“You’re lying.” Of course he was. I hadn’t known him long, but I already understood that Lyr kept the truth close to his chest.
He glanced at the dagger. “I didn’t know that you could throw a knife with such skill until you hit Melisande. Your blade went right into her neck.”
“Did I kill her?”
“No. You hit the back of her neck. She might be paralyzed temporarily, but she’ll recover. Eventually.”
“You don’t seem very worried about her,” I pointed out.
“She probably deserved it.”
“What do you mean? I thought she was your girlfriend?”
His expression changed, now perplexed. “Girlfriend? What is that?”
“Your lover, I guess.”
Pure confusion. “Yes. What’s that got to do with anything?”
I blinked. “I don’t know. What do you mean she deserved it?”
He fell quiet. “Is any of this actually important?”
A heavy sigh, and I pressed the side of the blade a little closer to his skin. “Actually, no, it isn’t. I got sidetracked. Why do the fuath think I have a kingdom?”
“I also did not know you had learned any real magic or that you were capable of attack spells. I assumed that you used iron weapons because you were too dimwitted to learn the ancient fae arts of fighting and magic. You have surprised me a number of times so far.”
“Speaking of being dimwitted, you are insulting someone who could make you feel a lot of pain at any second.”
“Ah, but then I might never tell you about your kingdom, as you call it. Flayer of Skins.” His velvety voice swept over my damp body. “Heal me. If I ever trust you enough, I might tell you the truth.”
“Okay, at least tell me this truthfully: Do you know what the fuath are talking about, and did it make sense to you?” I demanded, losing patience.
“Yes. But that’s all I’ll tell you, and I don’t really care if you slit my throat, because I’ll return and punish you tenfold.”
My mind reeled. What the hell was going on?
It was becoming clear that physical threats did not work very well on immortals. No wonder the pink-haired lady had tried seduction instead.
Slowly, I pulled the knife away, and my gaze landed on his bleeding shoulder. It looked terrible. “Why aren’t you healing faster? You’re a demigod.”
His pale eyes bored into me. “Someone shot iron into my body and stabbed me in the hip. I still haven’t recovered fully from death, and it’s drained my magical powers. I can’t heal all the injuries you’ve given me at once.”
“I didn’t know it was you when I stabbed you.” I pulled the dagger from his throat and slid it back into the sheath on my thigh.
Lyr carefully watched the movement with a keen interest, then dragged his gaze back up to my eyes.
He breathed slowly. “We can’t stay here long. The other knights will track us down. We’re too close to Acre.”
“I know.” I touched his shoulder just above where he’d been stabbed, then whispered a spell for healing. Magic snaked down my arm and blazed over his body. I kept chanting, channeling the power of the sea god.
A smile ghosted his lips. “Good. As long as you know I have valuable information, you’ll stay close to me and help me stay clear of the fuath. Now that I know how useful you are, I think I’ll really like having you close to me.”
I watched as the wound in his shoulder began to close up as my magic coiled around it. “What if, instead of healing you, I just tortured you with iron?”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Because you know I’m a good person?”
Another flicker of a smile. “Because you’re starting to like me.”
I glared at him. “Yeah, I love people who kidnap me and throw me in prison. Are all demigods as arrogant as you?”
He shrugged. “Midir and Gwydion certainly are.”
“They’re demigods, too?”
“They’re my half-brothers.”
“Oh. No wonder you have to tolerate them.”
The wound closed up a bit, but not as much as I would have expected. A deep, angry gash still cut across his shoulder, swollen in a way that looked like it was about to open again at any moment.
“It’s not working that well,” I said.
“It’s the iron in my blood. But it’s good enough. We need to get back into the ocean.”
I shook my head. “No, that’s just going to burst open again.”
I stood and searched our surroundings. A fancy hotel stood just to our right, windows blazing with gold light. Gods, it would be amazing to have a night in there right now.
I mean, not with Lyr.
Just in general.
In any case, we had no money, and the hotel porters weren’t about to admit two bleeding fae for free.
Son of a gun.
Lyr rose, and the wind whipped the cloak around his shoulders. “We will need to move around like humans. I will take one of their vehicles and drive it.”
My eyes flicked to the parking lot. It wasn’t the worst idea. If we had a car, we’d be able to get out of here much faster….
“I guess you don’t think stealing is that illegal.”
He shrugged. “Depends what it is.”
“I have an idea.”
“Explain.”
“Just trust me,” I said.
“I actually don’t trust you at all. I thought that had been established.”
“Right.” I started walking. “You ever wanted to learn how to hotwire a car?”
“No.” The sea breeze sent droplets of water rolling over his golden skin.
I winced at the sharp pain in my back where the sword had caught me.
Lyr’s eyes slid to me, catching my grimace. “Turn around. You’re hurt.”
“Don’t we have to go fast?”
“It will only take a second.”
I turned my back to him, and he brushed his hand lightly over my back. Warmth rippled through me, sensual and electric at the same time. Goosebumps rose over my sea-damp skin.
I closed my eyes, giving in to the pleasure of his healing magic that slipped over my wet body like silk. My pulse sped up, and my nipples tightened under the thin fabric of my dress.
