“You weren’t afraid?”the fae prompted, acting as if the grip didn’t cause any noticeable discomfort.Maybe it didn’t.The “breast” felt weird under Cha’s hand—not that she’d squeezed any before, besides her own, and who did much of that, really?—and she didn’t like to think about what she was actually touching.Glamour apparently worked best from a remove, fooling senses like sight, sound, and smell best, and from a distance.It tended to get wonky with close proximity.Of course, other magic, like the sort enchanting Cha into being a happy little human sex slave, came into play then and with powerful efficacy.
Oh, yes, she was afraid.Because she wasn’t an idiot.Or, at least, not an idiot about that.
“Sure, I was afraid.Cha answered fervently.“And am.But sometimes a little fear and pain adds the spice to the sex, you know?”
“Oh, I know.”Sunshine smiled, not at all nicely, a shadow of long fangs in extendible jaws, dripping with slime that was surely poisonous, showed through the glamour momentarily.The fae’s control was slipping in her eagerness.And perhaps in her overconfidence.Could be both.Likely was.
And Cha still couldn’t make herself tear away.She was fully fucked, and not in the good way.Where was a sorceress when you needed one?
“Why, hello there,” Dy’s voice came from somewhere off to the right.“I seem to be interrupting some sort of charming picadillo.”
Sunshine’s head snapped up, her shock making the glamour quake.Her hair hissed unpleasantly and the thigh under Cha’s cheek lost its lush firmness and became nauseatingly mushy.“Who are you?”the fae demanded.“This seems to be an infestation ofhumans.”She might as well have said “maggots,” the way disgust dripped from her tongue.
Dy came into view, her teeth bared in a flesh-eating smile.“How distressing for you,” she said, her tone making it clear she didn’t care in the least.“Like locusts.Or a dreadful fungus.”
“Or maggots,” Cha offered helpfully, still unable to move.
Dy eyed her.“Better release the one you’ve got there,” she said to Sunshine.
“Or what,human?”the fae sneered.
“That’s ‘sorceress’ to you,” Dy replied in a deadly voice.Her magic lashed out, feeling like a lightning bolt cracking too close, a scent like ozone in its wake.Of course, it wasn’t a real feeling or smell—just how Cha’s poor, unmagical brain chose to interpret the proximity ofholy shit magic!Abruptly, she was thrown free onto the daffodil lawn, temporarily face down with her nose buried in the surprisingly fluffy stuff that tickled so much that she sneezed violently, several times in a row.
So, she missed some of the initial confrontation between the Citrine fae and Dy, but when she struggled to her feet—such a revelation to have her body follow her own commands again—she saw Dy facing down a creature best described as a virulently yellow preying mantis.Only mushy, with nauseating dollops of unnamable sacs hanging down.Cha vaguely recalled some biology teacher mentioning how a preying mantis would bite the head off its mate following coitus and figured that could have been her own fate once the creature had finished interrogating her.
She owed Dy, big time.But what else was new.
Dy’s long, blonde curls—a reassuringly natural shade like corn—flew in the whirlwind of her magic, snaking and crackling as she leveled a barrage of fireballs at Sunshine, who seemed to be intent on capturing the sorceress in one of its seven pincers.A scorpion-like tail lashed overhead, topped by a squiggling set of stingers dripping viscous yellow fluid that looked uncomfortably like old urine.While Dy fended off the pincers with precisely targeted fireballs that must have stung, given the fae’s reaction, but didn’t seem to be enough to dissuade Sunshine from trying again and again.Meanwhile, the stinger snaked closer, just outside of Dy’s peripheral vision.
Cha’s head finally—finally!—clearing enough for her to be more than a sexual lap dog, she checked for the Cinnabar sword.It had been at her hip the entire time.And, sure enough, the MoonRuby wand remained also safely sheathed at her other hip.Both of those weapons would have been useful in extracting herself from Sunshine’s grip, if only she’d had the wit to do so.
