35. You Don’t Have to Touch It
thirty-five
You Don’t Have to Touch It
“ W hy does your heart beat five times instead of three?”
Lucais held the door to one of the palace’s drawing rooms open for me, which seemed like an unnecessarily gallant gesture considering he could have opened it with a single wave of his hand.
“Your average High Fae beats once for mind, twice for body, and thrice for soul. As High King, mine beats once for mind, twice for body, and thrice for soul—and then once more for kingdom, and once again for crown.”
My eyebrows shot up with intrigue. “What will happen to mine when I accept the bond?”
Lucais’s expression tightened. “We need to talk about that,” he replied curtly.
“Oh, for the love of fuck,” I muttered, trailing into the room behind him with my head hanging low. After everything we’d just exposed to each other in the courtyard, we were still stuck in the same frustrating place.
That is a more accurate statement than you might realise , he uttered into my mind.
Before I had a chance to ask what he meant, I heard the quiet slam of a book being closed, and my head whipped up to find Wrenlock sitting at the head of a long, polished wooden table.
The room was fairly empty compared to the space we usually dined in together, with colourful oil paintings hanging on the xanthous walls and not a whole lot of anything else.
The table had matching chairs, simple wood carvings without adornment or cushions, and a large silver candle holder sat in the middle.
It was empty. I peeked at the title of Wrenlock’s book and was quietly shocked to find he was reading a fiction novel written for pleasure.
He didn’t like reading—or at least, he hadn’t.
“Aura has decided she wants to accept the bond,” Lucais declared like it was the most unexpected breaking news in the world.
Maybe it was. He swung his arm out like a pendulum blade between us, and didn’t sound excited or even remotely happy about it, which irked me beyond belief.
“I don’t know what you think we should do, but I’d rather have it out in the open now. ”
Oh, I’m going to throttle him. Why does Wrenlock have to do anything?
“I can make up my own mind,” I cut in, shooting daggers at the High King. “I don’t have much of a choice in any case, so I’d really love it if you could refrain from trying to turn me off the idea until it’s all been said and done.”
Lucais’s eyes flared with something I couldn’t decipher, and he said, “That’s the thing, bookworm. You don’t know what it is that has to be done.”
Flabbergasted, I flung my hands up in the air and tossed a beseeching look towards Wrenlock. When all else failed, I could usually count on him to speak plainly with me if he was able to do so.
But his mouth was tight as he looked up at me from beneath dark, furrowed brows.“The mating bond requires a ceremony of sorts,” he began quietly.
I rolled my eyes, but I was willing to accept a ceremony if that’s all it took. “Fine. The sooner I put the whole horrible ordeal behind me, the better.”
Lucais let out a strangled laugh. “Oh, bookworm.”
“Stop playing cat-and-mouse with her,” Wrenlock chastised.
The High King shot him a chilly look. “Fine,” he bit out.
Taking a deep breath, he turned to me. “The traditional law states that the mating bond cannot take effect until the relevant parties have”—his tone wavered, and I could have sworn I saw Lucais’s body swaying slightly from side to side as he wiggled the fingers on one hand in the air between us awkwardly—“consummated…the…bond.”
His hand stopped moving. I stopped breathing. Wrenlock stopped sitting behind the table and rose to stand, walking around the side until he stood between us, his hands clasped in front of him and an expression of concern etched into his features.
“Aura?” he probed.
I stared wordlessly at the shiny surface of the table visible between them, its dark wood stain reflecting the yellow light from the faelight orbs that bobbed against the ceiling, and suddenly it all made sense.
Wrenlock’s awkwardness whenever I’d asked him about the High Fae’s intimate practices and his refusal to go all the way with me at the House, my lack of informed consent aside.
Morgoya’s fascination with whether or not we’d done it yet.
Lucais’s gentle rejection—which felt like it had happened on more than one occasion, even if I wasn’t fully aware of it at the time.
Dozens of memories came flooding back to me, moments I was glimpsing through a different lens where we could have fallen into each other in that way but never did, despite the ever-present ache of escalating desire.
In his bedroom at the House after he rescued me from the field of caenim. The day he’d antagonised me with his harsh words and soft touches in the armoury. When he’d kissed me with enough passion to overthrow Eros in the dungeon and then violently threw himself back against the opposing wall.
