A House of Cloaks & Daggers (The Gift War #1)

25. Touching Her is Suicide, and Speaking About Her is Treason

Chapter twenty-five

Touching Her is Suicide, and Speaking About Her is Treason

T he Oracle did not see me allowing Wren to die…but the High King’s Guard certainly did.

In the blink of an eye, they appeared on horseback, charging through the clearing with their swords raised in the air. It was as if their horses, without horns like Elera, had simply evanesced through the woodland. I only knew that they were the High King’s Guard because of their uniforms, which were a regal set of white pants and gold coats. They looked rather ridiculous, I thought, as they galloped towards us to save the traitor to their High King.

Alleged traitor, I supposed.

There was no real proof yet.

It was a feeling I had, an explanation for the peculiarities that nobody else could or would give me, but I did still find myself exhaling in relief when a dagger came spinning through the air, landing in the caenim’s back before it could spill Wren’s throat.

He hadn’t moved to stop it himself, hadn’t blasted a hole of light through its torso or vanished into thin air beneath it. He hadn’t done anything but let the caenim go while he held onto me with his burning eyes.

Aside from that shuddering breath of repose, I felt numb from head to toe, from the inside and out.

The collective shouting of the Guard was a distant murmur, even as they came to a stop around us, and the one who had thrown the dagger jumped down from his midnight stallion. He was taller than Lucais but shorter than Wren, and he had a mean face, nose pinched, and mouth turned down as he stalked towards me and raised a large, plump hand in the air. His palm connected with the side of my face with a crisp slap, but it did nothing to wake me up.

I let the blow throw me to the ground, bracing myself with my hands as I landed on my backside in a pool of sticky caenim blood.

Even then, I didn’t move.

I sat there in the muck, tunnelling down into myself, trying to make sense of the choice I’d made. Trying to remember what had felt right about it in the moment when I suddenly felt so empty and broken at the very thought of Wren dying.

The sentry was yelling at me, shouting filthy and horrific slurs as he grabbed my arms and hauled me to my feet.

I barely even heard him. I looked at Wren to make sure he was still okay, just in time to see him shoving the caenim’s lifeless body off himself and leaping to his feet without the assistance of his hands. His beautiful face was the picture of absolute fury, and I braced myself as he stormed over to me, ready for another strike, knowing that I probably deserved it.

But Wren didn’t hit me, though the action he took still woke me up and brought full light and proper sound back to my awareness.

He ripped the sentry away from me, light flaring on his palms, and punched him in the face. A muffled cry made its way up my throat as the sentry staggered backwards, guilt and incredulity rolling over his features as a trickle of red blood leaked from a cut on his cheekbone.

Wren struck him again, sending him to the ground. Blood gushed out of his nose this time. He became wedged between two dark corpses, but his eyes were glued to Wren’s face. He looked like he was about to cry. Wren looked like he wanted to hit him again.

“You lay a hand on her, and I will have your head severed from the rest of your body,” Wren snarled.

“But—Your—”

“I am in the perfect mood,” he began, with slow and spine-chilling emphasis, “to shatter your jaw…” he continued, cocking his head to the side, “…with my boot.” He narrowed his eyes at the sentry on the ground, a vicious challenge glinting in the gold, and then lifted his chin. He appeared to address the entire clearing, his volume increasing to a boom. “Are we clear ? Do you all understand that touching her is suicide, and speaking about her is treason?”

The sentry didn’t speak again. In fact, none of them did. All of them, even their horses, quickly found more interesting things to look at before Wren turned around and stalked towards me, still in an absolute, palpable rage.

Despite the fact that I knew he was talking about me, I felt his warning in the very marrow of my bones and would have cowered if I had the strength. It was as though there was another girl here and I had threatened her.

Maybe he will hit me now .

I tensed, bracing myself for his hands to close around my throat. He would likely be able to snap my neck one-handed.

