26. The Textbooks
twenty-six
The Textbooks
T he storm outside barely let up as the High King led the four of us through the palace’s empty halls, the sound of the pouring rain dulling the echo of the sirens as they blared on and on in warning of the threat outside of the wards.
Lucais walked with purpose, almost feverish in his desire to keep moving, like a man possessed.
I couldn’t help wondering what memory he had retrieved from the bank.
The way he’d said mama could break my heart into a million tiny pieces—and I knew that it would if I let it do so, if I wasn’t more careful.
A shudder tempted me, but I repressed it because there were things jumping out at me from the darkest corners of my mind, and I wanted them to leave me in peace.
I couldn’t allow them to see that I was spooked.
Wrenlock chipped away at the ice that had frozen over my heart after their betrayal, but I was suddenly extremely fearful that Lucais would simply melt it—and I wouldn’t know until it was gone and there was nothing left between us.
My eyes coasted across his strong back, his broad shoulders, the slightly damp locks of his blond hair, and his arms—the corded muscle I knew was disguised beneath his long sleeves—as he stalked a few paces ahead of everyone else.
Shaking my head out of the trance that staring at his physique seemed to put me in, I redirected my thoughts to the portal on the hillside near the Court of Earth, to the frightful encounter with his mother.
Were they close before the war? Why hadn’t he tried to save her?
He did try to save them, I reminded myself. He had tried to save his parents and Wrenlock’s sister. The High King had gone against the advice from his inner circle and attempted to give them their magic back once the Banshees were banished to the Ruins. Wrenlock had told me he almost succeeded.
Lucais was so powerful that he could control the wards all over Faerie. Single-handedly, he held the vicious and unnamed threats at bay without letting a flicker of his struggles with them show. Lucais shielded me, shielded Sthiara, and shielded Belgrave.
Why couldn’t he return the magic to the rebels after their nefarious plans went wrong? How close had he come to succeeding? What made him give it up?
“Lucais,” Morgoya beseeched from where she trailed a few steps behind me.
The High King continued his determined march towards the staircase, leading us to a part of the palace I’d never seen before.
I tried to piece together the sections I’d visited—the foyer, the museum, the floor of my bedroom, the dining room, the observatory, the hallway with tall arched windows, the throne room, and the destroyed wing—but I was completely lost. My mind grew hazier with every attempt.
“Lucais,” the High Lady tried again. He began to jog down the stairs, ignoring her. “Lucais, you’re not thinking clearly.”
He leapt from halfway down the stairs, landing nimbly on the next landing, and his head snapped up.
“On the contrary,” he shot back, pausing for only a second before he sat on the railing and slipped down the next flight of stairs, sailing along the banister.
“I am thinking with more clarity than I have in a very long time.”
I snorted. I’d believe that.
Arriving at the end of the staircase, he jumped to his feet and turned to gaze up at me.
His eyes were on fire again in the way that made me feel nervous and disorderly.
The look on his face was fiendish, but brimming with temptation.
I wondered if he made everyone feel that way or if it was a side effect of the Oracle’s prophecy.
“The thing in the lapsus needs to be dealt with, one way or another,” Lucais decided.
“If Blythe is alive, this is our best chance at recruiting her to our side—and we want Blythe on our side. We have Enyd, but we know Gregor is with the Malum now. That leaves us with Owain and Ulyssa. Even if we get both of them, Blythe being on the enemy’s side will render all of our efforts useless. ”
“How come?” I asked, huffing as I finally met him at the bottom of the stairs. Internally, I cursed my weak human body and the pitiful capacity of my lungs. My sense of gravity and balance, too. “I thought Gregor was the most powerful.”
“He is,” Morgoya replied, stopping beside me. “But it’s not about the power.”
“I’m sorry?” My gaze bounced between them, brow furrowing. “Then what is it about?”
The High King tilted his head to the side, snaring my eyes in his golden glow. He pursed his full, pink lips, and then sighed in resignation. “Blythe is Unseelie.”
“Un…what?”
“Unseelie,” he repeated. “It’s not about balancing power in situations like this. It’s about balancing faith.”
“Faith?” My eyes narrowed into slits.
“Adjacent to the High King is the High Court,” he informed me blandly.
