Page 47 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
The whole time we talked, Brynn stood against the counter behind my mother’s chair, slowly chewing on pieces of dry cereal. She didn’t take her eyes off us, though they slid back and forth between my face and the face of the High King at differentpoints in the conversation with an almost serpentine gleam. She certainly seemed to know things, like the enchantment hadn’t worked on her to its full extent. I wondered if she was somehow part-faerie, too.
Eventually, there was a knock at the front door. I tensed, but Lucais squeezed my knee under the table when my mother stood up to answer it. As soon as she was gone, Brynn pounced.
Throwing the cereal box to the side, she took one long step from the counter to the table and braced her hands flat on the wood, leaning down to speak quietly into the small space between us. Her voice was foreign, even down to the intonation, and the words sounded far too mature for the baby sister I had left behind before she’d even completed her first decade of life.
“I know what you are,” she hissed at Lucais, with all of her adult teeth, “and I know what you did.”
Blood drained from my face. When I looked over at my companion, he appeared amused by the admonitory edge to her tone. The faintest smirk ghosted across Lucais’s lips, but he showed faultless restraint and matched the severity of her stare with his own impenetrable golden eyes. After lingering for a moment to consider the challenge, she switched her merciless glare from his face back to mine.
I expected a many number of things to come out of her mouth, even the profanities she never got the chance to learn from me. Brynn stood over me like a waking nightmare or a vengeful angel—a beautiful, strong young woman held together by the bandages she had been left to apply around her broken bones herself because the sister who swore to stay and protect her had disappeared one night and not returned for…
How many years has it been, Brynn?
But she didn’t tell me. She didn’t say any of the things I wanted to hear. All she said before she stepped back and sidled up against the counter was, “Amelia was right about you.”
My sister fell out of my reach like the wrong end of a lifeline slipping over the side of the ship. I lurched towards her, pushing halfway out of my seat as I tried to swipe her hand from across the table, but it was fruitless.
“How long?” I whispered sharply, my hand still extended between us as if it could mimic an olive branch. “How long has it been?”
Brynn laughed bitterly. “Wow. You really are pathetic.”
Her gaze snapped up, her attention snagged by the person my mother had just brought into the house. She stepped between us for the blink of an eye, moving to open the fridge and pull out a drink for her newest guest. I followed Brynn’s stare to find her childhood best friend standing in the middle of the room, looking at me like she couldn’t believe I was real.
Alice.
Lucais tapped one finger against the top of my knee.This is the child you wanted me to help?
I swallowed and gave him a subtle nod.I didn’t anticipate the time jump, obviously.
The High King regarded her for what felt like an eternity, but it was probably only a few seconds.She’s doing a lot better now. She’s saving for surgery,he informed me, and I began to suspect that he was reading people’s minds—or sorting through their memories. It was probably the latter because our mental telepathy was strictly related to the mating bond, and he hadn’t been able to do it with Enyd.The best I can do is bestow a magical inheritance to help her with the costs of that. She has everything else covered, so she doesn’t require any type of enchantment—not even a protection spell. Alice has no disillusionment about who she is or who she is going to be.
I smiled at her softly.
Alice looked healthy, happy, and like the authentic version of herself she’d always dreamed about becoming as she stared atme with round, bug eyes the colour of melting chocolate. They reminded me of Amelia’s eyes—Amelia, who I hadn’t seen yet, and who had apparently said something to Brynn about me in the years I had been gone. I wondered if she’d stepped in to help out in the role of an older sister or if they’d simply gossiped about me to conceal their hurt that I hadn’t even said goodbye.
Amelia hadn’t known that I was leaving at all. I’d left John in charge of explaining that away, considering that he was part of the reason I left in the first place, and I’d taken the coward’s way out with Brynn.
“You don’t look any different at all.” Alice’s voice was filled with honest surprise. “Seriously. What the fuck—sorry, Mrs. Roberts,” she rushed to add, her voice spiking in pitch. A faint blush touched her cheeks. “Nah, for real, though. Can I get your skincare routine?”
A laugh bubbled up and out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Sure—”
I was interrupted by a knock on the ceiling—a dark, devious sound that spoiled the first moment of actual relief I’d experienced since returning home, and liberated an awful feeling of impending doom that began to leak down my spine. The timing was impeccable.
My gaze slid to Lucais, whose expression had hardened. The only other person in the room who seemed to have heard it was Brynn. While her posture had shifted when the knock sounded, she didn’t take her icy eyes away from my face.
Knock, knock, knock, knock.
“I am so very sorry to cut this short, but it’s time for us to go,” Lucais announced, rising to stand.
“You look well,” I rushed out in a gasp, nodding encouragingly to Alice. “Are you well?”
She beamed at me, braces and all, and did a proud twirl to show off her outfit. “I am really well.”
“We took public transport into town,” Lucais told them, surprising me with a twisty white lie, “and I’m afraid that, at this rate, we might miss our ride back.”
Brynn snickered. “Off you trot, then.” She wiggled her long, manicured fingers at me in a shooing motion. Flashbacks to days when she had painted half of my fingers pink with the polish she got in preteen magazines streaked across my vision.Knock, knock, knock, knock.“See you in another eight years, maybe.”
Eight years.
