It wasn’t always about me. I sat beside him and ran a finger down his chest. “Want to try again?” I asked in my most seductive purr.
“Can’t. I . . . have to . . . do something.”
I huffed. He couldn’t even bother to come up with a good lie.
While I sat in stunned dejection, Trystan set a record getting his clothes on. “Look, Keara, this has been fun and all, but I . . . I really shouldn’t have been with you. I have a girl—one of Lord Barlin’s mercenaries, Furi.”
“‘Furi-with-an-I’? Is she even potty-trained?”
He lifted a shoulder and turned toward the door. “She’s twenty-two.”
I snorted. Twenty-two. About the age I’d been when I’d met Trystan—and Furi had been four. Apparently, his taste in women hadn’t changed—including his age preference.
“Uh, take your time getting out of here,” he said. “Good to see you again.”
I grabbed Nosehammer, intending to smack away his pitying expression, but Trystan wisely hustled out the door, closing it behind him.
I glanced down at my forty-year-old body in the harsh daylight. I looked hot . . . didn’t I? Faint wrinkles marred the skin on my breasts. Without the support of the brass cups, they didn’t stand as pert as they used to. Unlike on Trystan’s still-perfect body, a pad of fat had insinuated itself over the muscles on my mid-section.
It wasn’t fair! Why did men get to retain their looks so much longer than women? Women warriors already had to work harder and achieve greater to get the same recognition as our male counterparts.
As I finished fastening my brass bra, a scratching at the door told me Saber had arrived. I let him in.
Such was my anguish, however, that I couldn’t contain my misery.
Saber head-butted my calf.
Saber smirked. I realize cats can’t help it—their faces come with a permanent smirk. But it rubbed me the wrong way.
he suggested.
The money I’d saved . . .
Saber huffed.
Feeling better now that I had a plan, I scritched along Saber’s back. His butt raised of its own accord.
We traveled by horse, Saber riding in a basket fixed behind my saddle, to the Wizard Alphonse’s tower, deep in the Canyons of Doom. No doubt, he’d named them that to discourage visitors. The canyons were really quite lovely in the winter, dusted with snow, trees glazed in ice.
When Alphonse opened the door of his tower, his eyes widened in alarm. “No refunds! I warned you that you didn’t really want to know what that animal is thinking.”
“I’m not here about my mind link with Saber,” I said. “It’s something of a more delicate nature.”
He glanced at my mid-section, exposed by a gap in my cape. “Aren’t you a bit old to be having a baby?”
“What?” I shrieked, my voice rising several octaves. Icicles shattered and ice chips rained down on us. “I am not pregnant.”
The wizard didn’t even have the decency to blush. “You may want to lay off the sweets then.”
Nosehammer smashed into his face before I even realized what I was doing.
Our next stop took us to the Caverns of the Damned. I was starting to believe that wizards were just antisocial.
The wizard who resided in said caverns looked puzzled by my request for more pert and youthful bosoms. “You look good, for a woman your age.”
As I wiped his blood off Nosehammer, I said, “Here’s a tip. There’s no good way to use the phrase ‘for a woman your age.’”
We journeyed on to the Maggoty Marsh. The young wizard who lived in a hollow tree listened patiently to my tale, until I reached the part about my age.
“You’re only forty?” he interrupted, astonished. “I was about to offer