Page 41 of A House of Cloaks & Daggers

Wren held the sturdy door open and beckoned for me to go inside. His eyes were molten gold again—not quite as bright as they had been in the bookstore but more radiant than they’d been during our travels. I studied his nonchalant expression for a moment longer before I took a step over the threshold.

The door closed, plunging us into a moody gloom and eerie quiet, and Wren leaned against it with his hands in his pockets, wrists fitting between glinting silver weapons on both sides. He suddenly looked very much like a butcher.

“If you dedicate enough of your few remaining human brain cells to trying, you may recall that I told you about the Malum and their diabolical plans.”

Eyes flashing, I crossed my arms over my waist and bent my head forward as I whispered, “You didn’t tell me that they’d waged awar.”

Clicking his tongue, he waved a hand at me dismissively as he pushed away from the door and began to stride down the hallway. He took exceptionally long steps. “Details, details,” he muttered.

Wren was bad enough on his own, but something about being left alone in the corridor of the haunted house felt worse, so I hurried to keep up with him.

Although there were no signs of life elsewhere, I tucked my hair behind my ears and attempted to straighten my clothes. No longer stained by the blood of my apparent enemies, they were still wrinkled and smelled like horsehair. I desperately needed a brush, some toothpaste, and a shower.

The hallway was lined with polished wooden consoles—some cleared, and others hosting vases and age-stained candelabras—and had about a dozen closed doors dotted oneither side. We passed all of them, heading straight for the staircase at the end.

“Honestly,” Wren grumbled, shaking his head as he began the ascent. He took the stairs two at a time, forcing me into a near-jog to keep up. “What did you think was going to happen when I said the High King might want to summon all of faeriekind to his behest?”

“Not an all-out war,” I snapped breathlessly. “Maybe a threat or something, but—” I huffed, pushing my shoulders back. “I really don’t give a damn about faerie politics.”

“A threat against the High King is as good as a declaration of war,” he countered evenly. “Nobody’s slumming it in the trenches yet, but things are all amiss on the Map.”

I stopped when we reached the next landing and made to grab for the sleeve of his shirt, but he moved so quickly that my grip snagged on his wrist instead. He grasped my hand as if on instinct, and my fingers slipped through his as I pulled it back, biting down on the inside of my cheeks to keep them from going red.

Wren gave me a strange look.

A stream of sparkling daylight pooled over him from the reinforced window behind me. The top of his blond hair glowed silver like a halo. With Wren’s strong features, mesmerising stare, and boyish haircut—not to mention his sheerheight—one might easily mistake him for an angel.

An angel cast out for never taking anything seriously enough, of course, but an angel, nonetheless.

I felt it again at that moment—the magic, brushing against me with an invisible hand, asking to be let in.

No.

Wren’s eyes bored into mine, the colour of absolute bliss, darkening slightly as he searched my face for something. “Yes, bookworm?” he purred.

Space.

The haunted house had plenty of space. I simply needed to get through the initial induction, and then I could move far away from Wren and work the last nagging traces of him out of my system.

“The Map?” I queried in a voice weaker than I would have liked.

He lifted his head, expression smoothing over into cool disinterest. “The Map of Faerie. Ancient, powerful thing. Handed over to each High King at the start of their reign. Very important in the grand scheme of things. Not important right now.”

I didn’t know why, but I pressed. “What’s amiss on the Map?”

He studied me intently for a moment, lips pursed. “Blythe, the High Lady of the Court of Darkness, went missing some seven odd years ago. Hasn’t been seen or heard from since, and nobody has dared to go looking for her because her Court seems to have vanished from the Map.”

One of my eyebrows rose. “There’s a Court of Darkness?”

“There are six Courts.” He began listing them off on his fingers. “Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Light and Darkness. The Court of Darkness was formally called The Court of Pretty Little Human Things with Sharp and Nasty Tongues”—he paused, wiggling four of his outstretched fingers in my face before I swatted his hand away—“but much like their namesake, they didn’t understand the very serious concept of war, so they succumbed to the enemy quicksmart.” He gave me a self-impressed, crooked smile.

“Oh, is that so?” I folded my arms over my chest, smiling back saccharinely.

His lips pulled back into a grin at that. “Blythe’s Court has been blacked out on the Map. It was all shady and shadowybefore, but now it’s justgone. Malum infestation,” he added. He made a comical face and shuddered, brushing invisible muck off the sleeves of his shirt. “And now the Court of Earth is acting suspicious, which is an issue because they border against the Court of Darkness, and even more of an issue because Gregor’s the second most powerful High Lord and won’t need much convincing to cause a scene.”

I fell into step beside him as he nodded towards the last flight of stairs and began to move again. “Who’s the most powerful?”

“The High King, naturally.”

---