Chapter 22
Wings
“I can’t believe that worked,” Azul commented, as Katu shot out of the border gates, the cat softly roaring his delight to be cruising in the lead.
“Why not?” After reassuring herself that no obstacles lay ahead, she surveyed the contents of Phin’s bribery chest. They’d taken a hit, though not as bad as it could have been.
Fortunately—thanks to Giant Jo’s—Katu didn’t need to be topped off with ambrosia yet.
Better to make up the time now. She opened the gold channel.
“Bandit on the far side of the big black line,” she announced.
“All clear to proceed. Our boxed-up friends made it possible, so if you have the means to be generous, it would be a nice thank you.”
A chorus of cheers and thanks jumbled from the path-box for a bit and Cha pumped her fists in the air, as if to a shouting stadium audience.
“I suppose you see yourself as some sort of folk hero,” Azul commented sourly.
“Nah. I’m as selfish as they come, but I do love the rush of the win.” She grinned at him, which he didn’t return, naturally.
“The reason I can’t believe that worked is that all of those agents, possibly the guards, too, will now be out of a job. Just to do you a favor.”
“For a financial windfall,” she corrected. “Those gems will give them a buffer, time not living hand to mouth, to find better jobs.”
“How could you possibly know they want that?”
“All people are essentially the same,” she explained.
“Fae or human, we all have the same motivations—we need coin or jewels or your preferred item of exchange to obtain the stuff we really want. The people who have most of the stuff expect the people with less of it to grub along, taking whatever shit they’re doled out.
And the workers do take it, because if they’re in a crap job already—and believe me, border agent is bottom rung—that’s the best they can get.
So they grit it out, waiting for the moment they can leave for the day and go live the part of their life they actually enjoy. ”
He was quiet a moment. “I never thought of it that way.”
“My darling sulky blueberry, that’s because you’re a prince. I bet you’ve never worked a tedious, low-wage job your entire life.” She cocked a brow at him. “Or any job at all?”
“I have a job,” he answered stiffly.
“I don’t think marrying psychotic bitches with a kennel full of fell wolves counts as an actual job.”
“Perhaps not, but it is a considerable amount of work,” he countered.
“Did you just make a joke?” She laughed for him, since he didn’t. “Answer me this—if you can,” she amended, remembering the geas. “What did they have on you, to make you go through with this marriage?”
“What makes you think this undefined ‘they’ had ‘something on me,’ which I perceive is some sort of hu—” He abruptly looked off to the side. “—peasant colloquialism for extortion?”
“Did you almost say ‘human’ and substituted ‘peasant’ at the last second?”
He stabbed a finger at the path-box. Yeah, yeah.
He still hadn’t told her the truth when he’d had it encased in a cone of silence.
Too bad the mystery only made him more interesting.
She’d bet one of those gems she’d just used to bribe their way across the Obsidian border that the blue hair went all the way down to his nethers. Mmm.
“Here’s what I think: you weren’t marrying this chick for love,” she answered his original question.
“As I’m not a superstitious idiot, correct,” he replied drily.
“You regard love as a superstition?”
“Don’t you?” he countered with a note of surprise. “The infamous Bandit, who’s bedded every available male on the Thirteen and beyond, surely doesn’t believe in anything so sentimental as romance.”
She considered disputing that remark, but why bother? “Dy and Phin—Dy’s wife—are in love. Have been almost from the beginning and no signs of it flagging. So, yeah, I guess I do believe in romantic love, in the staying power of a love like theirs, anyway.”
He didn’t comment. Since it was unlikely he was restraining himself out of courtesy, or some sensitivity regarding not wanting to stomp on her opinion, she figured he was thinking it over. “Why do you want to know what forced me into that marriage?” he finally asked.
She had to think back, having lost track of the conversation. “I had a point, I’m sure I did, about everyone being the same, having to do stuff we don’t want to in order to survive. But also, I’m interested. We’re kind of friends now.”
“Your definition of friendship differs from mine.”
“Check. Not friends. So, don’t tell me. But we’ve got a drive ahead of us. Want to pick a different topic? Or you could sing me a song.”
His head jerked around, as if in shock. “I’m not going to sing, now!”
Jeez, you’d think she’d asked him to disembowel himself. “Fine, fine,” she said placatingly and lapsed into silence rather than provoke him further.
The Obsidian landscape rolled past, growing decidedly more fae with every league.
Despite the implications of a word like “border,” the demarcation between human and fae lands wasn’t—to coin a phrase—black and white.
With the failure of the natural barriers between the magical and non-magical realms, the landscapes had begun to overlap, rather than jutting precisely up against one-another.
The phenomenon created a kind of bleed, where fae stuff filtered into the nearby human lands and where the non-magical world diluted the magic of the fae realm it abutted.
This mostly happened between Obsidian and neighboring Gypsum, though Cha had heard of other places in the world where magical realms had drifted up against the human ones.
She didn’t know what it was like in those places, but Obsidian was more or less like a human realm with a bit of a funky spin.
And, contrary to what some stories assumed, not everything there was black.
The black pixie dust did have a tendency to infiltrate many aspects of the realm, but mostly concentrated in certain places and objects.
