“Of course, milady. Each of us will wear our own parachute and Mellors will show you how to use them, if the need occurs, though perhaps this is not needed for our more experienced party members,” the prince said, fixing me with a steely eye.
“There you go, Lady McKinnon, safe as houses. So, where will we go?”
“This way, Lady McKinnon,” Mellors said. “What the hell are you doing?” he hissed at me as we walked over to the airfield shed to retrieve the parachutes.
“Giving him alone time with Tess, you moron! This is perfect, just the kind of thing to get her going, but she’s not going to want to kiss His Highness with us looking on!”
“She won’t?”
“No, things might be a bit bloody different here, but back home, romance is a private thing. I could have been at home, trying to repair the damage your fucking goons wreaked and Tess and the prince would be getting to first base in the skies! No wonder you’ve never been successful before.”
“I hadn’t realised. I thought you were trying to derail this–”
“I know what you were thinking,” I said and snatched up a parachute from the pile on the ground then jammed the goggles down on my face. “Just because I want to watch you die slowly and then piss in your decaying eye sockets doesn’t mean my advice isn’t sound.”
“I’ll make His Highness aware of this.”
I clambered into what felt like a huge rickety basket, now close enough to the aerowhale to touch. Its mournful cries that rang through the countryside seemed to devolve into shrieks as I did so. I fought back a tear, unable to wipe my blurry eyes behind the bleary goggles. Each movement I made yanked on the hooks embedded in the whale’s skin. I went to say something as Tess, the prince and Mellors joined me; Mellors and one of the staff going around and giving each hook a jerk to make sure the basket was secure. I barely suppressed the wince at each pull. Mellors dodged a splatter of blood with a curse, picking up a stick stored in the basket and prepared to jab it into the guts of the beast. I caught his eye and shook my head slowly, looking over to Tess, who stood rapt at the basket edge, her eyes sparkling. I saw the man’s muzzle pull back from his gums in a silent snarl, but he schooled his face to politeness when Tess turned to ask him a million questions.
“Your advice seems to have done just the trick,” the prince said, coming to stand beside me. “You needn’t truss yourself up with that parachute. My men are experts in this field. We’ve never had an accident yet.”
“No slight on your men, but I’m bloody terrified of heights,” I said. “It took a handful of Valium and a very sexy instructor to get me out of the plane last time. The only way I can do this is to be prepared for anything.”
He sniffed at this, as if my hunched form somehow compromised his grand plans for the day, “Your advice was well-founded, your sister seems quite enraptured.”
“Wait until you fire this baby up. If I were you, I’d be close by to help her find her feet. We’re both pretty klutzy and likely to stumble when the wind shifts. Hopefully, she’ll stumble right into your arms.”
“Ah yes, as when Brock stops Sage from falling on her face during her presentation in Moonlight on Sable. That seemed to lead almost directly to a consummation of their relationship,” the prince said. I blinked at him, my rude stare thankfully, masked by the owlish goggles. There were three hundred pages of ‘will she, won’t she, will she, what is he?’ in that book. Between Brock saving Sage from embarrassing the shit out of herself in front of the really important neuroscience conference she was a keynote speaker at, finding out he was a werewolf, being attacked by an NSA-style organisation and her discovering the psychic link between the two of them that allowed the two to escape the kind of medical testing neither would survive alone. Direct consummation? I didn’t see it.
“Yeah, of course, though a word to the wise, you may need to put in a bit more legwork with Tess. This is a great start, don’t ruin it by rushing in too early. Be attentive, indicate you’re interested, flirt, but be mysterious.”
“Why would I bother with that? It sounds downright tedious. Surely, the splendid view will be enough.”
I let out a long sigh. “I’m not sure how things work here, but at home, the mating dance, y’know, like animals do? We do that, too. People get to know each other slowly, they get a sense of the other person, start to work out if they are someone to get invested in. Men that come on too strong can be off-putting for
women.”
“Hmm, this is that ’hard to get’ concept you were blathering on about beforehand. It makes sense, I admit. Seen plenty of my friends make fools of themselves chasing after a bit of fluff that won’t give him the time of day. I don’t mind saying, this is the part of your plan I find the most onerous.”
“Well, hang in there, Your Highness and think of your freedom. Getting furry again, being able to howl at the moon, your dick doing that weird knotting thing . . .”
The prince’s eyes whipped around to meet mine. Fuck, Ash, you moron, don’t mention his dick if you don’t want to go anywhere near his dick. “Quite, well, your counsel has proven useful so far, so I will continue to heed it.” Thankfully, all I got was a sharp nod and him returning to Tess’s side.
I tried to watch my sister’s face fill with joy with some kind of pleasure, as the aeronauts scurried above us and commenced lift-off. I was more concerned with the buffeting winds and how unsteadily we seemed to be gaining height. Her eyes went wide and glistened as we slowly rose up into the air, her hands clutching at the edge of the basket, soon to be wrapped around the prince’s proffered paws. She’s having a once in a lifetime experience, I thought, every book, convention, and film was leading to this.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped as we started to get to a decent height, “Look at the view! And those huge ruins! Who made them?” Here’s his in, I thought, both fearful and pleased when he responded.
“They are some of the remains from the Brigintinian Empire. You see them all over the country, what is left of a race of giant p–” he caught himself and went on, “hoo-mans that came before us. Apparently, they rose up and conquered our lands, were supreme rulers and then inexplicably, they were gone, their broken architecture all that remained.”
“You were going to say pinkies, weren’t you?” Tess asked with a smile, looking over her shoulder at the prince.
“I–”
“It’s OK, some of your men have already slipped. It seems you think we are some kind of primitive animal, like a pig or something.”
“I would never–”
“C’mon, Your Highness, don’t ruin this,” she gestured to the view, “with a lie.”