Prince of Wolves - Tasha Black Page 0,2
rude, but this one seemed civil enough.
Once outside, he glanced around the lot.
People were already wandering back into the diner or heading to their mechanical coaches.
The bounty hunter following her must have snatched her double instead, leaving Ashe to enjoy her newfound freedom.
She tried not to celebrate openly, but she felt light on her feet with joy.
Ramón walked up to a decidedly humble looking coach.
“Your chariot awaits, my lady,” he said with a strange smile.
She blinked at him. This was not a chariot. It was a battered looking hunk of metal standing on four round rubber feet.
“Kidding,” he said, arching one eyebrow. “You really are shaken, aren’t you?”
“I’m fine,” she said for the second time.
He shrugged, and she watched as he opened the door to the coach.
She pulled up on her door handle and felt the click as it unfastened.
She was a natural. This mortal thing was going to be a breeze.
The man did something to the wheel of the vehicle, and it coughed to life.
She clung to the seat.
“Don’t forget your seatbelt,” he said, pulling something out of the wall near his head.
She followed suit and found a bit of waxed canvas with a metal piece on the end. She watched him pull his out and click it in and she managed to do the same after only two tries.
Nailed it.
However, she was unprepared for the sudden velocity of their departure.
She gasped and grabbed her seat with both hands.
“You, okay?” the man asked.
She nodded, unwilling to say I’m fine for the third time in a row.
They drove on in silence and she tried to focus on the horizon, like her parents had taught her to do when she was seasick on a boat in the choppy half-frozen lake.
The people I thought were my parents…
She tried to remind herself to be grateful for the information she had literally bumped into tonight.
Knowing she was a changeling made her lack of magic understandable, natural… not my fault.
“Here you go,” the man said politely, pulling the coach up in front of a small building.
“Have a pleasant evening,” Ashe said.
“Uh, thanks,” he replied, looking a little bewildered.
She got out and heard him chuckling. “What?”
“Oh, I’m just glad that you remembered your purse this time,” he said with a twinkly smile.
She smiled back, though she had no idea how her counterpoint could regularly forget such a commodious rucksack.
The coach pulled away in another foggy explosion and she faced the building head-on.
The first floor appeared to be a grocery shop. A hand painted sign in the window read CLOSED.
She walked around to the side where a rickety outdoor staircase led up to a door with the number 2 emblazoned on it.
She looked around, but there was no one to witness her, so she crept up the staircase, which was made of painted metal, not wood - so less rickety than she had originally thought.
When she reached the top, she shook the purse.
Something inside it jingled.
She stuck her hand inside gamely, feeling things that were soft, pointy, smooth, and at last the chattering metal teeth of a ring of keys.
It took a moment to locate the proper one, but it slid into the modern looking knob with a satisfying click and opened the door smoothly.
Ashe stepped into her new life.
2
Varik
Varik hid in the shadows at the edge of the woods, catching his breath and cursing himself silently for letting the girl slip into the crowd inside the diner.
Varik was a professional. He crossed the veil regularly, and was prepared for such distractions.
But the last thing he expected was to be shoved aside by a giant bear as soon as he set foot on the parking lot. And not just any bear - it had clearly been a fae creature.
He had no idea where it had come from, but he’d been ready for a serious fight over their shared quarry. He assumed it was there for the same prize he was seeking. And there was no way he would let his competitor win the bounty of Princess Ashe.
Varik was the most dangerous bounty hunter in the Seasonal Courts. The idea that some bear-fae had seen him in his natural form and kept coming was almost unthinkable.
Varik had readied a spell and weapon, and prepared himself to take out the burly bear by any means necessary.
But then it had disappeared as suddenly as it appeared.
And Varik was left with nothing but confusion, and the sinking feeling that there was more going on here than he understood.
But none of that