51. Ogres Will Fly
fifty-one
Ogres Will Fly
T he surprise announcement at dinner had sent everyone into a tailspin.
I’d never seen the High Fae quite so panicked, though it wasn’t in the familiar way of humans.
There were no screams or tears. Rather, a newfound sense of urgency fell upon them like a second skin, like they’d finally started to hear the ticking of the clocks as time passed and realised with a start that not all things were infinite.
The need to act—and to do so quickly—hit all three of them at once just as soon as Enyd retired to her room.
While Morgoya went to greet Ulyssa and the Court of Water, Wrenlock paid a brief visit to the armoury before meeting the High King outside the throne room. As always, I went with Lucais, and Batre had never shown up to dinner in the first place, so I had no idea where she was.
The pungent smell of the caenim was nearly enough to bring my soup up again as I followed the men into the throne room.
Enyd was right—there was a whole platoon of foul beasts stored in iron cages, and the sight sent a cold chill down my spine.
If I didn’t know better, I would also be questioning whether the man keeping caenim like circus tricks in the middle of his palace wasn’t actually the real enemy.
While the High King and his Hand decorated themselves with weapons, I counted the caenim in the room.
Twenty beasts divided by five Courts meant Lucais planned to release at least a few into each one—unless he was truly insane enough to think that he could recapture them to use again and again. I sincerely hoped he didn’t, but I also knew better than to hold my breath.
When the double doors to the throne room swung open with a loud bang, I was so distracted staring into the teeth-filled eyes of a nearby monster that I nearly jumped out of my own skin.
Morgoya rushed into the room, waving a hand above her shoulder to command the doors to slam shut in her wake, and stalked straight between two cages of particularly large caenim positioned near the entrance.
“Ulyssa and the water faeries are settling into their rooms, but it won’t be long before they expect a host,” Morgoya announced, cheeks flushed as she fought for breath.
Misunderstanding the fascination in my eyes, she glanced at me and explained, “We can talk freely here under the suppression spell. It covers noise and smell outside of this room, but not inside, unfortunately.” She threw Lucais a revolted look.
“You’ll have to play host,” he muttered obliviously. Lucais’s gaze was averted as he secured something onto his weapons belt. “I have to adjust the wards so our smelly little companions can do their job.”
“Where are you taking them first?” the High Lady enquired, her voice nasally as she pinched her nose shut with two fingers and glared sideways at a caenim drooling at her through the bars. Saliva dripped from its eyes, sizzling as it hit the iron.
“The Court of Water,” Lucais declared, hands going to his hips as he lifted his head to look at her. “We may as well start there since Ulyssa is already here—”
“No,” Wrenlock interjected, stepping between them.
“That’s way too suspicious. I know you’re pissed, Lucais, but we’re logistically better off starting at the Court of Fire and working our way down the Map.
It borders the Court of Darkness, which is where everyone’s going to assume they’re coming from, and besides that, Ulyssa’s Court is too random.
It’s not even adjacent to Gregor’s Court, and to hit it first the night they arrive? ”
Lucais hummed, considering. “Ulyssa’s going to fuck this up.”
“Not if we stick to the original plan.”
The sound of the caenim breathing heavily in the background was all we heard for a long moment as the men surveyed one another and contemplated strategy.
“Fine. Yes, you’re right,” Lucais agreed at last. Anxiety darkened each word. “The Court of Fire it is.”
The tension bled out of Wrenlock’s stature, and he returned to whatever he was doing before interrupting the conversation.
Striding over to me, the High King placed his hands atop my shoulders and studied me with warm, loving eyes.
“Here’s the thing, bookworm,” he said softly.
“You didn’t get as much time in the training room as you needed, but I can’t be more than three feet away from you without going out of my mind.
It’s dangerous to bring you with us, but it’s even more dangerous to leave you behind, so which—”
“You’re not leaving me here,” I cut in firmly. The very thought made me feel weak and queasy. “There is no way.”
The High King smiled. “I’m not leaving you here,” he agreed, but then a shadow crossed his face.
“I need you to understand that the cloaking spell I’ll be using to conceal the caenim will be quite labour-intensive.
I have to remove every last one of them before Enyd does something stupid—like give Ulyssa a tour of the palace when I’m not looking.
Once I’ve done that, I have to focus on manipulating the wards, so I can’t have my eyes on you the whole time.
” His smouldering gaze flickered to Wrenlock’s face, hovering beside us, and then back to me.
“I want you to take a weapon, Aura. You need to have one to defend yourself if something happens to either or both of us—especially if magic is still off the table.”
My heart beat so loudly that it hollowed out my chest, but I managed to nod, even though I almost wanted to keel over and vomit on the ground.
Within seconds, Wrenlock was slipping a dagger into my limp hand and forcing my fingers to curl around the hilt. “Here,” he murmured. “I’ve enchanted it so the blade will win your favour in a fight to compensate for any difference in skills between yourself and your opponent.”
