Page 96 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
Istared up at the Court of Darkness in a fit of silent rage.
Hatred filled my lungs with every breath. I was so angry with it for being incorporeal. For not being something I could punch or hit with things.
Feverish gasps filled my lungs with the smell of dusty red clay and the moisture gathering in the atmosphere from the electrical storm raging on above me. The dark maze had gone back to the way it was when we first arrived, the wisps of shadow sticking to the boundary line of the Court, a solid wall swaying only gently in the light, frosty breeze.
I wanted to kill the shadows. I wanted to chase them and hold them down while I beat the living fuck out of them for what they’d shown me, for what they’d put me through, for evendraggingme in there in the first place—
Before I knew what I was doing, I released an almighty scream at the Court of Darkness, pouring my rage out into the space between us.
When my lungs ran out of air, the sound turned into a quiet sob that wracked my chest with sharp, tight flashes of pain as mybody called out for oxygen again. I hauled a gasp of air into my mouth and swallowed it down painfully, my shoulders rocking with each silent cry of wrathful sorrow. I let it run its course, the shadows watching me from afar like they would deny everything and take their sins to their graves, and then I turned my back on them.
Blythe and the Court of Darkness can burn in hell.
Lucais and Wrenlock were executing caenim. Their movements were less urgent and more routine as they combed through the Ruins a mile or so away from us.
Chunks of black and grey littered the ground—a graveyard of dead beasts. There were so many carcasses heaped on top of one another in piles, reminding me of the grisly visions I’d been forced to watch of the world dying against my will.
The smell was putrid, but faint, dwindling as life was violently wrested out of the very last of their kin. I couldn’t count how many were left, let alone how many had been killed, but my estimate was high.
I felt a pinch in my stomach when I thought of Lucais being forced into committing so much violence on the same day. He must have been exhausted.
“Are you hurt?”
Gazing up into the High Lady’s malachite-splattered face, I tried to search for my voice to reply, but it had shredded my throat, and I couldn’t get the words out. I simply shook my head at her instead.
Morgoya tucked a strand of her dark hair behind one ear, dripping with fresh red blood from where her earlobe had been sliced in half. There was a deep cut across the side of her neck that extended down to her collarbone. It was already clotting, but dark bruises had formed on her ghostly white skin across her throat and on her temple. Indentations like human bite marks were present as if the creature had bitten her with the teeth in itseyes. She was missing an earring; her hair was matted to the top of her head and the sides of her face with dirt and gore.
Noticing the panic flaring in my eyes, she shrugged delicately—and then winced as if the movement hurt her.
“Close call,” she told me softly. “Batre pulled it off me before it could do any real damage. I’ll see a healer, and they’ll put me back to rights.”
In a daze, I looked around for Batre and found that she was lying on her side near me. She was awake, alert, and appeared to be unharmed, but visibly exhausted.
Panting wildly, her chest heaved, her cleavage nearly spilling out of her dress with each breath.
While the High Lady had worn a set of fighting leathers, her girlfriend hadn’t changed out of her usual green velvet dress, complete with a petticoat beneath her skirt and a waist trainer around her bodice. Accentuating her large, round curves, it matched both the colour of Morgoya’s eyes and the ribbons in the long twin braids that Batre wore in her hair.
But it was even more ill-fitted for battling caenim than my simple loose pants, shirt, and overcoat.
“Are you alright?” I mouthed to her. My lips felt dry and cracked, my tongue and the roof of my mouth like cotton.
She nodded. Dirt was smeared all across her face. “You?” she mouthed back.
I hesitated.
If Batre was okay after fighting the caenim head-on and rescuing the love of her life before a missing earlobe became a missing head, then it didn’t seem fair for me to be anything other than fine myself.
Except that I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t even close to being okay.
After what I had just been through, I didn’t think I’d ever truly be okay again.
All going well, I’d die long before the world was brought to its knees and executed by the end of everything, but I didn’t know how I could be expected to survive the sight of it.
Theknowledge. Theblame.
A sharp twinge in my back caused me to whimper as I struggled to right myself and sit up. Morgoya reached out to help me, her thin arms possessing a considerable amount of strength as she supported my spine—which felt like it had been turned to jelly.
Tears sprang to my eyes again, blotting out my vision as I held each of my arms in front of me and pushed back my sleeves to examine my skin for cuts and bite marks left by the sinister forces inside the maze.
