Page 146 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
I understand you.
The High King’s voice was in my head as I weighed the blade in my hand.You’ve been using your magic like a weapon, as if it’s a sword that you can pick up and put down. Rememberwhat I told you. You are power. It is not a separate thing. Stop thinking about it like it is.
I’ve been trying.
I know, my love.He pressed a swift kiss to my forehead.
I wished that he was right, but I only had one type of baseline magic left to experiment with—and it was destruction. Exactly like the Court of Darkness showed me…
Breaking my trance before I became totally numb, Morgoya pulled me into a hug so tight I felt something crack. “You’ll be okay,” she promised. “We’ll resume our practice as soon as you come back.”
Part of me wanted to thank her for all of her help, but the words felt like goodbye on my tongue, and I wasn’t sure how to get them to sound any differently.
A moment later, the doors banged open and a succession of heavy footsteps echoed on the floor. The familiar warmth of Batre’s arms encircled me, and I no longer needed to say anything. She squeezed me even tighter than her girlfriend had. As I felt the High Lady slip out of the embrace, I heard her drop her voice to speak to someone nearby.
“You’d better bring her back to me.”
If Morgoya threatened Lucais like that before the bond was solidified, I would have understood completely, but it seemed a little redundant after everything had been said and done. Still, I appreciated the sentiment. I appreciatedher.
“I’ll buy you as much time as I can, Lucais.” Morgoya’s eyes were filled with regret as Batre and I pulled back from one another, and her green gaze settled on her lover. She tilted her head towards the doors in a question, but Batre motioned for her to go on without her.
“I’ll be there in a second,” she said, and then she pulled a notepad out of her large pocket, holding it in front of me. “I was late because I went to get this.”
My lashes fluttered with uncertainty as she turned it over to a page with the words I AM SICK OF THIS written in a messy scrawl right in the middle of the paper. I started to shake my head, but she was already ahead of me.
“No, I’m serious,” she insisted, tilting the page so that Lucais’s inquisitive eyes could assess it, too. “I had a feeling that something like this would happen after the incident with the rose. You’re not going to tell me this wasn’t what you were trying to write down, are you?”
Torn up on the inside, I made a long, choking sound before I relented. “Yeah, no.” My free hand came up to rest against my forehead as my thoughts began to spin, the other curled around the dagger in a fist on my hip. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“Sweetheart, I need to go,” Morgoya called from near the doors. “They cannot be permitted to find this room before the caenim are all gone, and I don’t trust Enyd as far as I could push her down a staircase.”
Batre’s eyes seared into mine like a brand. “We’ll pick it up when you get back,” she promised, tearing off the page with the writing and pushing it into my grasp before she spun on her heels and hurried to join Morgoya at the door.
She threw one glance over her shoulder before the doors closed, and I fell back against the nearest wall when the echo rang out.
Enchantment. The pen had done as I intended it to, but there was an absurd delay. So Iwascapable—yet faulty.
I cringed against the stonework, cradling the dagger against my chest, scrunching the paper into a ball in my fist. I could feel the enchantment in the blade—a slight difference to the weight and feel, a twinkle that blinked back at me in the stone—but not on the paper. As I re-examined the hilt and its richly coloured jewel, I searched for a bond with it the way that Batre and Morgoya had taught me to do when I had been trying to accesslevitation magic. I felt a spark, but it was like grabbing soap, and it slipped out of my reach.
“We need to go.” The High King’s voice jerked me out of my fixation. I stuffed the page into the side of my boot so my hand was free to take his. “You’re about to see a lot more of Faerie, bookworm. Each Court looks very different,” he warned me.
Lucais was a vision of violence with two broadswords crossing over his back and a plethora of different devices strapped to his waist. When I peered around his tall frame, I realised the caenim had already disappeared from the throne room. We were all moving so fast that I wondered if the High Fae had actually been slowing down on purpose for me the whole time.
“The Court of Fire kind of looks like it’s been blown up when you’re on the outskirts. There’s a little forest surrounding it that they use for kindling reserves, situated between the outlying towns and the Ruins, so that’s where we’ll take cover while I work on manipulating the borders.” He moved to pull me into his arms, but hesitated. “Wecannotbe seen, Aura. If we’re discovered doing questionable things around the borders, it’s all over. We’ll have to explain ourselves to everyone and hope the High Court can be convinced to see reason.”
Wrenlock snorted as he sauntered over to us, equipped with as many weapons as the High King, minus the broadswords. “Yeah, right. Ogres will fly.”
fifty-two
Please Choose Wisely
Elera was waiting near the stables as the three of us snuck out of our own palace like fugitives under the cover of nightfall and fog. I questioned the decision to take her—I was questioning absolutely everything at that point—but I was given mixed answers.
“She hates to miss out on the fun,” Lucais informed me with a playful wink.
“She’ll get you out of there fast if things go wrong,” Wrenlock added, raising a brow at the High King.
The unicorn nuzzled her soft, furry muzzle against the crook of my neck as I approached, so I gave her snout a quick peck before Lucais helped me onto her back and climbed up behind me. Elera broke into a canter before she launched into the thin mist. I held my breath the whole time we were evanescing to stifle the rising sickness in my stomach, and found my lungs were burning by the time we landed on solid ground. For whatever reason, Wrenlock chose not to bring his own mount and travelled alone behind us.
