Page 21 of A Promise of Lies (Shadows of the Tenebris Court #3)

20

Kat

A few days after my conversation with Orpha, I walked back to my rooms from an early dinner. Late sunlight shafted through the windows lining the corridor, warm and bright. The gilded edges of the clouds painted on the walls glistened and glimmered as I passed. Moments like these brought it home that I lived in a literal palace—for now, at least.

But, of course, it could all come crashing down any moment when Cyrus discovered what I was up to or if Sura made her move.

Joy.

With that gloomy thought dogging my steps and a false smile on my lips, I returned to my suite. It was only when I closed the door, I could let the smile fall.

No sooner had I kicked off my shoes than I found another reminder of the lie I was living.

A small box of chocolates sat on the coffee table. A gift from King Cyrus.

I would’ve preferred cake, but these would do for eating my feelings.

I took a bite from one of the carefully crafted chocolates.

And immediately spat it back out. The floral flavour still clung to my mouth and nose though.

“Fucking violets.” I ran to the bathroom and rinsed my mouth out with water. Who the hells liked violet flavoured anything?

I wrinkled my nose in the mirror before pushing a smile in place. “ Thank you for such a delicious gift, Your Majesty.” I batted my lashes.

Gods. I almost convinced myself.

Just as well, since my life depended on the charade of a woman half in love with a king.

Piece by piece, I shed it. The smile first. Then a pair of heavy earrings he had given me that made my earlobes sore. Next, my gown in dusky rose.

I stood naked in the bathroom. Myself at last.

Yet I still felt this stickiness on my skin. A taint from his touches and my lies.

I found myself squeezing the potion bottle necklace as I turned the taps on full blast and ran a bath. I would scrub him away and sleep clean, for tonight at least.

I would be myself. Mine. Bastian’s.

Who I chose to be and who I chose to give myself to.

While I waited for the bath to fill, I wandered naked through the suite, checking there weren’t any other gifts I’d missed.

It was a habit Cyrus had taken to. Flowers. Jewellery. The box of chocolates. A lovely idea, if they’d come from anyone else, but always generic rather than tailored to me. Something he’d heard women wanted. Or maybe I was just ungrateful because of the giver.

I froze when I caught voices out in the hallway—my guard questioning someone who approached.

“I’ve just been with the king, and she’s been summoned.” Caelus.

As they knocked on the door, I grabbed a silk robe and tied a hasty knot. “Yes?”

Caelus entered, wearing a long dressing robe. Fae fashions were different to human ones, and I’d seen folk walking the corridors in various states of undress, robes included. But no one had come to my door in one.

“It appears we match.” My light-hearted tone rang hollow in my ears.

“I’m meant to tell you to ready yourself for the hot springs.” His gaze skimmed down me. “But I see you already are.”

I smiled, but my insides jolted together, like prey animals herding tight to avoid being the one taken by a predator. Caelus followed as I turned off the taps gushing into the bath.

Cyrus had summoned me to the hot springs beneath the palace. He’d charmed me. Given me gifts. And now he intended to have what he’d paid for. Ella had told me about men like that—they believed a few presents and some compliments gave them to right to something more.

In a daze, I followed Caelus away from my suite.

I would go away. I would let him do whatever he wanted to and I would be far, far away.

My stupid eyes burned, blurring the corridors we passed down. This was a matter of practicality. What needed to be done. It would save me, save Bastian, save Elfhame, and gods knew who else.

Sometimes a piece had to be sacrificed to take down a king.

Caelus spoke with a smile that tried to be reassuring, but I couldn’t take it in over the ringing of my ears.

I dimly registered the sun outside getting low outside before we started down the first staircase. If I could drag things out long enough, Sleep would claim him.

But that would just be putting off the inevitable.

These were simply consequences catching up with me. Once upon a time, they’d been the consequences of flirting with Caelus, with my uncle dragging me to him. Now Cyrus, with Caelus leading the way. What a horrible full circle.

We descended through every level of the palace. I passed through churning nausea to a numb stillness that teetered between determination and hopelessness.

At last, we reached the doors to the hot springs. Caelus nodded to the guards, who eyed me, but stepped aside to let us pass.

