Page 9 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
While he politely ignored me, I stood there and eyed him in wonderment.
How did he fool me into thinking he was someone that he was not?
He was the man from my dreams—or at least he would have been if my night terrors weren’t actually about Lucais Starfire. The prisoner in the dungeon of my mind was the High King of Faerie, who had glamoured his tattoos to hide them from me and pretended to be someone else when we had met, but I’d seen Wren in the dark.Hadn’t I?
They’d tricked me, and I was no longer sure about anything.
I stared at the man I had thought I was trying to save every night—the man I thought I was going to love. Exuding heat, his scent was that of a roaring fire in the dead of winter. His skin was a rich, sepia brown and soaked up the sunlight until it practically shimmered with golden light and warmth; and he was tall, broad-shouldered, muscular—
Andimpossiblystrong.
The chain linking my handcuffs broke apart with an aggravated shriek as Wren freed me, using his shirt to protect himself. Carefully, he broke the cuffs apart using only his fingers wedged into the space between my wrists and the irons. When they split into pieces, Wren tossed them into the gully and took my hands in his, dutifully inspecting my wrists and forearms for damage. He was the embodiment of warmth in both his looks and his personality, and that made it so much easier to believe he was—that he could have been—the High King under the rule of the Court of Light.
And he didn’t have a choice. And I loved him—
“You’re fine,” Wren surmised, reluctantly releasing my hands. I took them back into my own custody and rubbed my wrists, feeling strangely light and hollow without the cruel pieces of jewellery gifted to me by my mate. “Physically, at least.”
“And you’re shirtless,” I commented, mostly as an excuse to let my eyes wander down his chest.
I navigated his breastbone, like a valley between his pectorals, over the peaks of his dark brown nipples, and then through a maze of his abdominal muscles, which shuddered beneath my gaze as though my eyes were a physical touch. I stopped myself before I went any lower, before I remembered—
“I can’t stand it,” he said quietly. “The sight of you in chains is blasphemous. The way he treats you—”
I put my hand up between us, though I didn’t really understand why. “Stop,” I pleaded. My chest felt tight, my heart fracturing a little under the pressure of the enormous breath I pulled into my lungs. “You played along with his games, and whether you were a willing participant or not is beside the point. You treated me every bit as badly as he did. Worse, even.”Because it fucking hurt more from you.
Wren sighed and bent his head towards me, dark curls falling across his eyes. “Don’t misunderstand me when I say this because I am sorry for hurting you and I wish it had been different, but I did not take anything from you that you were not willing to give me, and your feelings for me developed of their own accord. Believe me when I saythatif you believe anything at all. You don’t love me because of the Oracle, Aura. You love mein spiteof it.”
“I don’t have feelings for you,” I snapped. I felt the tang of warm metal grace my tongue and swallowed it down. “I don’t love you at all.”
“Liar,” he accused.
“Manipulator,” I spat, but the voices in my head agreed with him. I sent a mental blade after their throats.
Brown eyes boring into mine, his mouth curved into the faintest smirk, and when I sucked my lower lip between my teeth, his gaze dropped, tracking the movement. I stepped back because something brutally honest and gasping for air told me that I didn’t stand a chance if he tried to kiss me.
Wren sighed. “I need to give you more time, I know.” He gazed down the road to where the carriage had disappeared over the hill. “The city is beyond the crest. The reason he has to go alone is because we haven’t permanently resided here for quite some time. Every pair of eyes within sight or sprinting distance of the royal carriage will be scrutinising it today.”
I rolled my eyes.If Lucais disdains me so much that he can’t stand the idea of being seen with me in public, why can’t he bear to let me travel freely through his realm?
Probably for some highly suspicious and nefarious reason. As if lying about his identity could ever be the worst of his secrets.
“Aura?” Wren waved a hand in front of my face. “Are you hatching a plan to flee? If so, you won’t need to fight me off because I’ll let you go. I’ll gowithyou—anywhere you want, any time you like.”
Shaking my head, I glanced back at him and smiled ruefully. “No, I’ve had a change of heart. I’d really like to see what and who the High King is so desperate to hide me from, actually. He wanted to smuggle me into Caeludor like some sort of contraband, so let’s go.” I tucked my necklace beneath my shirt and smoothed it down, brushing a hand over the scar on my forearm left by the original manacle from our trip through the Forest. “Take me into the City of Light.”
As promised, Wren acquiesced without argument and offered me a respectful nod of his head.We were almost at the top of the hill when a thought occurred to me.
“He called you Wrenlock in the House when he was poisoned, but when he gave me your name in place of his own, it was Wren. Which do you prefer?”
“Wrenlock,” he answered immediately. “He gave me Wren as a nickname when we were kids to poke fun at me for my affinity with birds, and he continues to use it to this day because he knows it annoys the hell out of me.”
Nodding to myself, I swirled my tongue around behind my teeth.Figures.I pursed my lips and tried his real name out.“Wrenlock.”
It was the first truth that intruded upon me as we stepped up to the top of the hill and found an enormously wide and deep valley carved into the ground below our feet.
Wren, one way or another, is dead.
It is only Wrenlock and Lucais now.
