21. Wicked Gold Eyes
Chapter twenty-one
Wicked Gold Eyes
I felt my soul, my consciousness, beginning to detach from the rest of my body, but I forced myself to maintain Wren’s unforgiving stare with one of my own. “You sick son of a—”
“I told you that you aren’t asking the right questions,” he snarled, leaning on the table as if he was ready to flip it over. His hair was silver beneath the faelight, but his eyes were burning like the flames of the candles in the hall. “Do you know how easy it has been for me to lie to you, Auralie? Do you know how dangerous that makes me?”
No.
No.
NO.
Everything—everything from the moment he erased the memories of my mother and sister, to the promise of taking me home…
He lied.
He lied to me.
He lied. To me.
My heart began to crumble like ancient stone beneath the hammer of the gods, and the pain was too intense for me to even consider why it felt so personal. Why his betrayal felt like he had stripped me of my clothes, grabbed me by my hair, and dragged me through a pool of shattered glass, only to leave me naked and bleeding on the stairs.
Wren watched those emotions crossing my face, his own an impenetrable mask of cruelty.
“Alright,” Lucais interjected, his voice more like that of a mediator than a King. “We need some context here.” His tone changed in an instant, rumbling with command. “Wren. By the Oracle, you need to calm down. Now .”
The villain across from me did not move, speak, or breathe.
I sank down in my chair, pinned in place by his wicked gold eyes.
“Auralie, I know this sounds crazy,” Lucais continued, voice softening, “but it’s important for you to understand this. Faeries cannot lie, but we can deceive you—and we’re very good at it.”
I must have looked as though I didn’t hear him properly because the High King sighed.
“We cannot tell you, with conviction, that the sky is a colour that it’s not,” he went on. “We can make a sarcastic remark that the sky is blue when it’s not. Auralie, are you listening to me?”
My face turned in his direction, tears flowing freely down my ice-cold cheeks. I could only shake my head, even though I had been listening.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “It’s—” Lucais broke off with a sharp exhale, and I felt heat bloom on my cheeks. Wren had lied to me, and Lucais was tired of me. “It’s easier for us to offer mistruths when we aren’t responding to a direct question, when we’re making subjective remarks or offering opinions. If you ask a faerie a direct question, you must pay careful attention to your wording and theirs.”
I just stared at him, at the crease between his eyebrows and the dark curls falling across his forehead, with blurry eyes. I couldn’t even look at Wren, couldn’t feel his gaze on me anymore as my entire body went numb from head to toe.
Lucais shoved his plate aside with a clatter and lay his hands down flat on the table, fingers splayed out over the surface. “Aura, ask me who the High King of Faerie is.”
There was a bang on the table, causing the glasses and cutlery to clink, and I started. Wren had either punched or kicked the wood.
He was still seething. I ignored him.
“Who is the High King of Faerie?” I asked, lifting my shaky hands to wipe the tears from my face.
“Lucais Starfire.” The High King looked at me with wide, open eyes. “That was the truth. Now, ask me if I know who the High King of Faerie is.”
I took a deep breath, shifting in my seat now that Wren was no longer looking at me like he was going to strangle me to death. I asked, “Do you know who the High King of Faerie is?”
Lucais’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Yes.” A brief pause. “Gregor Woodburn from the Court of Earth.” He coughed with his mouth closed, shaking his head as if to clear it. “That was almost a lie, see? Yes, I do know who the High King is, but I added the second part to mislead you. Questions and answers can vary depending on the context, and we can refuse to respond if we don’t wish to tell the truth, but we cannot outright lie to your face if you ask us the right questions.”
My head felt heavy, my blood thick and sluggish in my veins, but I nodded to convey understanding—though it was the most basic kind and utterly useless.
“One more.” Lucais’s voice was acting like an antidote to Wren’s poison. With each exhausted blink, my eyes began to clear. “Ask me if I can show you where the paperdove eggs are.”
Weakly, I arched an eyebrow at the name, but I took a deep breath and said, “Can you show me where the paper dove eggs are?”
The High King nodded and replied with, “Yes.”
