Page 49 of A House of Cloaks & Daggers

The House opened the bedroom door for me before I touched the handle, and I gave it a disapproving stare before I stepped out into the hall. I was highly suspicious that it might be banking favours with the intention to come back and claim them in the future.

Wren was not waiting outside my room.

Candlelight illuminated the hallway in a murky golden glow from the sconces burning along the sepia-coloured walls, casting flickering shadows across closed doorways and between wooden cabinets and hanging tapestries. I did wonder very briefly why the High King had chosen to use fire when organic orbs and flares of pure light seemed to be so easily accessible to members of his Court, but I was grateful for any illumination as I began to walk down the corridor alone.

Of course Wren didn’t wait for me.

I had told him not to—after accusing him and his sovereign of locking me in the bedroom like a prisoner.

Despite the fact that I’d been warned about the House and its enchantment, I refused to feel bad about any of it after I’d considered that there was still every chance they were torturing prisoners in the basement. If they were, the House knew about it and hadn’t done anything to stop it. My conspiracy theory was becoming less likely, but I had to keep my guard up, and that meant assuming the worst of everyone and everything.

Especially Wren.

When I made it back to the corridor of windows at the end of the hall, the candlelight behind me died off, and the flames burned brighter down the staircase. I was tempted to tell the House that I could find my way to dinner without help, thanks very much, but I didn’t want to risk losing light altogether, so I descended the staircase with my hand on the rail.

At the first landing, the candles leading to the ground floor had been snuffed out, and a string of firelight led the way down a wide corridor. Still, there were no signs of life, no sound beyond my footsteps padding along the mahogany floor runner as I followed the House’s directions.

My muscles tensed as I walked further along the hall, preparing for someone or something to jump out at me. Part of me wished that the High King’s inner circlehadbeen alerted to my presence, if only to save the awkwardness of an encounter with any of them.

Ancient weapons, suits of armour, and arrays of crystals and gemstones were displayed in glass cases along the walls. When my gaze lingered on any of them for too long, I felt that humming presence circle back to me expectantly. Averting my eyes, I stifled a shudder and quickened my pace down the hallway.

Every so often, a dark corridor would branch off between cabinets or doorways, but the candlelight continued in a straight line ahead until two huge double doors, left slightly ajar, appeared at the very end. The clink of glasses filtered out through the space, accompanied by a low murmur of voices.

Taking a grounding breath, I braced myself and pushed the doors open.

The termdining roomdidn’t feel quite right, although a huge buffet table stretched down the centre of the room with a dozen high-backed chairs padded with emerald-green cushioning. Platters, trays, and crystal towers filled to the brim with food were cluttering the spaces between woven gold placemats. No places were set with plates or cutlery for guests, aside from the three seats at the other end of the table.

Bookcases that had certainly seen better days lined the walls on the far corner of the room, where chaise lounges and side tables had been positioned around a circular green rug. Books had been left open, stacked on top of one another or barely hanging on to the edge of each wooden row, and quills and ink were haphazardly abandoned in the empty spaces between them.

The opposite wall was lined by floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the rear garden. A midnight sky swallowed the horizon, but the courtyard below was illuminated by blue light. That same blue light bobbed between the exposed beams above me like stars had been hung from the ceiling by invisible threads.

“It’s faelight,” Lucais called from across the room.

As if he had willed it to do so, one of the floating lights drifted down to meet me in the doorway. It was small, no bigger than a raindrop, though it had a hazy glow around it like it was blending into the very air. Although similar to a flame in shape, I could very clearly see that the little orb was, in fact, the branding in the Belgrave insignia.

The insignia shared with the Court of Light.

It was so peculiar, so ethereal, that it was no wonder we had been mistaking it for flame all that time. The faelight orb was not a concept that I could have conjured up myself—to have light appear right in front of me as if it had been scooped out of the sky in near-material form without any source of external power.Asa source of power.

Once I’d spent a moment examining it, the faelight returned to its space among the rafters, and I walked around to the side of the table closest to the windows in order to avoid Wren.

He was sitting beside the High King, who naturally occupied the head, reclined back on his chair’s rear legs with his boots on the table as he flipped through a book.

I considered moving the third and last place setting to a different spot, but I was starving, so I took my intended seat on Lucais’s other side. Across from Wren.

“Now I understand where you get that nasty little tongue of yours from,” he remarked without looking up from his book. “Do all human women use such crude language when requesting intimate favours from their human mates?”

I frowned, eyes dropping to the cover…

Not Wren’s book.

Mybook. The book I’d been reading in Dante’s that night.

“Where did you get that?” I demanded, jumping up from my chair. I made a wild grab for it across the table—decorum be damned—but the space was simply too wide.

Wren defensively lifted the novel over one shoulder with both hands and looked me up and down. “Careful, now, or you’re bound to get sauce all over that pretty little blouse.”

Blood boiled beneath my cheeks as I glanced down and realised that my breasts were scarcely a moment away from knocking over a sterling sauce boat. Mentally cursing the Housefor not supplying underwear, I braced my hands flat on the table and straightened my spine, willing myself to look him dead in the eyes. “Give it back.”

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