The blow I was expecting never came. Instead, I was overcome by a completely different but equally shocking sensation as he pulled me into an embrace. Wren held me tightly against his chest, and then there was nothing but wind so intense that I had to close my eyes until…

“Sit down.”

I opened my eyes straight into Wren’s pectorals. It was the same view I’d had when I first met him, only this time, his shirt was stuck to his skin with blood. He let go of me, and an icy shiver skittered across my skin. Swaying, I lost my balance, and he pushed me back into a cushioned armchair.

We were in a room at the House, identifiable by the similarity it bore to my own bedroom with a four-poster bed and the archway blocked by a gossamer curtain leading into a bathroom. It had to be Wren’s bedroom, judging by the mess. Apparently, he treated all of his possessions with disregard, not only the books he kept in the reading nook downstairs.

His bed was unmade, clothes and weapons strewn around the room in no obvious pattern, and his wardrobe doors had been left open.

“Please accept my apologies on behalf of Hanson,” he said, peeling off his shirt. It was ripped and torn, which wasn’t really surprising considering he had single-handedly cut down almost an entire army of iron-taloned monsters. “I’m working off the assumption that you would be physically unwell if I were to have him killed, but if the apology is insufficient, please say so.”

As if.

Wren turned and strode towards the bathroom, tossing the shirt behind the curtain, and I really tried not to stare, but I couldn’t help it. He had the most beautiful body I had ever seen. It was almost—but not quite—identical to the one in my dreams.

Broad, strong shoulders and arms corded with thick muscle, the tendons and veins in his hands stretched up his forearm like vines. His abdomen was carved with more precision than a statue, a maze of grooves and ridges sharp enough to break a tooth, and dipped down on an angle over his hips, beneath the waistband of his pants.

He walked back to me, and I thanked the High Mother that he was keeping those on.

Wren was a soldier, a warrior. His perfectly smooth, light-kissed skin was flecked with golden scars, whereas Lucais had sleeves of tattoos down his arms, likely markings relating to his royalty. If it wasn’t for the absence of those tattoos on Wren, I could have almost mistaken them. But the High Fae were naturally beautiful and violent, so I imagined they all looked much the same—sculpted to impossible standards. Wren was the most beautiful simply because he was the only one I’d seen so much of in person.

“Are you staring at me because you’re concussed or because you’re wondering if I’ll send you a nude self-portrait if you ask nicely enough?”

“Thank you,” I blurted, my gaze snapping to his face. For reminding me that I don’t like you.

He smirked at me, lowering himself to his knees between my legs. You’re welcome.

I tried to close the space he was sliding into, but it was too late. I should have sat down with my legs crossed.

“You’re going to be the death of me, bookworm,” he muttered absently, reaching up to cup my chin. He tilted my head to the side so he could examine my cheek, which was aching but didn’t feel significantly damaged. “But that’s the hope, isn’t it?”

I clenched my jaw and stared at the far wall.

I couldn’t believe that I’d been willing to let him die, alleged traitor or not, and I had already promised myself I’d never do something like that again. There was no point in admitting any of it to him, though.

“I’m not working with the Malum,” he told me. “But you did well today to refuse me aid.”

“What?” I jerked my head back, out of his grip.

“You thought I was the enemy, so you were prepared to let me die,” he said, angling his face towards mine. “Your enemies in Faerie will take on many different forms and try many different tactics to force you to yield, so that was good.” He reached for my cheek again, but I swatted his hand away, and he growled softly. “Fine. It doesn’t look fractured, anyway.”

“How do you know that?” I snapped. “About the Malum.”

He gave me a wry smile. “I can scent the suspicion on you every time we’re in the same room. It started the night you woke up in the cottage, screaming like a newborn faeling.”

Rolling my eyes to conceal my horror at being discovered so easily, I leaned back in my seat to create some semblance of distance between us because he was still kneeling between my legs. Somehow, it only made it much worse. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I huffed, trying to distract myself.