All those times he’d wiped away those lingering remnants of my lips and skin. He had touched me like he wanted to devour me, but then he always pulled back.
And the whole time, I had thought it was because he was toying with me.
No soulmate is better than a dead soulmate , he had told me.
Because if I became the High Queen, my fate with the Malum would be sealed.
They would have to kill me in order to fulfil their desire for a Malum Queen to rule Faerie at his side, and it would no longer matter whether Raella’s offer to turn me had been genuine at the time she had made it, or if Lucais could find a way out of it for me.
My bewildered gaze drifted up to the High King’s face, his eyes the homing beacon for mine.
His mouth was half-open, the words of whatever he wanted to say caught in his throat, and he shook his head at me slightly. Lucais looked hopeless, the image of someone who had tried everything.
I swallowed hard.
The realisation washed all of my bitterness away.
Lucais had wholeheartedly believed that giving in to his desires would kill me, so he held himself back the entire time.
Let me work the burning, pent-up frustration and desire that his very presence stirred inside of me out with Wrenlock to avoid being backed into a corner if I’d ever decided to throw caution to the wind and be even more direct about it than I’d been in the crumbling wing of the palace.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I whispered softly.
“I was too scared to mention the outstanding decision of our mating bond to you again in case it prompted you to reject it.” His voice was thick with tension.
“The first time didn’t work because the person you were rejecting was wrong, but once you know who your soulmate is, the rejection is permanent.
I never would have been able to win you back if you did it properly. ”
I took a shaky step forward. “Lucais—”
You don’t want this , he murmured into my mind, halting me in place. The expression on his face was an interesting mix of being afraid, sad, and outrageously turned on. I know that. I tried to avoid it, Aura. I really did.
How do you know what I want? I whispered back, and a thrill went through me at the instant flare of his raging arousal that pulsed through the bond.
Fine, he conceded, his voice rough even in my mind. But I never wanted it to happen because you have no other choice. So now we’re definitely fucked, and not in the way either of us prefers to be.
There was an extended, charged pause. How could we turn it into our own choice, instead of our first time being a last resort?
At the exact same time, we both gradually turned our heads towards Wrenlock, who was still standing there, a brow arched at our silent conversation with clear agitation.
A nagging feeling pulled at the back of my mind that there was something I’d been meaning to tell him, but for the life of me, I couldn’t recall what it was.
“No,” Lucais said with audible disbelief, seeing the awareness alight in my eyes. “You have got to be kidding.”
“I didn’t say anything,” I breathed, my tone adopting a defensive edge. But I knew what he was talking about because I clocked the same light in his own eyes.
“You get even more insane by the day, I swear to the Oracle.” He dragged a hand through his tousled blond hair, gripping the back of his neck.
“It’s nothing personal, believe me,” he said to Wrenlock, gesturing to him with his free hand turned palm-up towards the ceiling. “But that’s really not my thing.”
Wrenlock blinked—and then caught on like a grassfire. I watched his face contort as he flipped his gaze between us, eyes widening and then narrowing, mouth opening and closing. Finally, he pinned Lucais with a glare and said, “You’re not my first choice, either, you know.”
The High King gave him a withering look. “It’s not about you,” he snapped back, affronted. “It’s about what you”—he waved a hand towards Wrenlock’s crotch—“currently have on offer.”
Wrenlock’s stare was patronising. “You don’t have to touch it.”
“I’m not going to touch it.”
“I don’t want you to touch it.”
“Oh my God!” I exclaimed, tossing my hands up in the air and taking a determined step in between them. “This is absolute lunacy. Forget about it, please.”
“Wrong deity,” Wrenlock said wryly.
“Wrong name,” Lucais muttered.
“This is the dumbest idea any of us have had yet. And that’s saying something, considering some of the plans you’ve concocted,” I added for Lucais’s benefit.
“I don’t even know whose idea this was in the first place, but there is no way all three of us are going to be satisfied in an arrangement like that. ”
Lucais cleared his throat suggestively as Wrenlock drawled, “I think the end goal in something like this is really just for you to be satisfied, Auralie.”