Page 91 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
A shot of warmth trickled over me, starting from where our knuckles touched and palms rested against each other.
“We can get away with murder if we say the right things. He may have told your mother he was from the Court of Light, but that doesn’t mean he was born there. Maybe he travelled into your world through the Court of Light’s portal.”
“But the ma-magic—”
“Light manipulates the darkness, darkness manipulates the light.” His warmth reached my shoulder blades, and they slumped forward ever so slightly.
The tightness in my chest relinquished an inch.
“Rumour has it there were once just three Courts in Faerie, back in the very beginning of time. The dark and light faeries were the first, the wind and fire faeries were the second, and the earth and water faeries the third. People who believe this lean heavily into the idea that those elements cannot exist without each other, which is partly true, but there’s no substantial evidence to back up the claim. Even so, if he was clever—and I’d wager he is, having met his daughter—he could have pulled a few parlour tricks out of his sleeve to make it look like he was usingthe light. An untrained eye most likely wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
Great. As if I need another reason to hate him.
I shuddered as Lucais’s warmth brought full motion and feeling back to my legs. He was undoing the fear paralysis meticulously, using both his words and his magic to achieve a seamless result.
“Is he in there right now?”
The High King’s gaze strayed to the shadow maze contemplatively. “Maybe. He could be anywhere in Faerie, but if he lived in the Court of Darkness, he’d be there now. I know all of the dark faeries who were away from home when the wards were sealed shut, and none of them fit the description of your biological father.”
“Then let’s leave him,” I muttered, letting go of Lucais’s hand. I wrapped my arms tightly around my shoulders and ducked my head to warm my nose in the crook of one elbow. “I’ve already been damaged and disappointed by one father. I really don’t need to go through that again with a new one.”
Lucais’s expression softened. He started to shrug, but his High Lady interrupted him.
“It’s inconceivable,” she averred. “It can’t be, can it? There’s never been a human heir to any of the Courts.”
“There’s never been a human heir to the throne, either,” Batre offered neutrally.
“That’s true,” Lucais mused. “She’s already broken many of our standards—the High King’s soulmate, a human with no prior history of wielding magic doing it well enough to kill a Banshee—but so have I, and she was designed to be my equal.”
“You said the whole Banshee thing was light magic,” I reminded him. “So how can I have used light magic and still be the heir to the Court of Darkness? You said yourself that you’dhave to be clever to manipulate it like that, and I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Okay,” he allowed. “That’s fair. But how else do you explain this? If you were a light faerie, the shadows would shy away from you, not hitch a ride on your back.”
There was silence for long moments.
Finally, Morgoya broke it. “I never would have guessed that Aura would be your soulmate, but I don’t doubt it now. I’m just not convinced that she’s Blythe’s heir because—I mean—” She huffed, looking at me with a desperate gleam in her eye. The dark-haired beauty was reaching for something—all of us were, and we were becoming increasingly frustrated when we didn’t grasp onto anything with enough substance to stick. “How old were you when Blythe disappeared?”
“Uh…” I pulled a face at Lucais. “What, like, fourteen?”
He grimaced. “Yeah.”
Age gap.
Shut up.
“See?” Morgoya persisted. “I just cannot accept the idea that a human girl who never even knew she had magic was that powerful at the age of fourteen. No offence, Aura.”
“None taken.”
“But that’s assuming that Blythe did disappear seven years ago,” Wrenlock added. “What if it was later than that?”
“My point would still stand,” Morgoya replied, shaking her head. “A teenage human girl who doesn’t even know she has a claim to magic being strong enough to force out an existing High Lady who is four hundred years her senior? It just doesn’t seem like the right explanation.” She scrutinised me, her red-painted mouth twisting. “Does it?”
“Yeah, if we were in a book,” I muttered. Lucais snorted obnoxiously, and I pulled a face at him before turning back tothe High Lady. Sighing, I pinched my brows together. “When was the Oracle’s prophecy?”
“Five, maybe six months ago?”
My spine relaxed, and I shook my head dejectedly.That was not related, then.
