“I know,” Cha said with sincere regret.Hadn’t her mother told her the exact same thing her whole life?“I’m cursed.”
“Youarea curse,” Phinny insisted.
Cha considered that.Could it be?She supposed curses took all forms and that would explain a great deal.“I am sorry, Phin,” she said.“And I told Dy not to come with me.”
Phinny tightened her grip on the spoon, then hurled it across the kitchen, where it clattered against the wall and fell to the floor, startling them all.The kids had long since gone to bed.They’d eaten Phinny’s excellent supper and now the three of them sat around the kitchen table, drinking ale and trying to talk themselves through the impossible challenge.
Sighing wearily, Phinny sat back in the chair and rubbed her very pregnant belly.“What if I give you my unborn child, you she-devil?”she asked with deceptive casualness.“Will you cease to plague us then?”
“That’s unfair, Phinny,” Dy protested, going around to rub her wife’s shoulders.“Besides, our firstborn is Phin, Jr.He’s the one she should take.Andhe’s the one with all the talent in being evil, anyway.”
Phinny chuckled despite herself.“You have a point there.That child is practically a demon.”
“Looks like an angel,” Dy sighed.
“Looks likeyou,” Phinny corrected.
“Like I said.”
They laughed together, Dy bending to lay her cheek against Phinny’s.Their comfortable intimacy, the quiet, steady bond that allowed them to flow easily from furious with each other to lovingly happy gave Cha a stab somewhere in her mid-ribs.Not that she’d ever had a yen to settle down and have a passel of kids—even if someone else did all the work of pregnancy and labor—but she discovered a new and unpleasant envy for the easy connection between Dy and her wife.Phinny hadn’t supplanted Cha in her bestie’s heart.She truly believed that she and Dy would always have their friendship, but Phinny had become someone who gave her that family connection she’d lost when she’d cut ties with her horrible mother.
They’d both cut off their terrible mothers, something they’d bonded over early and often, but Dy had eventually found happiness and love, whereas Cha… well, she had Katu and would cherish the big kitten forever.She didn’t kid herself that, even if she found and rescued Azul, and even if by some miracle he’d found a way to lie when he called her “no one” and “nothing more than a ride,” they’d ever have more than a fling.
A searingly hot fling.World-collapsing orgasms and brain-melting intensity.A lover that had actually managed to deplete her usually limitless store of sexual energy.Azul had managed to wring her dry, leaving her boneless and thoughtless for the first time in her fraught lifetime.More than that, he’d felt like someone she truly connected to.Her person.
But they would never have a cottage and cozy in-jokes.That was okay, she told herself, as she wasn’t the settle-down-in-a-cottage type.She was the cruising-the-ley-lines, fighting-the-fae-authorities type.Still, shemissedAzul.Like that annoying feeling of having forgotten something very important.She’d never needed anyone and she still didn’t.She could live her life happily and just fine without the fae prince and his snarky ways.
What kind of ate away at her was that she didn’twantto live without him.And wasn’t that a fine kettle of rotten fish?While Dy and Phin billed and cooed at each other, making up from their fighting, Cha weighed how much of her determination to rescue Azul came from the sneaky desire—no way would she call it a need—to see him just one more time.Yes, she owed him her life and a rescue, but in her heart of hearts, and sparkle of pussy sparkles, she had to admit that it all felt like an excuse to see him.An incredibly dangerous, life-threatening excuse that would likely end in disaster, but… One more chance to see those incredible amethyst blue eyes and…
“Cha, are you even listening to me?”Dy demanded.
“Yes,” Cha lied, searching her brain to replay whatever Dy had said to her.“You really think loading up Big Betty with agnicurna from Lucky Ducky and Nerd Girl is a viable plan?”
Dy gave her an irritated glare that made it clear she knew very well Cha hadn’t been listening.“Stop daydreaming about your pussy sparkle and Prince Charming’s blue eyes and pay attention.We need big bribes, Lenorae said.”
“And you lost my box of jewels on your last boondoggle,” Phin added pointedly.
“I didn’t lose them,” Cha replied defensively.“I was abducted by Moonstone fae and thrown in jail.They confiscated everything not an integral part of Katu.I’m lucky I even got him back.”
And that was entirely thanks to Azul.Cha owed him for that as much as everything else put together.He’d saved her baby cat, knowing how much the jaguar meant to her.The memory made her newly soft heart feel even mushier.This was going to have to stop.After this.Once she’d rescued the wayward prince—and how in the hell had he managed to get himself held prisoner in the palace in Citrine anyway?—they would have to say goodbye forever.She would move on her with her life.
“Agnicurna is the logical bribe,” Dy pointed out.“It’s cheap for us, the fae all want it desperately, and the Moonstone fae entirely missed it when it was combined with Obsidian black dust.Remember?Nerd Girl said the fae can’t tell the two apart, like they look and feel magically the same.”
“Black dust isnotcheap for us,” Cha replied.
Dy gave Cha’s pocket a significant look.“You have a platinum coin now.”
She tried not to wince, fighting the instinctive need to clamp a possessive hand over her pocket.This was a Very Bad Sign that she wanted to argue that the coin meant more to her than its face value.The day had come when the Bandit cared about sentimentality more than cold, hard coin and it was a sad and sorry day, indeed.“Right,” she agreed on a sigh.“So, we go into Obsidian and buy black dust, ostensibly to bring it back here to sell at a profit?”
Dy nodded and Phin tapped blunt fingers on the table.“You say you’ve gone legit after that last bad run,” Phin suggested, thinking it through.At least planning the heist had distracted her from what a terrible idea all of this was.
“That will ruin our rep,” Cha argued.
Phin gave her a look dry enough to suck the moisture out of the ocean.“Everyoneknows what a disaster that gig was,” Phinny explained slowly, like she was talking to one of the little kids.“You have no reputation now.”
“Not true,” Cha defended.“We have a shitty reputation for being epic fuckups.That’s not nothing, Mama Bear.”
“Yeah,” Dy chimed in.“Plus, everyone thinks we’re stupid for trusting Otto in the first place.”