Page 53 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
He had cast out a magical net.
In all directions, the bodies of caenim appeared, jerking in the air like fish out of water. Lucais’s concentration was absolute, fixated on his hands as the monsters surrounded us on all sides, the scent of their death reek filling my nose and making it crinkle.
Their bodies writhed violently beneath the force of Lucais’s power as though they were being electrocuted, and then, all at once, they fell to the ground with a collective, lifeless thump.
Mouth falling open, I watched on in awe as Lucais repeated the motion, a vein visible on his forehead and the throbbing of his pulse in his neck the only signs of exertion as he drew in wave after wave of our stalkers and executed them from afar.
The smell rolled over me in cycles—pungent when a group of living caenim appeared, disappearing with barely enough time to clear away entirely before the next group was caught and pulled onto the field. It was the only sign they were truly dead because Lucais didn’t spill a single drop of their blood onto the ground.
“We couldn’t fight them through the swarm,” he explained, voice grave as he lowered his hands. He drew his sword with the resonant slash of steel before extending his hand to me. “It doesn’t seem like the Malum are there, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t hiding and biding their time. Stick close to me,” he instructed, his voice devoid of the emotion it had held only a few minutes prior when we were arguing. “And Aura,” Lucais added, his gaze cutting to mine, “Iwillkill you myself if you allow them to touch you. You’re better off dead than a prisoner.”
My blood ran cold at the sincerity in his words, yet I nodded my agreement. He’d mentioned before that they’d do worse things to me than take my life, but I didn’t want to contemplate the possibilities. I knew there were more wicked punishments than death—like bearing witness to it, for one.
With my hand in one of his and a sword in the other, the High King of Faerie took us back through the wind to the chaos beside the gateway.
The buzzing was ferociously unbearable, recommencing before we’d even fully touched the solid ground. I let go of Lucais’s hand to cover my ears as an angry flurry of locusts swirled around us, so disconcerted that they were unable to fly in a straight line. The frenzy was so intense I could barely see the world beyond them—could hardly catch a glimpse of the field or the sky, let alone the gateway, as if we’d landed in the eye of the storm.
Ducking my head, I squinted up at them, trying to discern their features. The locusts in Faerie were different from any type of insect I’d seen before—enormous, sizes ranging from a medium-sized dog all the way to a large horse, with bulbous black eyes like common flies, and an exoskeleton of plated armour, the colour of purple and blue bubblegum with striking green lines through their midsections. Sharp spikes reminiscent of needles were present around the exterior of their mouths, butI couldn’t see the stinger that had dislodged inside of Lucais’s waist when we were staying at the House. I couldn’t see any limbs on them, either, though they had two pincers on top of their heads shaped like antennae—designed to kill instead of learn.
Lucais didn’t hesitate for a moment before he sprang into action, wielding the sword above his head with expert precision, cutting down locust after locust as he took heavy, measured steps through the cluster in what I assumed was the direction of the gateway.
He was a vision of death and steel, each of his movements a piece of choreography rehearsed for the stage. Slicing his sword across the underside of their bellies brought them crashing to the ground.
A bubbly, black fluid leaked out beneath my feet as their wings strained to continue beating fast enough to lift their brutalised bodies back into the sky.
Following him, I skirted their corpses, my hands fastened to my ears as if they’d been glued there to suppress the noise. When a locust fell, the sound of its buzzing took on a higher pitch as the wings beat against the dirt, and it disturbed my empty stomach.
It wasn’t until we’d stepped closer to the gateway that I managed to figure out where the deadly spike was kept. The familiar appendage was tucked beneath it, reminding me of a shrimp in a cocktail glass rather than a bee in a hive. It gave the locust a hidden advantage, allowing the victim to draw closer to it before being stung.
By the time the swarm gathered their wits again and assembled some form of order, Lucais had slain hundreds of them, clearing a layer of wings and pincers away from the tops of our heads.
Through the blur of colour and the vibrational beating of their transparent wings, I glimpsed the gateway. I couldn’t spyany of the Malum, which meant they’d either retreated or were hiding in the shadows of distant trees. There was no doubt they’d been the ones knocking on the outside of the world when neither of their attack dogs possessed the ability to taunt us like that—
“Duck!” Lucais yelled.
Robotically, I followed his instructions and dropped to my knees without a split second of hesitation. I moved in time for him to pivot, sending a bolt of light flying from his fingertips in the shape of a fatally sharpened dagger. With wide eyes, I watched it soar through the air and pierce through the bodies of at least six targets before evaporating.
Light magic? Lightning?
Whatever it was, he’d sent it to skewer a group of locusts who were a hair’s breadth away from gripping me with their pincers and then doing the Oracle knew what with me once they had. As the disorientation cleared away, the rest of the swarm were becoming aware of the High Fae man slicing their comrades into bits of broken shell and wings, and they were assembling into attack formation from all angles around us.
Still kneeling on the ground, I blanched, wishing for a moment that I’d taken up Wrenlock’s suggestion to better prepare myself for situations where fighting required more than a few words off the back of a sharp tongue.
Even so, Lucais was a perfect match for the swarm. So skilled, in fact, that I began to wonder how they’d ever managed to sting him in the first place as he balanced a sword in one hand and magic in the other.
His fingertips shot out bolts of what I was certain had to be lightning. Honed into lethal edges and a perfect point, they hardly ever missed the soft underside of the locust or a perfect hit directly in one of their eyes. Meanwhile, Lucais continuedto slice them into pieces with his sword, aiming for their wings when he couldn’t get the angle right to gut them.
I cringed against the ground at his feet, feeling pathetically human and useless. The magic that had spilled dark, soft breaths against my fingers at the House was nowhere to be found. I didn’t even think it was watching me from a distance anymore.
Part of me wished I’d accepted it the first time it had presented the offering of its horrors to me, but the rest of me knew I had made the right choice. I needed to build the strength of resistance before I acquiesced to its demands. The alternative would have made me a conduit like it had done in every other situation—and I needed to be the controller or nothing at all.
Even though beingnothing at allfelt like slamming my head into rock bottom repeatedly as I cowered at Lucais’s feet like a worm.
When a path through the sky had been cleared away well enough for us to move again, Lucais sheathed his sword and gripped me with a hand. It was the one he’d used to wield magic, and his touch was so hot it hissed against my shirt.
Muttering an apology, he wrapped his arm around my waist and hoisted me up. My arms and legs wrapped around him instinctively, and then we were back in front of the wall of glass, staring at our reflections as he cradled me against him like a tired child.
In the mirror image, the vague outline of the swarm took shape again, the reflection growing clearer as the locusts drew closer to our backs. Wriggling, my sense of self-preservation drove me to pull away, but Lucais tightened his one-armed grip on my body and held us in place. All I could do was trust him as I watched the last of the vengeful swarm descend upon us from the sky like a thunderstorm, the buzzing of their wings drowning out even the sound of my own racing heart.