There was a momentary dizzy tilt to the world as we stepped through. A lodestone. I’d forgotten the springs were shared by the two sides of the palace. I clutched my stomach, almost losing my dinner.

“Are you all right?” Caelus murmured, catching my shoulder.

I wanted to flinch away from his warm skin through the thin silk, but I reminded myself I should get used to unwanted touch. Instead, I swallowed down the sick feeling and nodded.

“This way.” He ushered me down a narrow corridor that closed in, suffocating and dark.

I blinked when it opened up into a cavern, and I sucked down a greedy breath. Raw rock and crystal shards enclosed the space, glistening in the gold and lilac fae lights. It stretched on in near darkness, disappearing into clouds of steam, far larger than I’d expected.

Caelus led me past several pools of various sizes to the furthest—a large square one with a glittering black pillar at the centre. He gestured to the steps leading into the steaming water.

I shrugged off the robe. Better to get this over and done with. I couldn’t see Cyrus yet, but I could feel Caelus’s attention and the way he tried to bend it around me. Despite his efforts, I caught him watching as I descended into the dark water. He swallowed, but it was as though he couldn’t drag his attention away.

I had power over him.

The reminder allowed me to pull my shoulders back as I slipped into the warm water.

Even if I didn’t want this, it needed to be done. I was using what advantages I had, just as men had used their physical strength over me. This was no different.

If I told myself enough times, maybe it would be true.

At the bottom of the stairs, I glanced back at Caelus. Where was his king? He nodded me on, and I made my way further into the pool, water lapping at my breasts.

“We’re here,” Caelus called, lowering himself to sit at the edge, feet trailing in the water. Why wasn’t he leaving me alone with Cyrus?

From behind the pillar, a dark figure emerged. At first I could only see shadows, but as they dissipated into the steam, I let out a low cry.

Bastian pushed through the water to me, hands in my hair, lips on mine before I fully understood what was happening.

The scrape of stubble on my chin. The bruising intensity of his kiss. The paths his fingers traced on my scalp, like they were the ones that would always lead him to me. I knew them. I knew them all so well. Bastian had called me here. Not Cyrus.

It took too long to realise—Caelus had never said Cyrus had summoned me here. He’d said he’d just been with the king and that I’d been summoned. He let the guard—and me—link the two things and assume it was the king who had also done the summoning.

Fae had truly turned deception into an art form.

When Bastian released me, I sank from his kiss, clutching his arms, taking long breaths of that familiar smell, though I could’ve sworn his shoulders had grown broader. “I thought…”

“I know what you must’ve thought.” He stoked my hair, his touch soothing. “I’m sorry. We couldn’t risk Caelus saying anything in case anyone heard.” He kissed my brow, then fixed Caelus with a level look. “ Thank you . He has to stay. The guards at the entrance know Cyrus isn’t here. If he leaves, they’ll know you’re here alone.”

I sighed. “Which isn’t allowed. I’m to be accompanied at all times outside of Dawn.”

His mouth flattened.

I gave Caelus a tight smile before turning back to Bastian and pinching his nipple, making him yelp. “I could murder you , though.”

He caught my hand, kissed my palm, then placed it to his cheek. “I’m sorry. Truly. I needed to see you alone, and, besides”—the corner of his mouth tilted, a little wickedness creeping in—“I can’t stand seeing you in the clothes he’s chosen, and this was the quickest way I could think of to get rid of them.”

Despite myself, I laughed, but I still prodded him with my elbow as he lead me to the far end of the pool. I pulled the picks from my hair and shed the bracelet, leaving the tools and iron on the pool’s edge.

We stopped by a shelf carved into the rock where the water lapped only a few inches deep. He ran his hand through the shallow water, but his silvery eyes took their time trailing over me. “I hate to bring up work when you are so gloriously naked, but…”

“It’s a rare chance to actually talk about it rather than only leaving messages.” I understood, but that didn’t stop me gathering my hair over my shoulder, leaving one side of my body bared. I’d intended to seduce someone I didn’t want this evening and I wasn’t going to pass on the chance to at least tease the person I did want.

With Caelus on the other side of the pool, and the lapping water covering our voices, I told Bastian about my adventures in Cyrus’s office and suite, which I hadn’t trusted to a written report or relayed message. Bastian nodded when I told him I suspected Adra’s death was Cyrus’s work, tying up loose ends.

