2. Little Beast #2
I’d been diagnosed anaemic as a child, and neither the supplements nor the injections worked because my iron and transferrin saturation levels never went back into the normal ranges.
The doctors gave me doses high enough to counteract my vegetarian diet, but beyond that theory, they couldn’t figure it out. In hindsight, though, it made sense.
A blood test couldn’t have determined that my mother cheated on her husband with my flaky faerie father many years after a brutal war permanently separated faeriekind from human beings.
Ergo, at the point of conception, my body was damned to become a battleground for magic and iron as the consequences of other people’s actions played out inside my genetic code.
I sighed. Very briefly, I entertained the thought that I’d like to meet another half-faerie and ask them if they ever suffered the same problems. But that was too distracting, so I packed it away for later.
“I don’t understand why iron can hurt you and not me when both of us are supposed to have access to magic,” I went on, my voice adopting a calmer edge than a few moments prior.
“Aren’t faeries supposed to be allergic?
How do you suppose I’ve ever had magic at all if the repellent lives inside of my body? ”
That would explain a lot, actually.
Lifting a shoulder nonchalantly, he replied, “Well, at the moment, you don’t have any magic.
It’s dormant. I’m working on a theory that you might react to contact with iron when it’s active if your body treats it as a foreign substance externally, but I don’t think you’ll allow me to test it out on you because it’s going to fucking hurt.
” Lucais’s eyes flared as if to emphasise his point.
“Besides, it doesn’t really explain what I tasted in your blood.
” His throat worked, and his tongue darted out to swipe across his upper lip as if he were recalling the experience fondly.
I grimaced. My blood had cured him of locust poisoning, yet the experience had been anything but nice for me.
All of two seconds after finding out he’d betrayed my trust in the most absurd and damning of ways, I was being asked to save Lucais’s life.
And I did save him. Because I wanted to yell at him, and because—
No. Any other reason would be insane. I just wanted him to be conscious when I yelled at him, obviously.
After a moment, the High King huffed and said, “Honestly, the very existence of half-faeries is a mystery to begin with, and it’s one I haven’t had the inclination to study until”—he looked me up and down—“recently.” Frowning, he turned his gaze towards the carriage window. “We’ll find the answer eventually.”
Inhaling deeply through my nose, I curled my hands into fists around the iron chainlinks. “How do you know I don’t have any magic right now?” Have you suppressed it? Can I steal it back?
Lucais jerked with the motion of a short, sharp laugh. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
Studying the dark wood stain behind the High King’s blond head, I tried to recall what hadhappened after I unleashed my magic.
It had been relentless, a whispering presence following me throughout the House, playing me for a fool again for old time’s sake.
While the High King and his Hand were away, gallivanting across Faerie doing only the Oracle knew what, I had occupied myself in the House by reading, futilely searching for a dungeon to satisfy my in-built, inherited system of denial, and slowly reacquainting myself with magic during my final days there.
At first, I didn’t have a choice. I tried to ignore it while it pushed and pushed and pushed .
But after the day in the field with the caenim and Wren—no, with Lucais , who I had believed to be named Wren at the time—the closed door of my mind cracked open, and I lost an inch or two of the leash I had tightly wound around temptation.
Then another inch.
And another.
I let it go until the voice of mystical misguidance was wrapped around my body like an invisible constrictor python, squeezing the resistance out of my bones like the breath from my lungs.
The only reason I had even considered using it to flee was because he had told me in the armoury that I could learn how to create a shield for myself and other people.
Something that could go undetected but protect my little sister from harm.
For Brynn? For the sake of something—and someone —good? I’d agreed to do it. I’d agreed to try.
Apparently, I hadn’t tried hard enough.
All I wanted was to replicate the flood of darkness I had unleashed in the bathroom the day Delia’s beautiful white hair had turned black—preferably without the non-consensual hair dye—to create a distraction long enough for me to escape unnoticed.
The darkness was there, waiting, asking to be let out, but I had overshot my own abilities because I’d never physically rehearsed the action of evanescing.
My deep, immobilising fear of flying prevented me from being able to bring myself to try it out in advance; however, because I’d read about it in the House’s library, I thought I knew enough to put it into practice when the time came.
I figured I wouldn’t jump out of a plane wearing a parachute for fun, but if the plane was on fire and I knew the logistics of how to operate the parachute, then that entire scenario would be a completely different story.
Unfortunately, instead of ending up in the Forest of Eyes and Ears, where I would have been safe and hidden, I ended up in the back of the High King’s carriage in chains, where I was flustered and mortified.
“You locked me up,” I accused instead, lifting my wrists for emphasis.
The High King’s eyes rolled back in his head.
“Do you remember when I mentioned the exceedingly real risk of you imploding and taking out Sthiara in the process? Well, I don’t know what you were trying to do back there unless you were trying to murder me, but you completely short-circuited.
You used too much power too fast and burned yourself out.
I thought you died. Wren was—” He stopped abruptly, a war of frustration and guilt using his facial features as their battleground.
Wren.
My heart thumped in my chest like a blow to the head, pain shattering across my body in waves of betrayal and regret.
I felt my pulse picking up a new, unhinged rhythm and would have bet that the High King was listening to it as he watched my cheeks flushing pink with guarded, slightly narrowed eyes flaring sparks of gold and amber.
“I put the cuffs on you to protect you,” he confessed after a moment, changing the subject with as much ease as opening a door with rusted hinges.
“And to protect my realm. I warned you that what you were doing toed the line of dangerous territory, but you didn’t listen to me.
