24. You’re Not Heavy, But You Are Annoying
twenty-four
You’re Not Heavy, But You Are Annoying
T he sirens echoed like a haunting song throughout the palace as Lucais swiped my hand and spun me into his chest. The motion was so fluid and intimate, we could have been dancing the waltz in the observatory, but instead, he was crushing me into his body and evanescing to the border of the palace gates.
A violet-tainted cloud of fog parted for our arrival, the mist scattering into the recesses of the shadows like intruders who had been caught, and two of the High King’s sentries rushed forward to pull the enormous gates open for us.
Beyond them, Caeludor’s streets were coated in the darkest sheen of night.
No glowing lanterns lined the downwards slope from the palace into the lower town, and the mist made visibility even worse.
My head was spinning, my pulse sprinting a hundred miles a minute, and my knees locked. I almost tripped and fell flat on my face on the cobblestone when Lucais tugged on my hand.
“Wait!” I called, panting. “What about Wren and Morgoya—”
The High King whirled on me, his expression tortured. “Bookworm,” he pleaded, beckoning me with his free arm. His other hand still had an ironclad grip around mine. “There’s no time .”
Blinking furiously, I moved my head—though whether it was a shake or a nod, I had no idea—and stumbled forwards into his expectant embrace. He laid one hand flat on my back, gently but hurriedly pushing me out through the gates and into the darkness beyond.
As soon as we had crossed the invisible threshold of the palace’s particularly strict wards, Lucais’s arm snaked around my waist and we were spinning through the city’s streets together.
I hated evanescing from Point A to Point B, but it was even worse when the journey was broken up by frequent stops. My stomach absolutely roared its disgust at me as Lucais pulled me in and out of a cyclonic torrent of wind that had us tumbling into the lower town, one frenzied stop at a time.
Every few blocks down the winding city roads, there were faeries rushing through their front doors, calling out to one another over the sound of the alarm and trying to wrangle clumsy children who were still rubbing the sleep from their eyes.
It took me a few stops to realise that Lucais was throwing out orbs of faelight for them—golden orbs, glowing with an ethereal shine like they’d been scooped out of the core of the sun.
I wanted to ask why he couldn’t have done that remotely, but as soon as the question formed in my mind, I understood.
The Malum were attacking the wards.
His wards.
The thing in the lapsus had attacked him—was still attacking him, as far as I knew—and the effort of holding it back and fighting it off had weakened him ever so slightly, as had the battle with the locusts and the assault on the ward defending Belgrave.
Combined with a direct attack so close to home, Lucais probably didn’t have the strength to light the entire city back up with his faelight in one hit.
He never displayed the enormity of his power outwardly before—everything was subtle because he didn’t need to prove himself when his very existence brought light and storms to the skies above—so to watch him desperately wielding magic to achieve the same things that had once been as simple as breathing for him was terrifying.
I couldn’t remember with absolute certainty, but I was fairly sure the city’s footpaths were lined with lanterns holding faelight orbs when Wrenlock and I had first walked into town.
Considering that Lucais was the city’s power source, the Malum’s attack must have been quite brutal for it to cause all of the lights to go out.
Or maybe part of it was what I’d said.
Burying my face in the crook of his neck, I inhaled his scent of ink and musk before pressing my lips against his skin.
He was warm. His pulse beat in a steady rhythm against my mouth, and I tasted the faintest hint of sweat mixed with notes of sweetness on his skin, like caramel popcorn.
I held myself against him like that for the duration of a kiss.
It wasn’t quite the same thing, but it was all I could offer him.
We landed on a new street.
As the High King dropped one arm from around my waist and threw it out in a wide swing once more, sending dozens of golden orbs spinning from his fingertips, I brushed the hair from my face and looked up at his profile.
The tendons in his neck were visible—a tightness that stretched between the throbbing veins disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt.
I saw the difficulty as he swallowed, his throat bobbing with a slight hitch halfway through the action, and my eyes caught the trickle of sweat beading on his temple.