I watched as he reached over a goblet of red wine and pointed to a dish of what looked like purple grapes, which were about five platters away from the only bowl of boiled eggs I could see on the table.
“Matching your actions to words is the foundation of honesty for humans,” Lucais explained. “The High Fae have long considered this to be our greatest weakness, so we’ve found ways to work around it. Technically speaking, I answered your question truthfully, even though I showed you the wrong thing. You’ll get used to it, and learn to adapt, too.”
Bringing my elbows up onto the table, I buried my face in my hands and took measured, deep breaths until my face felt warm again. Even if I could trust either of them to tell me the truth, I didn’t want to ask how Wren had deceived me earlier. I wanted to figure it out for myself.
I wracked my brain, trying to recall the specific words.
“I said the Court doesn’t know you’re here.” Wren’s voice was like a distant echo of thunder. “I was referring to the specific room you were in, but I let you believe whatever you wanted. That’s the art of deception. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you—”
“I don’t care!” My fists came down on the table with a bang. I looked straight at Wren, at his beautifully deceitful face, and swore at him—a filthy word that he might have recognised from the book he stole from me. “Stop talking to me.”
A muscle in his jaw flickered, but he kept his mouth shut.
I turned back to Lucais, and immediately, part of my guard dissipated. He was sunlight where Wren was frostbite, and I could’ve melted into the expression on his face, the way he sat in the chair with the backs of his hands flat on the table as if he was ready to catch me if I fell. He didn’t look tired of me anymore. He looked almost impressed.
“Take your time,” he murmured encouragingly, noting my concentration as I tried to phrase the right sort of question.
I had absolutely no confidence in myself—not anymore—because it was so easy to become lost in language, and communicating with faeries was like the practice of reading and understanding all of the fine print.
But I could learn. I could adapt, like Lucais said.
“What caused you…to worry about me?”
His attentive frown slackened, chestnut eyes softening as they roamed my face. “I worried because I knew when the two of you crossed the border, and it took you days to arrive here when it should have taken minutes.”
“Why should it have taken minutes?”
He cocked his head to the side at the same time as Wren let out a discouraging groan. “It only takes minutes to evanesce from the House to the border,” he stated plainly.
My eyes shuttered. “But I’m human. You knew I was human. I can’t—”
“Oh, here we fucking go.” Wren tossed his head back, covering his face with his hands.
Lucais smacked his lips together, nodding at the table. “You let her think you couldn’t evanesce with her.”
Another falsehood. Or half-truth. Or lie by omission.
I looked at Wren, my fingers twitching against the smooth wood on either side of my placemat. He had dragged me across the countryside without sufficient food or water, let a Banshee attack me, and forced me to walk until my heels had bled while he sat his lazy ass on his unicorn.
He pulled his head back, eyes drowsy and half-lidded, and gave me an emotionless, crooked smile. I only had one question.
“ Why ?”
His smile became whole. “To teach you something so that we could’ve avoided all of this—”
“Have you lied to me about anything else?” I cut in. “Have you left out important details from anything else you’ve said to me or in answers you’ve given to questions that I’ve asked?” Hands braced on the table, I pushed myself out of my chair, my voice rising with me. My book fell to the floor with a thump. “Have you misled me or failed to correct me or deceived me about anything else ?”
Wren didn’t answer.
Because he couldn’t .
I laughed breathlessly once. My chest felt like it was about to cave in. But my arms were strong, strong enough to hold myself up. “Tell me what it is,” I demanded.
Still, there was no reply.
He stared at me as if the tables had turned, the power had shifted, and it was my unapologetic stare pinning him to his seat. It was only his sheer stubbornness preventing me from getting an answer. His throat worked, and I could see the restraint on his face and in his burning eyes as my conviction dragged the words up, only to become trapped behind his clenched jaw.
“Tell me what it is,” I repeated. And then a thought occurred to me. A new strategy. I lifted my chin, emphasising my position in our power struggle. “What are you thinking right now?”
His pupils enlarged, like black holes ready to swallow the gold in his eyes, and his knuckles turned white around two handfuls of the place mat before him.
“Hmm.” Lucais’s voice was a quietly conflicted moan. “Good girl, but that’s enough.”
