Page 88

We had made up, so his mood should be improving…

A piping shriek rang out, and I whirled, backing up against the hard planes of Lucais’s chest, searching for the source. It was a soprano, ringing out through the air like a song, so it couldn’t be the caenim. It echoed with fear and panic and—

“Calm down,” the High King said with a laugh, wrapping one arm around my waist and placing his other hand across my thundering heart. His long fingers splayed out, spanning nearly the entire length of my collarbone. He bent his head to mine, nudging my face towards the water with the bridge of his nose against my cheekbone.

The sea had risen up like a fountain, like an enormous orb of water was being sucked from the surface, and inside of it was a—

“Mer—”

“No.” The High King placed his lips against my temple so I felt his smile. “We have iron nets to keep us safe here. That’s a lochgrub. They’re usually harmless.”

A lochgrub—that’s what Wren had called me when I’d refused to step through the gateway.

Eyes wide and heart stuttering, I blinked at the blob of seawater hovering above the surface, trying to peer through the ripples and glare of grey light to glimpse the creature inside.

“The Merfolk clip their wings so they’ll be easier to hunt,” the High King explained, his breath tickling my ear. “Some of them risked fleeing into these inlets when we lowered the iron nets before that could happen, but they remain trapped in the water, too scared to take flight in case they land on the wrong side of the nets. That’s what it’s doing now—trying to fly—but it just can’t bring itself to break through.”

I stared and stared and stared at the creature in the moments that passed as the fountain of water slowly began to fall back into the sea.

It was small, but it looked almost human. With two short arms and legs, webbed feet, and long fingers, it had skin instead of scales that shimmered like a pearl. The wings were translucent, the gold-tipped outlines barely visible as they shuddered, and its body-length hair was the colour of seaweed and starlight.

Right before it sank beneath the surface again, the creature turned to face us.

An angelic face, huge eyes wide and glistening with regret, stared back at us as we stood together on the sand. It lasted for a heartbeat before it disappeared, sending small, dark waves crashing upon the shoreline.

“That’s a lochgrub?” I whispered.

“That’s a lochgrub,” the High King confirmed, pressing a warm and affectionate kiss to the top of my head.

I took his hand and let him lead me away from the inlet, back towards the House, but I wasn’t aware of anything as we walked.

If he spoke, I couldn’t hear him. If the dinosaur remains were still there, I couldn’t see them. If the courtyard or the roombeyond it were empty or filled with faeries again, I couldn’t notice. And if the light sky had indeed begun to clear, I hadn’t looked at it.

After Lucais walked me back to my room and I frantically searched for the copy ofThe Sins of StarsI had kicked under the bed, all I could think about for the rest of the afternoon was the ethereal vision I had seen along the beach.

The lochgrub.

The creature Wren had likened me to before he brought me into the Court of Light.

He could have called me anything—any number of creatures who froze on the spot and refused to move or were painfully slow and indecisive.

But he’d called me a lochgrub.

And now that I had seen one for myself, seen that it was so different from what I had imagined, the magic in my veins had started to squirm again. Trying to speak, trying to be noticed. Wren had called me a lochgrub, and everything—everything—stopped making sense.

Because lochgrubs were strange, but they were absolutely and incomparablybeautiful.

Chapter thirty-seven

The Armoury

The next morning, Ihad well and truly convinced myself that I was overthinking everything.

I was halfway throughThe Sins of Starsbefore I fell asleep, and nothing I read did anything to convince me that my original thoughts were wrong.

Micael and Livia were doomed.

His brother eventually told their parents, and Livia was sold into service at another noble household. Fate was getting in the way of a perfectly good love story, and I wondered why Wren gave me the book to read when it was so obvious that he detested the idea of Lucais being my mate.