Page 5 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
I grimaced. My blood had cured him of locust poisoning, yet the experience had been anything but nice for me. All of two seconds after finding out he’d betrayed my trust in the most absurd and damning of ways, I was being asked to save Lucais’s life. And I did save him. Because I wanted to yell at him, and because—
No. Any other reason would be insane. I just wanted him to be conscious when I yelled at him, obviously.
After a moment, the High King huffed and said, “Honestly, the very existence of half-faeries is a mystery to begin with, and it’s one I haven’t had the inclination to study until”—he looked me up and down—“recently.” Frowning, he turned his gaze towards the carriage window. “We’ll find the answer eventually.”
Inhaling deeply through my nose, I curled my hands into fists around the iron chainlinks. “How do you know I don’t have any magic right now?”Have you suppressed it? Can I steal it back?
Lucais jerked with the motion of a short, sharp laugh. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
Studying the dark wood stain behind the High King’s blond head, I tried to recall what hadhappened after I unleashed my magic.
It had been relentless, a whispering presence following me throughout the House, playing me for a fool again for old time’s sake. While the High King and his Hand were away, gallivanting across Faerie doing only the Oracle knew what, I had occupied myself in the House by reading, futilely searching for a dungeon to satisfy my in-built, inherited system of denial, and slowly reacquainting myself with magic during my final days there.
At first, I didn’t have a choice. I tried to ignore it while it pushed and pushed andpushed. But after the day in the field with the caenim and Wren—no, withLucais, who I had believed to be named Wren at the time—the closed door of my mindcracked open, and I lost an inch or two of the leash I had tightly wound around temptation.
Then another inch.
And another.
I let it go until the voice of mystical misguidance was wrapped around my body like an invisible constrictor python, squeezing the resistance out of my bones like the breath from my lungs. The only reason I had even considered using it to flee was because he had told me in the armoury that I could learn how to create a shield for myself and other people. Something that could go undetected but protect my little sister from harm.
For Brynn? For the sake of something—andsomeone—good? I’d agreed to do it. I’d agreed to try.
Apparently, I hadn’t tried hard enough.
All I wanted was to replicate the flood of darkness I had unleashed in the bathroom the day Delia’s beautiful white hair had turned black—preferably without the non-consensual hair dye—to create a distraction long enough for me to escape unnoticed.
The darkness was there, waiting, asking to be let out, but I had overshot my own abilities because I’d never physically rehearsed the action of evanescing. My deep, immobilising fear of flying prevented me from being able to bring myself to try it out in advance; however, because I’d read about it in the House’s library, I thought I knew enough to put it into practice when the time came. I figured I wouldn’t jump out of a plane wearing a parachute for fun, but if the plane was on fire and I knew the logistics of how to operate the parachute, then that entire scenario would be a completely different story.
Unfortunately, instead of ending up in the Forest of Eyes and Ears, where I would have been safe and hidden, I ended up in the back of the High King’s carriage in chains, where I was flustered and mortified.
“You locked me up,” I accused instead, lifting my wrists for emphasis.
The High King’s eyes rolled back in his head. “Do you remember when I mentioned the exceedingly real risk of you imploding and taking out Sthiara in the process? Well, I don’t know what you were trying to do back there unless you were trying to murder me, but you completely short-circuited. You used too much power too fast and burned yourself out. I thoughtyoudied. Wren was—” He stopped abruptly, a war of frustration and guilt using his facial features as their battleground.
Wren.
My heart thumped in my chest like a blow to the head, pain shattering across my body in waves of betrayal and regret. I felt my pulse picking up a new, unhinged rhythm and would have bet that the High King was listening to it as he watched my cheeks flushing pink with guarded, slightly narrowed eyes flaring sparks of gold and amber.
“I put the cuffs on you to protect you,” he confessed after a moment, changing the subject with as much ease as opening a door with rusted hinges. “And to protect my realm. I warned you that what you were doing toed the line of dangerous territory, but you didn’t listen to me.” He ran a hand over his mouth, dragging his fingernails across the glittering stubble. “Nobody has ever stolen the light from my Court before, Aura. Nobody has ever dared to try, and they’ve certainly never done it byaccidentsimply because they were pissed at me.”
I blew out a harsh breath of air. “I suppose we’re on the way for you to hang me for treason, then?”
It was an attempt at dark humour to lighten the mood, but I realised too late that I’d committed more than one conceivable crime against the High King of Faerie—and it was not stealing light from his sky for a mere moment in time that hung tension so thick it threatened to strangle me in the air between us. I hadfallen in love with his best friend, and we’d done unspeakable things with each other under his roof and on his furniture.
Although Lucais detested the fact that he was destined to bond with a half-breed mortal who needed to be saved from flesh-eating monsters every other week, and he didn’t really want me to do those things with him instead, it had to feel like he was being wronged. Lucais had to be at least a tiny bit pissed off himself.
Even if it wasathimself.
“No, little beast,” he said at last, resignation colouring his eyes a solid, stunning gold. “I won’t let them put a noose around that pretty little neck.” Lucais gazed out of the window as if he could see our destination, though he was facing the way we’d come, and his voice dropped in pitch and volume. “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”
I nodded slowly because I knew he wasn’t talking about the stolen light. “Them?” I repeated, so quietly I almost thought he wouldn’t hear me. My voice cracked as I tried to amplify the whisper with my next words. “You mean the people in Caeludor? That’s where we’re going?”
Why would they put a noose around my neck?
He nodded, his expression tight. “I know you had other plans, and I would be thrilled to hear all about them, but we need to get ahead of the rumours after what the Court of Wind witnessed at the House. News of the caenim attack will spread to the city, and there will be chaos if I’m not around to calm their fears.”
“You can’t order Enyd to keep her mouth shut?”
