Page 107 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
thirty-five
You Don’t Have to Touch It
“Why does your heart beat five times instead of three?”
Lucais held the door to one of the palace’s drawing rooms open for me, which seemed like an unnecessarily gallant gesture considering he could have opened it with a single wave of his hand. “Your average High Fae beats once for mind, twice for body, and thrice for soul. As High King, mine beats once for mind, twice for body, and thrice for soul—and then once more for kingdom, and once again for crown.”
My eyebrows shot up with intrigue. “What will happen to mine when I accept the bond?”
Lucais’s expression tightened. “We need to talk about that,” he replied curtly.
“Oh, for the love of fuck,” I muttered, trailing into the room behind him with my head hanging low. After everything we’d just exposed to each other in the courtyard, we were still stuck in the same frustrating place.
That is a more accurate statement than you might realise, he uttered into my mind.
Before I had a chance to ask what he meant, I heard the quiet slam of a book being closed, and my head whipped up to find Wrenlock sitting at the head of a long, polished wooden table.
The room was fairly empty compared to the space we usually dined in together, with colourful oil paintings hanging on the xanthous walls and not a whole lot of anything else. The table had matching chairs, simple wood carvings without adornment or cushions, and a large silver candle holder sat in the middle. It was empty. I peeked at the title of Wrenlock’s book and was quietly shocked to find he was reading a fiction novel written for pleasure.
He didn’t like reading—or at least, he hadn’t.
“Aura has decided she wants to accept the bond,” Lucais declared like it was the most unexpected breaking news in the world. Maybe it was. He swung his arm out like a pendulum blade between us, and didn’t sound excited or even remotely happy about it, which irked me beyond belief. “I don’t know what you think we should do, but I’d rather have it out in the open now.”
Oh, I’m going to throttle him. Why does Wrenlock have to do anything?
“I can make up my own mind,” I cut in, shooting daggers at the High King. “I don’t have much of a choice in any case, so I’d really love it if you could refrain from trying to turn me off the idea until it’s all been said and done.”
Lucais’s eyes flared with something I couldn’t decipher, and he said, “That’s the thing, bookworm. You don’t know what it is that has to be done.”
Flabbergasted, I flung my hands up in the air and tossed a beseeching look towards Wrenlock. When all else failed, I could usually count on him to speak plainly with me if he was able to do so.
But his mouth was tight as he looked up at me from beneath dark, furrowed brows.“The mating bond requires a ceremony of sorts,” he began quietly.
I rolled my eyes, but I was willing to accept a ceremony if that’s all it took. “Fine. The sooner I put the whole horrible ordeal behind me, the better.”
Lucais let out a strangled laugh. “Oh, bookworm.”
“Stop playing cat-and-mouse with her,” Wrenlock chastised.
The High King shot him a chilly look. “Fine,” he bit out. Taking a deep breath, he turned to me. “The traditional law states that the mating bond cannot take effect until the relevant parties have”—his tone wavered, and I could have sworn I saw Lucais’s body swaying slightly from side to side as he wiggled the fingers on one hand in the air between us awkwardly—“consummated…the…bond.”
His hand stopped moving. I stopped breathing. Wrenlock stopped sitting behind the table and rose to stand, walking around the side until he stood between us, his hands clasped in front of him and an expression of concern etched into his features.
“Aura?” he probed.
I stared wordlessly at the shiny surface of the table visible between them, its dark wood stain reflecting the yellow light from the faelight orbs that bobbed against the ceiling, and suddenly it all made sense. Wrenlock’s awkwardness whenever I’d asked him about the High Fae’s intimate practices and his refusal to go all the way with me at the House, my lack of informed consent aside. Morgoya’s fascination with whether or not we’d done it yet. Lucais’s gentle rejection—which felt like it had happened on more than one occasion, even if I wasn’t fully aware of it at the time.
Dozens of memories came flooding back to me, moments I was glimpsing through a different lens where wecouldhavefallen into each other in that way but never did, despite the ever-present ache of escalating desire.
In his bedroom at the House after he rescued me from the field of caenim. The day he’d antagonised me with his harsh words and soft touches in the armoury. When he’d kissed me with enough passion to overthrow Eros in the dungeon and then violently threw himself back against the opposing wall.
All those times he’d wiped away those lingering remnants of my lips and skin. He had touched me like he wanted to devour me, but then he always pulled back.
And the whole time, I had thought it was because he was toying with me.
No soulmate is better than a dead soulmate, he had told me.
Because if I became the High Queen, my fate with the Malum would be sealed. They wouldhaveto kill me in order to fulfil their desire for a Malum Queen to rule Faerie at his side, and it would no longer matter whether Raella’s offer to turn me had been genuine at the time she had made it, or if Lucais could find a way out of it for me.
