Page 133 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
“I am so sorry, Your Highness.” The woman standing in the doorway immediately fell to her knees to pick up her supplies.
That woke Lucais up.
He jumped to his feet, mouth agape and hair sticking up in places like he’d been electrocuted, and when she glanced up at him again, I was afraid the heat under her skin might be flirting with dangerous levels. To her credit, she gathered her items and retreated from the room in record time, and Lucais waved a hand to shut the door behind her. Letting out a husky laugh, he ran his hands through his hair to ruffle it after spending a night on the sofa cushions with my head on his chest and his arms around me, and then his eyes made their way back to my face.
I blinked at him, paralysed in the middle of the room, draped in a blanket, a deer caught in the headlights of his irises.
Apprehension circled us, a heavy tension in the air too thick to be snapped, and we assessed one another inside it with narrowed gazes. My stomach flipped when Lucais’s hand absently floated to his side, fingers poking at the same spot around his rib cage that was bothering me on my own body. His eyes darkened as he calculated the severity of what we had done, and then he broke our impetuous silence.
“Are we going to stand here and pretend that wasn’t the best sex either of us have ever had?”
“Yes.”
A sigh slipped through his lips, and the croaky languor of his voice was enough to make my heart grow phantom wings. “Okay.” He nodded in defeat, throat bobbing as he swallowed. “Well…then I’m going to shower and apologise to the staff.”
“Okay.” I stared at my nails as if my cuticles were interesting and shifted from one foot to the other before looking back at him. “That sounds good.”
There was a very long pause as we tried to tear our eyes away from the bewitchment that had locked our gazes together and sealed them with glue.
“Okay.” Lucais made the first move to break free of the trance and took a step as if he was about to evanesce from the room, but at the last minute, he turned back to me. “Aura?”
My cheeks flooded with heat for some unbeknownst reason. “Yes?”
“I meant what I said last night.” His gilded gaze dropped to the soft rug on the floor beneath us as if the memory was too strong to swallow. “You are perfect, and you didsowell, and I…” The High King’s tongue swept over his lower lip, followed by his teeth. “I won’t ever ask you to do that again now.”
I cleared my throat.Oh.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “I appreciate it.”
Even if I was a little disappointed, I didn’t show that to my brand-new soulmate, who smiled sweetly at me before vanishing from the room. I stood still for a few minutes after he left and familiarised myself with the way my left rib felt as the distance between us extended and stabilised, like the tension on a liferope or a grappling hook, moving and shifting depending on how much thought I gave to it and our relative proximity.
How do we know if it worked?
Lucais heard my question and replied instantly.If you get the urge to throw yourself into fireplaces again, we’ll know.
Where are you?
In the shower. Why? Would you like to join me?
Ignoring him, I pulled the blanket a little tighter around my shoulders and shook my head free of our mental connection as I shuffled towards the glass doors. They led out into a courtyard on the ground floor, though I could hardly see through the mist. All I knew was that we had plummeted through so many levels of the palace, landing in a small parlour filled with old bookshelves, a fully stocked liquor cart, a neatly organised desk, and the sofa we had slept on in front of a fireplace that didn’t have any wood left in the grate.
Deciding that I needed to shower too, I took one last, longing look back at the sofa before I left the room. I only made it to the next floor before my walk of shame was perceived.
“Aura!”
Halfway down a corridor, I came to an abrupt stop and swivelled towards the voice. Morgoya was climbing a staircase at the other end, each of her long strides making the tresses of her beaded gown swish and rustle. I hesitated, hyperaware that I was wearing a borrowed blanket, and wondered if I should make a run for it and pretend I hadn’t seen her. Deciding against it, I stumbled a few steps in her direction, clutching the blanket with both hands underneath my chin and trying not to let my cheeks burn like the very portrait of shame.
“You look well,” she commented, smiling so widely that a glimpse of her teeth was visible between her blood-red lips.
Morgoya knew.
“So do you,” I returned pleasantly.
The High Lady let out a long breath of air as she caught up to me, her smile simmering down into something duller and less intimidating. “I wanted to give you something,” she informed me, wringing her hands. A little crease appeared between her sharply sculpted eyebrows. “I don’t know whether to call it my condolences or my congratulations.”
I chewed on my lip as her meaning washed over me. “Right. You’re talking about my father.”
“That must have been very difficult for you.”
