8. Wrenlock Elumos #2
My upper lip curled. “Is that some perverted standard of affection with you people?” I demanded.
“You don’t care that the sight of your face physically hurts me, but you care about how violent and aggressive I’d like to be towards your High King because you think that’s some type of fucked up foreplay for us? ”
“Aura—”
“No!” I shouted.
Shoving his arm away, I stepped backwards and felt the eyes of the portrait paintings along the walls dart towards me, intrigued. I glared back at one set of painted black eyes for a moment before shuddering and returning my attention to the man in front of me.
“No. You know what? Fuck you and fuck your fucked up standards of love! Because the truth is that I would rather have Lucais fat-shame me to his unicorn and slut-shame me in these halls, every day for the rest of my life because the Oracle disappointed him with me, than have to remember what it felt like to have a complete stranger put his fingers inside me, his tongue in my mouth, and make me believe it was fate .”
Wrenlock dragged a hand over his anguished face.
Guilt roared deep in my belly, devouring the scene with wicked delight.
It was a greedy, starving beast I had been feeding all my life.
My chest heaved with breaths I scarcely managed to pull up from the catacombs of my lungs as we stared at each other across the hallway.
Wrenlock’s eyes were glinting in the reflection of light from somewhere, the chestnut dark as oblivion.
For the very first time, I could feel the vexation radiating from him.
“Go off, Aura,” he hissed, the precision of his gaze cutting into me.
“Please, keep going. Get this out of your system because you are not doing us any favours by playing the victim.” He took a step forward, and I stepped back, even though the distance between us suddenly felt like a void between worlds.
“I know that what I did was wrong. I know I hurt you. If I could have done anything about it, I would have. Don’t trust me, fine. But trust that .”
I took another step backwards until I could feel the ridge of the carpet edge beneath my foot. He remained in place.
“I am bound to him by a magic stronger than anything else in the world,” he went on, raising an apprehensive hand in the space between us.
“The same magic that hides this realm from yours. The magic that ended a war so intense it created human beings. The magic that almost managed to reverse the curse of the Malum.” Wrenlock’s eyes shone with silver again, and I realised it wasn’t light.
Those are tears.
“He came so close, Aura.” Wrenlock’s voice cracked, the sound of something precious breaking.
“He acts like the Court Jester, but you have no idea how powerful he is. You have no idea how many enemies he has because of that power, because they crave what he is capable of doing—the things he is capable of creating and destroying and commanding—and what you saw in my behaviour is just a drop in the ocean of that.” He paused, angling his head to one side.
“Did you know the High King before him was only in power for a single year before he was ousted by Lucais?”
I swallowed hard and shook my head.
“Never has a ruler in our history had such a short reign,” Wrenlock told me, shaking his head as if he could hardly fathom it himself.
“Lucais came into his power as a mere faeling. The youngest of the High Fae to possess enough power to challenge the High King. The crown sought him out decades before it was expected to do so, and he only grew stronger once it did.” He sighed roughly.
“I would tear down mountains and burn bridges for you with my bare hands, Aura, but consider me fairly. That is what I was up against.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came out.
Wrenlock seized the opportunity and stalked towards me until I was pinned against the wall. His hands flattened against it, one each above my head and my shoulder, and he leaned down until he was close enough that I could see the flecks of amber in his irises.
My breath caught in my throat.
“The day you arrived from the human world, I came upstairs,” he murmured, his voice gentle and warm.
“You were in the middle of a conversation.
I corrected him on his misbegotten recollections of the Gift War, fully intending to follow that by introducing myself to you as Wrenlock Elumos.
I thought you knew he was the High King.
I thought you knew he was your mate. Why else would he have brought you back?
Why else would you have come back with him?
It was too late for me to do or say anything by the time I realised I was wrong.
I tried to talk him out of it, Aura. Believe me, I tried .
I begged Morgoya for help, went to Batre when she tried to refuse, and fought against my feelings for you until they consumed me.
“It was never my plan to fall in love with you, but I did it anyway,” he swore, so close to whispering.
“I fell in love with the fire in your soul. You love books. I never read, but suddenly, I want to spend my days inside a library. You want to tempt fate by stumbling around the boundary lines of the wards, and I can’t think of any better way to spend my time than to stand around and watch you.
You are angry and defiant, and sometimes you jump to miscalculated conclusions, but you’re clever and kind when you want to be, and what we did to you was not your fault.
It is not a reflection of your intelligence but a sign of the times in Faerie.
I physically could not tell you my name until he had told you his . ”
A single, stray tear slipped down my cheek.
“But I need you to hear it now.” He inhaled deeply.
Released it as a controlled breath. “I am Wrenlock Elumos. I was born to Hairem and Maylace, and I have three sisters. When I was a kid, I had a pet crow; the other kids used to tease me because they said the crow was my familiar, and only Witches have familiars, but I loved that bird. We went everywhere together because I didn’t have any friends.
My father often worked away, and my sisters never wanted to leave our front porch with their dolls in case the wheels of their little prams got too muddy because we lived on a farm.
I enjoy music and dancing, but I’ll sit and read a book with you until we fall asleep any day of the week.
I met the High King when I was only a boy myself.
When he asked me to come to Caeludor as the Hand, it was the greatest honour of my life.
Until I met you . And I swear, I had no intention of falling for the fated soulmate of my best friend, whether he’s an idiot who doesn’t deserve her or not. ”
The confession hung in the air around us like the perfume of a spell wafting from a bubbling cauldron. The truth about Lucais, about his power—and Wrenlock’s helplessness, the magnitude of his struggles while we were living in the House. It was too much. All of the revelations were too strong.
I couldn’t think of anything to say other than to remark on the thread of solidarity that rolled out between us. Normally, I didn’t find common ground with other people, so it felt precious to me.
“I didn’t have friends for a long time, either. I wasn’t allowed to have people come to the house because of my father, and it sort of…scared everyone else off.”
Wrenlock’s mouth pulled up in a sad, understanding smile. He leaned back from the wall and extended his hand to me. “If you don’t want me to touch you, I won’t. I can’t lie outright to you. You know that. When I told you to slap me if my hands go anywhere you don’t want them to be, I meant it.”
I laid my palm against his.
His eyes lightened back to chestnut brown as his fingers closed around mine.
We walked, hand in hand, down the winding staircase to the lower levels of the palace.
My stomach growled ravenously right up until the moment we passed the corridor of magical relics and heirlooms. The stain of the maroon-skinned faerie’s blood was still on the rug—or maybe it wasn’t.
Wrenlock pulled me from the doorway, and I blinked so quickly I couldn’t be quite sure what I had seen.
I questioned him about it, though—asked him who the three-eyed faerie was, his name, his family, if there was anything that could be done to fix it—but he told me it had all been taken care of, and it was better if I didn’t know the details.
Wrenlock also told me it wasn’t the first violent death to occur in the palace, whether by accident or intent, but that tidbit didn’t provide me with the solace he thought it would.
By the time we made it to the dining hall, I felt nauseous again. And when I stumbled into the room, one hand gripping my stomach, I fell to my knees beside the nearest pot plant and vomited all of my stomach’s acid into it.