Page 72 of A House of Cloaks & Daggers

The ethereal beauty gave me a lazy once over, something wicked and ravenous glinting in her eyes. “I see,” she murmured. “I’m sure the pleasure will be mine, Aura. May I call you that?”

Words simply evaded me.

That was the first time any of the High Fae had asked permission to use my nickname. Both Wren and Lucais had simply assumed, and none of them had told me how they knew so much about me. I gathered it was because of the Oracle, but had everyone in Faerie witnessed that premonition?

“Dear little thing,” she purred, drinking in my disorientation with her feline, emerald green eyes. “I hope you won’t take offence to the things you overheard. I just hadn’t laid eyes on you yet.”

My gaze darted towards Wren, who was sitting in Lucais’s chair at the head of the table, watching me with disdain, before finally settling back on her face. “Does that make a difference?” I asked.

She cocked her head to the side and sniffed the air. “Let’s just say it leaves no doubt.” A delicate, one-shouldered shrug. “You are his mate.”

There was no emphasis, no underlying inference in her tone. She said it like a statement, like it just made perfect sense, and it was that easy for her to accept it.

The echo lingered in the room, clinging to the air around me.

Soulmate soulmate soulmate—

Wren pushed his chair back, obnoxiously scraping it against the floorboards, and sketched a bow for the High King. “I was defending the chair,” he explained, giving Morgoya an exaggeratedly suspicious look out of the corner of his eyes.

She sniffed again, decidedly ignoring the fiend. “Indeed,” she murmured to no one in particular. But her eyes were locked on me.

Nearly blushing beneath her gaze, I was only partially aware of Lucais taking his seat at the head of the table and Morgoya slipping into hers. It left me hovering beside Wren awkwardly, both of us aware that there was only one seat left directly beside the High King.

Lucais’s right-hand man looked inclined to shove me out of the way in order to claim it, but he cleared his throat and announced, “I’ll stand.”

Faeries and their politics and pride. They behaved as if there were not two dozen other empty seats at the table, which was bare save for a few unlit candelabras and the notebook Morgoya had placed in front of her.

Before I could move or object, the beautiful woman gave me a pointed look, waving a perfectly manicured hand towards the High King. “Why don’t you sit on his lap?” she suggested lightly.

My heart skipped a beat—because she was serious.

“Go on,” she urged, directing me towards him with her eyes. “It’s perfectly acceptable behaviour in our circle, and we’re all friends.” Her sparkling gaze drifted up, over my shoulder, until it landed on Wren. “Aren’t we?”

“I hardly think that’s necessary,” he replied in a tone that made me wonder if theywerefriends. “Aura’s a half-breed. She doesn’t know the first thing about the Court or what behaviour to expect or display. It’s confusing, and she tends to spook easily.”

Wren spoke about me like I was a wild horse needing to be broken, and I bristled, balling my fists at my sides. Lucais gave me a wary look, but he leaned back as if to offer me the choice.

Without so much as a glance in Wren’s direction, I brushed past him and settled into the High King’s lap.

It didn’t feel as uncomfortable as I had thought it would. Everything about the High King’s Court was informal, from the lack of respect Wren had shown by sitting in the High King’s chair initially, down to their behaviour when they dined in private.

The intimate gesture was no different.

The seat was wide and high-backed with two sturdy wooden arms carved into small waves at their ends, and Lucais filled the space almost completely. My legs dangled over one of his knees, crossed at the ankles, and I folded my hands in my lap, one shoulder pressed into the soft spot between his arm and his chest.

Balancing on an angle, I deliberately faced Morgoya, and Lucais’s arm instinctively came up to create a barrier between my spine and the hard edge of the chair. His right arm rested on the other side, hand dangling loosely over the end, and I found myself studying the veins and tendons on his hand and wrist, disappearing beneath his long-sleeved tunic. I matched my breaths to his deep, even breathing, remembering the feeling of his mouth against mine.

“My, my,” Morgoya purred, studying us intently. Her nostrils flared delicately. “It isdelicious. Even when it’s all so unofficial.”

The High King shifted in his seat, drawing me a little closer as he tightened his arm around me. “Tell me what’s happened,” he instructed calmly.

Morgoya straightened her spine, all traces of delight leaving her eyes like stormwater rushing down a drain. “There was another attack last week. They’re all coming from the Court of Earth, through the eastern passes beneath the Metal Mountains,” she began, interlocking her fingers as she placed her hands on the table. “We estimate about one hundred caenim per horde, the most we’ve ever seen at once. There’s been no word from Gregor or his sentries at the Watch, so they’re either all dead and he’s too busy to respond, or…they’relettingthem through.”

“The gateways are intact, running at full power,” Wren added redundantly.

I felt, more than heard, Lucais inhale a lengthy breath. “Where?”

“Sthiara was raided again,” Morgoya reported quietly. “Minimal structural damage, but that makes seven dead and two still missing. We can’t find where they’re hiding out. Our scouts picked up traces of the caenim along the road out of town, all the way back to the edge of the Forest along the coast. We’rescouting the Ruins now, but there’s no indication that they attempted to enter or skirt the Forest.” Her eyes flicked to mine and quickly dropped to her hands. “It’s pretty clear what they wanted and that they’ll keep trying.”

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