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I had suddenly lost my appetite.

Lucais waited for a few moments before deciding to start his own meal, and Wren followed his lead a few moments after that. I remained motionless in my seat, my fingers curling around the edges of the book on my lap as I stared down at my empty plate.

Meticulously and repeatedly, I went through all of my knowledge of the two men and their world in my head. The Malum and their vicious pets, stalking me into the human world. The small group of High Fae I had witnessed lounging in the courtyard, who had simply vanished into thin air. The Court of Darkness disappearing on the Map ahead of a brewing war. And the table full of food intended for many more people than had actually been invited or shown up.

When I lifted my head again, I found Wren watching me. I registered the fear in his eyes before he blinked it away.

Swallowing the saliva pooling in my mouth, I turned back to the High King. “You knew I was coming here.” He’d said he was worried about me, and he’d recognised me almost immediately upstairs—like we’d been introduced before. “Why doesn’t your Court?”

Lucais took longer than he should have to chew his food. He tilted his head to the side, towards Wren, as he swallowed, and his black curls shifted across his forehead until they touched his eyebrows. He glanced at his fair-haired companion, whose face was angled towards his plate again, and my heart began to race in a disjointed rhythm.

“Why are you looking at him?” My voice echoed in the otherwise deathly quiet room.

The two men shared a look, the picture of that moment worth a thousand words over a thousand years. An entire conversation passed between their eyes, so knowing and intense that no emotions were spared, and I found my hands, curled into fists, were beginning to shake beneath the table.

“They know,” Lucais blurted before I could explode into a thousand pieces. Wren glared at him, but he turned away from his friend, the wall of solid wood in his eyes beginning to split. “The Court knows that you’re here.”

My legs began to shake, too. My wholebody. “You lied to me.” I shot daggers at Wren with my eyes, trembling harder with each moment that he refused to meet them with his own. “But you told me that you couldn’t lie.”

Eventually, Wren’s sharp, unrelenting gaze switched from the High King’s face to mine. His expression was hard and unapologetic. “That was a lie.”

Chapter twenty-one

Wicked Gold Eyes

Ifelt my soul,my consciousness, beginning to detach from the rest of my body, but I forced myself to maintain Wren’s unforgiving stare with one of my own. “You sick son of a—”

“I told you that you aren’t asking the right questions,” he snarled, leaning on the table as if he was ready to flip it over. His hair was silver beneath the faelight, but his eyes were burning like the flames of the candles in the hall. “Do you know howeasyit has been for me to lie to you, Auralie? Do you know howdangerousthat makes me?”

No.

No.

NO.

Everything—everything from the moment he erased the memories of my mother and sister, to the promise of taking me home…

He lied.

He lied to me.

He lied. Tome.

My heart began to crumble like ancient stone beneath the hammer of the gods, and the pain was too intense for me to even consider why it felt so personal. Why his betrayal felt like he had stripped me of my clothes, grabbed me by my hair, and dragged me through a pool of shattered glass, only to leave me naked and bleeding on the stairs.

Wren watched those emotions crossing my face, his own an impenetrable mask of cruelty.

“Alright,” Lucais interjected, his voice more like that of a mediator than a King. “We need some context here.” His tone changed in an instant, rumbling with command. “Wren. By the Oracle, you need to calm down.Now.”

The villain across from me did not move, speak, or breathe.

I sank down in my chair, pinned in place by his wicked gold eyes.

“Auralie, I know this sounds crazy,” Lucais continued, voice softening, “but it’s important for you to understand this. Faeries cannotlie, but wecandeceive you—and we’re very good at it.”

I must have looked as though I didn’t hear him properly because the High King sighed.

“We cannot tell you, with conviction, that the sky is a colour that it’s not,” he went on. “Wecanmake a sarcastic remark that the sky is blue when it’s not. Auralie, are you listening to me?”