Page 34 of Cage Me

“For fucks sake, get off of me.”

Jett shoved them and Cage moved forward a whole five or six inches. He still held Azy in his arm, but her feet touched the ground under them. Her feet.

“Yes. Finally.” She wiggled her toes and stretched her legs. The gashes in her thigh and arm were still raw, but weren’t bleeding.

“That’s some magic mirror,” Cage said. Their bodies were smashed together, front to front, and Azy could feel every blessed inch of his hard, honed body.

His shard was hanging around his neck, right in front of her face. It felt strange to not be wearing it after all these days. She didn’t feel it’s loss though. Somehow, even though she wasn’t wearing it, she could still feel the connection between them.

It was different now. She couldn’t describe how. Like a warm current that pulled her closer to him and him to her.

She drug her gaze up from his entirely too naked chest to his golden eyes. God, they were actually gold. Not sparkly brown or some indescribably hazel, but twenty-four carat.

He stared right back at her with an intensity that made her feel like she could see straight into her head, where she kept all the totally innapropriate thoughts about just what she’d like to do to all his half naked-ness. Or his whole nakedness.

“If you guys are going to make out, I’m shifting and busting through these rocks.”

Cage waited one more moment before he cleared his throat and looked over her head to Jett behind her. “Feel free to bust on out of here. If you’ve got any idea how or where to go.”

“Mermaid. This adventure has been, umm, weird. But, I’d like to go back to my shiny hoard now.”

Azy tried to twist to see Fallyn, but she was fully wedged between the rock and Cage’s hard place. “I don’t think I can do that.”

“Just use one of my…what did you call them? Oh, ornaments to reflect through. The sooner the better, I am not enjoying having my face smashed into dragonling’s armpit.”

No, one wouldn’t.

“Can I use it to reflect us up to the surface?”

Fallyn gasped. “No no no no no no no no no no no no no. I don’t go up there. There are dragons up there.”

“Dumb bunny, there are dragons in here,” Jett said.

“What? Where? Don’t let them see me. Dragons are evil. They’re trying to kidnap me and take me to their red devil leader. Get me out of here.” Fallyn screeched and Jett let out a yelp.

“You’ve got about ten seconds to magic us out of here before I do more permanent damage to the crazeball’s brain. She’s clawing the shit out of me.”

Cage pulled Azy tighter to him, protecting her back with his arms. “She’s your sister, dude.”

“She’s not my brethren.” He yelped again, and rocks tumbled down from the top of the cave where he was trying to claw his way out.

Azy scooched her arm up and around and looked into the mirror. First, she saw Fallyn’s cave and didn’t want to go back there again. Then the view changed and she was looking at a spot a good hundred miles off shore where she and some of the other Mami Wata went to sun themselves on the rocks. Yes, that would work.

She blinked and the view changed again to the bedroom of the house where she’d grown up. The room was painted a different color and there were posters of Pokemon and a dinosaur toys spread across the floor, but that was definitely her room. She could see it as clearly as if she were standing in the doorway.

There had been a mirror on the back of her door. Yes, that’s exactly where she stood. She could see the street and the neighbor’s yard out of the window.

The memories of that old room in a house she hadn’t seen in five years hit her harder in the gut than a bullet. She swallowed past the lump in her throat willing that sight away.

The mirror darkened, allowing her to breathe again. She thought it was finished showing her reflections, but then she noticed the motion of a blue scaled tail swish by just along the edge. Yes, there was a tiny trail of bubbles, and then another glimpse of scales. Only these ones were bigger and distinctly un-mermaid like.

“What do you see?” Cage’s voice bubbled up through the filter of the images in the mirror.

“I think it shows me reflections of places I’ve been. Or maybe mirrors I’ve looked into before. I’m not sure what it’s showing me now, but I think it’s the reflection of another Mami Wata’s mirror.”

“There are more of these?”

“All Mami Wata have mirrors. Except me. They are passed down from mother to daughter, but my mother’s mirror was lost. Or so they told me.”

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