Page 76 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
“I always wanted someone like you for him,” his mother admitted in a low voice.
My eyes widened.She knows.
She dropped her gaze for a moment, and the illusion that she was friend rather than foe returned. She looked so much younger than I had imagined, and I briefly wondered if her appearance was true to the woman who had died and turned Malum, or if the way she presented herself to us after feeding on innocent faeries was simply a preference. Not that it mattered, in the grand scheme of things.
“If only I had the power required to change things around for you now,” she went on softly, raising her scrutinising gaze from the ground beneath my feet.
“What…” My voice faltered. I cleared my throat as delicately as I could manage with all of the fear his mother provoked slipping down it. “What do you mean?”
She gave me a sympathetic look that was somehow extremely condescending at the same time. “He has to be with Margot.”
Margot.Wrenlock’s sister.
“I will never marry her,” Lucais cut in, his voice firm. He was vehemently shaking his head. “No.”
The lady made from moonlight and murder simply shrugged. “Fine. I like Aura,” she said sweetly. Extending one long, bony arm towards me, she beckoned me with her hand. “Give her to me, and I will send her back to you once her transition is complete, my child.”
My stomach flipped, and though I tried to stop them, my eyes flew back to the pile of dead faeries behind her. That wasn’t a queue of High Fae waiting to transition into Malum. It was plain old murder—borderline cannibalism, surely—and she was a certifiable lunatic if she thought I’d fall for it.
“Transition? How many human girls did you have killed before you found me, exactly?”
She pursed her lips, levelling a thoughtful stare on me. “You know things.” Glancing at Lucais, she sighed deeply. “Fine. We were going to kill you,” she agreed, a haughty look in her eyes. “But it does not matter which woman the High King takes as his bride as long as she is Malum. If his choice is you, then I shall make you Malum, and you shall be the new High Queen.” She lifted a shoulder in a delicate shrug. “If the transition is successful, nobody will mind. Not even Margot.”
My forehead creased, and I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came out. She had rendered me utterly speechless.
Lucais inched forward. “You will touch her over my dead body, and then you will fight my ghost to take her.”
His mother gave him a withering look before rolling her eyes. “Mating bonds.”
Lucais made a strangled noise in the back of his throat and gestured between us with the hand that was not holding mine a prisoner. “Mother-in-laws,” he retaliated bitterly.
Her head reared back, a look of disbelief passing over her eyes. “What on Faerie is that supposed to mean?”
Lucais sneered, but I felt the effort in his façade through the bond. “The first time you meet Aura, mother, you threaten to kill her.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You want to turn her into Malum.”
His mother lifted her chin. “That’s not the same thing.” She had the audacity—I might have even dared to call ithumanity—to look genuinely offended. “I am notdead, you know.”
“You may as well be!”
Hurt flashed across her eyes—the first true sign of life I’d witnessed in her since she’d stepped out of the mist.
“Where’s father?” Lucais enquired, his voice suddenly thick and unsteady. Hatred trembled beneath the surface, a burn in his throat so strong I could almost hear it crackling.
She shook her head at him gently, and a tiny shard of broken-off maternal love hovered in the atmosphere between them. I recognised the glint to it, the way its edges were shaped, even without proper light.
“Where is he, mama?” the High King pressed. “Why did he not come to see me with you?”
“Lucais, your father knows you do not wish to see him,” she proclaimed in hushed tones.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I watched the exchange. I’d heard it a million times before—the excuses, the softening of a voice to try to compensate for the physical and emotional blows, the bitterness and disappointment.
The fuckingblame.
He knows you were angry with him, Aura. That’s why he left the last time. I don’t think your father believes you want him to come back yet, so he’s taken a job away from us for a while.
