Page 98 of A House of Cloaks & Daggers

“Okay,” I repeated blandly.

That was the best he would get from me. I had no interest in setting his clearly conflicted feelings at ease by accepting his apology. I’d appreciate it much more if he would simply disappear.

Wren nodded again, thoughtfully. “Okay.” He started to turn but halted. There was something raw and bitter gleaming in his gaze. He took a sharp breath and waved a large hand in the air between us. “I know you don’t like me, and I don’t expect you to. I never expected that from you, Aura. But I need you to know that this has nothing to do with you.”

My throat tightened, heat rising up to melt my brain. “You can dismiss me all you like—”

“Notyou,” Wren snarled, though his voice was mild. He gave me a beseeching look, free of its usual condescending edge.

I squinted at him, exhaustion beginning to creep over me. It was such a common feeling around him. “What are you trying to tell me, Wren? That if I was born High Fae, and I was not the fated mate of your High King, then you might actuallylikeme?”

The corners of his mouth turned down, and he shrugged. Something like relief loosened his shoulders. “Perhaps.”

If he was trying to make me sick with these hot and cold flushes, I wouldn’t let it work. One day he was behaving like an ass, belittling me and wishing I was dead, and the next he was offering me twisted compliments and wishing things were different.

I gave him the sweetest smile I could muster as I began to walk down the hallway in the direction of the staircase. “Like I said, I don’t care.”

His eyes shuttered, barely concealing another eye roll. “Good. I suppose this means you can escort yourself to dinner then?”

“Please.” I didn’t turn back to him as I replied or even glance over my shoulder to watch him evanesce.

I didn’t need to.

One moment, I felt him standing there behind me. The next, the feeling vanished. Becausehehad.

The days we spent travelling into Faerie together seemed to have attuned me to Wren every bit as much as it had done for him, and I didn’t like it. I couldn’t shake it off, though. Even as I walked through the House alone to meet Lucais downstairs, I couldn’t shake the imprint Wren’s fingers had left on my forehead.

I stomped, more than stepped, down the stairs and cursed him repeatedly as I approached the dining room doors.

My furious fixation on Wren was short-lived. As soon as I stepped up to the doorway, two members of the High King’s Guard appeared out of thin air on either side. I vaguely recalled the slight ripple of their silhouettes as being the effects of a glamour and wondered why the High King had thought it necessary to hide two sentries at the entrance to the room for this occasion.

My stomach flipped as I considered the possibility that they had been there all along—even on days when he had made everyone else leave the room—but I refused to let it show on my face as I regarded them both with the best impersonation of an impatient, entitled glare as I could manage.

They inclined their heads to me respectfully and moved in perfect synchrony to push the double doors open.

Concealing my surprise that the look I acquired worked, I gave them each a brisk nod as I lifted my chin and stepped into the dining room.

Except it wasn’t the dining room anymore. Not really.

My confident steps faltered as I cleared the threshold and felt the faint whoosh of air hit the nape of my neck when the doors closed behind me.

That wasn’t the dining room. It wasn’t even the pleasure room from downstairs. It was like I had stepped inside a faerie nightclub, the two rooms combined to make one entirely new world of High Fae society.

Plum-coloured velvet curtains were lowered across the wide windows lining one wall. The banquet table that normally occupied the centre of the room had been moved against it, filled with platters and bowls and towers of food much like it had been the first night I dined at the House.

Cushioned armchairs and chaise lounges had been set up, filling the empty spaces in a similar design to that of the strong-smelling room I’d hurried through downstairs. As I blinked ahead, trying to force my eyes to adjust to the phenomenon before me, I noticed that the side tables holding pipes and bejewelled boxes had been relocated to the dining room, too.

With blue faelight orbs hovering throughout the room, some against the ceiling and others down at eye level or lower, I felt as if I was walking through the stars as I took my first step.

Everything was painted in a dim, ultraviolet glow and had a delayed effect—like time had been told to slow down, and my eyes witnessed movement before it actually occurred.

I searched the room for Lucais, but I hadn’t seen a crowd of faeries like that since I’d rode through Sthiara on Elera with Wren. Faeries of all different shapes and sizes and colours flooded the room; some with wings tucked in between their shoulder blades or tails curled around one of their ankles, others with horns that rose high above their heads and bumped into faelight orbs as they moved.

Every last one of them was dressed elegantly, but scantily. I looked down at myself and felt the urge to cover up, keenly aware of my lack of underwear beneath my long-sleeved clothing, as bare shoulders and backs and midriffs and legs breezed past me with an eclectic buzz.

There was no glamour.

This is Faerie. This is the High King’s inner circle, and his guests from the Court of Wind.

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