30. A Very Clear Case of Dark Magic
Chapter thirty
A Very Clear Case of Dark Magic
“ I t all feels so… forced . I wish I didn’t have to put you through any of this.”
Threading my fingers through Lucais’s as he guided me through the maze of hallways in the House, I sighed. “The caenim that attacked my mother set us up, really.”
His long fingers tensed around mine, sending a shiver of pleasure skittering up my arm. The High King didn’t make gestures often, and they were normally casual and cool. This one echoed with a subtle and raw form of possession, though.
I had to admit that I didn’t not like it.
“The whole point of this was only ever to keep you alive,” he replied. “With so many human girls showing up dead, it stopped being about the mating bond and instead became about preventing them from killing humans in pursuit of you. We didn’t know who you were, and when we realised, we wanted to protect you. From all of it.” The High King paused, mulling over his words. “His methods,” he went on, cautiously referring to Wren for the first time in weeks, “would not be my first choice. He’s done the best he can, given the situation.”
I let go of his hand as we descended the staircase. Lucais was a smidge closer to my height, but he was still so huge that I had to bend my elbow to keep my hand in his. The gesture was odd—it felt comfortable, but I couldn’t remember who had taken whose hand first or why.
Wren had saved my life.
If anything, that acknowledgment served to turn my intense dislike for him into indifference. He was obviously an important member of the High King’s inner circle, and I still didn’t have any proof that he was a traitor. Or that he would be a traitor. He had disappeared from his own bedroom at some point during my embrace with his High King, which hinted at something, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what.
Lucais was accompanying me to a meeting downstairs. Apparently, if it involved the caenim, it had to involve me, too. When Lucais mentioned to me that Wren was waiting there, I scoffed without thinking it through first.
“Are there sections of the library that are closed off?” I asked to change the subject as he gestured for me to walk ahead through a doorway.
I entered yet another new hall illuminated with candlelight. They kept appearing, though I’d been combing through the place from top to bottom. It was as if the House was moving its halls and doors, like the Forest had changed the position of its trees.
Lucais gave me a strange look. “No,” he answered. “Of course not. You’re welcome to anything of mine in this House. The library should present no exception. Is there anything in particular you’re searching for in there?”
“The Malum,” I admitted. I had tried to overcome it myself for long enough. “And the Oracle’s prophecy. Anything to help me understand more about the connection between the two, and how that involves me. Wren said—” I broke off, scrunching my nose at the way his name felt on my tongue. “He told me that there were books I could read to brush up on my history, but I can’t get to them.”
“I’ll have some sent to your room,” Lucais offered immediately. “There’s really not much in terms of the Malum or the Oracle, though. The Malum wish to create a union that will give them equal rights to sit at the High King’s table, and the Oracle appears once or twice during every High King or High Queen’s reign to spit arbitrary gossip out of a crystal ball.”
“Are you saying they want to marry into the inner circle?” I clarified, as we strode past some familiar yet entirely out of place glass cases and cabinets. The House was definitely reorganising its doors and hallways.
Bastard thing.
“They have a bride ready and everything,” he muttered, shaking his head at the floor. “They were all—I mean, we knew them once. Lived among them, fought beside them. Some were considered close friends. Their bride was a member of my Court before she joined the rebellion and…” He trailed off into an uneasy silence.
“You know her?” I frowned, coming to a stop in the middle of the hall.
“Knew her, yes.” Lucais’s gaze fell back to the floor. “It’s not really her anymore, and even if it was, she’s not the intended High Queen. Or even a desired substitute. Not that the real one is under any obligation.” He gave me a meaningful look, accompanied by the most breathtakingly handsome smile of which I had ever been the recipient.
Intended High Queen.
Brynn would have a field day.
“They seized the Court of Darkness after the initial proposal was rejected,” Lucais continued. “It seems they would prefer to orchestrate a marriage and rule Faerie as equal parts Malum and High Fae, because they still don’t fully understand how far removed from us that they’ve become. However, we would be foolish to assume that they’re not well-prepared to try and take it by force.”
I raised my eyebrows at my own reflection, visible in the glass cabinet over his shoulder. “Why do they still want me dead when you’ve already rejected the proposal, and we aren’t even… I mean, it’s not like…” I took a sharp breath and spat it out. “We’re not married.”
