My father remained deathly quiet, and Lucais glanced towards me for permission to let him go.
Head spinning, I nodded slowly.
My father coughed and spluttered, rolling onto his side as if that would help clear his airways. Wheezing, he gazed up at me, and the hatred in his eyes was replaced by something I’d never seen before. I would have liked it to have looked more like regret, but that wasn’t even close, and I was so disappointed that my shoulders slumped.
Even disarmed on the ground before me, the man who had raised me to withdraw into myself and cower from him still had the power to leech all the feeling and strength from my bones with a single word or a look. I shook my head, stumbling backwards.
“I can’t do it.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I can’t.”
“Are you weak, too?” Lucais’s voice was soft in my ear as he moved to stand behind me. “Weak men make it their mission to force you into feeling small so they can feel powerful. They confuse being bigger with being better. Do you want this world to keep happening to you, or do you want to start happening toit?” He held me firmly in place with his chest pressed into my back and his chin resting over my shoulder. “You can do it,Aura. You can do anything you want.” His lips grazed the shell of my ear. “You happened to me without even trying. You’vedestroyedme without so much as a conscious thought, and I’ll never get over it. I haven’t been the same since the day I learned your name, since you branded yourself on me and I became your possession.”
A shiver skittered down my nape as Lucais tucked a loose strand of my hair behind my ear and slipped his free hand into mine, dangling limply at my side. I felt the outline of something cool and hard like steel warming between our fingers, but I was too mesmerised by my father’s snakelike gaze to look down and see what it was.
“Youownme, Aura.” The High King’s voice was low and rough, stoking a fire in places that had never felt warmth. “Mind.” He trailed his lips up the side of my neck. “Body.” He kissed the corner of my jaw. “Soul.” His nose brushed the hollow beneath my ear. “Kingdom.” He pressed his mouth against my temple. “Crown.”
Be still my beating heart.
My fingers curled around the item between our hands involuntarily as Lucais urged me to take possession of it, and I felt some of my strength returning as I clutched the weapon like a liferope.
“I will never be rid of the imprint of you,” he went on in a husky murmur. “You think you can do that to the most powerful man in the entire world—to the High King of Faerie—but not the spineless, pathetic louse who bullied you for your entire life?” Lucais gently lifted my arm, placing his mouth against the bare skin of my wrist. He angled the hand I was using to clutch the dagger into position to stab the blade in a downwards thrust over my shoulder.
I was clay in his hands, totally under his spell as he moulded me into a weapon, but I started to tremble as he guided my bodythrough the action, moving us in slow motion with his hand over mine.
“Open your eyes, bookworm. Your nightmares are over. You never need to hold back or hide again.”
A half-laugh, half-sob tumbled out of my chest as we paused with the dagger pointed down at my father’s body, lying stiffly on the ground, glaring up at us.
I’d shown Lucais all of my weaknesses, and he was still standing behind me. He was still seeking out my touch, stroking his fingers up and down my free arm, the fabric of his shirt on my body soft and thin between us. He wasn’t ashamed or scared—
“Wait.” I swallowed, trying to suppress the unsteadiness in my voice. “I need you to clear something up once and for all, please.”
His voice was a whisper, his breath sweet and heady. “Anything.”
“The fog.”
“I already told you about the fog.”
“It’s concealing the damage to the palace, I know.” Twisting around in his arms until he released me, I stepped away, the weapon in a tentative grasp at my side. “But you cleared it away from the courtyard, so you’re obviously in control of it. Why submerge the entire city?”
Lucais’s mouth pulled to one side as he debated, little creases forming around the corners of his eyes. He clicked his tongue. “You remember when I told you that the thing in the lapsus was using me as some kind of conduit?”
“Yes.”
He pulled a sheepish face and scratched the back of his neck. “Well, it’s been poisoning the city in its free time. I’m not a willing participant, but I can’t seem to stop it, either. The mostI’ve been able to do is to reduce the severity of the impact and slow the progression.”
“The palace is dying?” I gasped, glancing ruefully towards the grey stonework and towering spires behind him.
“Not the palace.” The High King’s throat bobbed. “It’s the whole of Caeludor. I’m masking it with a very strong glamour at the moment, redirecting the worst of the damage back into the palace, which is…why the fog has to be all-consuming.”
I blinked into the empty space between us. “What if you stopped masking it? How much of the palace would be left?”
“I won’t.”
“But if you did?”