“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Because you know I’m a good person?”
Another flicker of a smile. “Because you’re starting to like me.”
I glared at him. “Yeah, I love people who kidnap me and throw me in prison. Are all demigods as arrogant as you?”
He shrugged. “Midir and Gwydion certainly are.”
“They’re demigods too?”
“They’re my half-brothers.”
“Oh. No wonder you have to tolerate them.”
The wound closed up a bit, but not as much as I would have expected. A deep, angry gash still cut across his shoulder, swollen in a way that looked like it was about to open up at any moment.
“It’s not working that well.”
“It’s the iron in my blood. But it’s good enough. We need to get back into the ocean.”
I shook my head. “No, that’s just going to burst open again.”
I stood and searched our surroundings—a fancy hotel stood just to our right, windows blazing with gold light. Gods, it would be amazing to have a night in there right now.
I mean, not with Lyr.
Just in general.
In any case, we had no money, and the hotel porters weren’t about to admit two bleeding fae for free.
Son of a gun.
Lyr rose, and the wind whipped the cloak around his shoulders. “We will need to move around like humans. I will take one of their vehicles and drive it.”
My eyes flicked to the parking lot. It wasn’t the worst idea. If we had a car, we’d be able to get out of here much faster…
“I guess you don’t think stealing is that illegal.”
He shrugged. “Depends what it is.”
“I have an idea.”
“Explain.”
“Just trust me,” I said.
“I actually don’t trust you at all. I thought that had been established.”
“Right.” I started walking. “You ever wanted to learn how to hotwire a car?”
“No.” The sea breeze sent droplets of water rolling over his golden skin.
I winced at the sharp pain in my back where the sword had caught me. Lyr’s eyes slid to me, catching my grimace. “Turn around. You’re hurt.”
“Don’t we have to go fast?”
“It will only take a second.”
I turned my back to him, and he brushed his hand lightly over my back. Warmth rippled through me, sensual and electric at the same time. Goosebumps rose over my sea-damp skin.
I closed my eyes, giving in to the pleasure of his healing magic that slipped over my wet body like silk. My pulse sped up, and my nipples tightened under the thin fabric of my dress.
Abruptly, I stepped forward. “That’s probably enough.”
I glanced at him, and his blue eyes looked keen enough to see into my soul…
“We can head to the hotel parking lot.” I glanced behind us. I didn’t see any possessed knights crawling from the ocean, ready to slaughter us for the secrets to my kingdom.
I just had no idea what that meant. Nothing had survived of Ys. I’d been back there myself. In the first few years after Ys sank, I visited it often. The towers had crumbled. The gold lay under marble. Our famous bells had cracked open. Enterprising thieves could have found a way to pry the jewels from the temple walls, deep under the ocean.
I’d stolen many things in my life, but I could never bring myself to steal from Ys. It felt like grave-robbing.
All I knew was that the kingdom was gone. So what the fuath meant about looking for my kingdom—I had no idea.
We crossed into a dark parking lot, where a streetlight lit up the cars. I picked one that had no car seats in it. I also chose the oldest-looking car in the lot, hoping it wouldn’t be fitted with any kind of security systems and that the hotwiring would work roughly as it had decades ago. It was a small, beat-up piece of crap.
“Humans track cars by the license plates, so disguising it is step one,” I said.
“Can you do that?”
Luckily, I knew a spell to scramble things up. I closed my eyes, trying to remember the words I’d spoken when I’d turned all my books into gibberish. Then, I stared at the license plate and whispered a spell to rearrange the numbers. I slid the two behind the seven, the seven after the four. And voila, no one would recognize this car as stolen.
Assuming I managed to steal it. I hadn’t actually tried to hotwire a car since the nineteen-seventies, and I believed cars had changed a bit since then.
I crossed to the driver’s seat. “Now we just have to unlock it.” I rubbed a knot in my forehead. “I vaguely remember an unlocking spell, but it’s a bit rusty, and even on a good day it takes a few hours.”
“We don’t have a few hours. How do the locking mechanisms work?” he asked.
“You use a key. But without that… I think there’s something with like, a coat hanger you can slip in to get the door open…” We didn’t have a coat hanger. “Or a wedge.”
Lyr stood next to me, edging me out of the way. Without another word, he slammed his fist through the window, shattering the glass.
Immediately, an alarm blared, deafening me. Son of a gun.
Lyr frowned at the car, then crossed to the front to lift up the hood. “What’s that noise coming from?”
“The alarm,” I shouted.
He managed to find the alarm speaker with surprising efficiency, stopping the noise by ripping it out. He dropped it on the pavement. The car still made a sort of buzzing sound, but it wasn’t loud.
“How do I drive it?” he asked.
“You don’t.” I pointed at the passenger seat. “You sit there. I’ll drive.”
“Are you giving me orders?”
“Yes.” I slid into the driver’s seat and stared at the steering wheel. “I’m just going to need you to use that raw physical strength again to rip off the bottom of the steering wheel, because I don’t have a screwdriver.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, then leaned over and punched the plastic cover of the steering column so that it split. Then, he worked his fingers into the crack and pulled off the broken plastic.
“Perfect.” I reached in, pulling out three bundles of wires.
I chewed my lip, trying to remember what was what. One set of these led to the battery…
Lyr inhaled deeply, which I was certain was impatience.
Then, he added, “They’re coming.”
Shit. “I don’t suppose any of them have a car, do they?”
“No, none of the knights know how to drive.”
“Right, the World Key. Opening portals. Good. They won’t be able to catch us.”
“The speed at which we’re moving suggests otherwise.”
“Stop talking.” If I could remember which one was the ignition…
Brown, I thought. Usually brown, though you really needed the manual, and without it, I could potentially electrocute myself.
“They are within half a kilometer,” said Lyr. “And we are sitting still in a vehicle with a broken window.”
“Shhhhh…”
I twisted together what I thought were the battery wires. Then, I connected the brown to the yellow, and—
The headlights turned on, and the radio began playing an old Nirvana song. “Yes!” Air conditioning blasted out of the vents.