Page 15 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
Like a museum, the hallway displayed paintings and ornate mirrors along the walls between finely woven tapestries preserving memories from otherwise forgotten ages. Custom spaces had been carved into the grey stone to fit treasures like delicate oil lamps, wooden carvings of mythical creatures, gold vases, twinkling crystal lamps, and glass figurines of creatures from the water.
It looked to be priceless, like something Lucais would be placed in charge of as High King, rather than something he would have brought with him from his own personal collection.
Perfect.It was exactly what I needed.
On cue, like we had rehearsed it for an audience of one, I felt him appear behind me. Then I heard him take a single step, weighed heavy with hesitation.
“How was your walk?” the High King of Faerie asked, and the sound was a velvet caress against the inner chambers of my soul.
“It was fine, Your Majesty,” I answered in a lilting voice.
Slowly, I pivoted and met his curious gaze. Lucais wore the same clothes—a loose white shirt with string instead of buttons, left to hang open at the collar, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows to display the tattoos he’d only recently revealed to me, and fitted black pants. He didn’t carry his weapons belt. In the faelight, his crystal earrings and the Court of Light insignia hanging around his neck sparkled, and his golden eyes mirrored the shine as they narrowed on me with suspicion so strong it could have given me a strip search.
I watched him fold his arms over his broad chest as he leaned against the wall, and my roguish heart fluttered idiotically.
“Call me Lucais, please,” he purred, and then he cocked his head to the side. “Or baby.” His full mouth pursed as he regarded me thoughtfully. “No, wait”—he held up a finger between us, his eyes dancing—“how do you feel aboutschnookums?”
Smiling at him with all of the false pretence I could muster, I reached for the closest item—a glass carving of a unicorn, slender with a long mane and a single, straight horn. Gingerly, I picked it up and sidestepped off the gold-tasselled hall runner so I was standing on the granite-hard stonework.
And then I dropped it.
The unicorn smashed into a thousand pieces of glass, like hail on the ground.
Lucais lifted a brow. “I’ll think of something else, then.”
“So thoughtful of you,” I murmured absently, stepping around the mess I’d made. “Tell me why you don’t want the people of Caeludor to see me.”
“I never said that.”
My cheeks filled with air before the breath escaped through my lips in a whoosh. I stopped in front of a small mirror, edged with an elaborate design of frosted-glass flowers, hanging in the centre of the wall. When I reached for it, I caught a flash of movement in my peripheral vision and glanced back to see that Wrenlock had stepped forward as if to intervene. Lucais held his hand out, halting him.
“Now, now, Wrenlock.” Lucais’s golden eyes were piercing as they locked with mine. “If my future High Queen feels the need to dispose of items in this palace that are not to her personal taste, I will caution any man against trying to interrupt her creative process.”
My stomach flipped—and then dove behind my rib cage when I tried to kill the feeling with my mental tenacity.I have to do this.
Not only was he still playing with me, but he was the greatest half-liar and total brute in all of Faerie. If he wouldn’t answer a question plainly and of his own free will, there had to be something that would force his hand or trip his feet. It was simply a matter of finding it, and then figuring out not only what he was hiding from me, butfrom whathe was hidingme.
Taking a deep breath, I held the mirror in one hand as I traced the other across my reflection. Aside from the darkening circles beneath my eyes—which had not been so purple since I’d been plagued with relentless nightmares—I did not look any different.
My cheekbones had hollowed out somewhat, but my hair was still the colour of paprika and had barely grown in length, a waterfall of bloody curls spilling over my shoulders. My freckleswere soft and splattered over my nose and cheeks, and my eyes were as blue as the day I was born.
Worse than any symptoms of sleep deprivation or malnourishment, though, was the rounded curve on both of my plain old human ears.
No.Magic.No.Power.
I had nothing but the desire to set fire to things because I was fucking pissed.
“This is nice,” I remarked, glancing up at my intended soulmate. “Is it expensive?”
He rubbed the stubble on his chin with one hand, his expression unreadable. “Yes.”
“Hmm.” Nodding agreeably, I peered at myself again. The birthmark painted onto my skin through one eyebrow matched the colour of my lips, which were dry. I wet them with my tongue before I threw the mirror onto the ground with all of my might, where the flowers imploded and my reflection cracked. As I sighed sharply, my chest seared with heat and trembled with galloping beats. “Shame.”
Wasting no time, I snatched a crystal lamp and sent it flying into the glass door of the display cabinet behind me. The sound of glass shattering was so loud it almost caused me to wince, so I filled the corridor with the sound of damaged and broken things to help me acclimate.
As the volume increased with echoes of damage, the palace atmosphere began to match the way my world sounded inside my own head. Flinging open the doors on the next cabinet, I reached in and gathered items between my wrist and elbow without even checking to see what they were. Using my forearm, I swiped them off the shelves.Bang. Crash. Clink.I tipped vases from their resting places on the walls, yanked tapestries from their hooks until they tore, and flicked glass figurines onto the stonework.Bang. Crash. Clink.
Lucais didn’t speak, didn’t try to stop me. He was waiting me out—testing me to see if I’d cave first.