” He ran a hand over his mouth, dragging his fingernails across the glittering stubble.
“Nobody has ever stolen the light from my Court before, Aura. Nobody has ever dared to try, and they’ve certainly never done it by accident simply because they were pissed at me. ”
I blew out a harsh breath of air. “I suppose we’re on the way for you to hang me for treason, then?”
It was an attempt at dark humour to lighten the mood, but I realised too late that I’d committed more than one conceivable crime against the High King of Faerie—and it was not stealing light from his sky for a mere moment in time that hung tension so thick it threatened to strangle me in the air between us.
I had fallen in love with his best friend, and we’d done unspeakable things with each other under his roof and on his furniture.
Although Lucais detested the fact that he was destined to bond with a half-breed mortal who needed to be saved from flesh-eating monsters every other week, and he didn’t really want me to do those things with him instead, it had to feel like he was being wronged.
Lucais had to be at least a tiny bit pissed off himself.
Even if it was at himself.
“No, little beast,” he said at last, resignation colouring his eyes a solid, stunning gold.
“I won’t let them put a noose around that pretty little neck.
” Lucais gazed out of the window as if he could see our destination, though he was facing the way we’d come, and his voice dropped in pitch and volume. “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”
I nodded slowly because I knew he wasn’t talking about the stolen light. “Them?” I repeated, so quietly I almost thought he wouldn’t hear me. My voice cracked as I tried to amplify the whisper with my next words. “You mean the people in Caeludor? That’s where we’re going?”
Why would they put a noose around my neck?
He nodded, his expression tight. “I know you had other plans, and I would be thrilled to hear all about them, but we need to get ahead of the rumours after what the Court of Wind witnessed at the House. News of the caenim attack will spread to the city, and there will be chaos if I’m not around to calm their fears. ”
“You can’t order Enyd to keep her mouth shut?”
He regarded me like I had suddenly grown a tail. “It’s not Enyd who will send word.”
The urge to roll my eyes at him was intense, but I managed to keep it at bay. I have got to be civil if I want to get out of these chains. “You can’t silence her soldiers?”
Lucais was already shaking his head at me. “Do I look like the High Mother to you?”
Fuck civility then.
I ignored him. “Can you let me out of these chains?”
He ran his tongue along his bottom lip as he considered. “I can .”
Glowering at his obviously misleading truth, I remembered all the times he had manipulated our language to lead me astray while keeping within the bounds of his inability to outright lie.
It made my blood boil. I had enough to worry about and work through in my head without having to wade through the unlimited variations of phrasing the High Fae took advantage of whenever they spoke.
Something as simple as “You can call me Wren” had almost ruined the both of us completely.
He acknowledged my irritation with a raised brow and went on to ask, “How likely is it that you’ll attack me if I do?”
Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I shrugged. “Like you said, I have no magic.”
“It is actually your fists I’m afraid of.”
“I would nev—”
“You’ve done it before,” he interrupted, giving me a pointed look.
And though I loathed to admit it, Lucais was right—I had slapped him across the face in Dante’s Bookstore.
“That was before I knew who you were,” I argued miserably.
Lucais chuckled. The sound was dark, low, and sensual. I tried to shake it off, but it gripped onto my hips like a pair of hands and sent a bolt of something entirely unwanted between my legs.
“Does it really make a difference who I am?” he purred.
Defeated, I shook my head and let my shoulders slump forward.
It wasn’t worth the effort it would take for me to lie to the King of Deceit himself.
“The cuffs remain until I am certain that you won’t run for your life once I let you loose,” he declared, like I truly was a beast he was rehabilitating before releasing back into the wild.
“You don’t see it like this now, Auralie, but we’re lucky that all you did back there was black out.
If you disappeared, you’d find that there are worse things than scorned High Kings in Faerie, and you’d be tripling the reward for your own neck.
” He shook his head. “I don’t want to be your enemy.
It makes no difference if you like me or even if you trust me, but if you could just try to refrain from betraying me again—at least until you stop being such a liability—then we’ll be fine. ”
I snorted. Hypocrite.
Lucais’s eyes flashed as if he’d heard the private thought, but he said nothing.
He simply ran a hand through his hair and readjusted his position, resting his elbow on the windowsill and propping his chin on his fist. The High King was so handsome; he would make a stunning portrait posing like that, and I hated it. I absolutely hated it.
Until you stop being such a liability.
He was too beautiful to be so cruel.
Bored with our conversation and wilfully ignorant of my charged gaze, Lucais occupied himself by watching the scenery flash past us outside, and I decided to do the same—
Except I couldn’t. Because I was chained in place.
I don’t want to be your enemy. Lucais couldn’t lie to me outright, but he could trick me into believing things that were not true. Crucial things—like his identity and the Oracle only knew what else.
So what is it now? He doesn’t want to be my enemy, but he will be? He already is? He wants to be friends even less? Oh, it’s giving me a headache.
The urge to rub my temples to ease the pressure building inside my skull was intense, and the fact that I was restrained from doing so made me want to cry.
But I didn’t. I would not play those games with him, not when the odds were stacked against me so high that I was destined to lose count every time I tried to calculate the distance I needed to cover in order to get ahead.
Glaring at Lucais’s side profile, I vowed to never allow myself to be made into such a fool by a faerie again. A fool who was tempted by fate only to find out it was a lie. That everything was a lie.
No.
He could never win at the mindfuckery. I’d do anything. I’d refuse to play—or I’d cheat.
I settled back against my seat and closed my eyes. You don’t have to be my enemy, but I want nothing more than to be yours.
I knew he could hear me that time.