Page 40 of A House of Cloaks & Daggers

“Please, don’t start acting like you care about me now.”

Much to my relief, Wren didn’t deign to respond.

He was sullenly quiet for the rest of the ride out of the little township. I matched his hostility—until Elera veered off the cobblestone road onto a dirt lane that was concealed by a thick overgrowth of trees and weeds.

“This is taking forever,” I complained. “Why aren’t we there yet?”

I felt Wren turn his head from one side to the other by the brush of his nose against the back of my hair. “Do you even know where we’re going?”

“No,” I admitted tersely.It’s not exactly like you offered up that information. “Tell me.”

“It won’t make the trip any shorter if I do,” he challenged wryly.

I’ve encountered humans like this before.

Veritable brick walls.

“Honestly.” I sighed. “I don’t know how much longer I can stand to be around you.”

Wren patted one of my thighs. “Then it’s a good thing you’re sitting down.”

Frustrated, tired, and beginning to feel a little sore, I gave up on conversation with him. I had no response, no snippy remark that could ever match up to his apparently bottomless well of bad attitude and deflection skills.

I might cry again. Truthfully, I was tempted to, simply because I was just so tired. But then I saw the house.

Not a house, but a mansion. A grand building of four levels, carved from blue-grey stone with multiple smoking chimneys and a manicured lawn dotted with routinely pruned and clipped hedge trees. Soft lace curtains billowed out from the open windows on the upper levels like a haunted house, and enormous cobalt statues of knights in shining armour stood to either side of a pebbled driveway leading up to the front doors.

Elera saw it, too, and veered towards it. My heart thumped a little louder with each crunch of her hooves on the white gravel.

“Oh, look at that. We’re here.” Wren dug his knuckles into my ribs again, harder this time. “Long may I remember your benevolence in tolerating me thus far.”

As thankful as I was to finally have arrived at our destination—and immensely grateful for it being large enough to put a lot of space between myself and Wren—it was not a castle by any means. And that meant there was likely no High King or dark and dingy dungeon beneath, and essentially no point to my being there aside from the aforementioned freedom from my obnoxious travel companion.

“I forgot to mention this earlier,” Wren went on, as Elera slowed to a stop in the broad front courtyard. “It’s best to look sharp when you’re meeting the High King. A little late for that now,” he lamented, fluffing my hair, “but oh well.”

Shaking off his hands, I forced my stiff muscles to move far enough for me to turn back to look at him, eyes wide with dismay. “Thisis where the High King lives?”

A haunted house with a basement rather than a castle with a dungeon?

Wren nimbly slipped down from Elera’s back and extended his arms to assist me. I accepted the help only because my muscles were cramping, and I wasn’t sure that I could make it down safely on my own. Elera was quite large.

“Sometimes. This is the House, his safe house,” Wren amended, gripping me under the arms and lifting me from the enormous creature as if I was nothing but a stack of kindling.

“Why is he staying in a safe house?” I asked, feeling the pressure of solid earth gradually reconnecting with the bones in my legs as I touched the ground. It was a strange but extremely satisfying sensation.

Wren pulled a face. “Bookworm,” he crooned, somewhat remorsefully. “Did I forget to mention there’s a war going on?”

Chapter seventeen

The Court of Pretty Little Human Things with Sharp and Nasty Tongues

“You brought me intoawar zone?” I hissed, as Wren marched with purpose up the three stone steps towards the mansion’s black oak door.

Carved in the middle, the Belgrave—and the Court of Light—insignia was painted in white-gold and sat above a brass door knocker shaped like a cauldron. Wren bypassed it, reaching for the handle instead. I glanced behind us in time to see Elera trotting around the side of the house, deliberately excusing herself from the brewing argument as the door swung back without so much as a creak. It opened into a long, dimly lit hallway lined with a tasselled mahogany floor runner. Candles burned in their sconces upon the walls, and a huge chandelier was hanging at the end of the corridor, right before a grand staircase.

It was not a homely sort of mansion, but nothing like an ominous castle, either.

Definitely a haunted house.

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