Page 86 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
The High King nodded, gently patting Elera’s mane. She peeled another piece of bark off the tree and began to chew noisily.
Lucais dismounted first, then extended his arms to help me down. My eyes must have been filled with panic because he flicked my chin affectionately before joining the others, and the action pulled my anxious attention back down from the sky—which was being repeatedly split apart by ultraviolet streaks of lightning that very nearly mimicked the shape of a dark grin slicing across a face of dark storm clouds—to the ground and the High Fae standing around me.
“The storm is a side effect of the Court being in a full lockdown,” the High King explained.
He was addressing the group, huddled in a circular formation as the unicorns gathered around the trees a few paces away from us, but I had a feeling the briefing was mostly for my benefit. I knew that Wrenlock and Lucais had been visiting the lapsus while I was at the House, and it wasn’t a far cry to assume that Morgoya, at least, had joined them once or twice.
“It’s harmless, static electricity from the wards alerting me to the fact that they’re sealed off when ordinarily, they wouldn’t be, and it’s magnetised by the malignant energy inside the lapsus. It gets worse the closer we get, which is how we’ll know when we’ve caught up to the”—the High King waved a flippant hand at the storm ahead and scrunched his nose—“thinginside it.”
“Have you decided what you’re actually going todowith it?” Batre asked, eyeing him as if she thought he was well and truly falling off his rocker. I liked her more than ever for the expression on her face.
“No, but I can’t keep playing footsies with this fucking thing any longer,” Lucais replied indolently.
Morgoya wrapped a reassuring arm around her girlfriend but remained silent. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, torn between reprimanding him for his tone and chasing away the creases from his brow with my fingertips.
Heaving a sigh, Lucais dragged a hand down his face. “I’m sorry. The Malum have been feeding on faeries. I saw Raella in the portal, and she was Raella again—thanks to the lives of about sixteen assorted faeries she’d opened like a box of fucking party chocolates and dumped like wrappers on the hillside. She said it gives them the power to maintain the illusion of their High Fae forms, which means that’s what they’ve been experimenting with, and all of the faeries they’ve stolen from townships like Sthiara are already dead.”
Anxiety shot out across my body with a reluctant twitch of my shoulder.
It was more than the High Fae around me displayed, but I could feel it in the air. The devastation. The concern.
And the High King’s suffocating guilt.
“I don’t know what else that man is doing. I don’t know how much stronger they’re becoming, and I don’t know if they’vemanaged to syphon magic to utilise themselves or not. If we’re lucky, it extends as far as their image,” he declared, shaking his head. “But if they manage to overcome the Banshee’s anti-magic curse and regain power to utilise as weapons or as defence, then I don’t know if we’ll be able to prevent another full-blown war if they decide to storm the city and take it by force. Especially not with Gregor’s help, the fucking bastard.”
“Did she propose again?” Wrenlock queried. His throat bobbed when I glanced at him, and he met my eyes for a moment before looking back towards the High King.
“Margot wasn’t there.” Lucais’s tongue swiped across his bottom lip. He hesitated before divulging the remainder of the conversation. “Raella offered me Aura instead, though. She said that I could take her as my bride and all would be well—if I allowed them to turn her into Malum first.”
“Damn it.Fuck,” Wrenlock hissed, spinning away with one hand splayed across his mouth and the other on his hip. Morgoya and Batre echoed his sentiments.
“This needs to end,” Lucais insisted, nodding to the deepening shadows in the distance.
His voice was wavering, the whispers of exhaustion slipping through. I wasn’t convinced that it was purely physical, either.
“The Malum are still throwing things at the wards around Caeludor simply to annoy the fuck out of me. Blythe’s either in there or she’s not, but we can’t wait any longer. And I can’t let it grow more powerful than it already is. I left the Malum alone for too long. I can’t risk making the same mistake here.”
“What exactly is your plan?” Morgoya questioned apprehensively.
Lucais grinned like a fiend. “I’m going to make one hell of a scene.”
twenty-eight
Extraordinarily Long and Unorthodox Foreplay
“Ithought you told me that we aren’t here to catch a caenim,” I said through my teeth. “If you make a scene in the middle of the Ruins, what else do you think is going to happen?”
The High King winked at me. “That’s becausewearenotcatching a caenim, little beast.Youare going to lure the caenimoutby being here with me, but Wrenlock and I will do the catching. We can’t have a repeat of that day in the clearing where…” He trailed off, dislodging a lump in his throat with a cough. “Well.”
“Well?” I prompted, crossing my arms over my chest obstinately. I hoped the fire in my throat was reflected in my eyes as they pinned him to the spot with an unyielding glower.
Lucais’s warm, honey-coloured gaze softened as he coated me with it from head to toe.Where you not only had to think twice about saving my life, but you hesitated before saving your own, too.
A hot, loud heartbeat hit me in the throat, but I rolled my eyes at him and scoffed. “You’re insufferable,” I accused.
“Yet you keep suffering,” he returned with a sigh, but another devilish grin lit up his face in spite of it.
Amusement glittered in Lucais’s eyes when he gave a quick shake of his head and returned his attention to our companions. Taking a measured breath, he brushed a hand down the front of his shirt and composed his expression.
