Page 72 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
“No.”
“So I can do it again.”
I ground my teeth together. “You can do whatever you want, Lucais. And I can doWrenlockwhenever I want.” My hands curled into fists at my sides, and I exhaled sharply through my nose. “You and I can’t be together. We soobviouslycannot be together that we don’t even need to argue about deciding if we want to be, so it makes no difference if the attention I have for you ends up going to him instead. This”—I gestured between us wildly—“is making usweak, Lucais. You’re haemorrhaging power all over the place because of me, and I’m becoming myfucking mother because of you. Wrenlockfixesthat, if you’d just let him—”
He grabbed my arm, on the verge of shaking me. “No.Little beast, heed my warning because I am not inclined to repeat myself. If he so much aslooksat you when we’re out in public, I’ll have you put in the dungeons with your father.”
I shook him off me again. “Bite me.”
“Let me.”
“You don’t even like redheads,” I retorted.
His eyes grew wide, as if it was a grenade that I was throwing at him rather than a harmless recollection from the first day we’d met. Eventually, he said, “No, I don’t. So what a joke that the universe gives me you as my mate.” Lucais snickered, shaking his head at the ground before pinning me to the spot with his eyes. “You will be the first and only redhead I ever bed.”
“I will be?” I fought down the rising sense of pleasure, then decided to mask it when fighting the feeling didn’t work. “That’s so on-brand for you. You’re so fucking presumptuous!”
Lucais gave me a withering look. “You know as well as I do that it’s only a matter of time. I can’t stand it for much longer, Aura.” Throwing a hand out towards the ground between us, pointer finger extended, he sighed deeply. “The way that your existence grates against mine. The way the very ground beneath your feet calls to me as if I should be standing in their place and you should be in my arms. The way that parts of me come alive whenever you are near and the way they all die an agonising death whenever you are not.”
In the frozen shadows paralysing time as it strained to tick over the empty hallway, I stared at the High King of Faerie. His eyes flared pure gold. The sound of his voice reached out to stroke the inner chambers of my soul, entirely unhinged, the vocals of desperation caressing me with an intensity that brought warmth flooding back through all of my senses.
Tick-tock.
Brushing it off, I pulled free from his hold—the mental one—and turned away. I made it a few steps towards the doorway before he decided to speak again.
“I mean it, Auralie. I just announced to the whole of Faerie that you’re the intended High Queen. Don’t make me regret doing that.”
With a furious breath, I stopped. Turned. Met the gold beacons of his eyes with mine and beat down the urge to get on my knees to worship the power inside of them. Looking into them was nearly a religious experience, like he was tricking me into a confessional.
“Why don’t you just tell them you lied?” I suggested with a shrug. “You’re sogoodat that.”
Spinning away from him, I strode for the doorway, determined that I was going to leave and would not be tempted back into a pointless dialogue with him. He had the chance to apologise to me, but instead he chained me up. He had the chance to tell me the truth, but he left me coated in more half-truths and mystery. And he had nearly been given the chance tohaveme on more than one occasion, but he said no.
“Because I am in love with you,” he called after me.
Truth rang out between us like a clock toll.
Midnight. Time to go home before the spell is undone.
“Because I am so desperately in love with you that it’s made me sick and reckless, Auralie Roberts. If I somehow managed to convince the whole of Faerie that you are not my fated mate, even after witnessing all of that, then they would expect me to find them a replacement as the Oracle predicted. And I know you don’t want to hear any of this, but do you think I can look at other women since I met you? I can barely tell the difference between individual faces anymore. All I know is there is the face that is yours, and then there are the faces that are not.”
A single tear slipped down my cheek as I stood in the doorway. I was paralysed, like his words had broken my bones. Out of everything that he had ever said to me, those words were by far the worst.
The cruelest.
“I can lie about a lot of things, Aura. I can twirl and curtsy my way around and in between languages to trick anyone into believing things that are not true—anything but the fact that I am in love with you. That’s so obvious, I’m almost ready to give up the notion that rejecting you will protect you if I fail.”
His truth was cutting me to ribbons. I was suddenly remorseful that I had ever reprimanded him for the lies.I liked them so much better, so much better than this.
It was hurting me. Causing physical pain.
I love you.Snap.But I cannot have you.Crack.
“I’ve said it thrice now,” Lucais murmured, coming to stand behind me. His fingers lightly stroked down a curl of my hair, and my heart stuttered in reply. “Don’t make me say it again. And don’t let them see you with him.”
Wiping a tear from my cheek, I turned around—to do what, I had no idea—but I didn’t get the opportunity to start figuring it out because the sound of an alarm rang out through the midnight darkness and broke the spell.
“Fuck,” the High King cursed, a frantic look in his eyes as he stared out the window. “There are Malum trying to breach the wards around the city.”