I whirled on him. “Why?”
He made a similar noise in the back of his throat and pressed his mouth into a tight line.
Laughter trickled out of my mouth. A soft giggle at first, and then a full-blown cackle. “That’s it?” I gasped for breath. “That’s all it takes?”
“No.” Lucais rose from his seat, reaching for me with a hand. “I want to tell you—”
“So tell me what you’re thinking—”
“Stop it!”
In the blink of an eye, three things happened.
First, Wren’s roar shattered the two rows of empty champagne glasses lined up along the table. It was nothing but sound. The piercing explosions were contained, raining glass down on the spread of food without shooting over the edges of the table where Lucais and I were standing.
Second, he ripped the napery right off the table, taking countless trays and bowls of food with it. Sauce slathered the backs of chairs, grapes spilled out of their overturned bowls and rolled onto the floor, where they landed atop the mess of food and drink and linen.
And third, he leapt over the table, barely giving me enough time to stagger backwards before he rose to his full height before me. Close enough that his chest brushed against my chin as it expanded with each heavy breath.
He backed me all the way up against the window, breathing raggedly, and bent down far enough to place the tip of his nose against mine.
“You have a lot to learn,” he growled, and the menacing edge to his voice raised the hairs on my arms. In contrast, his breath caressed my lips, hot and heady. “The first is that our thoughts are considered the most private part of our beings, and it is an offence against our people to attempt to pry into them. You may take a nice long look at my cock, if you like, but you will stay the fuck out of my head.”
I gulped but showed no other sign of fear—or anything else.
“The second is that most faeries would sooner kill you than sit through a performance like that,” he went on, his pupils dilating. “Listen to me very carefully, bookworm. If you have power, you do not wield it blindly. You do not wield it at all. You are your power. If someone is stronger than you, you will be faster. If someone is faster than you, you will be smarter. And if someone is smarter than you, you will be more determined. You. Rely on nothing else. You are all that is required here. You. Are. Everything .”
Footsteps, as light as a cat, came towards us, but my eyes were locked with Wren’s, transfixed by the smouldering colour. I realised that I had stopped breathing at some point and took a sudden breath. His cologne, that intoxicating scent, had almost knocked me out, and I managed to break the stare only so I could turn my face away to find some other type of air that did not belong to him.
“What are you?” he asked, his voice low but strong enough to command an army.
“Human,” I whispered. Wren’s eyes narrowed, so I corrected myself. “Part-faerie.”
“No. Listen to me.” His enunciation of each word was so perfect that I caught a glimpse of his razor-sharp canines. “ What are you?”
A phantom hand brushed against mine. Wren hadn’t moved. Lucais was still standing a few feet away as if preparing to intercept.
I felt it again, asking for acceptance, looking for a tear in my flesh armour, and I ignored it. Shoved it away. But Wren’s face…
“Everything,” I whispered.
“And?”
“Power.” The word was a dose of poison on my mouth, but I let it out, and then I bit down on my lower lip to stop anything else from escaping its cage under his instruction.
Wren’s gaze tracked the movement straight to my mouth. “That’s more like it.” He closed his eyes and took a deep, calming breath before stepping away from me.
I remained against the glass if only to feel the sobering chill seeping into my back through the silk and lace of my shirt.
Lucais stepped forward, an embodiment of concern, as Wren turned on his heels and prowled back to the table. I allowed the High King to take my hand, allowed his warmth to flow into me through his touch, and felt the thunderous echo of my heart as it started to beat again.
“You weren’t supposed to find out like this,” Lucais murmured. “But I assume you know that the caenim were hunting you?”
I nodded, eyes darting towards Wren, who was holding up two pieces of a chair he’d broken to examine them.
“She knows about the Malum and Blythe’s Court, too,” Wren called over his shoulder, as he tried to fit the leg of the chair back into one of its splintered corners.
The High King nodded, taking a deep breath. He was less perturbed about the damage to his property than I would have expected. “The missing piece is the Oracle then,” he told me. “Would you like me to be honest with you, Auralie?”
