Page 93 of A House of Cloaks & Daggers

“Bookworm,” he called down the passage, the rumble of his voice echoing off the stone walls. “What happened to you?”

I stopped.

Placed my palm flat against the wall to balance myself.

And then I ignored him and continued to walk down the stairs.

Nothing. Nothing happened to me.

It hadn’t happened tome.

Chapter thirty-nine

You Didn’t Ask for This

Instead of returning tomy bedroom or finding somewhere else to hide, I walked through the House in search of Lucais. He was my antidote to the poison Wren spat on me at every opportunity.

We hadn’t talked about what happened in the dining room, but we made up on the beach—and it felt like that was for everything, sealed by the kiss he placed on the top of my head before he left me in my bedroom. Though, I was so preoccupied trying to figure out the mystery of Wren that I hadn’t even paused for a moment to consider why Lucais remained so distant. To figure out why he had kissed my hair instead of my mouth.

It felt forced, yes, but at the same time, the pull between us was pure nature. Instinct. Like he and I were made from the same cut of cloth, the same threads tidying our edges, the same stitching joining us at the seams. I wanted to explore that withhim, to learn more about him and discover what made him tick, if only he was willing—

“Aura?”

Halfway down another seemingly endless and stock standard hallway, I started and spun around. Lucais was poking his head out from one of the many doorways, his dark hair a tangled snare draping over his brow. I blushed, feeling suddenly coy. He knew I was meant to be in the training room with Wren.

“Are you—” As he stepped over the threshold, his breath hitched. I don’t know if it was the look on my face or the feelings spilling into my scent that tipped him off. “Aura,” he murmured, the sound so rich and deep that I experienced it almost like a physical caress. There was a hint of hesitation, though, and I bristled at it.

“I don’t understand,” I told him, using my annoyance as fuel for my brazen confidence. I wasn’t completely sure if the heat in my blood was stoked by Wren or Lucais, but I was determined to use it on the latter. I stepped towards him, and his feline gaze swept along my body, from the top of my head right down to my toes, as if he wanted to commit my figure to memory before he pounced.

“Go on, then,” he urged, eyes darkening.

“You learn about me but send your right-hand man into my world to retrieve me. Okay, fine, you’re the High King and maybe youcan’tleave. But then you shove me into one of these gazillion bedrooms and disappear for hours as soon as I arrive. You sendhimback up, later that night, to bring me down to dinner. If it was anyone else, I would understand—but for your intended High Queen? You can be informal with Wren in the dining room and allow him to stuff his face before you pick up so much as a piece of bread, but you wouldn’t come back to check onmeyourself?”

Lucais’s throat worked. “I regret the way I handled that.”

Nodding my head in support of that sentiment, I went on, “Enough to change your behaviour from that point on? I don’t understand the way you look at me. Half the time, I feel like I’ve offended you somehow. The other half, I feel like you’re so turned on by my presence that you’re sitting there and picturing me naked.”

His full lips twitched, and he ran his tongue over them, shifting his position so that he was leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded over his chest. “Would it upset you if I was?”

My lower belly clenched, heat blooming between my legs. I took a measured, equal breath in an attempt to steady my cantankerous heart. “It upsets me that you can’t seem to decide on one,” I answered quietly. “We kissed, and it was pure warmth…and then you went cold. You left me to my own devices for almost a month, forgetting about me—”

“I never forgot about you,” he cut in, glaring at me. “Yes, I had some rather pressing matters to attend to that arose with little notice, but I was never far from you. I watched you in the garden twice a day to make sure that you always returned to the House safely when you were finished scattering your scent along the boundary line. I made sure that Delia was here on the days when the power feeding into the House’s enchantment had to be temporarily redeployed. And I waited, every night, to make sure that you were sleeping soundly before I left to attend to other matters, in case you needed me—”

“I do need you,” I insisted, practically falling a step forward. Another. “I need more than small talk over dinner and a kiss on the top of my head, Lucais. I don’t know why you keep taking back everything that you give me—”

His irises flared with sudden rage. “Because youdidn’t ask for this,” he snarled, and the sound sent chills racing across my skin.

I shook them off and closed the distance between us. I had to tilt my head almost all the way back to glare up at him. “Neither didyou.”

Lucais huffed a humourless laugh. “Whether or not that’s true, it is irrelevant. I have no interest in taking anything from you that I’m not entitled to take, Aura. And right now, that’s nothing. I am entitled tonothing.If you wish the situation between the two of us to be different, you’re not asking the right person.”

“You want my permission?” My brow creased. He already had it. “You want me to ask for it?”

His entire body went still. “Ask for what, exactly?” he murmured, eyes narrowing with heated suspicion.

“You,” I whispered.

Lucais groaned, throwing his head back as he moved to press my body against the wall, boxing me in between his arms. He bent down to press his forehead against mine, his breath warm and deliciously smoky as it fanned my face. “Be more specific,” he said, his voice tinged with desperation.

---