A House of Cloaks & Daggers Bonus Scene: Lucais's POV
Ah, fuck.
When Auralie’s lips curved into the most faerielike smile I’d ever seen on that gorgeous, spiteful mouth, I knew I was in trouble. An incoherent shout came from behind me as she cocked her head to the side, those seastorm eyes stabbing relentlessly into my heart, and then she—
Oh, bookworm.
The light glitched, a flash of onyx shattering the moody gloom, and my world plunged into darkness as deep as the middle of the night. I knew it was Aura’s doing because I felt her imprint across the spell as clearly as I would feel her hands all over my body. The woman had a touch of madness, tempting me to chase the heat in her gaze before it turned ice-cold on me at the last possible second, and I was addicted to every lingering glare and stolen glance. I thought about her all the damn time—the blue oasis of her eyes, the shivers that danced along my skin beneath the brush of her fingertips, the delicate pout of her touch-starved mouth, and those strands of sunset-red hair always blowing out of my grasp.
When she reached into the core of my magic and ripped out the lights in the sky, it was a very familiar ache.
“Lucais!”
Enyd’s voice came from somewhere in the shadows, an irritatingly shrill note of accusation in it. Internally, I groaned at the inference. As if I would shut down my own fucking magic. Why are we not beyond this yet?
Deep down, I understood it was because the passage of time was a tricky thing to balance against the impact of world-altering events. The ones that created realities, and the ones that destroyed them. Lights were a sore spot for faeries, and they probably wouldn’t be able to heal from the trauma until someone from the Court of Light no longer possessed the crown. Fear took no hostages in right and wrong.
I suppressed a sigh, knowing my options were slim—and that the behaviours and feelings my people had about the matter were not entirely unjust. Consequently, my next move would be taking responsibility for the future High Queen’s darkness leaching into my Court. Aura had ripped light magic out of the sky, and the last time something even remotely similar happened, it signified the beginning of a long and brutal war.
They still blamed me for that, too.
“What the fuck is going on?” the High Lady from the Court of Wind demanded.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I raced through a mental list of acceptable explanations, but I kept stumbling over the one truth I couldn’t tell.
She turned the lights out. Aura found a literal switch for my magic and fucking flipped it.
The beautiful, clever little fool and her disastrous magic. Wren tried to stop her, but there was a dead body between them, and he was still reeling from her rejection. It made him hesitant and clumsy.
I knew what had happened immediately, but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t bring myself to twist the truth, even if it would stop Enyd from screeching out redundant statements or quieten the surprised rumblings from her men. The sound of gravel shifting underfoot accompanied the commotion as soldiers staggered through the sudden dark, forgetting that a corpse was lying somewhere in the middle of our group—quite separately from its head—and I blinked in a futile effort to help my eyes adjust.
Standing in the courtyard, encased in the pitch-black expanse of night falling in the middle of the afternoon, I rubbed my temples and counted to three. Someone nearby shouted an obscene curse after having stumbled over the decapitated head, and that was when I finally let light flare in my palms.
I kept it dim and tight, enough to illuminate my silhouette and prevent anyone from tripping over Aura’s figure. She was on the ground beneath me, her hair splayed around her head like a maroon curtain, her expression peaceful as she dozed inside complete and utter magical burnout.
I fucking warned her.
Sighing, I sent the light from my palm out in a wide orb, swallowing the two of us in a bubble while the others stumbled around in the dark. They could wait. I needed a minute or two to summon the strength to fix what the love of my life had damaged.
My light gilded her face, partially covered by auburn curls, her chest rising and falling with every deep and even breath. Auralie Roberts was out cold. I crouched down beside her, my mouth in a tight line as I swept a lock of hair back from her forehead, and made a quick assessment to ensure she hadn’t sustained any serious injuries on her way down.
By the Elements, I had fucking warned her.
It was only a couple of days prior when she had started to hoard magic like a Goblin with treasure. I could sense it gathering around her, stagnant and unused. The reserves of my own powers were stretched so thin that I felt starved myself—of magic and her touch—so any spark of rogue power seemed to linger near me like a feast to which I was not invited. Hers was…painful. The excess magic blooming around her chafed because it was so opposite to my own, and yet so deliciously abundant. She tempted me with her mind, body, soul, and magic. Still, I warned her away from it. I told her that she risked imploding and taking out Sthiara, and she ignored me.
Of course she ignored me.
I gazed down at her and I knew I’d fucked it all up.
From the moment I first saw her until the moment I told her I loved her—everything was wrong and backwards and deeply regrettable.
Except… There had been those glimmers.
We’d had moments where it felt like she was tripping over me—despite my mistreatment and her attitude, and the fact that she believed she had to fall in love with Wrenlock—and my arms ached in the most euphoric way from being constantly poised to catch her. Waiting. Always waiting. Waiting for her to fall, and then to accuse me of pushing her.
It was deplorable, but I’d admit to it. I’d confess that I would gladly spend the rest of my life deliberately tripping her over if it meant she would spend more time in my arms when I inevitably broke her fall with my body. Over and over again. Like a dance. Like a rehearsal for the performance of a lifetime. Aura would call me clumsy, and I’d neglect to correct her so she didn’t see how pathologically in love with her I was.
She could look at me with hatred in her icy blue eyes just so long as she kept looking.
“Aura,” I whispered, selfishly reinforcing the light barrier against sound so my words to her were private. “You beautiful little idiot. I don’t think your fall is responsible for the blackout.” I actually suspected her magic had gently guided her to the ground after knocking her out because she hadn’t made a sound and there wasn’t a single mark on her body. “I think your magic burned through your system so fast that it caused you to short circuit. I’ll bet this is all self-preservation,” I murmured, adding the last part more for my own benefit than hers. I doubted she could hear me through the magic fog, anyway. “That’s what it always is for you, isn’t it?”
Self-preservation.
Staying alive. Even when she…
My hand tightened into a fist around a strand of auburn hair as the memory surfaced, as it had been doing at random ever since I found her kneeling before the caenim, ready to die in the field. She had followed me into a portal willingly because she wasn’t satisfied with her life in the human world, but something had followed her through it—something that wasn’t tangible or traceable.
Something even I couldn’t fight.
I hoped to the High fucking Mother that she would decide to be strong enough to fight it herself when she woke up.
My beautiful, lonely, haunted girl.
The bane of my existence in the very same breath.
My undoing.
Heaving a long breath, I stroked one finger down Aura’s cheekbone before I pulled her into my arms and rose from the ground, cradling her limp body against my chest. I counted to three again before I let our private little bubble of light stretch and expand—first to incorporate the others, and then Sthiara, before finally spreading it out across the entirety of my Court. I was about to have a lot of explaining to do, and the demands on my magic made me feel light-headed. I needed to get inside, away from prying eyes and droning voices—even if only for a few minutes.
Turning my back on the rest of the world as my light bled into it, I carried Aura into the House. Morgoya’s lilting voice drifted on the wind as she dissuaded Enyd and her men from following me with the threat of petty blackmail and illegal sanctions. Wren would deal with the body before he tracked me down—whenever he felt brave enough to revisit the subject of my soulmate with me.
I wanted a private moment with Aura when she didn’t consciously hate me. A moment where I could feel guilty for everything I’d done, and I could tell her all about it. Explain why I did things that broke my own heart. Confess that I broke hers on purpose, but only so the damages would be limited to things I could control. And then admit I was losing control.
I loved her, but I was losing control.
