Page 88 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
His chestnut eyes wandered across the sky—a little disbelievingly, to be honest—merely in an effort to avoid mine.
A pang of guilt slid down the back of my throat. I really needed to talk to him later.
After I dealt with the antics of the High King as he spiralled into a fit of madness.
“You,” I accused, swinging my gaze back to Lucais. Guilt for a lot of different things was piled up so high against my spine that I felt like I might start to choke if I didn’t shift some of the blame onto someone else, and he was the best candidate.
His full lips twitched into a feline pout that had my heartbeat tripping over itself. “Me.”
“You mean to tell me that you brought me all the way out here to play the part of smelly rat cheese so you can play catch and release with a bunch of flesh-eating monsters that are going to ravage the towns across the outskirts of your own kingdom?” I pointed towards the horizon for emphasis, and he nodded with mock solemnity. “You do this simply to force people into enough of a panic that they’ll flee into the citadel. All so you can then move on to playing whack-a-mole with the wards and lapsuses around Faerie without anyone finding out that you might haveaccidentally-on-purposesentenced an entire Court of faeries to a fate worse than death?”
Lucais’s eyes twinkled as he mulled over my words, nodding vaguely. “Yes,” he agreed with an exceptionally pleasant smile.
My hands balled into fists. “This is the stupidest and most selfish plan I have ever heard anyone concoct in my entire life,” I declared, shaking my head with incredulity. Why I had thought he might attempt to vindicate himself from the very specific, very awful accusation was beyond me. “You are horrible for doing this—for expectingmeto do this!” I crossed my arms, eyes crinkling at the corners. “You should feel terrible right now.”
The High King rolled his eyes skyward and took a firm step towards me, the gold in his irises solidifying as they narrowed on me. “What exactly is it about me that gave you the impression that I’m a golden retriever boyfriend?” he enquired impatiently. “Please do let me know so I can take the necessary steps to correct the dreadful misapprehension you’ve apparently been under this whole time.”
“You keep saving my life,” I seethed, “and then complaining about it. Forgive me for being a little bit surprised that you’re now willingly throwing me out into the middle of the Ruins to lure caenim and other miscellaneous beasts for yet another one of your harebrained schemes.”
He held my glare unflinchingly. “I will never ask you to do something that you’re not perfectly capable of doing.”
“Oh, yeah, like fall in love with you?” I made to turn away, but he snatched my chin with one hand and used it to pull my face back to his.
Inches away, Lucais’s breath settled over me like nitrous oxide. I was slightly taken aback to discover that, despite my mockery, his expression was the portrait of calm.
He spoke very carefully and very slowly. “I double…dog…dare you.”
For a long moment, I stared at him, breathing heavily. I knew we had an audience, but there was a part of my soul—sick with interference from the stars, and twisted almost irrevocably around his—that wanted to ask for that kiss.
I knew he’d give it to me.
I knew that pulling back from him and clearing my throat as if it would push the lustful haze from my head would be my one regret if something did go fatally wrong, but I did it anyway.
“If the two of you are quite finished with your extraordinarily long and unorthodox foreplay,” Morgoya called, coming to meet us, “we’re near the border of the Court of Earth and the Court of Darkness. A few miles ahead, Aura, you’ll start to feel a shift in the atmosphere, even though we’re technically on the other side of the wards. It gets rather cold and gloomy.”
Nodding, I mouthed an apology at her once the High King had turned away from us.
She shook her head at me, eyes flaring as if to say she was enjoying every second of it.
But even I knew the tension between Lucais and me was dangerous. It was so thick it would eventually suffocate one of us or snap and decapitate the other.
We didn’t have much time before something had to give, and I was well aware that I would be the one giving.
I just didn’t think it would be the thing that was expected of me.
Only a week or so into my time in Caeludor, and I was already getting comfortable. Reacquainting myself with my emotions, letting little human fantasies peek through the surface of the depths of my mind. Allowing myself to forget that I’d done things that were so much worse than anything the High Fae around me could claim.
That was part of the problem.
I felt so at home with Lucais and Wrenlock because, no matter what they did to me, I knew I could beat them in a challenge of wickedness if I admitted to my crimes.
Trailing behind the group, I took the opportunity of the quiet to reorient myself.
The Ruins spanned over a much larger space than I had originally thought because we began to head west, as if Elera had evanesced further out of Faerie’s normal boundaries than I’d expected.
While the dead ground didn’t change much as we walked, stepping over jagged rocks and deep splits in the red clay dirt, the temperature did begin to drop, and the darkness swallowing up the horizon began to take a much more physical shape. What I had originally thought was nothing more than a symptom of nightfall colouring the sky turned out to be the shadows of the Court of Darkness—an opaque black fog to rival the one Lucais had placed around Caeludor in its density.
My mind immediately spiralled into comparisons as it tried to understand the Court of Darkness’s blight.An enchantment, perhaps, if the fog was anything like it was in the city. But is it enchanted to hide something? And if so, what?
