Page 90 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
“Wait!” she cried, glancing at the High King. I gave him a beseeching look, my chest feeling like it was about to fall apart into a three-hundred-piece puzzle. “I think… I think you’d better hold still for a moment, don’t you?”
My toes curled in my boots, but I did as she advised and held very still while the High King approached me with the caution normally reserved for a wild horse.
Flaring my eyes, I sent a silent demand for him to tell me what he was staring at behind me. His gaze flicked to mine for a heartbeat, but it conveyed nothing more than uncertainty and apprehension.
The shadows were still spilling out around my feet, though they reared back, drawing closer to my ankles and climbing up my calves towards my knees as he approached.
“What?” I implored when nobody said anything. “What is it?”
The High King waved over his shoulder for the others to approach before he dropped into a half-crouch, bracing hishands on his thighs as he cocked his head to the side like he was appreciating the curve of my ass. He was transfixed bysomething.
“Aura,” Morgoya remarked softly. “You’ve got a shadow.”
My brows knitted together. There was no sun. It was overcast and gloomy. None of them had a shadow.
“Not just any shadow,” the High King murmured. He turned his head to the other side and let out a low, haunting whistle. “It looks like it’s attached to her.”
“What?” I exclaimed. It was redundant, and I knew that, but panic had taken over the control system in my brain, and hysteria was riding the clutch. “What’s attached to me?”
“The shadow…”
I saw him reach a hand out, felt him coast it down along my back. The motion made me stiffen, every muscle in my body straining to pull taut. A flicker of electricity sparked out across the muscles in my shoulders and lower back at his near touch, but there was something else in there, too.
Something dimming it.
“Hmm,” he murmured. “That’s rather fascinating indeed. It doesn’t separate from her body, but my hand slips straight through it.”
“But that is Aura,” Wrenlock contended. He drew a swirly line in the air with his pointer finger, one eye squeezed shut as he scrutinised me. “Look at it. The same height, the same curves of her figure, the same posture—even down to the curls in her hair.”
“It’s hanging off her.” Batre’s voice was a ghostly undertone. “Like—”
“A shadow,” Morgoya finished, squaring her shoulders. “By the Elements, she looks like Blythe.”
The High King straightened. “Indeed.”
I opened my mouth to ask them how in the hell I could possibly look like Blythe, but as soon as I did, my teeth started to chatter violently.
The trembles swept all the way down to my fingertips, and suddenly, all of my energy was sucked into the endeavour of maintaining self-possession. My teeth and the hinges of my jaw ached with the effort.
I felt hysteria brewing a pot of uncontrollable sobs at the bottom of my throat, sprinkling in a dash of blood-curdling screams and a pinch of sudden onset nyctophobia.
“Wasn’t this your theory?” Wrenlock questioned, putting a hand on the High King’s shoulder. “You said that you believed Aura to be the heir to the Court of Darkness, did you not?”
“I did,” Lucais admitted, stroking the light sprinkling of stubble on his chin with one hand. At long last, he looked at me properly—held me with his eyes. The trembles subsided, but barely. “I tasted dark magic in your blood, Aura. I stand by that theory, and I’m honestly inclined to take this as confirmation.” Arching his brows, he pointed to my feet. “This is the third time the darkness has reacted to you in strange ways, and right now, it’s treating you like a familiar.”
“The third time?” somebody asked. I thought it was Batre, but I was too deep inside my consternation vortex to hear it properly, and I didn’t dare break away from Lucais’s eyes lest it swallow me completely.
He nodded, gaze still locked with mine as he lifted a fist and raised one finger. “The dark magic in her blood”—a second finger—“the shadows on the Map of Faerie”—a third—“and now this.”
“Are you sug-suggesting that my father lied to m-my mother?” I stammered.God, it’s hard to hold still. Pull yourself together.“Because sh-she was sure he was from the Court of Li-Light.”
The High King held his palm up to me, exchanging the steady presence of his gaze for his hand so he could break eye contact and watch the shadows at my back while he approached me.
He treated the darkness like a snake, poised ready to strike, and I trembled so violently I thought I’d be sick.
Still, I accepted the gesture gratefully. I focussed on his palm, tracing the lines on his skin, counting the silver rings on his fingers. When Lucais was close enough to touch me, he gave me that hand.
“Here’s the thing about faeries, bookworm,” he drawled, threading his fingers through mine.
