3. You Can’t Pick a Fight with Irons and Expect to Win
three
You Can’t Pick a Fight with Irons and Expect to Win
S omewhere between one place and the next, I lost my battle with the carriage and succumbed to the rocky movements and whooshing white noise conspiring to lull me to sleep.
When the carriage came to an abrupt halt, it yanked me back to alertness.
I fell forward, only managing to catch myself a second before I landed face-first in the High King’s lap.
He was wide awake, lounging in his seat with his legs uncouthly spread apart, one hand resting atop his knee and the other raised in the air as if he wasn’t quite sure what else he was supposed to do with it.
For a split second of pure and unfiltered insanity, I imagined that he was going to place his palm against the back of my head, fist his hand in my hair until it almost hurt, undo the buckle of his belt with his other hand, and guide my face the rest of the way down to where he wanted my mouth.
Then I shoved that absolutely obscene train of thought out of my head and right back into the asylum from which it had obviously escaped unbidden. Halting my descent into madness, I glanced up at him from beneath my lashes and glowered at the hideously charming smirk creeping across his full mouth.
Ew. He’s having the same thoughts. Ew, ew—
Using the tension of the cuffs and chains, I pulled myself upright and pushed my spine against the carriage seat until I felt the wood digging into me through the cushion.
“Not right now, but thank you for the offer,” the blond fiend began, visibly fighting for his composure despite the even tone of his lovely voice.
“I’m afraid we’ve come too close to civilisation, which wouldn’t ordinarily be an issue for me, except that I am the High King and someone is about to open”—he paused, casting an expectant look out of the carriage window right before the door swung open and blinding light flared into the space between us like a prison spotlight—“that door.”
I was preparing to pull an immature face at him when I noticed who that someone was.
Wren.
My heart punched my chest like it was trying to make a hole there so it could see him, too.
Something became lodged in my throat—something that couldn’t be swallowed or spoken—so I just stared at him with round eyes as he turned to face me.
The exchange felt like it had to be happening in slow motion because an eternity spanned between us in mere milliseconds.
A vision of warmth and heat bursting against the sun-brightened background, his broad figure took up almost the entire carriage doorframe and cast an overly large shadow across the floor.
He was all dark eyes, dark skin, and dark curls…
And a dark look that unravelled across his face as his gaze snagged on the handcuffs chaining me in place. Without sparing a single moment for logical thought, Wren reached for me. His eyes were widening with horror, and his hands were fast.
Too fast.
I couldn’t move out of the way in time.
The dark-haired faerie grasped my wrists, locking his fingers around the iron cuffs in an automatic attempt to pull them apart and release me. But the iron scalded him, smoke and sparks flying, and a violent hiss marked the sound of the manacles devouring his skin.
He yelled—loudly and with vulgarity—and jumped backwards, shaking the hand that had copped the brunt of the damage. Pulling the chains taut, I hid my hands behind my back so he couldn’t make a second attempt. Judging by the feral look on his gorgeous face, I was certain he would try.
Wren’s stare sliced into me, deep chestnut eyes narrowing into slits when he marked the deliberate removal of my hands from his reach, and so he turned to Lucais instead.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” he demanded. “ Let her go. ”
Lucais was gaping at him with obvious disgust. “Me? Has a Bogeyman possessed you, Wren? You can’t pick a fight with irons and expect to win. I’ve never seen anyone do something so foolish…”
The High King continued his tirade of ridicule, but it all simply faded from my mind. Everything from the moment that he uttered the name Wren .
It was the first time I’d truly heard him use it since the day we met when he had tricked me into believing it was his name.
But it wasn’t.
He was Lucais Starfire, the High King of Faerie, and hearing him address the real Wren directly for the first time broke the spell of lingering confusion I’d been caught under since the truth was revealed.
I stared at him like I was seeing him for the very first time.
His tousled blond hair, the sharply carved jawline and high cheekbones, his thick golden eyebrows so often elevated with distaste for me, and those eyes filled with starlight, sunlight, and the burning heat at the core of the earth.