“Don’t lie to me,” I answered, loud enough for both of them to hear. “No matter what.”
Lucais inclined his head to me. “The Oracle offers a prediction on the success of each ruler’s reign, and the whole of Faerie stands to bear witness to it. Unfortunately, the last one wasn’t very clear, and it caused some unrest across the realm, which seems to be escalating now. For as long as we’ve been a civilisation,” he went on, oblivious to Wren’s continued efforts to repair the broken chair by force, “Faerie has been ruled by a High King or Queen—or both, or two of one or the other—hailing from one Court. That Court tends to receive the most benefit from the reign, as the crown feeds into the land, so the High King’s power is strongest wherever he is.
“Mates—as in soulmates—rarely occur between two different Courts and have never occurred between different Courts for the High Kings or Queens. But this time, the Oracle claimed it would be different. At first, it seemed like a union between the Court of Light and the Court of Darkness was going to happen, but then the Oracle showed us that the new High King would take a mate from the human realm.” He shook his head, laughing without humour. “That’s never happened before.”
I did not particularly like where this was going, but I let him continue.
“The Court of Darkness has since vanished, so it seems we misunderstood at least part of the Oracle’s message. Soon after, there was a dramatic increase in the number of human bodies found in various Courts.” Lucais stared down at our hands, at my limp fingers he held in his grip. He looked like he wanted to drop them. “Most of them are discovered near the gateways. Caenim attacks, usually. We think they leave the bodies there to send a message because they’re all young women who…”
What? Who what?
“…look and smell like you.”
Like me. My genetic makeup.
Like my mother.
My hand fell out of Lucais’s hand.
“The Malum wish to create a peace pact by forcing an arranged marriage,” he added. “We can only assume that they’re aware of the prophecy and they consider a human mate—or any mate—to stand in the way of their plans. There is no world in which a union between the High King of Faerie and a Malum bride would ever take place, but you can’t reason with them.” Lucais reached for my hand again, but I pulled away.
“So, you’re telling me that I look like this girl,” I whispered. “They’re killing… It’s not half-breeds, it’s—”
The High King tilted his head down, looking up at me through thick black lashes with apologetic eyes. “It’s you, Auralie.” Lucais’s tone was gentle, but I detected a faint trace of brewing hysteria underneath. “The Oracle claimed that you would be the High King of Faerie’s mate.”
Heart beating up my throat, I braced a hand along the window behind me to steady myself as I began to sidestep away from him. Lucais looked like he was trying to find something else to say, but he knew as well as I did that there was nothing to follow.
Mates.
Soulmates.
The concept was familiar enough. Faeries only ever married for love, but the allocation of soulmates was less about emotional connections and more about physical compatibility. The mating bond came first, and union of love second—if at all. They believed in fate, but love was as fickle in Faerie as it was in my own world.
I can say no.
In the books I had read before, sometimes, they said no. Sometimes, the love was unrequited, and the union never happened. Even if they tried to force me, I would never let them—
My hand curled around what felt like a doorknob. I realised that the windows were actually glass doors leading onto a narrow balcony concealed mostly by darkness, so I maintained eye contact with the High King as I checked to make sure it wasn’t locked—and prayed to the House, my only witness, that it would stay that way.
It was unlocked, so I pushed down on the handle and held the High King’s stormy and highly suspicious gaze.
If he would accept the word no from a High Fae mate, he could accept it from me, too.
“I reject the bond,” I declared loudly, and it was only the expression on his face that told me I had used the right words.
Faster than he could react, I shoved the door open and fled into the darkness before the guilt could set in. Lucais’s eyes had widened in fear, anticipating the words…
But it was Wren who roared, the sound full of violent rage as I ran after the tiny orb of faelight that had followed me through the balcony doors. It was Wren’s furious dismay that shook me to my core while Lucais remained silent, exactly where I’d left him, as if I’d taken his heart out of his chest and carried it with me.
I had always felt that if emotions had a soundtrack, then disappointment was loud and ferocious and all-consuming. Heartbreak, for me, had always been quiet. The final traces of the music as it faded into silence right as the playlist came to its end.
Sadly, I realised that Lucais must have felt the same.