Page 14 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
five
The Locust and the Love Declaration
Maybe I’d imagined it.
Stranger things had definitely happened in Faerie before.Manystranger things. It was actually far more likely that I was hallucinating the ruination of Lucais Starfire’s palace than it was that the High King of Faerie’s home had been allowed to fall to pieces and not a single creature had doneanythingabout it whatsoever.
Wrenlock and I followed the cobblestone road across a bridge that was barely wide enough for a single carriage to cross with any degree of comfort. Squinting over the low-set stone parapet to see what was hiding below, I discovered a river of mist snaking beneath the bridge, completely obscuring my vision of the ground.
The fog condensed, an immaterial fabric tightening its hold as it wrapped itself around us like hessian bags falling over the heads of prisoners before the guillotine. It was something akin to a sentient being guarding the palace, almost like a dragon or three-headed beast in a fairytale, prowling around the perimeter. It felt poised to swallow any potential threats into itsopaque mists, sentencing them to an eternity of wandering lost through an endless and inescapable fog.
The idea made a grim sense of claustrophobia gather in my chest, squeezing my heart.
Breathing deeply in spite of the damp chill clawing at my lungs, I searched for a physical anchor for my eyes to settle on to help me hold the panic at bay. I could hardly make out the shape of a building ahead of us, let alone see where the bridge ended or if anything was coming our way. I did, however, spy the far side of the palace’s exterior as I cast my eyes around. For a brief moment, the mist thinned, and I saw the crumbling stone again. It was like a sandcastle that had weathered the touch of too many waves, falling into collapse in jagged fragments and dust.
I tried to catch another glimpse so I could make a more thorough assessment of the damage, but the fog didn’t shift again, and soon enough, we had reached ascending steps. With my hand tightly secured in Wrenlock’s gentle grasp, I navigated them unsteadily. A new pair of sentries—dressed in the white and gold uniform I had seen before but coated in a sheen of gloom that had not been present at the House—opened the tall, arched doors for us like they were weightless.
Stepping inside the palace felt as though we were escaping a rainstorm. Relief seized my shoulders and forcibly released the tension I was carrying in them until I could feel my chest deflating like a balloon.
The comfort brought to me by four walls—wherein my sight was restored, and the bitter chill in the air was trumped by some type of presumably magical heating element—was so strong that I sighed blissfully and slumped against the nearest one. My head lolled back, gaze drifting up towards the high ceiling. I studied its intricately painted surface until a familiar heat grazed my throat, bringing my eyes back to the man standing a few feet away from me.
Wrenlock watched me, a hot flare of desire evident in his dark eyes, twinkling like the flame of a lighter being held beside a candle wick. He was a wild element, burning up all of the oxygen in the room in his timeless pursuit of me. I was motionless as I stood there, a rope covered in wax, unable to react but wanting more than anything for him to set fire to me so I could burn with him.
He didn’t move to close the distance between us, but I remembered when he had—when he’d pressed me up against the wall in the House’s hallway right before we evanesced through it, desperate to find somewhere safe to land in each other as we tumbled onto the bed.
In my peripheral, a figure appeared in one of the nearby doorways and strode over to meet him. Silently, they handed something over, and he accepted it without breaking eye contact with me for even a second.
The faerie disappeared.
After holding onto me with his eyes a moment longer, Wrenlock’s gaze fell, causing heat to bloom beneath the places it landed on my body. He tore his eyes away from my flesh like it was something sticky and then slipped the item—a black tunic—over his head with ease, leaving me gasping for breath, my chest heaving as I stumbled forward, glaring down at the stone floor so he wouldn’t have access to the regret watering my eyes like dead flowers.
It’s too late. Hehurtyou,I reminded myself.
He didn’t mean to,a wicked and intrusive voice whispered in reply.
Irritated, I shoved the voices into a cage in the back of my mind and slammed iron doors shut, locking them twice. I steeled myself, pushing my shoulders back, and stormed past Wrenlock without another look as I headed towards the staircase.
One fated mate who had the power to keep his promises, but never did simply to spite me. And onewhatever he waswho would do anything I wanted if I asked nicely enough, but didn’t have the power to see it through.
The High Mother and the Oracle must be clinking their teacups together and laughing at me.
I walked beneath an enormous chandelier, stumbling a step as I craned my neck to look up at the lights. The heavy black frame must have existed for decorative purposes since there were no candles to illuminate the room; instead, Lucais’s orbs of faelight bobbed up and down in place of the flames, a mix of whites, yellows, and oranges.
It occurred to me as I redirected my line of sight and focussed on taking the thin, gold carpeted steps two at a time that the palace did not belong to Lucais—it belonged to whoever the High King or High Queen was at any given point in time, and must therefore have many different features leftover from many different rulers. I’d not seen a chandelier like that at the House, so it was likely a relic left behind by the Court of Fire. Absentmindedly, I wondered who it was and how long it had been since they lived there. A few hundred years, at least, based on what Lucais, Wrenlock, and Morgoya had told me about the Gift War.
Do all the Courts leave something behind? Would the Court of Darkness, too?
For a building so old, the High King of Faerie’s palace was certainly not in a dire state of disrepair inside, which cemented my belief that I’d imagined the crumbling exterior. If the foundations of the building were truly so weak, I would surely have found partially collapsed walls and ceilings clouded with stone raindrops waiting to fall upon me within.
On the contrary, the palace looked to be in relatively good condition for its age; its firm stone floors and walls had minimalcracks and chips, chandeliers were polished to the point of sparkling in the dark, glass casings around the empty lanterns had been wiped so clear they were almost invisible, and clean tapestries and stainless rugs of gold or white adorned the halls.
At the top of the large, cascading staircase were carvings of dancing pixies and land-dragons—known as dinosaurs in the human world—high on the walls and low between the posts on the stone balustrades.
I paused, assessing their depictions as I contemplated my next move. The heat brushing my back told me that Wrenlock was following but quietly keeping his distance. Somewhat regretfully, however, he was not the man I needed to see. The jury was still out on whether he was the man Iwantedto see—or if I even wanted to see either of them at all.
Walking on, I moved deeper into the palace. The orbs of faelight did not respond to my presence the way the ones at the House did, and longing stabbed my gut. I had raged against the magical presence of the House during my stay there, but it had been so nice to not feel alone. The palace felt empty and cold, lacklustre for all enchanted purposes.
A few twists and turns later, though, I found one similarity—cabinets of magical relics and historical tokens.
