“I’ve never had to work this hard for dinner before,” I muttered.
Timur waited in his chair silently. Powered by foreign magic, the chair’s thick wheels glowed softly, promising a smooth, cushy ride. I felt more at ease with the unfamiliar green magic than with his touch. Yet in his case, both came as a packaged deal.
“I’ll never make it up there on my own, will I?” I blew out a breath in defeat.
“No. It doesn’t look like you will,” he replied honestly.
“And there’s no other way for us to get food?”
“No,” he confirmed what I already knew. We had no money to buy even a pack of plain rice.
“Okay…” I untied my sweater and put it on again as an extra layer of protection from the contact with him. “Let’s try it then. Just…” I approached his chair tentatively. “Please keep that spine away from me.”
“What spine?” He adjusted his cloak, getting his lap ready for me. With a flash of white, the bone whip shifted from his knee.
“That one.” I pointed at it.
He slipped it under his cloak, tucking it to his side.
“Alright. Thespineis put away.”
“Thank you.” I gingerly brought my butt down to his thighs, mindful not to kick his legs or feet in the process.
“I’ll have to use both my hands to help you,” he warned.
I remembered his right hand—the one with claws. I didn’t want any of the skeletal parts of him to touch me. But the alternative was to keep crawling up this path until I dropped dead from exhaustion.
“Okay.” I nodded.
He gripped my left side with his left hand. The right one, he kept under the cloak, holding me through the material with it.
Maybe his right hand just got caught in the cloak by accident and he didn’t free it. But I had a feeling he did it for my sake. He’d caught on to my apprehension about his looks and took care to hide them from me the best he could. Guilt scraped inside my chest at that thought, like I was caught doing something I wasn’t proud of.
Timur adjusted me on his lap sideways, guiding both of my legs over his right armrest.
“That’s better,” he grunted approvingly. “We may even make it there on time now.”
The chair moved up the path again. The incline of the path made the chair tilt backward, forcing me to lean with myshoulder against Timur’s chest. I strained my neck muscles, trying to keep my head from dropping to his shoulder. That didn’t last long, however. My neck cramped, and I had no choice but to rest my head on his left shoulder, snuggling against him like some fucking bride.
“Now that we’re both on the chair,” I said, snappy in annoyance at the situation. “Can we just fly straight up? Why do we need to follow the path?”
“The chair doesn’t fly. It hovers over the ground when it’s rough,” he explained. “It can also roll on its wheels on a smooth surface.”
“So much for magic,” I scoffed. “It’s not all-powerful at all.”
“No, it isn’t. Every magic has its limitations. But Gorgonian magic can do what ours can’t in this case. People of Lorsan are excellent at crafting devices like this.”
“How did you get it? Did you travel all the way to the Above for it?”
“No. The fae of Sky Kingdom blocked our shadow tunnels with their light, making it impossible for any fae to travel between our worlds. However, their light doesn’t stop inanimate objects from passing through. So a trade can still happen, if one knows the right people,” he added casually.
“What did you trade for it?”
“I called in a favor,” he replied vaguely. “But it was a multi-tier trade. Someone from Sky Kingdom, I don’t know who and to what purpose, needed a weapon laced with a potion from Alveari, and someone from Lorsan was willing to trade a moving chair for spider silk from Sky Kingdom.”
I whistled. “You have quite the connections.”
“Had,” he corrected. “Most are lost now.”