Saving beating herself up for her foolishness for later, Cha left the wand where it was, still not trusting the cursed thing to behave, and drew the Cinnabar sword.She swung at the immense stinger—and nearly fell on her face as the blade sank into the mushy surface that was much harder than it appeared.
Sunshine feltthatand whirled with a bone-jarring screech.The stinger began spewing a distressingly thick fluid like pus as it flailed.Sunshine reached for Cha with three pincers, having the acuity to fend Dy off from immediately jumping to Cha’s side with the other three.The fae feinted at her head, which Cha deflected neatly before diving for that vulnerable stinger again.She managed to cleave off one of the bundle of wormlike things at the tip, which oddly flew up into the tree, and draped over a branch, continuing to wiggle on its own, dripping the fluid that hissed and turned the daffodil grass black where it landed.
Note to self: don’t let that stuff touch you.
Then her ankle jerked and her short-lived journey of being actually on her feet ended abruptly when she was upended, suspended by that ankle from one viselike pincer, dangling well above the ground.She tried swinging her sword at the limb that had captured her, but her leverage was all wrong.She did, however, gain an excellent vantage of Dy’s continuing sorcerous battle with the fae.
Dy had switched tactics and seemed to be destabilizing the ground beneath the big bug.Sunshine sank, scrambling up with multiple floppy feet, only to sink again—and lurching to the side suddenly enough to drop Cha on her head.
Ow.
She’d spent more than enough time already being helplessly dizzy and entirely useless, though, so Cha forced herself to her feet—walk it off,she sternly instructed herself, her mother’s caustic voice useful for once—and determinedly attacked the vulnerable stinger.It took dodging flung droplets of the burning venom, along with ducking the pincers darting her way—fortunately without much focused intention, so distracted was Sunshine by Dy’s magical attacks—but Cha managed to cleave away a few more squiggly worms.Then, via great good luck, just as Dy rained what looked like crimson pellets on the fae, pushing Sunshine back into the hole, and as she flailed for purchase on the crumbling rim, the long column of the stinger-tipped tail flopped out flat for a moment.
Cha, always a fan of seizing the opportunities luck threw her way, pounced on the stinger, straddling it and wielding her sword in overhead blows like an axe.The position gave her a bit more effective purchase on the deceptive exoskeleton—or whatever the hell it was—and allowed her to use her weight to pin down the business end of the stinger.It surged beneath her, but she clamped on with her knees and rode it like a green colt feeling its oats.The back of her neck tingled with apprehension at the thought of those snakey bits reaching her and delivering a dose of no-doubt painfully lethal venom, but as long as it was only imaginary tickles and not caustically burning drops, she figured she was good.Or, if not exactly good, at least not dead.
Her determined hacking at the same spot finally yielded results.The mushy yellow carapace cracked, then gave way entirely, the stinger snapping in half.Sunshine screamed in a woman’s voice, and Cha leapt away—checking first to see where the squiggly tip of doom had landed.It flip-flopped like a beached squid, tentacles waving frantically.Some even acted like fingers, digging into the pretty, daffodil lawn and trying to crawl toward her.Cha took several stumbling steps back—not at all steady on her feet yet—putting significant distance between herself and it.
“Bandit!”
That woman’s voice wasn’t Dy.Cha spun to see Sunshine as the fae woman she’d been at first, but now crumpled dramatically on the lawn, one leg missing and bleeding copiously.She wept, beautifully, and reached a delicate hand toward Cha.
“Please don’t hurt me, Bandit,” she pleaded.“I wanted to love you.I didn’t mean to make your lover jealous.Help me, please, my beauty.”
Dy, on the other side of the prone figure, tossed back her long curls and raised her brows.“They say the fae can’t lie,” she said to Cha.“Guess it was love at first sight.Shall I bow out and leave the field to your new blonde?”
“Ha ha.”Cha shook her head at the fae.“Cut out the dramatics, Sunshine.My jealous lover will let you live if you’ll take us to the palace.”As extortion, that might be a stretch, as fae tended to be very long-lived, if not immortal.Still, if you chopped them up into small enough pieces, they didn’t enjoy life very much.