“It’s an establishment made up of the Seelie Court and the Unseelie Court.
They preach about protecting the image of the High Mother and claim to have established linkages to the Otherworld, but they’re categorically useless for all legitimate purposes.
” He waved a hand through the air like he was shooing a fly away.
“During the Gift War, the whole damned lot of them went into hiding. They claim neutrality but stand decidedly on the other side of everything corporeal. It’s so annoying. ”
“It’s a little more nuanced than that,” Morgoya interjected. “They’re not the equivalent of Heaven and Hell—”
“Oh, yes, they are,” Lucais argued under his breath.
He threw a disparaging glance at her. “That’s what I based it off when I rewrote a little bit of our history into your world,” he told me.
“The idea of God and Lucifer came from the High Court, but if they asked me, I would categorically deny it.”
Morgoya let out a long-suffering sigh behind me, and he grinned shamelessly at her.
“So Seelie and Unseelie are good and bad faeries,” I said.
“No,” Morgoya answered at the exact same time as the High King replied with, “Yes.”
Feeling the effects of whiplash setting in, I looked to Wrenlock for support. He pulled a face at me as if to say that he didn’t know and he didn’t wish to get involved.
“Basically,” the High King elaborated, “the Seelie faeries believe that all life forms should be protected and cherished. They’re bleeding hearts. They developed a particular soft spot for humans when the Gift War ended and it was safe for them to come out of their little hidey-holes.
“On the other hand, the Unseelie faeries believe that certain life forms should be used for entertainment or hunted for sport because everyone can fend for themselves. Survival of the fittest type of mindset. There was an Unseelie ruler in the Aboveworld during the Dragon War and that’s how we ended up with a whole lot of dead dragons.
They also just so happen to be the ones who used to throw humans into portals with monsters for bets. ”
I shivered. “What are you?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t made up my mind.”
My eyes flicked to Wrenlock. “You?”
“Seelie,” he answered quietly.
“Batre?”
“Seelie.”
“And you?” I probed, my brow creasing as I turned my head towards Morgoya.
There was hesitation etched into the High Lady’s face. She bit her lip, and I knew. “Unseelie.”
My surprise arrived with bags fully packed, ready for a long stay. I tried not to let it show, but something shifted inside of her emerald-green eyes, and I knew she had marked the emotions swirling through me.
“It’s a belief system,” she mumbled beseechingly, wringing her hands.
“It’s merely a religion like any other. You don’t always know someone’s alignment, especially if they don’t practice all the elements of their faith.
I would like to be part of the Unseelie Court in my afterlife, but I don’t throw humans away, Aura. I never did.”
That was somewhat reassuring, but I was ashamed to admit that I could suddenly picture it if she had done such things.
Her razor-sharp features, dark hair and feline eyes, the flawless alabaster skin that stretched without a single blemish from her hairline to her long, pointed, crimson nails beneath silky gowns—all the marks of an ethereal being, enchanting and deadly, depicted in history books and fairytales as the unassuming and fatal temptress over the ages.
She could probably convince me to step into a portal, if she so desired.
I could have sworn that I’d seen her before, and I was appalled at myself for not noticing the darkness around her sooner. But that was the point. In the fairytales, the humans seldom see it coming.
“The point is”—Lucais quite literally snapped my attention back to him with the click of his fingers in front of my face, and I wanted to bite them—“that Morgoya and Gregor are Unseelie, but everyone else is Seelie except for Blythe. If we don’t hold the majority favour with the Unseelie Court, we risk a huge disadvantage if the Seelie Court decides to vote for neutrality against the Malum—or worse. ”
I fought back the cold, sinking feeling in my stomach at his last words. Surely no faerie in their right mind would vote to allow the Malum back into the High King’s inner circle, but the way that Lucais was glowering at Morgoya made me less confident in my assumption with every second that passed.
“Couldn’t you just make a choice?” I questioned. “And throw it to the Unseelie Court?”
He shook his head. “No, that would piss them off because they’d know I was being disingenuous.
It’s part of the reason I haven’t been pestered to make a choice already.
They can tell if you’re not truly of that belief in your heart, and they know that I’m on the fence.
