Page 150 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
Akaleidoscope of onyx and glitter monopolised my vision while the carriage sped over the flat, dirty landscape of the Court of Fire. The stress was getting to me, and yet I suspected the sweat dampening my skin was caused by the rising temperature. With it, the smell of smoke intensified.
Are you okay?I whispered to Lucais through the darkness in my mind, over and over again.
He did not reply.
The carriage jostled us around a bend, taking up a steep incline, and the sensation made my stomach flip like a rollercoaster as we climbed. I was grateful that Wrenlock didn’t try to speak to me again. Even though I had questions—like what had happened to the High King, where we were going, and why he had betrayed us—I couldn’t bear to hear the sound of his voice. I was so categorically furious that I trembled uncontrollably from head to toe—little tremors that seized my muscles and shook until I felt my bones rattling—and I genuinely didn’t think I still had the ability to speak.
Hands wrapped around my wrists before the carriage came to a stop, and I opened my eyes to glare into Wrenlock’s expectant gaze as he urged me to move ahead of him. I wanted to punch him in the throat, to slap him until he undid everything he was doing to us, to find my voice and use it to shred his eardrums until they bled, but I was in a nightmare, unable to do anything but breathe, listen, and obey.
The landscape took my breath away when I stepped outside. Vengeful as I was, I had to admit that there was a cruel and mesmerising type of beauty in the expanse of obsidian streaked with cracks of molten ochre. In the air, there was so much ash that it turned the entire sky grey in clouds that circled the peak of a tall, single mountain before us.
We were at the base of a volcano.
It towered high above us, proud and menacing, with ribbons of smoke dancing into the sky from the crater. Lava trickled down the sides, snaking into rivers that hissed and bubbled in various sizes and depths all around us, like veins of fire that fed into the atomic bomb of a landscape upon which we had intruded. Every so often, a tiny fire caught alight when a dribble of lava overflowed onto the burned earth, or a piece of rock fell into the magma. But the sounds were soothing—a calm soundtrack of white noise inspired by one of the most incredible natural wonders I had ever witnessed.
Fighting against the desire to ogle for longer, I wiped the sweat from my brow and turned in search of Lucais. For some reason, Wrenlock stood back patiently and allowed me to take in the monstrosity of fire and ash, but as soon as I altered my focus, he grabbed me and spun me into the aether through a wall of heat so intense I felt like it grabbed for us with proper hands. My eyes closed on instinct, and when I opened them, I found that he’d taken us inside the volcano—
No. Inside thepalace.
The volcano is a palace,I realised with no small amount of horror, and the crater was a throne room.
We stood in the centre of a large, circular platform, surrounded by the rough interior walls of the crater’s peak—a fatal drop straight down into the magma chamber below us that flowed in waves like an ocean of fire. Sizzling, red-hot lava climbed the walls like vines in a forest, alight with an orange glow that made me extremely uncomfortable.
A small, narrow bridge crossed the gap between the circle in the centre of the volcano and a door built into the far wall, extending behind an enormous wooden throne with six heavenbound spikes carved into its back. Soldiers from the Fire Army flanked it, one on either side, large pitchforks clasped in their hands before them, and an emptiness in their eyes as they stared straight ahead at absolutely nothing.
With painstaking slowness, I turned around as other faeries appeared on the platform with us. Two additional soldiers brought Lucais in—unconscious—and threw him onto the ground. I lunged for him, but Wrenlock held me back, and I couldn’t find the strength to make even a sound of protest. I was stuck in a lucid dream, trying to wake up, to push through the wall of glass from the other side and feel the tassels of my throw blanket in my hands again—a tether to the reality I needed to reclaim before it was too late.
Because it couldn’t be the one I was in.
Shoving Wrenlock’s hands away, I stepped out of his reach to make a statement, and as I did so, my eyes fell upon a figure hunched beside the wooden throne. His head was lowered like he was trying to make himself invisible, his hands and feet bound in irons.
Despite my state of mind and the horrors that were seizing control of my reality, I recognised him. I took two careful stepsforward, squinting to get a better look at his face. He shuffled backwards, aware of my presence, so I ducked my head and—
“John?” I blinked. Heatstroke symptoms aside, I recognised the old man. He was unmistakable with his large hands, greying hair, and the dark eyes that reluctantly rose to meet mine as I took another step forward. “John Dante,” I gasped. “What in the blazes are you doing here? What have they done to you?”Why have they done it?
He hung his head, the manacles around his wrists fizzling as he tried to retreat. “Wasnae the plan, lass.”
The sight of John cracked the surface of the dream, bleeding one reality into the next, and I felt my voice humming in my throat as if it had never been suspended. “Wrenlock—”
A figure emerged from behind the throne, stopping me in my tracks. She had long, brown hair, brown eyes, and a chocolate bar half covered in the wrapper in one hand. My head fell forward so fast it might have rolled clean away from my shoulders, and my eyes became saucers while my brain struggled to reconcile with the sight of my childhood best friend standing inside an active volcano in Faerie.
“Amelia?”
She rolled her eyes between long lashes and gave me a less than friendly wave. “Surprise, bitch.”
“What…” I trailed off into stunned silence as the pieces of the puzzle clashed. Amelia looked exactly the same age as she had when I left for Faerie, but that was more than eight years before in the human world. “What thehellare you doing here?”
As if on cue, Lucais began to stir. He groaned as he sat up, rubbing his temple, and blinked his golden eyes a few times before they found my face, and his eyelids stilled. Awareness lit his gaze as he processed my expression, then immediately searched the room for the cause.
Finding John cowering beside the wooden throne, he frowned—the crease on his brow would have been adorable under any other circumstances—but when his gaze landed on Amelia, there wasn’t even a hint of recognition in it.
“John and Amelia are here,” I stated, wildly thrusting a hand towards them. It was equal parts confusing and inconvenient for me, and it showed.
Lucais’s head swung towards me. “Who’s Amelia?”
“My best friend.”
He screwed up his nose, eyes flicking back and forth between us with a strong dose of judgement and distaste evident on the surface. “Your best friend is a Hobgoblin?” he asked.
