Page 149 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
It wasn’t hyperbole. There really was a small army of soldiers waiting for us once we cleared the last of the trees. About fifty steps out into the open, we stood exposed and vulnerable beneath the burning skies as they poured out of the forest—so close they had to have been watching us the entire time—and every last one of them looked as though they were prepared for a bloodbath.
With the colour of the dirt beneath their feet, I could have easily been convinced that there had already been one.
“Owain’s militia,” the High King said in greeting as a group of soldiers clad in red and black marched forward with a set of iron manacles. His tone betrayed his ire, but it was tainted with a flicker of genuine intrigue. “Where are all the women?”
“Things have changed here since the last time you paid a visit to us, Lucais.” Wrenlock’s tone was clipped, and he urged me to take a few steps forward, but the firmness of his hold relented by a fraction once the soldiers had the High King in chains. The hissing as the iron seared Lucais’s skin made mewant to scream. “He’s banned anyone who isn’t male from enlisting.”
I was still in a daze, stuck on the way he had said the wordus.
“I’ll see about that.” The High King gave a disappointed head shake, turning in a slow circle. My gaze landed on his hands, bound at the waist, as steam billowed out from between his wrists and the irons. “Fancy showing bookworm here the first proper army in Faerie, and it’s your lot of burned leftovers.”
“I’ve seen your army,” I found myself mumbling in an effort to make sense of a single thing that was happening around me. It was so trivial, yet I got stuck on it, and the white and gold uniform of the Court of Light was engraved into my memories after everything that had happened with Hanson.
“You haven’t seen the real armies,” Lucais countered, his tone conversational even as we were pushed into a walk that felt like a death march by our captors. “Enyd keeps a certain type of men around her because she sleeps with them, and I don’t station women as guards because they thrive in intelligence, but if you’d met Ulyssa before we left, you’d find that their assembly consists mostly of women or queer soldiers. Owain used to have female guards, at the very least.” He turned his head, surveying the soldier closest to him. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I find any of you handsome gentlemen disappointing, but it is odd after what the Court of Fire used to represent.”
“Lucais?” Wrenlock called over my shoulder, causing me to cringe away from the sound.
“Yes, dearest?”
“Just shut the fuck up.”
For once in his life, the High King of Faerie actually did what he was told, and the rest of our walk was spent in a reflective silence. I didn’t risk sharing a thought with Lucais again, but itwasn’t necessary for me to know that he was thinking the same thing as me.
He was wondering how we had gotten into such a mess, and how we were going to make sure at least one of us got out of it alive.
The soldiers from the Fire Army escorted us into the outlying town beyond the little tin hut. The smoke was stifling; ash gathered in my throat, triggering my muscles to tense around a cough, though nobody else seemed particularly disturbed.
Eventually, a cobblestone road appeared through the centre of the village, cutting a long, straight line between rows of houses that glowed with a subdued red tint reflecting off the numerous fires that lined the streets. Stacks of wood were littered between buildings carved from stone and topped with slanting tin sheets or straw, a practise that would have raised alarm bells if the occupants of the township were human beings because there was a significant risk that half of the town would go up in flames if the wind took a turn in the wrong direction.
No other signs of life were present as we marched onto the cobblestone, the sharp impact of boots against the ground the only sound brave enough to encroach upon our silence. On the other side, there was an expanse of dead land where fires burned like bushes in the place of any flora.
Beads of sweat started to gather against my hairline until they were heavy enough to slide down my temple. I couldn’t move my hands to wipe them away, and I found myself silently raging at Wrenlock’s hypocrisy. He had criticised Lucais for chaining me to his carriage, but he was holding my wrists bound at my back after putting a knife to my throat. The knife, at least, was no longer resting against any part of my body—it remained in Wrenlock’s other hand, an ever-present threat.
Two carriages waited for us up ahead, and that was when Lucais broke his vow of silence.
“No,” he snarled. In an instant, he’d shrugged off the hands of both of the soldiers escorting him and whirled on Wrenlock. His hands were still bound in the iron chains, dulling his magic, but the wind picked up around us. “You are not separating us in those carriages, Elumos. I swear to the High Mother—”
Wrenlock was calm when he cut him off by saying, “We’re all travelling to the same place. It’s just a precaution.”
Before the High King could speak, one of the soldiers crept up behind him and pulled a thick black bag over his head. Lucais shouted and swore viciously, pulling against his constraints so hard it looked like he was willing to sacrifice his own hands to break free, and I found myself needing to turn away when they kicked him to the ground.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to stop them. I wanted to do something,anything—
But I was immobilised by my own mind, slipping into a dreamlike state that incapacitated me, though I would have clawed my way out if only I could feel my own hands again. All I could do was look away.
Sheathing his blade, Wrenlock put his hands over my ears to block out the sound of Lucais being beaten into submission and forced into the carriage waiting behind us. I was guided into the first one. It was carved from a gold frame and glass wheels, pulled by a trio of black stallions without any horns, with cushioned red leather seats on the interior. The maroon-coloured velvet curtains were closed, restricting my view of the world outside and allowing only the faintest light to illuminate the interior of the carriage.
Once inside, Wrenlock released my hands and crouched in front of me. I rubbed my wrists and turned my head when hereached up to sweep my damp hair away from my face, revulsion churning my stomach.
“Aura,” he whispered. “Please look at me, baby.”
There were vipers in my stomach, biting me in the places I used to feel the wings of the butterflies in his voice.
I closed my eyes, and I didn’t open them again for the entire carriage ride, even when I heard him sigh and settle back into the seat across from me.
fifty-four
Surprise, Bitch