“Cutting them off, more like,” he muttered with a glower as he looped an arm around my waist and pulled me closer. “You’ve done well, love. Though I feel sick to think of you sneaking into his rooms. If he found you in there…” A shudder rippled through him, bringing us closer still.

“Hmm, that reminds me.” I pinched his nipple again, but he only flinched this time. “That’s for not warning me about things like pits in the hidden passages.”

At least he had the good grace to wince. “Ah. Yes. Sorry. I know all the paths so well, I don’t even think of them anymore. And I didn’t know you were going to find a way in there so quickly.”

I stuck my nose in the air, as cocky as Sepher. “Of course I did. I’m resourceful.”

Bending closer, he chuckled against my neck. “You are . Impressively so.” His lips grazed my throat, making me squirm in barely contained delight. “And you found that letter. I wonder who’s stirring things… and what else they might have planned. Do you think you can get it for me?”

I let my head hang back, giving him better access to the sensitive skin he was teasing. It was a challenge keeping my thoughts straight when my body was so occupied in waking from the slumber I’d forced it into on the way here. My nerves lit up, ready to soak up every breath upon my skin, every grazing touch, and the way his fingers dug into the soft flesh of my hips as though reassuring himself that I was really here. But he kept that other hand in the shallow water, like it was an anchor stopping him drowning in me entirely.

Somehow, I managed to string a sentence together. “I’ll try.”

I never said it was a complex sentence.

There was one more thing I hadn’t shared yet, distracted by the way his body slid against mine, slippery from the water yet perfectly familiar. “The mirror.”

“Hmm?” The sound reverberated from his lips up my throat as he trailed kisses to my earlobe.

I swallowed and tried to fight the flames he fanned in me, but it was a losing battle, and my reply came out gasping and desperate. “I recognise the descript— ah !” I couldn’t bite back the sound as he nipped my earlobe.

A dark chuckle followed. “Do go on with your report, soldier.”

I dragged in a breath, but that pressed my breasts into him, and since being pierced my nipples had grown almost unbearably sensitive. The pleasure shot through me, making my knees tremble.

Catching me, he pulled back with eyes darkened. “You seem distracted. Let me help.” Except his help involved manoeuvring me against the wall and crushing me against it. “Continue.”

Even with his hardening cock poking me, I would be professional and get out what I needed to say. I would .

I stretched my arms out to the side and pressed my hands into the edge of the shelf behind me. Focus, Kat .

“I have a theory. It was Nyx’s. The one she used to contact her lover. And I found a note on the back in his lover’s handwriting asking him to take care of it. It referred to the mirror’s owner as her sister.”

He sprang upright, eyes wide on me. “Sura was… No.” He shook his head. “ No . Dusk and Dawn don’t mix like that… not at their level, especially.”

“Sura and Cyrus.” I nodded, firm. “Her daughter…” I raised my eyebrows, prompting.

“Oh shit. She does look like him.”

“Exactly. And wasn’t she talking about uniting the courts? Wouldn’t a child of the two royal families be the perfect figurehead for such a plan?”

His chest heaved as though he could barely contain himself and his expanding thoughts. “And if she encouraged him to kill Lucius, it would leave Dawn destabilised enough that folk would welcome a new regime.”

“If they were lovers, that means she knows him well enough to know his desires and frustrations and thus exactly how to manipulate him.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Should I be concerned?”

“Are you saying I’m manipulative?”

Face screwed up, he made a sound that wasn’t “no.”

I mean, I was in the process of manipulating a king into letting me close. “That’s fair. But we’re talking about Sura, not me. She’s planning to rule with Cyrus and their daughter as one big happy family. She’s the person most likely to have written all the letters.” I frowned, trying to remember the one from his office. “It said she couldn’t reveal herself yet, how it wasn’t safe. And it isn’t safe for Sura to reveal she’s alive—not with her mother still around and very much in power.” After all, wasn’t that exactly why she’d made a bargain with us—our freedom, but we couldn’t tell Braea of her survival?

“It was the same writing, then?”

I squinted, trying to picture all the notes I’d found. “I can’t be sure. I’d need another look.”

He nodded. “All the more reason to try and get hold of the letter from his office again. But only if you can do so safely. Understood?”