I stared down at the red jewel encrusted in the hilt, sparkling with a depth and glimmer so strong it almost took on the illusion of an eye. “You mean you spelled it to cheat,” I mumbled thoughtlessly.
Lucais’s fingers grabbed my chin and jerked my head up to look at him.
“Cheat, Aura. Fight dirty. Break the rules.” His thumb dragged over my mouth, flicking my lower lip, and I felt his gaze like a physical touch while it wandered across my face as if he was memorising every blemish and freckle.
“I don’t care what you do to keep yourself safe as long as it works.
If there’s a cost, I’ll pay it tenfold .
” His eyes landed on mine. “Do you understand me?”
I understand you.
The High King’s voice was in my head as I weighed the blade in my hand. You’ve been using your magic like a weapon, as if it’s a sword that you can pick up and put down. Remember what I told you. You are power. It is not a separate thing. Stop thinking about it like it is.
I’ve been trying.
I know, my love. He pressed a swift kiss to my forehead.
I wished that he was right, but I only had one type of baseline magic left to experiment with—and it was destruction. Exactly like the Court of Darkness showed me…
Breaking my trance before I became totally numb, Morgoya pulled me into a hug so tight I felt something crack. “You’ll be okay,” she promised. “We’ll resume our practice as soon as you come back.”
Part of me wanted to thank her for all of her help, but the words felt like goodbye on my tongue, and I wasn’t sure how to get them to sound any differently.
A moment later, the doors banged open and a succession of heavy footsteps echoed on the floor.
The familiar warmth of Batre’s arms encircled me, and I no longer needed to say anything.
She squeezed me even tighter than her girlfriend had.
As I felt the High Lady slip out of the embrace, I heard her drop her voice to speak to someone nearby.
“You’d better bring her back to me.”
If Morgoya threatened Lucais like that before the bond was solidified, I would have understood completely, but it seemed a little redundant after everything had been said and done. Still, I appreciated the sentiment. I appreciated her .
“I’ll buy you as much time as I can, Lucais.” Morgoya’s eyes were filled with regret as Batre and I pulled back from one another, and her green gaze settled on her lover. She tilted her head towards the doors in a question, but Batre motioned for her to go on without her.
“I’ll be there in a second,” she said, and then she pulled a notepad out of her large pocket, holding it in front of me. “I was late because I went to get this.”
My lashes fluttered with uncertainty as she turned it over to a page with the words I AM SICK OF THIS written in a messy scrawl right in the middle of the paper. I started to shake my head, but she was already ahead of me.
“No, I’m serious,” she insisted, tilting the page so that Lucais’s inquisitive eyes could assess it, too. “I had a feeling that something like this would happen after the incident with the rose. You’re not going to tell me this wasn’t what you were trying to write down, are you?”
Torn up on the inside, I made a long, choking sound before I relented. “Yeah, no.” My free hand came up to rest against my forehead as my thoughts began to spin, the other curled around the dagger in a fist on my hip. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“Sweetheart, I need to go,” Morgoya called from near the doors. “They cannot be permitted to find this room before the caenim are all gone, and I don’t trust Enyd as far as I could push her down a staircase.”
Batre’s eyes seared into mine like a brand. “We’ll pick it up when you get back,” she promised, tearing off the page with the writing and pushing it into my grasp before she spun on her heels and hurried to join Morgoya at the door.
She threw one glance over her shoulder before the doors closed, and I fell back against the nearest wall when the echo rang out.
Enchantment . The pen had done as I intended it to, but there was an absurd delay. So I was capable—yet faulty.
I cringed against the stonework, cradling the dagger against my chest, scrunching the paper into a ball in my fist. I could feel the enchantment in the blade—a slight difference to the weight and feel, a twinkle that blinked back at me in the stone—but not on the paper.
As I re-examined the hilt and its richly coloured jewel, I searched for a bond with it the way that Batre and Morgoya had taught me to do when I had been trying to access levitation magic.
I felt a spark, but it was like grabbing soap, and it slipped out of my reach.
“We need to go.” The High King’s voice jerked me out of my fixation. I stuffed the page into the side of my boot so my hand was free to take his. “You’re about to see a lot more of Faerie, bookworm. Each Court looks very different,” he warned me.
Lucais was a vision of violence with two broadswords crossing over his back and a plethora of different devices strapped to his waist. When I peered around his tall frame, I realised the caenim had already disappeared from the throne room.
We were all moving so fast that I wondered if the High Fae had actually been slowing down on purpose for me the whole time.
“The Court of Fire kind of looks like it’s been blown up when you’re on the outskirts.
There’s a little forest surrounding it that they use for kindling reserves, situated between the outlying towns and the Ruins, so that’s where we’ll take cover while I work on manipulating the borders.
” He moved to pull me into his arms, but hesitated.
“We cannot be seen, Aura. If we’re discovered doing questionable things around the borders, it’s all over.
We’ll have to explain ourselves to everyone and hope the High Court can be convinced to see reason. ”
Wrenlock snorted as he sauntered over to us, equipped with as many weapons as the High King, minus the broadswords. “Yeah, right. Ogres will fly.”