Page 45 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
“We’ll find out,” Lucais promised, crouching down in front of me. “I swear to you that I’ll find out what happened.” He tugged my hands free from where they were fiercely tangled in my hair and tried to coax my head up.
I sucked down a gasp of fresh air, wiping my wet, sticky nose in the crook of my elbow before I obeyed, and then I dragged a hand over my cheeks and upper lip to swipe away the last of the moisture before I met his gaze.
“I am so sorry, Aura. Please believe that this was never my intention.”
Even if I wanted to be furious with Lucais, I couldn’t find the strength within me to do it right at that moment, so I let him haul me to my feet.
He proceeded to explain what would happen when he lifted the spell he’d placed upon the world to freeze time—which apparently wasn’t placed upon thewholeworld, though it felt very much like it was—and I refrained from sharing any of the mean comments that were in my head about what good it did him to be able to freeze time but not travel through it.
Precariously ducking his head and twisting his torso to fit through the space between my mother and the doorframe, Lucais showed me that we’d need to place ourselves in the right positions to catch up with the passage of time when the spell expired, or else we risked fracturing the veil of reality he’d placed upon the human world in order to make it sustainable without magic.
With the townhouse and my family members essentially in suspended animation, I felt like I was walking through a haunted house.
We made our way through the low-lit hallway, beneath a globe that used to flicker but was suddenly bright as a star, and into the dead quiet of the kitchen, where not even the hum of a refrigerator brought the room to life.
“At this point, we’d already be inside and finished with the initial greetings,” Lucais mused, pulling a chair out for me at the old wooden table I remembered so well.
It was possibly theonlything I still remembered well in the house. He pushed me down into it with his large, slender hands on my shoulders.
“She’s probably making a pot of tea…so you need a mug,” Lucais muttered, glancing around. Just as I was about to point him to the cupboard at the end, he made a satisfied sound and lunged towards it. Lucais pulled out a mug I’d never seen beforein my life—but at least I still knew where they were kept. “Here you go.” He placed it down in front of me distractedly. “Now. What’s missing?”
“Milk?” I offered weakly.
He snapped his fingers and spun on his heels towards the brand-new fridge I’d also never seen before. “Yes, I—” The High King broke off and went still as a statue, except for the very slight tilt of his head as he stared at something on the refrigerator door.
“What is it?” I demanded, fear curdling the contents of my stomach. “Lucais.What is it?”
Before he answered me, the spell timed out. I heard the grandfather clock in the hallway begin to tick again, followed by an incessant hum like a swarm of bees above my head. Then the sound of a dozen different televisions each set to a different channel switching on. I shut my eyes as everything came rushing back to the surface of time, and—
“—can’t remember the last time I saw the old Ogre since the bookstore closed down, but I’m sure if I give Patty a call, we could set something up. It’s so seldom we get you back home, after all,” my mother was saying. Her voice was normal and easy as it filtered through the kitchen and filled up all of the vacant, frozen corners, breathing life and substance back into them.
My eyelids fluttered aggressively, trying to acclimate to the scene before me in the weak afternoon light. The townhouse was west-facing, and very little natural illumination came in through the windows after the burst of morning sun at the back doors faded away.
Standing by the stove dressed in a set of pink cotton pyjamas, my mother wore a knitted shawl that had once belonged to my grandmother around her shoulders. I stared at it, feeling the colour draining from my face. Without missing a beat, Lucais reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a cartonof longlife milk, setting it down on the table before taking a seat next to me.
The rickety wooden chair creaked beneath his weight.
Far too casually, he slung an arm around the back of mine.
When I felt a crossbreeze tickling the nape of my neck, I leaned back to peer down the hallway.
Finding the front door still open, I elbowed Lucais in the ribs. He followed my line of sight and waved a hand in the air, closing it with magic—right as Brynn strode into the room, scowling down at the two of us like she had witnessed the entire scene and had long outgrown her thing for fairies.
For a moment, I thought back to the three-eyed faerie in the palace and how insurmountably guilty I’d felt when I thought of Brynn finding out. But the way she was staring at Lucais made me second-guess myself, and a low, unsettling feeling took root in my stomach.
What did you see on the fridge?I telepathically demanded of the High King as we carefully and quietly observed my sister’s movements around the room.
She sauntered over to the pantry and pulled out a box of dry, sugary cereal, popping pieces of it into her mouth like popcorn as she leaned back against the edge of the counter and stared daggers at me. Somehow, each crunch sounded like a threat. I tried to gauge whether she really was taller than me or if I was just in a state of all-consuming panic.
There are three usual suspects that interrupt the rhythm of time between our worlds,Lucais said through the connection between our minds.Time passes differently depending on how it’s filled. The couple of months you’ve spent with me shouldn’t have equated to more than a year back home under normal circumstances, which means that something major happened while we were away. Huge global events kind of seize the timeline here until it haemorrhages in weeks and years.
Global events like…?
Generally, it’s a world war.He hummed in his mind.Sometimes, an axis-tilting political election.
Or?I pressed him because he didn’t seem to believe that either of those things were the cause.
A plague.