“Lucais—” I started to say, but he was already securing his other hand to my waist again, and then we were spinning. “ Lucais, ” I tried again, though the sound of the wind and the world moving away from us at an alarming speed almost swallowed my voice. “Lucais—”
“Aura,” he replied tersely. His tone was not irritated; he was having trouble vocalising.
My stomach dropped. How many Malum could cause this much of a struggle?
I don’t know.
Even though I should have been expecting it, I blinked in surprise at the sound of his voice in my mind, like a honey-sweet tea calming the stiffness in my throat. And then my cheeks burst into flames because I believed I’d kept the thought private.
Is there any way to find out? I asked as we spun through the aether.
We came to a sudden halt, but he stumbled a few steps when his feet touched the ground.
He almost dropped me, and the sensation of falling caused the toes of my own shoes to snag on the cobblestone as I fought to find solid ground, which in turn sent me toppling into him.
Lucais threw out an arm for balance and faelight orbs scattered from his fingertips with no direct path.
They ricocheted off the cobblestone and spun off into the mist-filled sky above us.
Fuck, I heard him think.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped. I staggered backwards, my hands curling around the edges of a wooden flower planter decorating the curb outside a small cottage. Firelight smouldered through the window behind me, the only light left in the entire street. “Leave me here and go ahead.”
The sirens continued to blare in the distance—a chilling omen.
Panting, Lucais bent over and braced his hands on his knees. Then, he looked up at me with disgust etched into his features. “Why?” he demanded, his voice hoarse.
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Because I’m heavy, and I’m distracting you, and you’re…” My tongue came out to wet my lower lip, and then I bit down on it, hesitating. “You look exhausted.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “You’re not heavy, but you are annoying.”
My shoulders slumped forwards, and I sat back on the edge of the planter. “Finish lighting the city and come back for me,” I suggested.
“I’m done.” He blew out a long breath and straightened, swiping a hand through his wind-tousled hair.
It was like starlight, illuminated in the glow of the firelight radiating behind me and the few faelight orbs that had returned from where they’d scattered into the fog.
“Morgoya can cover the rest of the city. I need to get to the wards.”
Shock robbed me of the colour on my face. “You’re not—”
“I am.” Having caught his breath, he strode towards me. “And I’m not leaving you here.”
Despite the warmth in his conviction, I found myself gripping onto the flower planter a little harder as he approached. “You’re not going to offer me up to broker a peace treaty, are you?”
Lucais curled both hands around my hips with a raw, possessive force and tugged me against him hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs. The hard planes of his chest pressed into my breasts, his fingers digging into my skin, and my heart began beating without rhyme or reason.
Heat curled and expanded between my legs.
Gazing up at him, his sheer height forcing me to tilt my head all the way back, I found that he seemed to have regained at least a bit of his strength alongside all of his usual attitude.
“It depends on how annoying you are between now and when we arrive,” he taunted.
And then we were spinning again.
The city fell out from under our feet like Lucais’s powers were taking us on a magic carpet ride, and I felt a distinct shift in him.
It was a deliberate, carefully held composure, as if he was trying to prove that I didn’t exhaust him physically—and neither did the Malum or the thing in the lapsus.
Mental exhaustion was another story entirely, and I promised myself that I would be more mindful of it in the future. I would remember that he had so many things coming at him from all sides, and I…
Will I stop being one of them? Could I?
The voice in my head was silent.
The next time we evanesced, it took longer, and when we finally stopped, it was on the top of a hill in a completely new part of the city.
I could tell that we were on the opposite side of Caeludor to the Court of Water by the way the mountains stood over the valley of fog.
When we had entered the city, there had been a very harmless entryway paved for us over a sloping hillside—as opposed to the adamant barricade of the Metal Mountains that loomed from every other angle.
Like the one towering above us as we found our footing and Lucais let go of my waist.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I quickly brought up a memory of the Map of Faerie in my mind. Based on what I could recall, the Court of Earth was closest to us. There were passes beneath the land that allowed the caenim to get through, and Gregor was the High Lord of the Court of Earth…
…and suspected of high treason.
The contents of my stomach turned ice-cold.
I guess this proves it.