“When have I ever been anything but careful?”

His eyes narrowed as he pursed his lips. “Do I need to list the occasions you’ve flung yourself into danger in the time I’ve known you, Katherine ? Let’s see. There’s drinking poison. And the sabrecat race. The?—”

“All right. All right.” I pressed my fingers to his mouth, though the fact he cared so much made me feel like like something precious—like some one precious.

Throat suddenly thick, I pulled my fingers away and replaced them with my lips. “I get the picture,” I whispered. “I’ll be careful. No unnecessary risks. I promise.”

Eyes screwed shut, he kissed me back once, then leant his brow to mine. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, love.”

No. I would stay as safe as I could. Wasn’t that what I’d always lived for?

But I loved him for wanting my safety almost as much as I did.

“You worry too much,” I murmured. “Let me distract you.” I tiptoed to his mouth, using the shelf behind me for stability, bundled up as much of that love I could and put it into the kiss I gave him. Long and deep. Comforting and warm at first, then a fire leaping to life, as I slid my tongue into his mouth.

A low sound reverberated from him into me, and suddenly the molecules of distance between our bodies pressed together was still too much. I arched into him as he crushed me against the wall. I needed to be him. To feel him. To contain him. I needed something imprinted on my skin to remember when I returned to Dawn.

Caelus was here, but fuck that. It hadn’t mattered before. Let him watch. Let him see that I adored this man and that, no matter what I had to do, I chose him.

I fucking chose him.

I reached between us and ate up the groan Bastian gave as I slid my hand along his cock.

“He’s watching,” he breathed around kisses.

I spared a glance for Caelus. He sat at the other end of the pool, lips parted, gaze skipping away from us. But he couldn’t hide how his robe bunched up in his lap, tenting on his hard length.

I had no power to escape Dawn, not yet, but I had the power to do that to him. I had the power to make Bastian shiver as I ran my thumb over the smooth head of his dick.

Here. Now. In the golden gloom, I had this small measure of power.

I drank it down. Every heady drop.

Head spinning, I called out to Caelus, “You can watch. There’s no shame in it.” No shame in sex , as Bastian had once told me. “You have my consent.”

Slowly, he turned back to us, cheeks flushed. I smirked at him as I stroked Bastian, making their breathing ragged.

Bastian took advantage of the permission I’d given, hands skimming up my sides and around my breasts. He teased his way closer to my nipples as his attention skipped from me to glancing over his shoulder at Caelus. “Do you want him to show you how much he’s enjoying seeing you, love? Shall I tell him to touch himself?”

My skin burned with each word until I had to lift myself partially out of the water, using Bastian’s shoulders. The steamy air was cool in comparison, but it still took me a few seconds to form the simple word: “Yes.”

Bastian flashed a wicked grin, and he called over his shoulder. “You heard the woman, Caelus. Show her .”

I’d been forced to release his cock in order to escape the water, and it seemed that had allowed Bastian to regain his composure, because he slid one hand under my backside and lifted me clear.

Now he had better access to my breasts and took full advantage of it. Just a graze of his lips on my nipple had me gasping as the sensation shot through me. When he closed his mouth around it and sucked, I cried out at the pleasure racing to my centre, eyelids fluttering shut. If not for his strong arms, I’d have fallen back.

When I regained myself, I found Caelus’s taut body on display, the robe discarded. Moisture made his skin gleam in the golden light, catching on the muscles of his arm as he slowly slid one hand down his length.

“I know this isn’t what I promised you,” Bastian murmured in my ear, “but it will have to do… for now.”

What he’d promised? I blinked, mind only drifting to the answer hazily. His double. He’d promised to give me both parts of himself. But he couldn’t reveal his secret with Caelus here.

I gave him a lazy smile and traced the edge of his ear in the way that always made his breath catch. “I suppose I can forgive you.”

“Good.” There was a finality to it. A line drawn that said this was the beginning. Of what, exactly, I wasn’t sure, but my pulse raced, eager to find out.

He squeezed my thighs, fingers grazing my edges, so close to where I throbbed for his touch. “Are you ready?”

I swallowed but still couldn’t get my tongue to work. All I could do was nod.

And, with Caelus’s gaze searing into us, Bastian began.