Page 110 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
“Yes.” Lucais’s tone was petulant. “Forgive me for making an already complicated situation even more complicated, but I’d really like to make just one more request.”
“Fine.” I waved a hand, but he stared directly at Wrenlock when he spoke. I didn’t miss the way his tone iced over with the hint of warning.
“Her mouth is mine.”
He stared at the High King impassively. “What in the—”
“I don’t care about whatever has already happened between the two of you,” Lucais interrupted. “I don’t want to know thedetails, but I would like to request that, while the three of us are together, Aura’s mouth and the sharp and nasty tongue that comes with it belong to me.”
“You’ve literally watched us kissing,” he argued.
Lucais raised one devilish eyebrow. “You know very well that isnotwhat I’m talking about.”
Wrenlock frowned, but deferred to me with a look.
Aura’s mouth and the sharp and nasty tongue that comes with it belong to me.
His comment sent me spinning backwards in time to a moment where I had looked the blond fiend dead in the eyes, fully convinced that he hated me. He stood on the staircase in the House and joked that the Court of Darkness—my destined place in his world, though we hadn’t a clue about it back then—was formerly called the Court of Pretty Little Human Things With Sharp and Nasty Tongues.
Because he thought I was pretty. Because he thought that I was as pretty as a lochgrub, one of the most well-known aesthetic wonders in all of Faerie. He thought about my mouth and what it might be capable of doing beyond insulting him and trying to scare him off by hurting his feelings.
I blinked at him, borderline tearful, and unfathomably wonderstruck.This whole time?
He inclined his head to me.It is one of your many exceedingly redeeming qualities.
I was floored. Completely and utterly spellbound. There was no question in my mind, so the enthusiasm came rushing out like the dam that finally broke.
It’s yours. My mouth is yours.
The arch of one blond brow twitched as he fought off a smile.Are you going to tell him that?
Our silence was broken by my sharp intake of breath as I turned to Wrenlock and said, “Okay. Lucais won’t touch you, and you won’t touch my mouth, and I won’t…”
“You won’t do this if you don’t want to,” the High King offered in the silence of my uncertainty. “Even if you feel like you have no other choice. Because you tell us to start looking for another option, and we’ll start looking.”
Wrenlock nodded his enthusiastic agreement with the sentiment, and my heart warmed at their attempts to soothe me when we all knew perfectly well that there was nothing left to search for outside the palace walls.
“I won’t do this if I don’t want to,” I repeated. A bizarre thought struck me that the repetition of those words was as close to wedding vows as we were ever likely to have. I had to stifle a maniacal laugh. “Even if I feel like I have no other choice.”
“Then we’re all agreed.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
Fuck.
thirty-six
We’ll Be Friends Tomorrow
We met in the High King’s bedroom a little while later.
I’d hyperventilated in the shower for a good ten minutes before I decided to pull myself together.
The choices, despite anything the two men might insist, presented an impossible scenario. If I did not accept the mating bond with Lucais and formally become his High Queen, it was likely that the Court of Darkness would continue to haunt me, either driving me into the shadows again, or to my death.
Even if I didn’t want to believe anything that Wrenlock and Lucais were telling me, the Spectre who visited me the last time I was in my own room had already warned me about it. Simultaneously, he had been very clear that he did not have my best interests at heart, and then he’d proceeded to trick me into making a bargain with him over it. Maybe it was the result of my childhood trauma, but I was more likely to trust the words of people who never pretended to care about me.
