28. Extraordinarily Long and Unorthodox Foreplay #2
For a long moment, I stared at him, breathing heavily. I knew we had an audience, but there was a part of my soul—sick with interference from the stars, and twisted almost irrevocably around his—that wanted to ask for that kiss.
I knew he’d give it to me.
I knew that pulling back from him and clearing my throat as if it would push the lustful haze from my head would be my one regret if something did go fatally wrong, but I did it anyway.
“If the two of you are quite finished with your extraordinarily long and unorthodox foreplay,” Morgoya called, coming to meet us, “we’re near the border of the Court of Earth and the Court of Darkness.
A few miles ahead, Aura, you’ll start to feel a shift in the atmosphere, even though we’re technically on the other side of the wards. It gets rather cold and gloomy.”
Nodding, I mouthed an apology at her once the High King had turned away from us.
She shook her head at me, eyes flaring as if to say she was enjoying every second of it.
But even I knew the tension between Lucais and me was dangerous. It was so thick it would eventually suffocate one of us or snap and decapitate the other.
We didn’t have much time before something had to give, and I was well aware that I would be the one giving.
I just didn’t think it would be the thing that was expected of me.
Only a week or so into my time in Caeludor, and I was already getting comfortable.
Reacquainting myself with my emotions, letting little human fantasies peek through the surface of the depths of my mind.
Allowing myself to forget that I’d done things that were so much worse than anything the High Fae around me could claim.
That was part of the problem.
I felt so at home with Lucais and Wrenlock because, no matter what they did to me, I knew I could beat them in a challenge of wickedness if I admitted to my crimes.
Trailing behind the group, I took the opportunity of the quiet to reorient myself.
The Ruins spanned over a much larger space than I had originally thought because we began to head west, as if Elera had evanesced further out of Faerie’s normal boundaries than I’d expected.
While the dead ground didn’t change much as we walked, stepping over jagged rocks and deep splits in the red clay dirt, the temperature did begin to drop, and the darkness swallowing up the horizon began to take a much more physical shape.
What I had originally thought was nothing more than a symptom of nightfall colouring the sky turned out to be the shadows of the Court of Darkness—an opaque black fog to rival the one Lucais had placed around Caeludor in its density.
My mind immediately spiralled into comparisons as it tried to understand the Court of Darkness’s blight. An enchantment, perhaps, if the fog was anything like it was in the city. But is it enchanted to hide something? And if so, what?
The dark, smoky clouds stuck to the boundary line almost rigidly, a wall spanning from the hellish ground beneath my feet towards the heavens high above me.
The colour and texture matched what I’d witnessed on the Map of Faerie, though I didn’t have the same bird’s eye view from the Ruins.
It stood, not quite like the wall of glass, but rather like an enormous, inky hedge maze crafted from shadows and nightmares.
In a trice, I was a child again, dwarfed by something sinister.
Once we had drawn near enough for our movements to disturb the shadows, I peeked over my shoulder at the Court of Earth. The dark wall split the two Courts apart neatly and followed the natural boundary lines.
As far as my mortal eyes could see, Blythe’s land was completely swallowed by the unrelenting mist.
Gregor’s Court, on the other hand, didn’t look affected by its neighbour’s ailment.
The Metal Mountains were visible in the distance, miniscule from where we stood at the cusp of Faerie—like the shape of a cargo ship on a horizon that was initially mistaken for dry land.
In the south, I couldn’t discern any major landmark features like The Watch as it was depicted on the Map, but the rest of the Court looked fairly normal.
At least, in line with my expectations of it under normal circumstances. No tumbleweeds, no inky black lines poisoning the soil, and no rebel soldiers pointing at us.
There was nobody at all, actually.
I didn’t see any townships or standalone buildings in the vicinity—only wildlife and natural scenery.
Barely a few paces away from the shadows at the border, there was a flowery bush in bloom, rooted in healthy dirt beside a small pond. Toads jumped in and out of the water to a symphony of croaks and clicking noises.
Giving one last longing glance towards the Court of Earth, I turned and hastened to catch up with the High Fae. They were less enamoured with different parts of Faerie than I was and had already begun to march up towards the worst of the storm.
