Page 120 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
“No, Lucais, I don’t.” My voice trembled, so I pushed my feet to move faster.One after the other. The voices in my head told me to keep running. Always, always running. “I think that’s exactly what you’re saying. I think that’s what you’ve been saying this whole time, and you’re just too afraid to admit it.”
I heard his footsteps padding along the stone floor and felt his brooding presence following me as I found a staircase and began to descend it, though I didn’t know where I was going—only that I had to leave. I had to keep moving, keep walking, because I couldn’t do what he was asking me to do. What hekeptasking me to do. Even thinking about it was messy and painful. Attempting it was even worse. If I succeeded at unleashing the magic again, it would only cause more destruction.
“Have you forgotten what happened last time?” I muttered, loud enough for him to hear it. My voice rose in pitch and volume as I plowed onwards, picking up the pace until I was nearly jogging down the stairs. “I took the light out of your sky. You hexed a whole Forest to turn against you. My father was a dark faerie, and I’m being summoned to lord over a realm that wants to watch the world die in deafening silence. What if I do something likethatnext time?”
“So we’ll be prepared for it,” Lucais returned, still trailing me. His voice was annoyingly even and calm. “You can’t do much damage in a place like this anyway.”
“You haveno ideawhat I’m capable of,” I seethed. Heat was accumulating in my chest, making my pulse feel weak and thready.
“Youhave no idea what you’re capable of,” he shot back.
At the bottom of the staircase, I found a side door and shoved it open, secretly hoping that it would slam closed on his face as I stalked out into the freezing morning air. The stonework was so cold that it sliced through the socks and bit into the soles of my feet, icy and resolute.
The door fell closed with a resounding slam, but the High King was right on my heels. “You already know you could be the answer to all of this!”
Halfway across the courtyard, I whirled so fast I almost slipped over and fell onto my ass. “Yes,” I shouted, “and Idon’tcare!”
“What the fuck, Aura?” Lucais’s brow creased as he threw his hands out to the sides. “Why the fuck not?”
I was burning up from the inside out, despite the glacial temperature of the ground beneath my feet and the air in my lungs. Breathing took more effort than it should have. My heart was running so fast that it was no longer even beating; it felt like one long, constant pressure in my chest.
He’d finally done it.
He’d pushed me too far.
The confession was poison on the tip of my tongue, and it was self-preservation to spit it out.
“Because when I care, Lucais, peopledie.”
“What?”
“Lucais!” I shouted his name into the bitter atmosphere mindlessly, stamping my freezing foot into the cobblestone. “I am not right. I am not right in my head”—with both hands, I pointed to my brain—“or in my heart”—I mimicked the motion of stabbing myself in the chest—“or in any part of me. I mean,lookat me!” I waved both of my hands up and down my body as if he wasn’t looking properly and required directions. “I can’t control magic, but I can’t absorb iron. What thefuckis that about? I am anathema, and you’re honestly lucky that you’re finding out now before you’re mated to me for the rest of your—”
“Will youstop?” Lucais had a wild look in his eyes, and a strong breeze picked up in the courtyard that probably had something to do with it. “There is literally nothing about you that doesn’t look or feel right to me, you infernal fucking woman!”
“You don’t even know me!” I shrieked.
“What more do I need to know?” he shouted back, the deep tone echoing against the stonework. “For fuck’s sake, Aura, I’ve already seen the worst parts of you. I think we’re going to be just fine!”
I tipped my head back and glared up into the fog, swirling like storm clouds against the wind stirred by Lucais’s upheaval of emotion. When I finally said the words into the mist—when Iscreamedthe words with all the might of my lungs—they were as much for me as they were for him, because I’d never uttered them out loud before. Ever.
“I had a brother!”
Silence accompanied the stilling of the clouds.
Silence that had once been my closest friend.
Silence that was going to devour me whole and spit out my bones if someone didn’t break it.
“What happened to him?” Lucais asked once the mist had finally settled around us again.
It solidified until we were encased in a protective cage of grey fog, so opaque and firm I might have been convinced it was soundproof, too. Like it was determined to shelter my secrets alongside my body.
But I’d kept it for far too long.
It demanded to be known.
So I confessed my sins to the High King of Faerie and prepared to face his judgement.
