Page 117 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
Understanding washed over me with the flush of pink that touched my cheeks. “You didn’t…” I trailed off awkwardly, staring down at his crotch. Beneath the light fabric of his pants, I saw the immediate twitch of his cock springing to life at my attention, and the colour on my cheeks deepened.
“Oh, no, I did.” He grinned like a fiend when he saw the expression on my face. “Around the same time as you, actually.”
My heart skipped a beat, sparing one for the space between my legs that throbbed once at the imagery of Wrenlock getting Lucais off while I came apart on top of him. “But not…with me,” I hedged, uncertain.
His smile was coy. “Not exactly, no.”
I took a few deep breaths, weighing up my options.
If the bond hadn’t been solidified, that meant there was still time for me to change my mind if that’s what I wanted to do. But if I didn’t want to back out, then we had to start it all over again, and I wasn’t sure I’d survive it.
The way Lucais had felt inside of me was all-consuming and lethal. It was hard enough to look him in the eye after he’d fucked me with his tongue and pulled me apart at the seams, so to lose myself completely with him would surely feel a million times more intense—and a million times more unforgettable and inescapable.
“How many times does it need to happen?”
“Just once. Each. Together. Preferably around the same time.”
I pushed my shoulders back and straightened my spine, letting my knees fall to the sides so I was cross-legged beneath the blankets. “Okay, then,” I agreed. “We’ll be friends tomorrow, and we’ll finish this today.”
One night to get it over and done with would have been ideal, but one entire day wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Steeling myself, I untangled my legs from the blankets and moved towards him.
“Down, girl.” Lucais laughed. He took the hand that was reaching for his erection and brought it up to his mouth, placing a kiss over my knuckles. “You just woke up. Your safety net hasn’t come back yet. And you need something a bit stronger than coffee to replenish your strength.”
I rolled my eyes, but I fell back onto the pillows and conceded.
The High King didn’t ask me what I wanted to eat. Much like he had done with the coffee and tea, he simply took it upon himself to make it—and make it bizarrely accurate to my tastes.
He summoned a large tray of food so close to the breakfast spread the House used to send into my bedroom. It was filled with pancakes, waffles, assorted fruits, and golden syrup; there was a plate with thick slices of toast, paperdove eggs, sticks of butter, jam, and another pot of perfectly brewed coffee, complete with a pitcher of milk and cubes of sugar. Lucais sat with his legs crossed on the other side of the bed, facing me across the breakfast tray. My eyes bounced back and forth between the food and his unreadable expression while I tried to untangle specific memories from the haze in my brain.
“You…” I began after a few moments of his expectant silence. I extended a finger in the air between us, then hesitated, biting my lip. “I don’t know if this sounds unhinged, but”—I frowned at the food, then flicked my eyes up to meet his curious gaze—“you were sending me food at the House.”
The High King’s mouth twitched, evidently against his will. He reached for a sprig of grapes and popped three into his mouth in quick succession, chewing thoroughly before he responded. “Was I?”
My brow creased. “Weren’t you?”
“It’s possible.”
“I thought that it was the House. This whole time…” I trailed off, staring blindly at the foggy window over his shoulder.
He shrugged, bringing my vision back into focus. “A strong enchantment can absolutely take on a life of its own,” the High King told me. “I enchanted the House, but over time, it’s become far more independent. It has a mind of its own.” He buttered and cut a slice of toast, handing one half to me. I took it, my mind still reeling. “The House takes most of my suggestions on board, and it wouldn’t survive for long without me, but I don’t have total control of it.”
I shook my head slightly as I recalled that the House had locked my bedroom doors but still allowed him to comein through the balcony, which I’d thought was absolutely preposterous behaviour at the time.
“For example,” Lucais went on around a bite of toast, “the interior design. The House alters its own décor and layout to suit the guests. Did you notice that your bedroom bore a striking resemblance to your bookstore? I certainly did—because I had nothing to do with it. That was the enchantment, observing you and adjusting the House’s layout to suit the parts of your identity it was able to perceive. The problem is that it changes theentirebuilding to fit the new design.” He rolled his eyes. “The whole time you were there with me, I couldn’t find a single fucking thing in my own bedroom.”
I stifled a laugh. “And the Forest?”
“The Forest,” Lucais said tightly, a scowl overcoming his face, “is a perfect example of a faulty spell.”
I put a hand over my mouth to conceal a smile. “So what went wrong then?”
“You’re better off asking what wentright. And the answer to that would be absolutely nothing.” He dusted breadcrumbs off his fingers over the empty plate, and I took the opportunity to take my first bite of toast, chewing patiently as I waited for him to speak.
“I was young and experimental,” he divulged at last. “My family’s cottage—the one you saw replicated to host the Map—was located in the Forest of Eyes and Ears before it was destroyed in the war. We had to move to Caeludor when I became the High King, which happened much earlier than anyone had expected, so we would occasionally travel back there for long weekends. I hadn’t actually lived there long enough to form a solid attachment to the cottage myself, but I knew my parents missed their home. My father, most of all, because his inventions and experiments were housed there, and there was plenty of space for him to work.” Lucais stopped long enough tomake up a fresh cup of coffee. He took a sip before offering it to me, which I took gratefully.
“The Forest, on the other hand, I was obsessed with,” he went on. “I was in a bad mood one weekend. My parents had been arguing more often because of all the stress they were under and I knew it was my fault, so I foolishly decided that if I could create a spell strong enough to make it seem that I had disappeared, then the crown might find someone else and all of our problems would be resolved.”
Lucais’s words hit a very familiar nerve. I pinched the skin on one of my knuckles inconspicuously to counteract the sting.