I’d tell the whole lot of them to sink to the bottom of the Underworld if I didn’t think Maraja would send them all right back up. ”
“Maraja is Queen of the Underworld,” Wrenlock advised me, before I had to pose the question myself.
He looked between the High King and the High Lady wearily.
“This little history lesson is wonderful, but can we refocus on the urgent projects before we delve further into the flow chart of faerie politics?”
Lucais nodded fervently and, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, closed his eyes and waved everyone ahead of him.
Batre, Morgoya, and Wrenlock continued their walk through the palace towards some unspecified destination and the High King waited for me to spur back into motion before he fell into step beside me.
I bristled at the warmth emanating from him, at the way my heart stuttered like a stupid little school girl at the notion that he wanted to walk with me.
The feeling was short-lived.
“You didn’t know about the Seelie and the Unseelie?” he asked, screwing his face up as he lifted his elbow to peer at me below his arm. He dropped his hand from where it was holding his nose. “Really?”
“Oh my God.” I came to a sudden stop, rolling my eyes skyward.
He copied me, and I spun to face him head-on, narrowing my gaze. The High King cocked an eyebrow expectantly, looking down at me exactly like he had when we first met in Dante’s Bookstore before I’d slapped him across the face.
“How many times since we met have you told me I need to read more fantasy books?” I demanded.
I held my hands up with air quotes, lowering the decibels of my voice in a mocking and admittedly poor attempt at imitating him.
“ Aura, ” I growled, pushing the corners of my mouth down into a scowl.
“ You work in a bookstore and read too many books. Wait, no. Aura, ” I tried again, bobbing my head from side to side.
“ You don’t read enough books because you don’t know anything about magic and portals and demon creatures with funny eyes.
Read more books about faeries, Aura. Read more books written by faeries, Aura.
Brush up on your faerie history and put the hockey porn down.
” I threw my hands up, rolling my eyes again.
The High King had folded his arms over his chest at some point during my rant and was watching me with amusement glittering across his eyes, his mouth turned up at the corners in the most exquisitely attractive smirk.
I dragged a deep, ragged breath into my lungs as he waited patiently for me to deliver my closing argument.
“Look, I’m sorry that I’d rather sit down and read a smutty sports romance with a cup of tea at the end of a long day, Lucais.
But some of us are just more comfortable relaxing into the idea of cheering your athlete boyfriend on from the bleachers, before he takes you over the rooftop balcony at the grand final afterparty, than we are with the idea of balancing on top of a unicorn bareback with our fated mate after just having fought a fucking Banshee off with our bare hands two kilometres out from a settlement of Goblins!
” I finished, my lungs tight and screaming for breath.
The High King stared at me, nostrils flaring, for a long moment before he reached out to swipe the pads of his fore and middle fingers down the side of my face.
The touch was so gentle that the thought behind the gesture itself made more of an impact upon me than the physical caress. I wanted to lean into it, into him.
“I am not this athlete you speak of,” he murmured, “but if you wish to be taken over the side of a rooftop balcony, bookworm, then you need only ask.”
I ground my teeth together as a pulse of heat and desire throbbed between my legs. “In my head,” I grit out. My defiance was waning beneath a strong flood of blush colouring my cheeks. “I want to do these things in my head.”
“Perfect,” he purred, flashing a devastating smile at me. “Because I want to do them in mine, too. Let’s practice in our minds and then get together to compare notes.”
I could have swatted him over the head with the nearest object, but we were standing in the middle of a very large and open walkway, and I suddenly remembered that three of our companions were hovering at the end of it, observing us from afar.
Lucais seemed to realise, too. He inhaled deeply through his nose, seeming to weigh up his options, and then eventually sighed, resuming his long strides to join his friends.
“At least you’re learning about the real fantasy worlds now,” he stated plainly, squaring his shoulders as we approached the group. “Some people learn better on the job than they do from the textbooks, anyway.”
I rolled my eyes at his back as he pushed on a side door that opened into a courtyard. The fog was considerably thinner, and as we walked across the bailey towards the stables, it was an effort to keep my head down and my feet in a steady rhythm.
Because all I could think about was whether there actually was a rooftop with a balcony anywhere on the palace grounds.