Page 16 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
So, I gritted my teeth and kept going.
Pausing in front of a suit of armour halfway down the hall, I tilted my head to the side, and a heavy silence fell upon me as I examined it, quieting the other voices in my head. I pushed the whole suit of armour over because I had to keep up the commotion, keep mimicking the sound in my mind. If nothing else, at least it was cathartic.
The suit shattered another cabinet on its way down, sending broken pieces of glass and ceramic spilling across the floor like a flood of treasure out of a pirate’s chest.
“You do realise that you are destroying your own alimony?”
I faked a laugh to cover the sound of my relief that the High King was still standing there, at least interested in what I was doing, if not perturbed. “Aren’t you listening?” I hissed. “I don’twantit.”
“Fine.” His tone was clipped.
Good.
Reaching out blindly, I seized something else from the wall and sent it careening against another cabinet.Bang. Crash. Clink. Bang. Crash. Clink—
“I swear to the High Mother,” Lucais grumbled at last, and I whirled, glaring at him to disguise my investment in what he had to say. All I needed was one truth—a single, solitary, straightforward answer. But his eyebrows shot skyward, and he flung out a hand towards me, looking pointedly down at the suit of armour. “You’re as destructive as a pet wolf and about as friendly as one, too.”
My eyes rolled back into my head. “Wrong answer,” I seethed.
“Is there arightanswer?” he shot back, flinging both of his arms out to the sides with a desperate, pleading look in his golden eyes.
I shook my head in disappointment, bending to pick up the sword from the fallen suit of armour. To my surprise, both Lucais and Wrenlock flinched, the latter ducking behind a painting I hadn’t fully knocked off the wall while the former took cover behind a nearby cabinet. The glass had made an ocean all over the floor, but the gold frame was still intact.
My brows pushed together.Is the sword magical?It looked like any boring old sword, but maybe I wouldn’t know the difference. My gaze bounced between the two men, irritated, as my chest rose and crashed back down with heavy breaths. “What are you hiding from?”
“You, in a minute, by the looks of things,” Lucais retorted, his tone bordering on the edge of hysteria as he peered at me between the shattered shelves. “Will you put that thing down?”
It took everything in me to stop my mouth from falling agape. Recovering quickly, I shot back, “Will you tell me the truth?”
“Ihave—”
“No!” I screamed, rage taking the reins.
Fuck, this is worse than the silent treatment I used to get as a child!
A frustrated scream built between my collarbones, and I slashed the sword wildly above my head. It cut through a tapestry hanging on the wall like a stick of butter, and the weight of it swinging through the air nearly sent me toppling over and falling into a pool of glass on the ground.
I grunted quietly and sought my balance with a deep breath. “You havenot.You lied to me, Lucais, and youjust”—bracing myself with my feet shoulder-width apart, I raised the sword high above my head with two hands on the hilt—“keep”—glassrained down on me as it collided with an empty lantern, which blew apart against the sword’s razor-sharp edge—“doing it!”
As I brought the weapon down, aiming for the dramatic finish of the blade striking the floor with a clang, I misjudged the grip required for its weight distribution. The sword slipped from my hands. It flew through the air, turning hilt over end straight down the hallway until it landed—
Oh, no.
Embedded in the chest of a very unfortunately placed man.
He was a pale, maroon-skinned faerie I’d never seen before who had turned the corner and come to a sudden stop in the middle of the hallway. I didn’t know what race of faerie had three eyes, but he had a third one in the middle of his forehead above an expertly sculpted nose, and they all turned glassy at the same time. Collapsing, he landed flat on his back, the suit of armour’s sword standing straight up in the air.
My stomach dropped, the impact of its fall sending bile shooting upwards, where it burned a hole in my chest. Everything felt like a live wire, tingling with unhinged electricity. My hands went to my mouth to stifle a scream that never came.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I had about a millisecond to regain control of my expression before Lucais and Wrenlock, who had turned their heads to track the course of the sword, looked back at me.
Focus, focus, focus.
Clamping my tongue between my back teeth so hard I tasted a metallic tang, I regained ownership of my expression and forced it into a mask carved from stone. Emotion slipped away like a balloon in the breeze, replaced by a masquerade I hadn’t practised since I was eleven years old.
Lucais turned to me first—eyes wide, cheeks flushed, mouth slightly agape. I was at a standstill, snared on indecision between the urge to run and hide behind his arms or run andhide behind the suit of armour. His gaze bounced off the ceiling before he pinned me to the spot with a smouldering copper stare and sighed brusquely.
