Page 98 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
“What the fuck?” Wrenlock shouted, gripping him by the collar of his tattered and bloodstained shirt. “You save her! Youalwayssave her!”
The High King shoved Wrenlock onto the ground with a grunt of revulsion and sat up, wiping saliva and blood from where it had dripped down from his nose and mouth onto his chin. He didn’t even spare his friend a glance before he looked directly at me, resting his elbows on his knees, feet flat on the ground, breathing heavily.
Look. The fucking bastard was cornered by a hundred caenim from all different angles,he informed me through our mental bond.
I stifled a sigh of relief that it was well and truly still intact.
They’d only just finished pouring out of the shadows. At least a dozen were at his throat, many more at his back… I was having flashbacks to you in that field, honestly. I figured that I’d probably regret it if I let him die, and even if I didn’t regret it on account of myself, then you were going to make me regret it if I pulled you out of there and you found your lover boy with his heart cut out on the ground behind me.
I rolled my eyes at him to conceal the way I gagged at the thought of Wrenlock—of any of them—being one of the bodies with missing organs on the ground.
I took a single eye off you for a split second, he went on,and blasted the damned things back to the pit of evil they’d crawled out of before they did as much to him. But I had a hand on you at all times, and if I’d lost that, I would have gone in after you. They couldn’t possibly fight me off forever, little beast. I would have ripped them apart and followed you inside their remains.He held my stare, weighing my reaction heavily.Nothing would have kept me out.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I nodded because I knew he was telling the truth. I’d felt the phantom of his hand on me at all times while I was inside of the maze. I’d leaned on it for all of its strength as I’d tried to fight my way back out. Between the two of us, I had no doubt we would have eventually met each other somewhere inside of the dark.
I glanced at Wrenlock, who was crouched down and glaring at us like he hoped I was shouting profanities at the High King through our bond, but he didn’t believe that I was. “It’s okay,” I told him. His expression tightened. “I’m okay.”
I wasn’t, but it was not because of Lucais.
Wrenlock turned his head away to release an almighty breath and rose to stand. Gesturing to the necropolis, he said, “The fuck are we going to do with all of this?”
Morgoya patted my shoulder gently before doing the same thing. “Well,” she said with a grunt, “I think maybe a fire…”
I heard you shouting, the High King whispered into my mind while our three companions debated the best course of action for cleaning up the disaster we’d created. I was surprised they were even considering tidying it up, given the mess was inside a place they’d aptly named the Ruins.What did you mean when you said it’s not you?
A flash of death, destruction, and devastation assaulted my mind. I dropped my eyes to my hands, folded in my lap, and showed it to him to the best of my abilities. To my surprise, the pictures were murky and vague, like memories of a dream, though I’d only recently had the very real experience firsthand.
I don’t think they want me to rule them. The Court of Darkness isn’t coming back from this. They want to be destroyed. They want to find the thing more permanent than the dark, more final than death. Nothingness. The end of creation. I think they want me to let them out. I don’t think they want me to save them.
But they dowantyou.
Yes.
Then they’re not going to stop until they take you from me. Regardless of whether they mean for you to save them or destroy them, the call of power from one of the Elements and its Court is impossible to resist.
I won’t answer it, I insisted.I have no business there. I never want to go back again.
Wrenlock theorised that the lapsus was a symptom of a much bigger problem, and I knew without a doubt that he was right. The lapsus was a symptom of the world ending. Faerie was dying, and the malediction started in the heart of Blythe’s Court.
The High King climbed to his feet and walked over to me, helping me rise with his hands underneath my arms. He keptone hand there while he slipped the other behind my knees, lifting me into his arms and holding me tightly against his chest. Without a backwards glance at our friends and the fires they were trying to start, Lucais began to carry me to where the unicorns were waiting for us near the copse of trees with flaky bark.
Elera trotted over to us as soon as she noticed our approach, and I didn’t have the energy to shrug her off when she began to use her large, hot tongue to clean up the blood, sweat, and dirt on my face. As thoroughly disgusting as it was for me, I knew it was a gesture of kindness from her.
We’ll see, bookworm. The High King’s grave reply was significantly delayed.We’ll see.
thirty-one
Tommy
The Malum had retreated from the city’s wards by the time we returned and the High King tucked me into bed, which I had to think was an incredibly creepy coincidence. It was a relief for both the High King and the people of Caeludor, though, because it meant the faelight would be back up and running in the city automatically, and Lucais could get some rest. At least one of us had to—and after what I’d seen, it certainly was not going to be me.
Initially, I did try to get some sleep, but as soon as I shut my eyes, I was plagued with visions from the Court of Darkness. They came back to me in fragments, and I wasn’t sure if I should feel relieved that I couldn’t seem to remember them with clarity—or concerned.
The bits and pieces I was able to put together painted a picture that aligned with all of our darkest fears combined. The Court of Darkness was, in fact, being controlled by the Malum. There was not a sliver of doubt in my mind after experiencing the feeling of its magic—the feeling that had been so like the magic fuelling Raella’s portal—and even if that wasn’t enough toconvince me, I had a mountain of evidence piling up in the very back corners of my brain.
From the unique colour of the maze’s interior shadows to the low visibility in my mind when I tried to recall my mental pictures of things that had once been so clear.
It was like my dreams of the man in the dungeon—of Lucais in the dungeon, bathed in shadows so dark they made a moonless night look like a rainy afternoon, as flickering images of a body covered in burn marks and tattoos came rising to the surface before new waves of darkness dispelled the illusion and washed everything away. I was swimming underwater in a murky river without the faintest idea of which way was up, and my recollection of the dream—and my time inside of the Court of Darkness’s wards—was a bull shark I didn’t see until it was right in front of me, its jaws spread wide open, coming for me at high speed.
