him and slid it into the sheath at the side of the center console, then flapped her hand at the renewed sting.
“You should do something about that hand,” he observed. “And the arm. And the leg. You look like shit.”
“Yeah?” She gave him a jaundiced side-eye. “You look considerably worse for wear yourself, Prince Charming.”
The path-box sparkled to life. “Status update, Bandit,” Dy said.
“Peachy keen with cargo intact,” she replied. “I am…” She checked the clock. Well, shit. “A bit over an hour to BX.”
“How much over an hour?” Dy demanded.
“Almost an hour more than that,” she admitted, and the prince made a sound of disgust, shaking his head. “Hey, I rescued you. You could show a little appreciation.”
“Told you so,” Dy said. “I left some high white for you. Try to make up the time, please.”
“Have I ever let you down?”
“Consistently,” Dy snapped and the box went dark.
“You two have a beautiful friendship,” Prince Charming observed.
“I know.” Cha allowed a beatific smile.
He bit out a sigh. “Give me your hand.”
“Aww, I’m touched, but we just met. And you’re already engaged.”
“Are you always an asshole?”
“Yes, but I’m your asshole now, darling.” She could’ve been wrong—it had happened once or twice before—but she thought he smothered a laugh. Reaching over he snagged her bad hand. “Hey! Watch the grabby grabby.”
“You liked it well enough with that Tourqe idiot.”
“Well, what he does think with, he uses very well and—ouch!”
“Don’t be a baby.”
“I’m not, I…oh, now that’s nice.” Her hand had abruptly stopped hurting, the cessation of agony almost orgasmic. She tipped her head back, closed her eyes, and sighed at the sheer relief.
“Shouldn’t you be keeping your eyes on the road?” he asked.
“I am, metaphorically speaking.” As promised, Dy had left a thin line of white down the network of rural leys, guiding Cha back to the Thirteen via a series of shortcuts.
Mostly she just had to keep a mental feeler out for anything dumb enough to wander onto the white to get fried there.
She could leave the rest to Katu. Cracking one eye open, she risked a glance at her maimed hand, pleasantly surprised to see it looking almost normal again. “What did you do?”
He shrugged, acting nonchalant, and released her hand. “A spot of therapy.” He reached across her, gave her an arch look when she jumped, then laid careful fingers over her scorched shoulder. “You need to learn not to stand in the way,” he murmured.
“Yeah, totally my fault.”
“Good of you to admit it.” As the pain in her shoulder lessened, he dropped his hand to her bum leg, healing the thigh wound, which turned out to be a fell-wolf bite she didn’t remember getting. “All better,” he told her, more than a little smugly.
“Th—I appreciate it,” she said, amending her thanks at the last moment, recalling how insistent he’d been that he hadn’t thanked her. If he was full or even mostly fae, then thank-yous were verboten.
“Least I could do given the rescue effort.”
She flexed the hand, beyond relieved to have it back in working order, but unwilling to say so.
Also: they really needed to talk about who in the seven hells he really was, but she was afraid to find out.
She’d hate to have to leave him by the side of the road, after all the trouble she’d gone to.
“I was hoping for another platinum coin,” she told him instead.
“Isn’t one enough?”
“I, ah, kind of lost the other one.”
“You. Lost. A platinum coin. Is that what happened to your hand—the coin burned a hole through it?”
“Pretty much.” And that was all she was going to say on the subject. “On-ramp coming up.”
This entrance to the Thirteen went more smoothly—though it could hardly have been worse than the last one—as Dy had led her to a decently threaded ley meant to enter the main line at speed.
They inevitably slowed, however, as they lost the high-test white and dropped down to a smattering of dark gray.
Katu hit a nice cruising speed and Cha settled in for some serious catching up with Big Betty.
“Why did you come after me?” Prince Charming asked after a while.
“Told ya—I was hoping for another platinum.”
“You could have endeavored not to lose the first one.”
“Yeah. That goes on the list of precious things I’ve carelessly lost, along with my virginity, youthful optimism, and moral compass.”
He made a snorting sound and she grinned over at him. It wasn’t an actual laugh, but close. “You don’t strike me as the sort to mourn her virginity.”
“Not in and of itself—and certainly not the ensuing hijinks—but I didn’t care for the manner of losing, thus the ‘careless’ qualification. But enough about me. We really need to discuss the fact that you’re a sorcerer and probably a rogue fae.”