“Oh, so you just wanted to watch me squirm?” Wren arched a golden eyebrow, his hair windswept across his face. “In that case, tell me, is there anything else you’d like to watch me do?” Without breaking eye contact, he braced his forearms on my thighs and let his hands dangle suggestively between my legs.

Something wicked and made of fire woke up inside of me.

It wasn’t magic this time; it was worse. The budding sparks of electricity caressed my nerves, linking to his hands, their proximity, and his every tiny movement, and I frantically reached for the main switch to shut them all down.

If he did touch me in that particular moment, I had no idea what I would do. How would I react? Would I like it?

I crossed my arms over my chest because I did not dare move my legs. I was trapped. My scent—my stupid, stupid scent—was going to be my doom in Faerie. The one thing I couldn’t control, and he was so close…

Wren’s eyes travelled to my folded arms, and then lower.

“You disgust me.”

“Your sharp little tongue can lie,” he murmured, sliding his arms off my thighs with borderline unwillingness, and the knowing glint in his eyes completed the rest of the sentence. But the rest of your body cannot.

I squirmed, lifting one leg, and kicked him in the chest. It was gentle enough to push him away from me, to avert his face from where it was inclined towards a part of my body I was still trying to bring back under my control.

Wren laughed and leaned back on his hands. “Oh, relax. It’s not the first time. It happened when I was teaching you to ride my…” He trailed off, a sinful smile taking shape across his full mouth as I forced myself to keep my eyes on his face. “ Horse ,” he finished.

And, just like that, I wished that I’d let him become afternoon tea for the caenim.

“Where’s Lucais?” I enquired politely, and the scowl that followed the death of Wren’s smirk told me he understood why I’d asked.

I was still his High King’s mate, bonded or not.

“Everyone went to the field. They’re on their way back now.”

“How come you found me first?”

“You forget,” he started to say, as he climbed to his feet and brushed the dust from his pants. “I spent two days with the salt from your sweat and tears stuffed up my nose. I’ve become accustomed to you. It didn’t take long. Especially not with the trace of your magic lining a path from the disaster in your bathroom to the disaster in that field. Are you seeing a pattern here, Aura?”

Bringing my legs up onto my seat, I curled into a ball and resisted the urge to start rocking back and forth. “I do not want to talk about that.”

Yes, I had a pattern. I had a pattern that I was doing everything I could to break.

“You didn’t hurt anyone,” Wren offered, his tone toeing the edge of gentleness.

I scoffed. “Not this time, at least.”

But I had come close to it again if I’d had anything to do with Delia’s hair.

Something had escaped from me—like magic, but worse—and it would never, ever happen again. I would not acknowledge it. I would not accept anyone else’s acknowledgement of it, either.

Wren’s inquisitive stare coaxed my eyes up to meet his, but before I could fabricate a response that wouldn’t condemn me, Lucais appeared in the middle of the room in a blur of red and gold.

The High King’s wide eyes fell on Wren first, and he said, a little breathlessly, “I really wish you hadn’t struck Hanson.”

My heart stopped.

I was in trouble.

Of course I’m in trouble; I almost let the High King of Faerie’s best friend and right-hand man die. On purpose. Whether or not he was also willing to let it happen is an entirely different matter. There is no apology in the world —

Lucais’s eyes settled on my face, and his eyes went wide, as if he didn’t realise that I was in there. A soft sigh escaped him, and his shoulders slumped forward. “I would have liked to do it myself,” he finished quietly.

For a moment, I stared at him—the High King of Faerie, the man from my dreams.

His clothes were ruffled—a silver-trimmed tunic and black pants—and he carried no weapons. He didn’t need them. Lucais radiated warmth, power, and light, and his features held onto absolutely no traces of heartbreak, disappointment, or resentment for what I had said to him and what I had done.

The High King of Faerie had already forgiven me—perhaps never thought I’d needed it to begin with—and, in that moment, something charged between us. Hot, intense, and familiar.