Abruptly, I stepped forward. “That’s probably enough.”
I glanced at him, and his blue eyes looked keen enough to see into my soul.
“We can head to the hotel parking lot.” I glanced behind us. I didn’t see any possessed knights crawling from the ocean, ready to slaughter us for the secrets to my kingdom.
I still had no idea what that meant. Nothing had survived of Ys. I’d been back there myself. In the first few years after Ys sank, I had visited it often. The towers had crumbled. The gold lay under marble. Our famous bells had cracked open. Enterprising thieves could have found a way to pry the jewels from the temple walls, deep under the ocean.
I’d stolen many things in my life, but I could never bring myself to steal from Ys. It felt like grave robbing.
All I knew was that the kingdom was gone. So, what the fuath meant about looking for my kingdom, I had no idea.
We crossed into a dark parking lot, where a streetlight lit up the cars. I picked one that had no car seats in it. I also chose the oldest-looking car in the lot, hoping it wouldn’t be fitted with any kind of security systems and that the hotwiring would work roughly as it had decades ago. It was a small, beat-up piece of crap.
“Humans track cars by the license plates, so disguising it is step one,” I said.
“Can you do that?”
Luckily, I knew a spell to scramble things up. I closed my eyes, trying to remember the words I’d spoken when I’d turned all my books into gibberish. Then, I stared at the license plate and whispered a spell to rearrange the numbers. I slid the two behind the seven, the seven after the four, and voila. No one would recognize this car as stolen.
Assuming I managed to steal it. I hadn’t actually tried
to hotwire a car since the 1970s, and I believed cars had changed a bit since then.
I crossed to the driver’s seat. “Now we just have to unlock it.” I rubbed a knot in my forehead. “I vaguely remember an unlocking spell, but it’s a bit rusty, and even on a good day, it takes a few hours.”
“We don’t have a few hours. How do the locking mechanisms work?” he asked.
“You use a key. But without that … I think there’s something with, like, a coat hanger you can slip in to get the door open….” We didn’t have a coat hanger. “Or a wedge.”
Lyr stood next to me, edging me out of the way. Without another word, he slammed his fist through the window, shattering the glass.
Immediately, an alarm blared, deafening me. Son of a gun.
Lyr frowned at the car, then crossed to the front to lift the hood. “What’s that noise coming from?”
“The alarm!” I shouted.
He managed to find the alarm speaker with surprising efficiency, stopping the noise by ripping it out. He dropped it on the pavement. The car still made a sort of buzzing sound, but it wasn’t loud.
“How do I drive it?” he asked.
“You don’t.” I pointed at the passenger seat. “You sit there. I’ll drive.”
“Are you giving me orders?”
“Yes.” I slid into the driver’s seat and stared at the steering wheel. “I’m just going to need you to use that raw physical strength again to rip off the bottom of the steering wheel, because I don’t have a screwdriver.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, then leaned over and punched the plastic cover of the steering column so that it split. Then, he worked his fingers into the crack and pulled off the broken plastic.
“Perfect.” I reached in, pulling out three bundles of wires.
I chewed my lip, trying to remember what was what. One set of these led to the battery….
Lyr inhaled deeply, which I was certain was impatience.
Then, he added, “They’re coming.”
Shit. “I don’t suppose any of them have a car, do they?”
“No, none of the knights know how to drive.”
“Right, the World Key. Opening portals. Good. They won’t be able to catch us.”
“The speed at which we’re moving suggests otherwise.”
“Stop talking.” If I could remember which one was the ignition….
Brown, I thought. Usually brown, though you really needed the manual, and without it, I could potentially electrocute myself.
“They are within half a kilometer,” said Lyr. “And we are sitting still in a vehicle with a broken window.”
“Shhhhh.”
I twisted together what I thought were the battery wires. Then, I connected the brown to the yellow, and—
The headlights turned on, and the radio began playing an old Nirvana song. Air conditioning blasted out of the vents. “Yes!”
“You’ve got the music on,” said Lyr, “but we’re not moving.”
No gratitude. “I need to get the engine on.” I breathed in and out slowly, stripping the tip of the wires. “And this part could kill me.”
“Let me do it, then.”
“Shhh.”
“They’re on the beach just behind us, now.”
When I’d carefully exposed the tips of the wires, I touched the battery wire to the starter wire.
The engine ignited.
“Yes!” I revved it a few times. “Get your seatbelt on.”
Chapter 18
“Seatbelt?”
An irritating beeping noise in the car set my teeth on edge.
“I barely know how to drive,” I said. “You’re going to wear the seatbelt.”
I hit the gas, and we lurched onto a road lined by palm trees. There weren’t too many cars on the road, and I stared at the lines, trying to stay between them.
“What’s that beeping?” asked Lyr.
I glanced at the dashboard, where a red light glowed, showing a figure with a seatbelt. “That’s the car telling you to put your seatbelt on.”
He reached for the belt, fumbling as he figured out how to connect it. When he clicked it, the beeping went quiet.
