Page 46

Lucais as a prisoner.

Lucais as the High King.

The High King as a prisoner.

A prisoner as the High King.

All one and the same, yet such entirely different potential storylines.

My head was positively spinning as we came to a stop in front of a large oak door, which swung open without a single touch to reveal a lavish bedroom within. Both of them were watching me, waiting for me to move, say something, or take a breath.

“Thank you.” I reclaimed my arm and forced my legs to take a step, and then another, until I had crossed the threshold of the guest suite. “Thank you,” I said again.

I had nothing else to offer. There was nothing but a roaring in my head. A loud vibrational warning, though for whom it was intended, I had absolutely no idea.

Turning around in a slow circle, I instructed my eyes to focus on the room. It was grand enough to rival any penthouse apartment in a human hotel, and certainly more luxurious than any room I’d ever stayed in before.

An enormous four-poster bed sat in the centre of the room, adorned with a canopy that looked as though it could have been crafted with the delicate web of a spider. In one corner, a small desk sat beside a floor-to-ceiling bookcase filled with fiction and fairytales, and a russet velvet armchair sat against the wall on the other side. The similarity it bore to Dante’s Bookstore was startling but comforting.

A huge bay window overlooked the gardens, an abundant spread of soft green and lilac pillows and blankets on its seat, with patterned white lace looped over two brass hooks on either side. At the opposite end of the room, a gossamer curtain was the only door to the bathroom, hanging down from the open archway and faintly obscuring what appeared to be a marble bathtub and long sink.

“Auralie, I wouldn’t leave you like this if I didn’t absolutely have to,” the High King murmured from the doorway.

My throat had closed up like I was having an allergic reaction to the air in the room. I felt suddenly dizzy as I nodded my head and made to turn around, pausing only to examine the antique wardrobe standing in the corner of the room and the familiar insignia carved into its doors. I had to tear my eyes away from it, fixing my gaze on Lucais once more.

Later.

I could ponder the shared symbol later, and the revelation about my dreams and what to do with my newfound freedom.

The face I’d longed to see for so long was handsome and kind, but Lucais’s eyes were visibly guarded by an emotion too strong for me to properly discern. He bowed his head to me as he pulled the door closed, a gesture that stunned me so completely that I couldn’t even think to say goodbye…

And then he locked it from the outside.

A vulgar word rang out in my mind repeatedly.

The unmistakably damningclickwas so faint, but it instantly sobered me up.

Heart spluttering, I lunged for the doorknob. My steps were near-silent on the plush carpet, and I had almost clasped my hand around it when I heard Lucais’s voice on the other side. Swearing quietly at a silent Wren, the High King was hurling questions at him about what he was thinking and what he was doing as their voices faded down the corridor.

It had to have been about me—about Wren taking me there. Because I was human. Because I hadn’t imagined it. Lucais knew something. About my dreams, or dreams of his own…

The hallway fell silent.

They hadn’t realised that I’d heard the lock.

I held in my screams, my shouts, and the urge to try to break down the door. My hand fell back to my side. The doorknob was useless. Mortal limbs were useless.

I was a human in Faerie.

The moment of relief I’d felt earlier—the fleeting brush against freedom—was merely another faerie trick.

I was ahuman. InFaerie.

Walking backwards, my mind running a million miles an hour, I halted when I was in line with the bathtub on theother side of the lace curtain. And then I strode through it, wrestling my smelly cardigan over my head without bothering to undo the buttons. The curtain clung to me as I entered, and I swatted it away, wildly throwing my clothes around the room as I undressed.

Fine. Lucais and Wren could lock me in here.One of them had already dragged me across the countryside for two days with minimal regard for my welfare.But my family was safe, and there was no prisoner in the basement.

I was a madwoman, almost completely deranged, slowly losing her grip on the last threads of sanity. What did it matter if I took the opportunity to relax in a hot bath while I had a mental breakdown and resumed plotting my escape?