Page 65 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
You’re better off dead than a prisoner.
No soulmate is better than a dead soulmate.
His words were the equivalent of a bucket of iced water dumped right on the top of my head. If I wasn’t so obsessively aware that he was concealing what were likely to be very morally questionable truths from me, I’d probably go into a shame spiral over the fact that I’d even offered him the chance to have me like that in the first place—let alone on any subsequent occasions.
I didn’t know if I would have gone through with it, but we were falling into a dangerous pattern. I was bitterly determined to stick it to the Oracle—until he slid his fingers into my hair or pouted at me, and suddenly, I was the poster girl for prophecies and repetitive life cycles.
How was that any better than my upbringing? I wasn’t breaking marriage vows for a faerie like my mother, but I was risking my sanity for one all the same, and it made me feel weak.
“Morgoya sent you a dress,” Wrenlock informed me from where he stood in my bedroom doorway. My head snapped up, shoulders seizing because I’d forgotten he was standing there, talking to me while I daydreamed. He pretended not to notice as he held up a shimmering red gown on a very faerie-looking coat hanger carved from a twisted vine. “She said to tell you it’s not an apology.”
Scowling, I snatched the garment from him. The fabric was so soft, it slipped from the hanger with only the slightest tension.
It issoan apology.
And I would accept it. I would. I’d just needed a little bit of extra time to forget that she had known the truth and, instead of encouraging me to uncover it myself, had spent that energy on Lucais, playing some fucked up faerie games to pressure him into revealing it—which, in the end, had not even worked.
“If you can forgive me, then sooner or later, you’re going to have to forgive her, too,” Wrenlock commented, effortlessly and thoughtlessly striding into the room after me.
I glanced back to find him examining details on the walls, the furniture, the bed. His eyes studiously avoided me while I sighed, stripped naked in the centre of the room, and began to shimmy into the dress.
“When exactly did I forgive you?” I asked, trying to freeze him out with my tone.
It was a failure—something was lodged in my heart, stopping it, and Wrenlock had placed it there.
“Your hatred is beginning to thaw,” he murmured, picking up a book from the side table. Wrenlock flipped it open, staring at the pages, apparently unaware that he was holding it upside-down. “Otherwise you would not have agreed to go out with metonight, and you certainly wouldn’t be undressing in front of me.”
Craning my neck to peer over a shoulder, I fiddled with the thin spaghetti-strap until it was untwisted and spoke to him vaguely as I did. “You invited yourself into my room after delivering a gown for me to wear,” I stated plainly. “Your back is turned. I’m not undressing for you.”
“Not this time,” he replied under his breath.
Heat flashed in my chest like a flare gun had gone off inside the cavity. It was an amorous feeling in part, but most of it stemmed from the complicated layers of shame I was yet to properly unravel. Because Ihadundressed for him once before—completely and utterly laid bare before him, on the dining table in the House, the first time we had come close to ruining each other entirely.
Even as my face grew hot and my head began to spin in small circles, the ghostly traces of Wrenlock’s hands and mouth lingered in certain places on my body. I felt tiny prickles lighting up throughout the network of my nerve endings, as if he’d set a time bomb inside of me that only he could detonate—or disarm.
“Where are we going?” I asked him to distract myself.
The dress, thankfully, did not require any zipping or buttoning. It was a flattering cut, cinched at the waist, hugging my hips, and gathered in a cowl neck with a small chain running between straps at the front. In a dress like that, I was glad faeries didn’t believe in underwear because there would be no way to wear it discreetly.
I smoothed down the fabric and strode over to him right as he turned around and parted his lips to answer me.
Wrenlock’s mouth hung agape for a long moment as he stared at me. His expression fell flat, his eyes unreadable. He remained so for a moment longer than required to make a statement that he found me attractive, and I began to squirm.
Swallowing, I glanced down at myself. “What is it?”
His throat worked as if the muscles were recovering from temporary paralysis, and he blinked a couple of times before his voice managed to free itself.
“The colour…” His throat bobbed. “The colour suits you perfectly.” Lifting his hand, he gently tugged on one of my curls. “Against your hair…” Quickly reclaiming it, he folded both arms behind his back and bowed his head to me. “Aura, it’s perfect. You look like you were made to be worshipped.”
I considered him for a heartbeat. Something in my chest yawned and stretched like a cat waking up from an afternoon nap. “Thank you,” I whispered.
Wrenlock gestured to my open doorway. “After you,” he said, and cleared the thickness audible in his voice. “I thought we could go downstairs. There’s a party in the observatory. We can’t see the stars through the fog, but there are faelight orbs that provide the same kind of atmospheric benefit. Plus, we can dance.”
Smiling as widely as I could manage under the circumstances, I linked my arm with his, remembering that he’d told me he liked to dance. That was one thing about the real Wrenlock that was unique and true to him—and if it was all I could have, I’d gladly take it and use it up. I needed it, even if it was as simple as dancing. I just needed to know one honest thing about him.
“Let’s go dancing, then,” I agreed. My heartbeat rattled hollowly in my chest, but a warmth began to simmer around it like a gentle fist coaxing it to settle and yield.
It wasn’t his fault,said one of the strangers in my head.
