Page 101 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
“The one we just made.” Tommy winked at me and straightened, smoothing down the front of his waistcoat like it was a nervous tic, and my heart dropped from my throat to the floor beneath the bed, where it immediately became coated in dust and cobwebs, and the spiders started to make nests inside the arteries.
“No…”
Tommy tutted at me. “Trust me, it’s a better deal than I would’ve given anyone else.” His dark eyes drifted over the frontof my shirt to where I still had one hand holding the fabric in place to cover the space between my legs. “Now, sweetheart, you had better get dressed. I’ll be seeing you.”
The Spectre tipped his invisible hat to me again—
And then he was gone.
thirty-two
My Nightmares and Demons
When a knock came at the door later on, my heart lurched with anticipation.
It was all so silly.
I lifted my head from the tear-stained pillow, unable to even call out an invitation to enter, and waited for the High King of Faerie to open the door and slip inside. When he didn’t, my heart dropped like a bungee jumper again, but I forced a small smile onto my face as Wrenlock softly closed it behind him and crossed the room.
He didn’t hesitate. He came straight over to the bed and lay down behind me, wrapping me up in his tight, warm embrace with the kind of strength that would give my nightmares and demons a run for their money. One arm fit around my waist as the other slid underneath my head, and he pressed his lips to the top of my hair.
“The caenim are dead, and the Malum have left the wards outside the city,” he murmured in a voice as smooth as bourbon. I already knew that, but I let him continue to comfort me. “Youneverhave to go back there, Aura, I swear it to you. You don’tever have to go back. I will never make you go back. I won’t let you.”
A new tide of tears washed up on my cheeks, wetting the shirtsleeve of the arm he had tucked underneath my head.
I felt bad for him; it must have been uncomfortable to keep his arm sandwiched between the wetness on my face and the wetness on my pillow, but he didn’t flinch. Wrenlock held me in steady warmth and quiet, the soft sound of his even breathing white noise in the background as I fell into an internal debate over whether sleep was too risky or worth it.
I knew, deep down, that Lucais wouldn’t come up to check on me. I knew it, and yet I’d hoped for it, anyway.
He set up the platform for my dive into disappointment at great heights, and he helped me climb up there, but I was the only person who could make myself fall from it. I was the only one responsible for whether or not I jumped. And I’d been standing on it, curiously peering over the edge since the very first day I met him…
Until the first time I’d seriously considered taking the leap.
But that day had come and gone. It was a new day, and it was Wrenlock who had come up to check on me. It was Wrenlock who promised that I’d never be forced to return to face my nightmares. It was Wrenlock who held me against him without having to cry, beg, or fight about it back and forth.
Lucais was a part of me I would never be able to get rid of, despite having tried over the course of many months. I was finally ready to admit to myself that it was because I didn’t truly want to be free of him. But the platform was incredibly high in the air, and he wouldn’t tell me what was waiting for me at the bottom, so I didn’t move.
A trust fall was suicide in a place like Faerie.
So, I waited instead, knowing full well that we’d likely wait on each other forever.
I wriggled back against Wrenlock, nuzzling my head into the crook of his arm and breathing in his heady scent of warm sunlight and smoke from the fires. I knew there was something I’d been planning to speak to him about, something I had wanted to tell him or explain…
But by the time I drifted off to sleep, I’d forgotten what it was.
thirty-three
The Caenim in the Throne Room
It invokes the power of the bargain between us.
With the Spectre’s words ringing in my ears for the next few hours, I tossed and turned between the sheets as I dreamed up all the worst-case scenarios in which he could use it against me. Eventually, I fell into a blissful state of oblivion, and I slept for as long as I possibly could.
When I woke up, I was alone, and my head felt heavy and sore. Tommy had tricked me into making a bargain with him, and my nervous system was too frazzled for me to be able to think in a straight and sensible line. I hadn’t heeded Lucais’s warnings about the wording that faeries used to fool humans, and it landed me in the web of another man’s trickery and bullshit—which was just fuckingperfect.
By the time my stomach pains began, I was willing to relent my desire for sleep and wander downstairs to find some food.
I followed the general direction that Wrenlock had taken me the couple of times he’d escorted me downstairs from my bedroom, but I barely made it to the staircase before a familiar voice sang out my name.
