Page 19 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
The air rushed out of my lungs all at once when it swung open and, using the arm I was still fiercely holding onto, Lucais pulled me through the doorway. I let go of him, and he placed his hand on the small of my back, the puzzled look remaining fixed in place until he closed the door, and his face was consumed by the immediate onslaught of shadows.
The dungeon was cold and pitch-black.
For a moment, all of my anger and apathy left me for dead. I was paralysed by fear for the man at my side as liquid dread rose up my throat.
This is it. The moment my most wicked dreams come true, born of selfishness and greed. I couldn’t let him go, and now I’ll pay the price.
My dreams had been warning me about it for months before my twenty-first birthday—before I met the High King and stepped through the gateway into Faerie. It was the vision the Oracle had chosen to show me in the human world, a prophecy from fate, and I had allowed it to be decreed because I willingly watched it happening to him. How shamefully I hadlongedfor it every night.
Strength abandoned me, and I leaned into Lucais’s side, though I didn’t know what use it would be. I couldn’t save him. I hadn’t figured out who was hurting him—although the Malum were the most obvious guess—or how they’d managed to entrap him. I didn’t know why I was there with him in the first place, aside from the instantaneous and glaring idea that he’d brought me down to the dungeon to show me something and they’d ambushed him—
Light.
A flare of light split the room into a million pieces as an orb appeared at our side, dozens more following it, and Lucais moved with the speed of an apex predator, pinning me to the closest wall. I gasped. The damp stone was bitterly cold as it seeped through my clothes in search of skin.
“Little beast.” Lucais’s mouth was at my ear, his breath warm and sweet as it caressed my face, the scent of him intoxicating. Tingles shot down the side of my neck, straight to my nipples, and then lower, causing a heated tension to wake up and stretch in my belly. “You’re starting to make me nervous.”
I gulped. “You should be,” I whispered thickly.
And for the very first time, I actually wished I could tell him.
Nose skating along my cheekbone, his lashes tickled the bridge of my nose, and his mouth was dangerously close to mine when he murmured, “Why?”
Because—
Something clutched my throat, cutting off the oxygen.
I haven’t even opened my mouth yet.
Fear nipped at my fingers and toes. At that moment, I realised I was going to die trying to tell him the truth. I was going to die because there was an ancient and powerful magic willing to kill me to prevent the words from leaving my lips, and I suddenly could notstandthe fact that he didn’t know what would happen to him down there.
Death was the better option.
God, I wished things were different. But Lucais needed to know, and I needed to be the one to tell him. I had been scared and silenced for far too long, and I wasn’t about to keep doing it.
My head bobbed, my throat working as I tried to force a breath of air inside my body, to swallow, to doanything—
Alarm flashed in my eyes, and Lucais’s head reared back, an incensed type of confusion marring his features.
“Auralie.” He scanned my face, catching the tension in my throat, the terror in my eyes. “Auralie.” His voice was strained, tighter than normal. “What is it?” he asked, palm slapping against the stonework beside my head. His eyes were frantic as they assessed me from head to toe. “Whereis it?”
My hand searched for his, snatching it and placing it flat against my rib cage, directly beneath my breasts, where my lungs had been disabled. I couldn’t move them—couldn’t evenfeelthem. His forehead creased, mouth twisting as he made the connection, and then he moved his hand to my throat while I choked on magic. He felt the muscles contracting, felt the absence of air, and put his hand over my mouth.
Oh, like that’s helpful—
Wedging his thumb and forefinger between my lips, he pried my mouth open, but even then, the air would not come in.
“You really can’t breathe,” he exclaimed, and my annoyance was dulled by my current predicament. “Fuck. How—”
Thank the High Mother, Lucais figured out that the question he was about to ask was an insensitive waste of my very limited time because he didn’t complete it. As his voice broke off, the edges of my vision went black and blurry, and the orbs of light he had summoned into the dingy little room with us began to look more like stars. He grabbed both of my hands in one of his, pinning them to the wall above my head and ignoring the withering look I tried to give him.
Then he took a deep breath, and his lips crashed against mine, searing with heat and bursting with oxygen.
Lucais’s mouth sent an entire lungful of air into my body, breaching the boundary line sewn between my lips by the magical entity working to subdue me forever.
My chest was heaving as I breathed him in hungrily, the feeling of his mouth on mine like breaking through the surface of a murderous ocean, and every time I gulped down one breath of fresh air, I found myself clawing at him for more so I could keep my head above the water.
Dazed, I thought I might have bitten him in my desperation—but he tasted like honey, not blood. I angled my head to allow his mouth to cover more of mine, to facilitate deeper access, begging him formore,more, more.