The bond .

I could almost feel a tangible connection threading through the air between us.

I know you. I have known you always. I will know you forever. You and I are the same. We are one.

Lucais was not my prisoner.

He was not my High King.

He was my soulmate.

He was a safe place for me to land, to immerse myself in all of my wildest and most frantic dreams. He had a face that would never lay blame for his darkest emotions over me, hands that would never act them out on me, and a voice that would never be used against me. And even if fate had orchestrated it, did that make it any less real? Were we any less worthy if we listened to the stars? If I gave it—the stars, the High King, and even the damned Oracle—a chance?

My heart stuttered, beating to the sound of a thousand lives falling into each other across time and space, and something cracked open in my chest and bled light into the room between us.

Lucais saw the change. Wren probably saw it, too, but I wasn’t looking at him. I wasn’t looking at anything or anyone other than the dark-haired man in front of me who was offering me everything I had ever wanted in the depthless world of his eyes.

Something like sparks glittered in my peripheral, possibly coming from my fingertips. I flinched, barely—too consumed with the ache to remember the lives our souls had met in before. Lucais saw it happen, though, and he reacted more appropriately.

“Oh, fuck, Aura,” he muttered, practically leaping to step towards me. He clasped both of my hands in one of his and lifted the other to brush the hair back from my face.

I was consumed. I’d never had someone look at me the way Lucais looked at me—like I was his sole purpose in life, and the world simply ceased to exist from every other angle.

There was a beat of hesitation, and then he wrapped me in his strong embrace, covering me in the scent of smoke, heat, and sunlight. It was an unusual scent—unfamiliar but fulfilling, as though he truly was the piece of me that I had been missing all my life.

And so maybe that meant I could try.

At best, perhaps I would learn to love my soulmate. At the very least, I could do my best to keep him alive.

I didn’t owe him anything. He didn’t expect anything. But I had dreamed of him for months, and that had left me with something to offer him. After all, Lucais had waited for me his entire life, and I had done enough damage to enough people already.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I whispered against his chest.

His hand came up to stroke my hair, fingers threading through it, tightening against my scalp in a possessive way. “Don’t you dare apologise. You never apologise.”

“I didn’t mean it. I take it back. I’ll…try.”

I heard his heart physically skip a beat, loud and alarming, and he squeezed me a little tighter. “Don’t run, Aura. You don’t have to run. Say the word, and we’ll take you wherever it is you need to go, no questions asked. You don’t have to hide from us. We would never—”

Maybe it was a delayed reaction to a near-death experience or a culmination of everything bad that had ever happened to me, but I suddenly felt as close to being in love as I ever had in my life.

And so, I pulled back, looked up at him, and kissed him.

Lucais started, as if my lips had electrified him, and his fingers flexed against my spine. He made a small, tortured sound, and pulled away, the colour in his eyes dancing, sparks flicking off a bonfire. “Aura, you don’t have to do that,” he whispered.

My heart was absolutely racing, sending my blood tearing through my veins like wildfire. “Let me try.”

Lucais nodded slowly and cupped my chin with his hand. Conflict was caught in his eyes, but it vanished in a blink. He tilted my head back towards his with excruciating slowness and parted his feather-soft lips as his mouth met mine again. Heat and light consumed me, fireworks streaking out of my nerves and burning me up from the inside out.

As my mouth opened for him, I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I couldn’t believe who I was doing it with or the things I quickly began wanting to do next. Lucais’s tongue brushed against mine, tasting sweet and smoky, and I sagged against him, his arm fastening around my waist to hold me up. He felt as hard as granite, every last inch of him. Arousal filled the air, flowing out of me in waves, so strong that for once I could actually understand what Wren was talking about…

Wren .

I jumped back, cheeks aflame, and Lucais copied my movements.

But when I scanned the room, heart pounding furiously, I found that we were alone.

Wren was gone.