Lucais gave me a crooked smile and chuckled, running a hand through his dark hair. “Aura, we wouldn’t marry. High Fae don’t marry. We mate.” His woodfire eyes were sparkling with faint amusement. “The Malum are offering marriage because there is no mating bond between our kinds, and therefore no other way for their bride to be recognised as High Queen. There can’t be a Malum Queen. It goes against the High Mother. So, while they may believe it’s their best option to join us again, it’s practically an impossibility. It wouldn’t make a difference if you accepted the bond, but they don’t care.”
“I don’t understand. Wren said the rebels mated with the Banshees, and that the High Fae in your Court were…canoodling that first night. So, they’re all mated?”
Lucais’s eyes darkened. “No.” He averted his gaze from mine and sighed deeply. “By the Oracle, I’m going to kill him.” A pause. “Aura, we can bed whomever we like for pleasure, and we very frequently do. It is reproducing that requires a mated pair because they have been blessed with a bond by the High Mother, signalling genetic compatibility for the creation of strong, healthy faelings.”
I felt my cheeks burning, and we shared a heated look before I asked, “How did the rebels manage to mate with the Banshees, then?”
Lucais cleared his throat. “We didn’t think it possible until it happened. The rebels were unknowingly harvesting their essence under the misapprehension that it belonged to the Witches, and Banshees are magic drainers. When the process became so intimate, something went terribly wrong. Like a merger between the two. It never should have happened, and what was born of their sins is the furthest thing from a faeling. Some of us believe that it was an intervention of the High Mother to punish them for their faithlessness.”
“Okay. So, when Wren said mate , he meant—”
“They were fucking each other, Auralie,” he said soberly, the warmth in his eyes flaring as he took a step towards me. I stumbled backwards, brushing up against the wall. “And it produced something, almost in the way that it’s supposed to when a bonded couple do it with the intention to conceive a faeling.”
Mortification swam circles in my head, and I could only nod.
Wren had more or less confirmed their extremely prolonged lifespans with his firsthand recollections of a long-ago war, so it made sense that the fertility myth was true, too—but to restrict procreation to mates when love was a choice, and the bond wasn’t?
I wanted to know what Lucais thought about these things, but the conversation felt far too intimate for the middle of a draughty hallway, so he backed up from me, and we continued to walk. His fingers brushed against mine, and I wasn’t sure whether it was on purpose or not.
Mercifully, we arrived at our destination only a few moments later.
The double doors to the dining room were closed, and Lucais motioned for me to wait in the hallway as he cracked one door open and slipped inside. He didn’t click the door shut behind him, so when a sharp, lilting voice spoke, it filtered out through the gap.
“It’s a very clear case of dark magic,” she was saying.
“Except it was light magic that killed the Banshee on the road here,” Wren countered. His deep voice had adopted a casual tone that was annoyingly burned into my memory. The hairs on my arms rose at the sound of it, the budding start of a shudder knitting around the top of my spine.
“Hmph. Your magic.”
“Was not.”
“Can we—” Lucais interjected, but he was immediately interrupted.
“You expect me to believe that she was being attacked and you were physically able to do nothing ?” the stranger demanded, scorn ripe in her tone. “Is she even who we think she is?”
Wren’s voice turned as cold as death. “She most certainly is, and you will treat her accordingly.”
A tinkering laugh. “I heard she rejected it.”
“She didn’t know what she was saying.”
“Seriously—” Lucais tried again.
“She gets nothing until she becomes something,” the stranger persisted, a cutting edge to her voice.
“Oh, please.” Wren groaned. “You’re just jealous.”
“And you’re completely blinded by loyalty—”
Shoving against the door with my shoulder, I very nearly fell into the room.
Lucais’s hands shot out to steady me, and I gave him a grateful smile before turning to face the stranger, who had pissed me off with the tone she was using while talking about me. I didn’t care that she was criticising Wren’s blind obedience to the High King or that he was defending me because of that obedience. But to say that I was nothing …
Astonishment washed over her face and silenced the room.
As I surveyed the beautiful woman standing at the far end of the table, I began to lose my nerve.