The man from my dreams—both nightmares and daytime fantasies—with broad shoulders, strong legs, and tattooed arms corded with muscle.
His glistening crystal earring, the twin necklace to my own with the shared insignia of our homes peeking out from his loose white shirt, the defined column of his throat, and his full mouth of baby pink lips and teeth as sharp as the words he so often spoke.
“Lucais,” I murmured absently.
He broke off mid-sentence, elongated and delicately pointed ears pricking further, and turned his face to me, head tilting ever so slightly to one side.
Golden eyes smouldering, he doused me with an expression of incredulity, and his tongue came out to wet his lips just as I thought they were beginning to curve upwards into some semblance of an affectionate smile. They didn’t, though.
He gazed back at me for what felt like thousands of years, and then clicked his tongue and returned to his one-sided conversation with a clearly agitated Wren.
I was too bewitched by my revelation and too embarrassed to peer up at Wren and discover if he looked as hurt as the palpable tension between us immediately felt.
It was the first time I had ever properly acknowledged one of them by their true names.
Both out loud and in my own head. And I had picked the High King—without even thinking about it, without even meaning to choose him.
“Auralie is fine ,” the High King stressed to his friend.
Are they still friends?
I hadn’t even asked.
Did I ruin that, too?
“She is ready to punch me in the throat and make a run for it at the earliest opportunity, though,” he added, lowering his voice into a harsh, sardonic whisper and cupping a hand over his mouth and nose to conceal it from me. “I think she’s bored of me.”
Wren wore a furious expression when I at last looked back at him. “Are you fine?” he bit out.
Fine? Such an interesting question, especially coming from you. I felt my lower lip begin to wobble, so I snagged it between my teeth with a sharp intake of breath. Exhale.
Fixing him with a hard look, I asked, “After what you did to me?”
Wren’s beautiful face fell. His anger dissipated, replaced by a profound look of remorse. The pull I felt towards him strained, like the iron chains the High King had used to secure me to his carriage were wrapped around the feelings his best friend and I had for each other instead of my wrists.
Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t go to him. I refused . He was not the man I had thought he was. Wren was dangerous because he could seriously hurt me. He had seriously hurt me.
Hadn’t he?
Lucais was Lucais, and I’d found a way to reconcile myself to that because he was the same no matter what name I called him.
When he was pretending to be Wren, he had tried to drug me in Dante’s Bookstore with silver powder.
And when he was leaning into his true name of Lucais, he had tried to wake me by sticking a feather up my nose.
Even when he was pretending not to be the High King, he still acted like one…
Oh, the irony.
The day I teased him for thinking of himself as a Prince in Brynn’s dreams must be the funniest day of his stupid, immortal life.
His name never changed him, not even a little bit, and I didn’t like him any differently between one name or the other.
But the real Wren? I had absolutely no idea who he was. I did not know who the man standing in front of me with a broken heart and burned hands was when he wasn’t pretending to be somebody else—and doing a damn good job of it, too.
I really liked him when we were roleplaying soulmates, but he was doing it without my informed consent and lying to me through his perfect teeth.
Was it all a lie, though?
“I will be fine,” I conceded, turning my head away from him.
My eyes burned with the threat of hot tears.
Some strange part of me was flailing as if caught on something underwater, blowing ferocious air bubbles to the surface with a message that popped before it reached my ears.
Shuddering, I tried to shake it off. I shot the High King an impatient look, and his eyes grew large with theatrical indignation. “Are we far from these gates?”
Blinking slowly, he shook his head. “About a twenty-minute walk.”
“We’re walking?” I frowned. I couldn’t see out of the carriage door, and the window on the other side was covered by thick velvet curtains. Is there another town like Sthiara out there?
“No,” Lucais replied. “I’m not, but you are.
” He gestured between his right-hand man and me with a long finger.
“The palace is protected by wards that are so strong even I can’t evanesce through them unless I am alone.
Everyone comes and goes on foot. And for this trip, at least, I need to travel to the palace gates by myself. ”
I was about to ask why, but he waved a hand—
And pushed me outside.