Page 33 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
The bell above the door jangled on entry, and I had a momentary flashback to Dante’s Bookstore. Homesickness grabbed for me with hands of desperation as the smell of mothballs and fresh ink rushed to greet my nose.
A rainbow of spines lined the walls from the ceiling to the floor on shelves of golden timber and long-stemmed plants with drooping leaves were suspended in midair above our heads, some tethered from macrame hangers on ceiling hooks and others seemingly bespelled to levitate. Obsidian jars housed long quills, glittering like a starry night, and a large, gliding wooden library ladder was in the corner of the room beside a stack of half-opened book cartons.
We had entered a faerie bookstore.
Something in my chest pulled, and my lungs constricted, remembering the last time we had been inside an establishment like it.
I’m sorry, lassie, but ye must go.
A short, portly man with a large, crooked snout and two elongated ears like those belonging to a horse stood behind the counter. His head was mostly bald save for some tufts of white hair at the top, and his skin was a speckled tangerine. Huge round eyes, rimmed with tight creases, were raised to welcome us, and he smiled with a wide mouthful of slightly discoloured teeth. After disappearing beneath the countertop for a moment, he rounded the corner half his height, walking with a slight limp that had him leaning heavily on a gnarled tree branch serving as a cane.
“Your Majesty,” he greeted Lucais pleasantly. The small man’s voice was a smooth rasp, and I buried my unreasonable shock at hearing an unfamiliar person referring to the arrogantbastard at my side as royalty. His dark, eager eyes moved to my face, and he licked his plump lips. “This is she?”
Lucais both looked and sounded less than impressed when he glanced down at me and confirmed it flatly. “This is she.”
“And so she is found.” The short man reached for my hand, nodding his head enthusiastically. Not knowing what else to do, I gave it to him, and he held it snugly in his thick-fingered grasp, bending his head with reverence. “It’s an honour to finally meet you, milady,” he said, his voice filled with conviction. “A real honour.”
My face paled.Milady?“Than—”
Lucais clamped a hand over my mouth. “Uh-uh. Zip it, you. Never give thanks to a malevolent faerie or they will take it as a debt owed.”
I licked his palm to get rid of his hand, and his eyes flared before he pulled it back. “Malevolent faeries?” I repeated.Are they not all a little bit malevolent?
“Eyes on the prize, bookworm. This is Eldrick,” Lucais said by way of introduction. He suddenly sounded bored. “He’s the only Hobgoblin in town I trust with my precious artefacts—” The High King broke off with a small choking noise, noticing that Eldrick had taken advantage of our distraction and started to lick my hand with small strokes of his purple, catlike tongue.
The Hobgoblin’s eyes were closed, and he moaned softly as if he were licking chocolate from my fingers. I tried to conceal the cringe, but I was exceedingly glad his eyes were closed because I could not keep the expression from flitting across my face. The rest of my body was tense, frozen in place by the stupefaction and unfamiliarity of local customs. My track record with the Goblin race was indigent at best, and I still had the taste of Lucais’s skin on my own tongue.
With a quiet groan, Lucais tugged me firmly against his side and reached across me like he was brushing away a cobweb,effectively snatching my hand back from the storekeeper. “Youare obviously not included in that,” he muttered, eyes darting to mine. He sighed wearily. “Eldrick, please. We’re here to see the Map.”
“My deepest apologies,” the Hobgoblin said, bowing repeatedly as he backed away. He gave me one last, longing look as his tongue swiped over his mouth again. “It has beensolong since we have had a High Queen, and such a treasure is she.”
Lucais had the nerve to roll his eyes. “Indeed.”
“A Hobgoblin?” I hissed at him when Eldrick shuffled back behind the counter and started opening and slamming drawers with a ferocity that put John Dante to shame. I wiped his saliva off on my clothing as discreetly as I could manage. “I thought you said they hate to be observed. Didn’t one of them try to attack us on the road into Sthiara?”
Lucais gave me a scornful look. “Notus,” he replied. “You. Besides, that was aGoblin. They’re quite different.” He paused, thoughtful. “Do you learn anything when you read, or do you just like to look at all the pretty words? All those books you ransacked in the House’s library—and for what?” he muttered.
I shook my head, too dazed to bite back, and watched as Eldrick returned carrying a large key on a periwinkle ribbon. Lucais followed him as he hobbled into the back room, dragging me along behind him, and looked on as Eldrick carefully placed the key on the floor.
Using his free hand, the High King clicked his fingers, and blinding light exploded from within the key in a circle, opening a portal out of thin air in front of us. Before my mouth could finish falling open, the High King stepped through it, his figure becoming veiled by a thick coat of magic—almost like a sheer blanket woven with luminescent golden threads—and then he used the hand still wrapped around mine to yank me inside too.
eleven
What Shadows?
Iattempted a scream, but the High King twisted our arms and covered my mouth with his free hand again.
Stunned, my chest heaved as I registered the shape of his body pressed against mine from my shoulders down to my knees. His arms were around me, one across my chest and one looped over my waist. The heat from his skin was a searing touch, the vile thing between his legs growing thicker and harder with every passing second pressed into my lower back, gently pulsing with need.
His full, insistent proximity stirred a flurry of butterflies between my legs—tingles that travelled up and down my spine like unwanted passengers on a broken elevator with one blissful, inevitable fate. My head lolled back against his shoulder, and Lucais’s breath was a honey-sweet pant in my ear, the sound of a sinful promise that might condemn me simply for listening.
To break the spell—and Ireallyhad to break the spell—I surveyed our new surroundings.
The portal had transported us into a small room. A cottage kitchen with herbs and spices lined up on the windowsill, potsand pans hanging from the ceiling, and a round table carved from heavy wood sat in the middle of the space. Through the lace curtains, I glimpsed the paradisiacal expanse of an open forest bursting with coloured flowers, filled to the brim with particles of light and accompanied by a rushing crystalline stream.
“What is this place?” I whispered.
Lucais let me go, and the removal of his arms from my body felt like he had stripped me bare of my clothing and the first layer of my skin. “The Map.”