I guessed that it was mostly due to the fact that the Court of Earth were traitors to the crown, but even with that knowledge in the forefront of my mind, there was something beautiful about it. Like my world, but laced with magic.
For the very first time, I was gazing upon Faerie with my eyes open—and not too distracted fighting through fog or trying to forget my own existence to properly notice it.
Keeping about an arm’s length of distance between myself and the dark wall, I followed the High Fae in a straight line a few paces behind Wrenlock.
Ahead of him, the High King was deep in a low-toned conversation with Morgoya, and Batre—High Mother bless her—lingered behind to remain near my side.
Only a step or two ahead of me, the rosy-cheeked woman offered me a kind, dimpled smile over her shoulder as we walked, the ends of her twin braids bouncing against her back with each of her long steps.
When she turned away, I glanced down at my feet, and that’s when I noticed it.
The darkness.
Clouding around my feet like low-lying mist, the shadows from Blythe’s Court had slithered out to greet me.
I faltered a step, though the shadows presented no resistance, and the motion of my boots kicked up a flurry of darkness.
Some of the shadows scattered for a split second, but they quickly dispersed in the air, and a new wave of them rolled over my ankles.
I twisted to one side, then the other, and on both occasions found that they were pooling behind me.
I swallowed a tight lump in my throat, heart pounding wildly in my chest in its insistent but futile demand to be let out and freed.
When I sidestepped, I pulled the darkness with me, like a magnetic force was tying us together.
A cold sweat trickled down my spine, falling from the spot on the back of my neck where I felt the brief touch of a hand.
“Bat…” I tried to say her name, but my lungs were heavy with damp, useless air. Drawing in a ragged, wet gasp, I tried again. “Batre,” I rasped.
She turned, and her face paled. It might have been the gloom, but I’d seen redness on her cheeks a moment prior. Her eyes grew round, head rearing back as if she was about to fire questions at me, but I was already shaking my head to convey that I had no fucking idea.
I stepped sideways again to demonstrate that it wasn’t me drifting too close to the wall—it was the darkness coming out to me.
The shadows flowed around my feet, following my every movement.
When I continued on in a straight line, they were gently dispelled with each stride, like I was splashing through the tide on an evening walk along the shoreline.
“Aura…” Batre’s voice was quietly alarmed. “Aura, are you okay?”
Hearing the question, all three of the High Fae walking ahead of us abruptly stopped and whirled around.
Feeling embarrassment warm my skin beneath my heavy coat, I watched as Morgoya’s eyebrows hit her hairline.
Wrenlock opened his mouth in the shape of an O , and Lucais did a double-take.
However, none of them met my eyes. All of them—even Batre—were fixated on something over my shoulder, positioned in my blind spot.
I didn’t want to look, but my head began to turn on its own volition to follow their line of sight.
Batre’s hand flew up to stop me.
“Wait!” she cried, glancing at the High King. I gave him a beseeching look, my chest feeling like it was about to fall apart into a three-hundred-piece puzzle. “I think… I think you’d better hold still for a moment, don’t you?”
My toes curled in my boots, but I did as she advised and held very still while the High King approached me with the caution normally reserved for a wild horse.
Flaring my eyes, I sent a silent demand for him to tell me what he was staring at behind me. His gaze flicked to mine for a heartbeat, but it conveyed nothing more than uncertainty and apprehension.
The shadows were still spilling out around my feet, though they reared back, drawing closer to my ankles and climbing up my calves towards my knees as he approached.
“What?” I implored when nobody said anything. “What is it?”
The High King waved over his shoulder for the others to approach before he dropped into a half-crouch, bracing his hands on his thighs as he cocked his head to the side like he was appreciating the curve of my ass. He was transfixed by something.
“Aura,” Morgoya remarked softly. “You’ve got a shadow.”
My brows knitted together. There was no sun. It was overcast and gloomy. None of them had a shadow.
“Not just any shadow,” the High King murmured. He turned his head to the other side and let out a low, haunting whistle. “It looks like it’s attached to her.”
“What?” I exclaimed. It was redundant, and I knew that, but panic had taken over the control system in my brain, and hysteria was riding the clutch. “What’s attached to me?”
“The shadow…”