Thus, the trunks of the surrounding forest were a gleaming black, but the canopy was green, if a deeper tone than in human lands and with occasional sweeps of black leaves.
Same for the other foliage. Some of the flowers that bloomed in the meadows and the fruit hanging from the trees shone a disconcerting glossy black, but otherwise it was more or less human-normal.
The road signs and ambrosia stations were a bit on the twisted side, but mostly familiar.
It helped that she’d been there so many times. Moonstone would be much stranger.
“Family,” Azul said, breaking into her thoughts.
When she raised a brow at him, he shrugged, looking uncomfortable.
“Family obligations are why I agreed to wed…her. I might not have to be employed for a living, but a life such as mine doesn’t come without its pressures.
There are some ways in which I must do as I’m told. ”
He sounded so bitter, in a most familiar way. She knew that particular flavor. “So, walk away from your family.”
“Excuse me?” He sounded so astonished and offended that she nearly laughed.
“Cut ties. Lots of people do it,” she told him, not quite able to interpret the complex rush of emotions across his face.
If she had to put a name to it, she’d call him tormented.
“If your family is shit to you, then you owe them nothing, let alone your loyal obedience. Cut ’em off. Go your own way.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It never is,” she agreed. She knew that better than most. “But sometimes it’s necessary.”
They were quiet for a bit, this time more companionably. Cha suspected Azul was deep in thought. “That guard,” he said finally, “the Obsidian fae guard at the border, if he had requested actual sex in exchange, would you—”
“Let me stop you right there, Your Highness, before you piss me off. I like sex; I make no pretense otherwise. I’d be interested in finding out if what they say about fae lovers is true—just mentioning that to you, putting it out there—but I indulge on my terms, for my own pleasure.
Not as a commodity. Does that answer the invasive question that’s none of your business? ”
“Yes.” He might have sounded a bit chastened, but then he asked, oh so casually, “What do they say about fae lovers?”
“Have you lived in a cave your entire life?”
“No, a palace,” he returned immediately, expression so perfectly deadpan that Cha couldn’t tell if he was yanking her chain or not. “We don’t get a lot of gossip there,” he added.
“Sounds stultifying. Nasty family. No gossip. What do you do all day—lie about on velvet settees and send servants running to bring you things you don’t need?”
His perfect mouth twitched, annoyance or amusement—it was a toss-up. “Something like that. Come on, spill. I’m curious and we have a long drive.”
“I can see you’re learning from me,” she replied without rancor.
“You’ve created a monster, indeed. What do they say?”
“Persistent little devil on this topic, aren’t you?”
“I have an interest,” he replied, almost primly.
It would be nice if that interest was related to her, but he sure hadn’t taken her up on the fairly blatant offer.
Not that she had time, but…A girl could dream.
“Well, you’ve heard the old tales—that to be seduced by the fae is to lose all sense of yourself.
Their lovemaking is utterly sensual, enveloping every sense so that you think of nothing else but the moment. ”
“And that’s appealing?”
She slid him a look, but he seemed to be asking in earnest. “There’s a reason human beings fall into doing stuff like drugs and alcohol.
Yeah, not thinking and losing yourself entirely to the pleasure of the moment has a definite appeal.
What wouldn’t we give sometimes to have only pleasure and forget our cares?
” Her words fell between them with a little too much weight, so she bared her teeth in a salacious grin and added, “And then there’s the special features like claws, wings, tails, extra appendages, and who knows what all. ”
He barked out something like a laugh. “Those things are sexy?”
“Seven hells, yeah!” He looked so adorably perplexed that she had to keep going, just to see if she could make him squirm.
“Sharp claws, grazing your skin, because a little pain makes the pleasure even more exquisite. Tails, because it’s an extra appendage, and if it’s prehensile, just imagine the orifices it could stimulate when everything else is occupied. ”
“And wings?” He asked the question with a slight burr to his voice, his blue blue eyes on her, glimmering with interest.
“Wings…” She shrugged cheerfully. “Just flat sexy. I can’t tell you why. Incontrovertible fact.”
“Interesting to know.” He’d gone back to neutral, gazing out at the road ahead.
“Maybe because he’d, like, wrap you up in them, just the two of you in this sensual cocoon of naked fun.”
“I thought you said you’d couldn’t tell me why.”
Yeah, it was perverse of her to enjoy the burr of irritation in his voice. Even more so that she was encouraged by it. “Maybe it’s the feathers,” she mused. “They’re the perfect combination of soft and prickly, flexible and rigid, ideal for playing games of erotic torment.”
“They might not be feathered wings, you know,” he bit out. “Some fae have leathery wings.”
“Ooh.” She produced a shiver, making her bosom jiggle, quite effective as she hadn’t returned her jacket zipper to its usual position yet. “Even better. So gothic.”
“That Obsidian fae guard that caught your eye didn’t have wings,” he pointed out. If Azul hadn’t been so clear about his lack of interest in her, she’d have called him jealous.
“I’ve heard they can hide them,” she confided, giving him a wink. “Glamour, magic, whatever. They only come out at special times.”
“I suspect that what you’ve ‘heard’ is a load of dramatic fiction liberally embroidered with titillating nonsense.”
Definitely jealous. “A girl can dream. What about you—ever bedded a fae?”