Page 75 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
Before I had a chance to react, the air in front of us began to ripple and distort, and I could see the two of us standing together in the reflection of what looked similar to the wall of glass from my dreams. Except it was not all-consuming like a gateway; it was smaller, like a full-body sized mirror.
Another portal?
I won’t be long.
Why—
I didn’t finish the thought because the ripples increased in severity, like larger stones were being dropped into a still lake, and Lucais took a step forward, and—
At the very last possible second, I snatched the High King’s hand and fell through the portal with him.
He twisted to push me back, but it was too late.
Entering felt like stepping through mud, whereas the gateway and the portal in the Court of Light had been more like aclear body of water, and I could have sworn part of it stuck to me even after we cleared the boundaries. Not like a physical layer of something—but a magical one.
Lucais moved to send me back to the other side, but it was to no avail. There was nothing there. Panic flashed across his beautiful face, and then he swallowed me with his arms.
The High King fit me tightly against his chest, holding me so close I felt like I could split in half, his heart beating like a wild racehorse fresh out of the gates. I didn’t regret following him through it, but an irrefutable sense of dread reached out to caress me, coming directly from the shadows—a touch he tried to shield me from, but could not completely ward off.
He pressed his lips to the top of my head. “Fortune’s fool.”
“Lucais.”
The voice that spoke his name was not mine. It was not familiar to me at all. He had pinned me to his body with such a tight grip that I couldn’t move to find the speaker, yet I wriggled against him in vain. I was aching to see, to know. It was such a human voice, such a friendly voice. He’d said that it was Malum—
“Mama,” he answered quietly.
And then he very slowly turned around.
Lucais tried his best to keep me concealed, though I was determined to look. Craning my neck as far as it would stretch, I peered around his arm to see the speaker.Did I hear him correctly? Did he say the wordmama?
But then I saw her stepping out of the mist.
She was angelic in her beauty. Incredibly thin, like she was made of starlight strung together with papery skin and completely straight, white-blonde hair that stopped at her shoulders. Pitch-black eyes were framed with extremely long lashes, and her mouth was heart-shaped and blood-red. Her features were sharp and angular; everything was pointed orelongated from the tip of her nose down to her fingernails. The resemblance she bore to her son was uncanny, though his complexion was far darker.
“How are you appearing like this?” he asked. “Are you an apparition?”
“Not an apparition, my Lucais.”
Her voice was so sweet and melodious, like a siren song. I found myself stepping out of Lucais’s grip to stand at his side and glean a better view of the woman who had created him. He let me, but kept me tightly in his reach with his hand around mine.
“As it turns out,” she continued, “we simply had not been consuming enough magic to maintain our true forms. And I have recently been fed.” Daintily, she tipped her head to one side and cast a brief look over her shoulder.
We both followed the direction she was indicating, and it took all of my willpower—and a firm squeeze from Lucais’s hand around mine—for me to remain motionless and quiet as the sight of dozens of dead faeries in a bloodied pile of broken bones and ink black veins came into focus a few yards behind her.
The colour on her lips…
It was like the body in the courtyard all over again, but magnified to be so much worse. I was sick to my stomach thinking about how long they had suffered. The deaths weren’t instantaneous. Not when the Malum were involved. Enyd’s sentry had stumbled all the way from beyond the House’s wards into the dining room, trying to make his way back to his High Lady before he’d finally succumbed to his injuries.
They’re not getting stronger.Lucais spoke directly into my mind again, correcting a previous assumption he’d made about the Malum and their diabolical plans.They’re getting smarter.
I didn’t know if he was really speaking to me or just thinking loud enough for me to hear it, but I found myself poised toreply nonetheless. My lips parted, and then his mother turned towards me, as if the motion had caught her attention.
The movement was not humanlike. It wasn’t even faerielike. The way that she moved her head reminded me of the laughing clowns at the Belgrave Carnival I used to take Brynn to visit once a year. Her gaze was positively serpentine—dead, yet still occupied. I could feel the danger in it, as if direct eye contact broke whatever spell made her appear so angelic and holy from afar.
“Aura,” she said.
Lucais used the fist he had closed around my hand to pull me firmer against his body. The chaos emanating from him was enough to send a building collapsing onto its side. I sensed fury and devastation growing inside of him like a wave poised to drown an entire civilisation.
