Chapter 39 Sex, Lies, and Ley Lines
Sex, Lies, and Ley Lines
They left the walls of Azul’s estate behind very high walls topped with what appeared to be razor-sharp chunks of amethyst, guarded by a faceted, gothic wrought-something gate that opened at their approach and faded invisibly into the walls behind them—and plunged into the whiteness of the Moonstone landscape.
Azul directed her through the rural leys and soon they hit the Moonstone Throughway. Cha eyed their erstwhile sanctuary dwindling in the distance in the rear view, vanishing to a dot, then quickly gone.
“Something wrong?” Azul asked, turned partway in the passenger seat to watch her.
Cha shook herself. Bad enough that she was having all these weird, softhearted feelings; no need to compound that with spinelessness.
She produced something that felt close to her usual insouciant grin.
“Just very ready to put Moonstone behind me. How long to the border, do you think?” Even at the blazing speeds on the fast white, she agitated to go faster.
She also kept wanting to look over her shoulder for pursuing Sugarplums and puttoes.
“Less than an hour, subjective time,” he replied, patting her on the knee. He meant it to be soothing, she knew, but the gesture mostly served to annoy her by making it so clear that he saw through her bravado.
“If we don’t hit trouble. Or traffic. Or troublesome traffic,” she commented darkly.
“We won’t.”
“You’re so confident?”
“I do have increased power still. Enough to do that much for you.”
“For us,” she corrected. But he only smiled blandly.
Yeah, he could clearly handle anything that came at him here.
“The fae realms just aren’t for humans,” she said on a sigh, feeling every cautionary tale about humans lost to the fae in the chilled marrow of her bones.
Marrow that at least hadn’t been sucked out of her cracked bones by Sugarplums.
“I tried to warn you.”
“Yeah, well, you’re in excellent company with all kinds of people of my acquaintance then, from my parents and siblings, to my teachers and professors, to my lifelong best friend who I can only hope is still alive.”
“You have a family?” he asked, sounding more interested than she’d have predicted.
“Did,” she answered on a shrug.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“For what, that I had them or that I don’t anymore?”
“Interesting question. I always thought humans liked their families and so were sorry to lose them.”
“Don’t the fae like their families?”
“I could be biased,” he answered after a pause, gazing down the sparkling white ley line. “I don’t like mine, for obvious reasons.”
She absorbed that, wanting to ask more, knowing he likely couldn’t say.
Plus, he looked sad, so she didn’t want him to dwell.
Bad enough that he was headed into this fucked-up wedding scenario.
He didn’t need to ponder why his clearly awful royal family had sacrificed him to a situation so terrible he’d run from it.
She understood Azul well enough now to know he wouldn’t flee unless he had no other choice.
“I didn’t lose my family,” she told him, her attention on the flow of the ley line, internal gaze focused on the past, “not to mortality anyway, if that’s what you’re thinking.
It’s more that they lost me. I was a problem child,” she continued, glancing over to find him raptly listening.
“Always getting into trouble. They were happy to send me to Miss Mulry’s and have done.
Not just happy—relieved.” That had stuck with her more than anything, the utter relief on her mother’s face as she said goodbye and went back to the hired carriage that brought them there, Cha’s younger siblings already arguing about who got Cha’s room.
“How old were you?”
“Ten. That was the youngest you could board a kid. I was lucky Miss Mulry’s took me on as my family was poor. Scholarship student, you know, on account of my extremely awesome ley-riding talents.” She smirked at him, but he was frowning.
“How bad can a ten-year-old be?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes. “You know me.”
“Yes, I do, and you’re not a problem person.”
“I’m incorrigible,” she confided with a wink. He still didn’t smile. “Oh, come on! I’m badass. I’m the Bandit. I didn’t earn that rep by being all law-abiding. I didn’t think you harbored illusions about me that way.”
“I know not many people would have picked up a rude, stray prince on a rural back ley.”
“You were understandably out of sorts, what with the fell wolves and all. Besides, I thought you were pretty. Never could resist a bit of candy, you know.”
“Softhearted,” he whispered, smiling now.