Cold air blasted my wet body, and my teeth chattered. Not only was the AC cranked, but the wind whipped at me through the shattered window. My hair flew into my eyes, and I shook my head to get it out.
“Can you turn down the air conditioner?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the road. “The cold air?”
Lyr jabbed at the dashboard, but the cold air kept blasting.
The headlights of another car were coming at us faster than I liked, and I veered to the right, panicking a bit. The side of our stolen car scraped against a concrete barrier, and adrenaline shot through my nerves. This was possibly scarier than facing the possessed fuath.
“These streets are not big enough,” I muttered. “It’s ridiculous.”
“Why is it that you know how to steal a car but not how to drive one?” he asked.
“I had a brief stint in the ’70s as a car thief. But I didn’t have to drive them far. I just dropped them off at an empty lot near an abandoned railroad, and someone would strip them for parts, or … I have no idea, actually. All I know is I got a few hundred bucks for each car.”
“I understand. You’ve spent a hundred years breaking laws.”
“I don’t see you objecting to this lawbreaking right now. We’re in a stolen car.”
At that moment, I felt an unwelcome sting around my thighs and rear, like my skin had been lacerated. I sucked in a sharp breath at the pain. “I just realized I’m sitting on broken glass.” With all the adrenaline flowing, I hadn’t felt it till then.
“I’ll heal you when we stop.”
An image flashed in my mind of his hands on my thighs again, and my legs clenched. “I can do it myself.” It came out sounding a little angry.
“You’re very tense sometimes.”
I glanced at the dashboard. A packet of bubblegum lay on the top of it. That was what I needed. “Lyr. I need a favor.”
“Oh, really?”
I gripped the wheel with white knuckles. “I need you to pick up that pink packet, unwrap a piece of gum, and pop it in my mouth. Please.”
He did as I asked, and I opened my mouth. He popped in a stick of gum, and I started chewing. Finally, I began to relax.
“Thanks.”
When the song on the radio changed, I felt like the gods were blessing me. “Can’t Help Falling in Love” began playing.
“Can you turn this up?”
“This music is terrible.”
I popped a bubble. “You shut your godsdamn mouth, or so help me Elvis, I will shoot you again with iron bullets.”
“You like this?”
“Elvis is the god of music.”
“El-vis.” He said the name like he’d never heard it before. “I haven’t heard of this god.”
“I touched his shirt once.” I giggled, then focused on the road again. “You should probably stop distracting me while I’m driving.”
I glanced at him quickly out of the corner of my eye and saw a smile curling the corner of his lips. “I thought you hated men.”
“Not all men. There are exceptions. Elvis being one of them. And the Horseman of Death is nicer than you’d imagine, given his title.”
“Is that right?”
I was beginning to relax a little, although my eyes were still locked on the road. I wondered how long I could go without blinking before I’d go blind.
It didn’t look like there was much around here. Palm trees. A road. Some shrubs. “Do you know where we are? Or where we’re going?”
“We’re just south of Acre, and we need to find a place to hide while I can heal myself properly. My spirit needs to go into the death realm. We need to find an empty human habitation where we will be safe while I do it. And you’ll likely need sleep.”
“Likely, at some point.” My hands were sweating on the steering wheel. “Speaking
of healing … why did you tell your brothers that I healed my own head in the prison? I didn’t.”
He closed his eyes and settled back into his seat. Wind rushed in the car, whipping his long hair around him. “If I’d shown any softness toward you, they would have found ways to torment you more harshly. In the days after Ys fell, I was the only one who defended you before I changed my mind. They still think my mind was warped.”
So, the lie had been … protective of me. That was a surprise, and yet he’d also thrown me into a freezing pit with my arms tied behind my back, so I wouldn’t be warming to him too much.
Another car came toward us on the opposite side of the road, and my stomach tensed.
I couldn’t look at the signs, because I was concentrating too hard on trying to stay on the road without hitting the concrete barrier.
I breathed in deeply, trying to think clearly as the air conditioner blasted over my wet dress.
As my mind quieted for a few moments, the words of the fuath returned to me. Your kingdom….
I stared at the headlights on the dark road. Lyr had defended me at one point, and now he no longer trusted me. “So, what changed your opinion of me, Lyr? At one point, you thought no daughter of Queen Malgven would ruin her kingdom.”
“I saw you in London once. After Ys fell. At that moment, I was sure that your father’s blood truly ran in your veins. It was clear you had to indulge every base and cruel pleasure that excited you.”
I popped a bubble. “You think I’m like my father? I could kill you for that comment.”
“Of course you could. You’re driven by bloodlust, just like he was.”
Oh, boy. I’d had some bad days after the fall of Ys. The loss of my sea powers had felt like my soul was cut right out of my chest. I felt strangely empty, like I’d already died but my body kept stubbornly living on. I was a shell of a person. And if I’d been unfit to rule Ys at twenty-five, I was far worse after it had sunk. I went through a gin phase and slept in hovels. I spent time around the worst sort of humans. And when I avenged crimes against other women, it wasn’t always pretty.
The tension returned to my body, and I gripped the steering wheel hard. “What exactly did you see me doing that was so terrible?”
Sea Fae Trilogy Page 11