Page 52 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
You Unbearable Psych Patient
The High King of Faerie had a nasty habit of making split-second decisions. I made a mental note to discuss his narcissistic tendencies with someone who could do something about it before he got himself punched in the face. Or worse.
As if starting a war using the age-old“because I said so”approach wasn’t controversial enough for him—albeit it was to end slavery, so one point for altruism—the arrogant bastard legitimately wanted to make an irredeemable enemy of his own soulmate. Lucais behaved as though he wanted to flirt with me while I secretly plotted his ultimate demise like it was some twisted kind of foreplay.
Perhaps itwasa sneaky method of silent abdication—liberating himself of the crown’s responsibilities without having to admit to any of his wrongdoings, then laying the blame on a half-breed human girl, who finally snapped on a random Tuesday afternoon and stabbed him with his own apple-peeling poniard.
If vanity was the greatest weakness of the High Fae, then pride was worshipped at their altar.
“I swear to whatever deity can hear us over all of this fucking noise, I willkillyou if you left any of those Hitchcock nightmares back in Belgrave!” I screamed at him over my shoulder as I ran, covering my ears to shield them from the deafening buzz as thousands of enormous locusts surged around us.
Lucais, as per usual, had decided to lull me into a false sense of security with his misleading words.Even if it means not loving you at allin faerie-speak roughly translated into plain English asI guess that means never listening to anything you ever say again.
And that is exactly what he did when he lowered the shield around my hometown long enough to rip a portal in the fabric between realms—in direct opposition to what I’d asked him to do—enabling an entire army of monster insects to come spilling through the gap like a tear in the side of a bean bag.
If I’d started to doubt my reservations about our pendulum relationship, Lucais’s choice to put his own desires over mine certainly swung it back to the opposing end. Again.
The High King had shoved me into the portal he created on the ground before anyone really knew what was happening, myself and the locusts included. Given that the Malum were mentioned every time the subject of those airborne pests was brought up, I started to think they must be keeping them as pets alongside the caenim.
Fortunately, neither Lucais nor the Malum expected me to run for my life as soon as the soles of my shoes touched down on magical soil.
The blurriness of the lapsus afforded me a split second of incorporeality to slip my body out of Lucais’s grip, and then I bolted like a bat out of hell, shrieking as an onslaught of caenim came into view but not turning back.
The foul beasts trudged through the horde of bugs, slow by nature and delayed even further by the creepy-crawly chaos.I took the chance to run for my life across the field, leaving the High King to chase after me, cursing and ranting in an incoherent rage at the back of my head.
The locusts flew in dizzying circles, completely disoriented by the sudden transfer back and forth through the portal. So thick were the clouds of insects that the caenim fell behind within moments of my reappearance in Faerie, and any fast-moving shadows I thought I spied in my peripheral were quickly swallowed up by an angry tornado of wings, pincers, and poisonous spikes.
Thinking he could cheat, Lucais tried to use his magic to catch up with me, evanescing a few paces ahead and reaching out to grab my waist. I expected it from him, so I kept my movements careful and deliberate as I dodged each attempt. I couldn’t let him touch me because I knew we’d be back in the carriage in the City of Light in an instant, and then I’d have lost any and all leverage.
“I’m serious!” I yelled at him, manic and wheezy. “Go back there and check!”
“I absolutely will not, you unbearable psych patient!” Lucais shouted back, voice booming over the incessant buzzing of the locusts. He appeared in a whirlpool of black and gold, nearly falling flat on his face when he lunged for me, and I jumped out of reach. “Damn it, Auralie! These things are poisonous!”
“I know! They tried to kill you once,” I reminded him. “Why don’t you give them a rematch, and I’ll go for help?”
I was still shouting and running at the same time. It quickly pushed me to become out of breath, but yelling at him vocally was so much more satisfying than doing it mentally. My lungs burned, and I stumbled on the next few steps as the pattern of approaching caenim forced me into the long grasses on one side of the walking track.
“Because youarethe help I need,” Lucais muttered, appearing directly in front of me. He had anticipated my next move and beat me to it, a step ahead of me, his hands already circling my arms like a vise. “Which is so ironic for someone who—”
Shock ran through me like an electric current when Lucais broke off abruptly, and I caught the look on his face. He was staring at something over my shoulder, but I didn’t get the chance to turn around before he pulled me against his chest, and we were slipping away into the next gust of wind.
“I’m not kidding!” I screamed, though my anger was mostly swallowed by the whoosh of the air circling us like a tornado. I tried and failed to pound my fists against his chest as we lingered very briefly inside of a misty white lapsus. Panic was fuelling me, taking the place of oxygen and my beating heart. “I need to know they’re safe! I’ll never forgive you if evenoneof those creatures becomes locked in their world!”
“Hush,” he sniped, his voice breathy and low.
“No. I mean it, Lucais.” It dawned on me that we should have already arrived back in Caeludor. He was hesitating, so I grabbed onto it like the fistfuls of his shirt I had snared in both of my hands. “There is no future for us if anything happens to them,” I swore, on the brink of tears. “None ever, none at all. We’ll be done. I’ll bedone.”
The High King must have detected something in my voice that convinced him I was telling the truth because we came to a crashing halt in midair, and he nearly dropped me in the middle of another empty field.
Gasping for breath, I stumbled out of his arms with my hands in front of me, poised to break my fall. If I hadn’t already regurgitated all of my breakfast, I was sure I would have been violently unwell after that graceless emergency landing.
Bracing my hands on my thighs, I bent over and sucked in air like water, trying to quell the raging storm in my stomach.
We were in a field of long grasses, the pastel colours surrounding us like a pool of water painted by celestial lights.
When I felt secure enough to straighten and tip my head back to face the crystalline light sky, I felt a wave of peace wash over me. Guilt quickly followed, engulfing it—for feeling peace when I didn’t know if my family was safe, and for liking Faerie’s skies better than I’d ever liked the sky in the human world.
Oblivious, Lucais stood near my side, focussed on his hands. He held them as steady as a surgeon might to perform a life-saving operation, and after a long moment embedded with intense concentration, an enormous pulse shot out around us like an ultrasonic wave.