If Lucais and Wren were beautiful, the High Fae woman was glorious.
She had long chestnut-brown hair pulled up into a high ponytail, accentuating the sharp definition of her cheekbones. Everything about her was narrow and angular, from her tall figure to her pointed ears and nose, and to the long red nails on her bony fingers, clutching a leather-bound notebook. Wearing a shimmering teal gown of silk chiffon with a neckline that plunged almost down to her navel, she held her head high as if she knew as well as I did at a glance that she could have been the High Queen.
“Auralie,” Lucais murmured, taking my hand to bring me around to the other side of the long table. “I’d like you to meet Morgoya.”
The ethereal beauty gave me a lazy once over, something wicked and ravenous glinting in her eyes. “I see,” she murmured. “I’m sure the pleasure will be mine, Aura. May I call you that?”
Words simply evaded me.
That was the first time any of the High Fae had asked permission to use my nickname. Both Wren and Lucais had simply assumed, and none of them had told me how they knew so much about me. I gathered it was because of the Oracle, but had everyone in Faerie witnessed that premonition?
“Dear little thing,” she purred, drinking in my disorientation with her feline, emerald green eyes. “I hope you won’t take offence to the things you overheard. I just hadn’t laid eyes on you yet.”
My gaze darted towards Wren, who was sitting in Lucais’s chair at the head of the table, watching me with disdain, before finally settling back on her face. “Does that make a difference?” I asked.
She cocked her head to the side and sniffed the air. “Let’s just say it leaves no doubt.” A delicate, one-shouldered shrug. “You are his mate.”
There was no emphasis, no underlying inference in her tone. She said it like a statement, like it just made perfect sense, and it was that easy for her to accept it.
The echo lingered in the room, clinging to the air around me.
Soulmate soulmate soulmate—
Wren pushed his chair back, obnoxiously scraping it against the floorboards, and sketched a bow for the High King. “I was defending the chair,” he explained, giving Morgoya an exaggeratedly suspicious look out of the corner of his eyes.
She sniffed again, decidedly ignoring the fiend. “Indeed,” she murmured to no one in particular. But her eyes were locked on me.
Nearly blushing beneath her gaze, I was only partially aware of Lucais taking his seat at the head of the table and Morgoya slipping into hers. It left me hovering beside Wren awkwardly, both of us aware that there was only one seat left directly beside the High King.
Lucais’s right-hand man looked inclined to shove me out of the way in order to claim it, but he cleared his throat and announced, “I’ll stand.”
Faeries and their politics and pride. They behaved as if there were not two dozen other empty seats at the table, which was bare save for a few unlit candelabras and the notebook Morgoya had placed in front of her.
Before I could move or object, the beautiful woman gave me a pointed look, waving a perfectly manicured hand towards the High King. “Why don’t you sit on his lap?” she suggested lightly.
My heart skipped a beat—because she was serious.
“Go on,” she urged, directing me towards him with her eyes. “It’s perfectly acceptable behaviour in our circle, and we’re all friends.” Her sparkling gaze drifted up, over my shoulder, until it landed on Wren. “Aren’t we?”
“I hardly think that’s necessary,” he replied in a tone that made me wonder if they were friends. “Aura’s a half-breed. She doesn’t know the first thing about the Court or what behaviour to expect or display. It’s confusing, and she tends to spook easily.”
Wren spoke about me like I was a wild horse needing to be broken, and I bristled, balling my fists at my sides. Lucais gave me a wary look, but he leaned back as if to offer me the choice.
Without so much as a glance in Wren’s direction, I brushed past him and settled into the High King’s lap.
It didn’t feel as uncomfortable as I had thought it would. Everything about the High King’s Court was informal, from the lack of respect Wren had shown by sitting in the High King’s chair initially, down to their behaviour when they dined in private.
The intimate gesture was no different.
The seat was wide and high-backed with two sturdy wooden arms carved into small waves at their ends, and Lucais filled the space almost completely. My legs dangled over one of his knees, crossed at the ankles, and I folded my hands in my lap, one shoulder pressed into the soft spot between his arm and his chest.
