“Auralie isfine,” the High King stressed to his friend.
Are they still friends?
I hadn’t even asked.
Did I ruin that, too?
“She is ready to punch me in the throat and make a run for it at the earliest opportunity, though,” he added, lowering his voice into a harsh, sardonic whisper and cupping a hand over hismouth and nose to conceal it from me. “I think she’s bored of me.”
Wren wore a furious expression when I at last looked back at him. “Are you fine?” he bit out.
Fine? Such an interesting question, especially coming from you.I felt my lower lip begin to wobble, so I snagged it between my teeth with a sharp intake of breath.Exhale.
Fixing him with a hard look, I asked, “After what you did to me?”
Wren’s beautiful face fell. His anger dissipated, replaced by a profound look of remorse. The pull I felt towards him strained, like the iron chains the High King had used to secure me to his carriage were wrapped around the feelings his best friend and I had for each other instead of my wrists.
Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t go to him. Irefused. He was not the man I had thought he was. Wren was dangerous because he could seriously hurt me. Hehadseriously hurt me.
Hadn’t he?
Lucais was Lucais, and I’d found a way to reconcile myself to that because he was the same no matter what name I called him. When he was pretending to be Wren, he had tried to drug me in Dante’s Bookstore with silver powder. And when he was leaning into his true name of Lucais, he had tried to wake me by sticking a feather up my nose. Even when he was pretendingnotto be the High King, he still acted like one…
Oh, the irony.
The day I teased him for thinking of himself as a Prince in Brynn’s dreams must be the funniest day of his stupid, immortal life.
His name never changed him, not even a little bit, and I didn’t like him any differently between one name or the other.
But the real Wren? I had absolutely no idea who he was. I did not know who the man standing in front of me with a brokenheart and burned hands was when he wasn’t pretending to be somebody else—and doing a damn good job of it, too.
I really liked him when we were roleplaying soulmates, but he was doing it without my informed consent and lying to me through his perfect teeth.
Was it all a lie, though?
“I will be fine,” I conceded, turning my head away from him. My eyes burned with the threat of hot tears. Some strange part of me was flailing as if caught on something underwater, blowing ferocious air bubbles to the surface with a message that popped before it reached my ears. Shuddering, I tried to shake it off. I shot the High King an impatient look, and his eyes grew large with theatrical indignation. “Are we far from these gates?”
Blinking slowly, he shook his head. “About a twenty-minute walk.”
“We’re walking?” I frowned. I couldn’t see out of the carriage door, and the window on the other side was covered by thick velvet curtains.Is there another town like Sthiara out there?
“No,” Lucais replied. “I’m not, but you are.” He gestured between his right-hand man and me with a long finger. “The palace is protected by wards that are so strong even I can’t evanesce through them unless I am alone. Everyone comes and goes on foot. And for this trip, at least, I need to travel to the palace gates by myself.”
I was about to ask why, but he waved a hand—
Andpushed me outside.
It had to have been the force of his magic because Lucais never physically touched me, and yet the chains tethering my handcuffs to the floor were released, and an invisible wind picked me up and carried me out through the door. It dropped me rather unceremoniously onto the ground. Instinctively, I went to throw out my arms to steady myself, but the chains onmy handcuffs had been linked together, and the action set me completely off-balance.
Wren’s strong arms caught me before I fell flat on my face on the gravel road. He supported me as I found my feet, and by the time I was able to look up again, the High King had slammed the door shut, and the carriage was being pulled away by a team of six black and white unicorns with an alarming number of spiky horns.
Jackass.
The sound of a horse’s snort came from behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder to find Elera standing in the middle of the dirt road, ogling me. Her large, dark eyes were wise but regarded me with an element of caution. I nodded to her in greeting, and she hesitated a moment before bowing her head to me—lower than a simple hello would warrant—until the tips of her three curved horns brushed against the ground. Elera didn’t spare a glance in Wren’s direction when she lifted her head and broke into a gallop after the High King’s carriage.
I turned back to him. “Why is he going alo—what are you doing?”
Wren’s shirt was already over his head by the time I finished changing the question, and then I’d completely forgotten what I’d originally been intending to ask.