“See how you are with the insults?” she huffed. “Dy is the softie. Everyone knows it. She’s going to be broken-hearted about Monat.”
“Like you.”
Sighing, Cha wrestled the unexpected surge of grief.
She and Monat hadn’t been close, but they’d been friends.
She’d been too busy worrying about her own shitty fate before to give way to the very real sorrow over Monat.
Even worse would be having to tell Dy. Cha couldn’t think about it too much and keep herself together.
Azul was watching her closely, maybe seeing the dank emotions that threatened to sap the ferocity she needed to keep going.
“I’m sorry for Monat’s shitty fate,” Cha said with deliberate lightness, shrugging it all off.
“She was good people and didn’t deserve that end, but I was mostly upset that I nearly ended up the same way.
Anyhow,” she continued when she saw he was about to insist she possessed some kind of sweet, gooey center, which she emphatically did not, “my mommy didn’t want me, my daddy left early, wah wah.
I don’t know about fae, but that kind of tale is more common in human families than the opposite.
Getting dumped at Miss Mulry’s Academy for the Magically Gifted was the best thing that could’ve happened to me because that’s where I met Dy.
Speaking of…” She frowned at the path-box.
“This thing stopped working when I crossed into Moonstone. Can you whammy it better, now that you’re all full of Amethyst piss and vinegar again? ”
“I contain neither piss nor vinegar,” he replied in a snotty tone, passing lightly caressing fingers over her hand, telling her without words that he would let the topic go.
Continuing the movement, he spun a web of violet magic that formed a net around the path-box.
“If Dy is in range, she should answer. Use the amethyst channel.”
“There is no amethyst channel.”
“There is now,” he replied, looking all smug and self-satisfied.
“You know, you could have been a lot more useful before,” she grumbled.
His smile faded, leaving him broody again. Grief and anger, she realized, just like her own demons. “I’m aware,” he said with biting regret.
See? She wasn’t a good person at all. “Sorry,” she muttered, and he waved off the apology. She tapped the path-box until it turned purple—an unearthly shade that didn’t occur in nature, at least, not in the human realms. “Oh, that little display won’t raise brows or anything,” she told him.
“You should probably not use it in mixed company,” he suggested, unrepentant.
“Goldilocks, Bandit here. You out there?” The box shivered with waves of lavender and she threw Azul a look. He shrugged.
“Bandit!” Dy’s voice came through with frenzied relief. “Where in the seven hells are you?”
Cha’s lips actually wobbled with emotion at the welcome sound of Dy alive. “In the Big White, headed for the reverse BX. You?”
“I’m at the rendezvous and you’re nearly three hours late. I was starting to worry!”
Three hours? Azul looked amused at her stunned reaction. “I told you time moved differently in the … ‘big white.’”
“You don’t have to put air quotes around it,” Cha told him. “You are so uncool.”
“Is that Prince Charming?” Dy asked, her voice rising to a screech. “Bandit, if you’ve been—”
“I haven’t,” she interrupted and Azul raised a brow at her, making a shocked face. Well, she had been, but … “It’s a long story,” she amended. “I’ll tell you later. Can we still get through?”
“I hope so. We’ll be hitting the work-around in daylight.”
“We will?”
“Um, yeah.”
Cha looked around at the Moonstone night, which still looked like day to her. So confusing. “Can’t be helped, I suppose.”
“Agreed. The alternative isn’t one. Bandit, there’s no room for screwing around. You have to—”
“I have to be there soonest. Will do,” Cha interrupted and tapped off.
“It’s fascinating to watch you lie,” Azul commented. “It’s a kind of human magic we can’t match.”
“First of all, I wasn’t lying, exactly,” she protested. “I didn’t want to air the details on the path-box, so I talked around it.”
“No, I would’ve talked around it. You said you weren’t when you were. Magic.”
“It’s not magic,” she retorted.
“Lying again.” He laughed musically and with real delight. “No wonder I adore you, Arantxa.”
Her mood surprisingly light, she gave him the middle finger, listening to the music of his laughter as she coaxed Katu into a bit more speed.