“He came so close, Aura.” Wrenlock’s voice cracked, the sound of something precious breaking. “He acts like the Court Jester, but you havenoidea how powerful he is. You have no idea how many enemies he has because of that power, because they crave what he is capable of doing—the things he is capable of creating and destroying and commanding—and what you saw in my behaviour is just adropin the ocean of that.” He paused, angling his head to one side. “Did you know the High King before him was only in power for a single year before he was ousted by Lucais?”
I swallowed hard and shook my head.
“Never has a ruler in our history had such a short reign,” Wrenlock told me, shaking his head as if he could hardly fathom it himself. “Lucais came into his power as a mere faeling. The youngest of the High Fae to possess enough power to challenge the High King. The crown sought him out decades before it was expected to do so, and he only grew stronger once it did.” He sighed roughly. “I would tear down mountains and burn bridges for you with my bare hands, Aura, but consider me fairly.Thatis what I was up against.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came out.
Wrenlock seized the opportunity and stalked towards me until I was pinned against the wall. His hands flattened against it, one each above my head and my shoulder, and he leaned down until he was close enough that I could see the flecks of amber in his irises.
My breath caught in my throat.
“The day you arrived from the human world, I came upstairs,” he murmured, his voice gentle and warm. “You were in the middle of a conversation. I corrected him on his misbegotten recollections of the Gift War, fully intending to follow that by introducing myself to you as Wrenlock Elumos. I thought you knew he was the High King. I thought you knew hewas your mate. Why else would he have brought you back? Why else would you havecome backwith him? It was too late for me to do or say anything by the time I realised I was wrong. I tried to talk him out of it, Aura. Believe me, Itried. I begged Morgoya for help, went to Batre when she tried to refuse, and fought against my feelings for you until they consumed me.
“It was never my plan to fall in love with you, but I did it anyway,” he swore, so close to whispering. “I fell in love with thefirein your soul. You love books. I never read, but suddenly, I want to spend my days inside a library. You want to tempt fate by stumbling around the boundary lines of the wards, and I can’t think of any better way to spend my time than to stand around and watch you. You are angry and defiant, and sometimes you jump to miscalculated conclusions, but you’re clever and kind when you want to be, and what we did to you was not your fault. It is not a reflection of your intelligence but a sign of the times in Faerie. Iphysicallycould not tell you my name untilhehad told youhis.”
A single, stray tear slipped down my cheek.
“But I need you to hear it now.” He inhaled deeply. Released it as a controlled breath. “I am Wrenlock Elumos. I was born to Hairem and Maylace, and I have three sisters. When I was a kid, I had a pet crow; the other kids used to tease me because they said the crow was my familiar, and only Witches have familiars, but I loved that bird. We went everywhere together because I didn’t have any friends. My father often worked away, and my sisters never wanted to leave our front porch with their dolls in case the wheels of their little prams got too muddy because we lived on a farm. I enjoy music and dancing, but I’ll sit and read a book with you until we fall asleep any day of the week. I met the High King when I was only a boy myself. When he asked me to come to Caeludor as the Hand, it was the greatest honour of my life. Until I metyou. And I swear, I had no intention of falling forthe fated soulmate of my best friend, whether he’s an idiot who doesn’t deserve her or not.”
The confession hung in the air around us like the perfume of a spell wafting from a bubbling cauldron. The truth about Lucais, about his power—and Wrenlock’s helplessness, the magnitude of his struggles while we were living in the House. It was too much. All of the revelations were too strong.
I couldn’t think of anything to say other than to remark on the thread of solidarity that rolled out between us. Normally, I didn’t find common ground with other people, so it felt precious to me.
“I didn’t have friends for a long time, either. I wasn’t allowed to have people come to the house because of my father, and it sort of…scared everyone else off.”
Wrenlock’s mouth pulled up in a sad, understanding smile. He leaned back from the wall and extended his hand to me. “If you don’t want me to touch you, I won’t. I can’t lie outright to you. You know that. When I told you to slap me if my hands go anywhere you don’t want them to be, I meant it.”
I laid my palm against his.
His eyes lightened back to chestnut brown as his fingers closed around mine.
We walked, hand in hand, down the winding staircase to the lower levels of the palace.
My stomach growled ravenously right up until the moment we passed the corridor of magical relics and heirlooms. The stain of the maroon-skinned faerie’s blood was still on the rug—or maybe it wasn’t.
Wrenlock pulled me from the doorway, and I blinked so quickly I couldn’t be quite sure what I had seen. I questioned him about it, though—asked him who the three-eyed faerie was, his name, his family, if there was anything that could be done to fix it—but he told me it had all been taken care of, and itwas better if I didn’t know the details. Wrenlock also told me it wasn’t the first violent death to occur in the palace, whether by accident or intent, but that tidbit didn’t provide me with the solace he thought it would.
By the time we made it to the dining hall, I felt nauseous again. And when I stumbled into the room, one hand gripping my stomach, I fell to my knees beside the nearest pot plant and vomited all of my stomach’s acid into it.
nine
Low Blood Sugar
“Oh, High Mother.” Morgoya’s lilting voice carried across the room. “Wrenlock,” she chastised. “Tell me she isnotwith faeling.”
The sound of a glass shattering pierced my ears, and I managed to lift my head high enough out of the pot plant to find that Lucais was sitting at the head of the breakfast table with a pile of broken glass at his feet. He had one hand in a fist before him, his wet skin and shirt sleeve stained pink with the contents of his former glass mug, and the other pinching the bridge of his nose. The High King’s eyes were tightly closed.
Are you okay?
His voice in my mind was composed, but I felt the thunderous echoes restrained by sheer willpower behind it. It was obvious to me that a mental conversation was all he had the capacity to hold at that moment in time. I, on the other hand, did not have the strength to even reply in my mind.
Another empty wave of nausea rose up, pausing at the halfway mark behind my sternum and wreaking havoc on my ability to breathe properly, and I ducked my head back into thepot plant. My mouth watered as my stomach heaved, and my throat tightened rhythmically.
If I can just force it out for good, I’ll be fine—
“No,” Wrenlock replied, speaking through his teeth. “She killed someone yesterday.”
“Oh,” Morgoya quipped. “Well, that’s alright, then.”