Balancing on an angle, I deliberately faced Morgoya, and Lucais’s arm instinctively came up to create a barrier between my spine and the hard edge of the chair. His right arm rested on the other side, hand dangling loosely over the end, and I found myself studying the veins and tendons on his hand and wrist, disappearing beneath his long-sleeved tunic. I matched my breaths to his deep, even breathing, remembering the feeling of his mouth against mine.
“My, my,” Morgoya purred, studying us intently. Her nostrils flared delicately. “It is delicious . Even when it’s all so unofficial.”
The High King shifted in his seat, drawing me a little closer as he tightened his arm around me. “Tell me what’s happened,” he instructed calmly.
Morgoya straightened her spine, all traces of delight leaving her eyes like stormwater rushing down a drain. “There was another attack last week. They’re all coming from the Court of Earth, through the eastern passes beneath the Metal Mountains,” she began, interlocking her fingers as she placed her hands on the table. “We estimate about one hundred caenim per horde, the most we’ve ever seen at once. There’s been no word from Gregor or his sentries at the Watch, so they’re either all dead and he’s too busy to respond, or…they’re letting them through.”
“The gateways are intact, running at full power,” Wren added redundantly.
I felt, more than heard, Lucais inhale a lengthy breath. “Where?”
“Sthiara was raided again,” Morgoya reported quietly. “Minimal structural damage, but that makes seven dead and two still missing. We can’t find where they’re hiding out. Our scouts picked up traces of the caenim along the road out of town, all the way back to the edge of the Forest along the coast. We’re scouting the Ruins now, but there’s no indication that they attempted to enter or skirt the Forest.” Her eyes flicked to mine and quickly dropped to her hands. “It’s pretty clear what they wanted and that they’ll keep trying.”
I stiffened, and Lucais’s thumb brushed against my arm in silent comfort.
“As far as we can tell,” she went on, “none of the caenim have gone near the portals, so it’s unclear if they’ll send any through to Belgrave—”
“But my concern is Caeludor,” Wren cut in, bracing his elbows on the table and leaning forward. “If we stay here much longer, they might make a move on the city to provoke us, to draw us out.”
Morgoya sat back in her chair, nails clicking on the wood. “It’s far more likely they’ll come back here if they know Aura is with us and suspect their first army got even half as close as they really did. So, that begs the question, what are you willing to risk?” She maintained eye contact with Wren, though the question was clearly posed at Lucais.
The High King turned his head towards mine, so close that his breath tickled my nose. Even seated on his lap, our faces were barely at equal height. My gaze dropped to his mouth as he murmured, “Caeludor is the City of Light. It’s our home.”
Blinking through the fog his proximity unleashed in my mind, I looked up into his eyes. “So, obviously, you can’t stay here if there’s a risk to your home.”
“No.” Wren’s voice was a gentle growl in reply to a question no one had asked him. “We’re not going to risk losing two things at once.”
“Two things?” I repeated, throwing my head back to peer at him quizzically. His displeasure was even more pronounced upside-down. “What’s the second?”
He stared me down, and I challenged him to say it out loud. You.
Using his free hand, Lucais tilted my face back to his. “He’s right.” His eyes roamed over my features indulgently as he tucked my hair behind my ear. “I wouldn’t dare. You didn’t ask for any of this.”
“Neither did you.” I spoke without meaning to, without thinking about it.
The High King smiled at me. “Oh, I know.” He dropped his hand from my face, but instead of returning to the arm of the chair, his forearm fell across my lap as he turned to Morgoya.
Every muscle in my body tightened and then forcibly relaxed.
“We’ll stay here and monitor the situation closely,” Lucais decided. “If we return home now, it might prompt an attack on our capital that may not have otherwise happened. Keep at Gregor until you get an answer, and ask Enyd for a meeting as soon as possible. Start making the arrangements. Her Court might be their next target if they’re going as far south as the Metal Mountains. We’ll warn Caeludor, too, but keep it quiet. We don’t need unwanted attention on the city right now.”
Morgoya nodded, glancing at Wren. He remained quiet, ever the devoted servant to the High King of Faerie.
His loyalty to Lucais might be preserving my life, but I wasn’t foolish enough to trick myself into believing that he was happy about it.
Wren’s sullen disposition quite literally tainted the air as their discussions continued—going over the details of hosting company from the Court of Wind and selecting which of the Guard to use for increased patrols on the streets of Caeludor—and I could feel his eyes burning holes as hot as the sun into my back every so often.
I wish things were different.
Different how?
Wishing the Malum weren’t trying to stage a hostile takeover of the High King was one thing. That was arguably an obvious thought for everyone in the room.
It felt like more than that—still, three weeks later, it felt like more than that.
As the three members of the inner circle conversed, I mulled over his words.
I’d assumed Wren meant treason, a desire to overthrow the High King and claim the crown for himself, but the land wouldn’t allow it. Lucais had confirmed as much when he told me the Malum could never rule, and Wren certainly wasn’t the first or even the second most powerful of the High Fae. Maybe the third, at best, after Lucais and Gregor.
How many would he have to kill to claim that title for himself?
What else could he have meant?
Their discussion deepened, and I felt Lucais fall into a familiar state of relaxation. He was at ease in his role, accustomed to discussing the fate of Faerie, and perfectly content with me sitting quietly in his lap while he did so.
His body language created a ripple effect on me. And so, when he leaned forward to tilt his head around me, deep in conversation with Wren about ward security, I found my arm moving from where I had rigidly wedged it between our chests. I snaked it around the back of his neck to allow him more room, casually draping one hand over his shoulder. The motion was so natural that the High King didn’t miss a beat, and his thumb began to stroke my thigh.
My focus became fixated on that touch—the absentminded simplicity that spoke in volumes, echoing within my body, and the warmth we shared that I suddenly felt as if I would die without—and I struggled to pretend otherwise, to ignore it.
The woman in front of me didn’t even try to ignore it, though. Her gaze locked onto us, and she attempted to conceal a small, satisfied smile—and failed.
“What are we going to do about her ?” Wren demanded. I hadn’t even heard the topic of conversation changing, and again felt those holes of blistering heat scorching my back. “She can’t stay with us.”
“Is it not safer that way?” the High King countered evenly, his thumb still brushing over my leg. “They’ll track Aura by scent. They don’t care where we are while she’s alive.”
“No,” Morgoya agreed, her gaze following the High King’s hand as it slowly travelled further up my thigh until it was nearly against my hip. “But all of this magnifies her scent. If it continues and we leave,” she murmured, studying the strong arms around my body before glancing at Wren, “it won’t be long before the Malum catch a whiff—not to mention the rest of Faerie. And then we’ll have questions I’m not sure we can answer yet.”
“I’m sorry,” I interrupted a little breathlessly. I wriggled in Lucais’s lap, feeling like an insect beneath a microscope, and his palm slid down to my knee. A line of fire burned in its wake, threatening to warm my cheeks, and I hoped they couldn’t hear the slight acceleration of my heart. “Scent? Questions?”
Morgoya looked between the men as if asking for permission before she spoke. “High Fae have a heightened sense of smell, and the bond between mates is very potent,” she explained. “Think of it like a wedding ring on humans, something to tell others that an individual is spoken for. And with the way things are right now, it’s going to be a little stronger than normal until everything settles down.”
She had used the word delicious to refer to my scent. Our scent, entwined as we sat together, emphasised by the thing charging between us as Lucais’s fingers traced the seam of my pants, down to my calves, back to my knees, and up to my hip.
Lucais didn’t know what he was doing. He couldn’t have because they were talking about it right in front of us, and his hands were making it worse. His brown eyes were clear as he looked at me, murmuring something about the High King’s connection to the land and how intense it can be during certain life events.
But I didn’t care if the mating bond stretched over the whole of Faerie and made all of its residents aware of my presence. At that moment, I was more worried about what Wren and Morgoya were about to become aware of as his hand trailed up my leg, silk slipping between our skin as if it was about to fall off, and my body reacted in the only way it knew how.
Lucais noticed it first, saw the panicked tears pricking my eyes as every other part of my body began to melt like ice cream in full sun as a thrumming and lightheaded tension began to build in my core, and his hand froze on my leg.
“Leave the room,” he commanded quietly, and Morgoya immediately rose to her feet. Lucais didn’t take his eyes from my face, but I could only assume he spoke directly to Wren as he added, his voice a quiet snarl, “Now. We’ll discuss this later.”