A Kingdom of Lies (Realm of Fey #2)

CHAPTER 5

The vision of Erix didn’t waver. I rubbed my eyes hard once, twice, and still he stood before me.

It was him. Not a trick of the light, an illusion crafted by Doran’s power over the light. The shine of his silver gaze confirmed that. But something was different. Dark shadows that hung beneath his eyes; the hollows of his cheeks deeper against the dulled tone of his usually sun-kissed skin.

“This isn’t real,” I muttered, body numb as Erix walked towards me. “Erix is… he is in Farrador.” My royal guard took a step forward, his footsteps crunching over broken stone. “Keep away from me. Stop! Whatever this is… end it.”

“I am flattered that you believe me to be powerful enough to conjure the unreal, but I am no god,” Doran said. “At least not yet. What you see before you is very much real. Touch him, see for yourself.”

A faint breeze picked up Erix’s scent the closer he came, warm cinnamon and crisp fallen leaves on a mid-autumn’s morning. Still, I refused to believe it.

“This was your plan,” I said, voice a pathetic whisper. My hold on Father grew tighter as Erix loomed above us. “You left me and gave yourself up.”

“I did, and now you have what you want.” Erix’s reply was as cold as the power that longed to escape my body. One single thought and I could devour this entire place in ice and wind.

“And I too have what I desired,” Doran gloated from behind Erix.

I stared at nothing but my guard, unable to formulate a word. Father groaned as I still fought to hold him up, and all Erix would do was look down at me with his empty, uncaring eyes.

“What has he done to you?” I sobbed.

Erix’s lip curled, flashing teeth. “Forgiven me.”

“Of course I did,” Doran said, clapping meaty hands together. “He is my son, after all. My last hope.”

“Lies,” I screamed, spittle flying beyond my lips. “All lies–”

“No, Robin. It is true. Doran is my father, I am his son. His berserker.”

Questions thundered through my mind; it was near impossible to only pick one and not spill them all out at once.

“Have you known all this time?”

“Yes. As did Althea, Queen Lyra. I came to King Doran expecting to be killed for my crime. Instead, I have been given another choice. Another chance.”

“Forgiveness!” Doran shouted from behind Erix, interrupting the moment. “I gave him what he sought. Do you see now? I am not the heartless monster you think me to be. You have what you desire, and I have what I desire.”

Something was still missing, a move on the game board that Doran had set up. I just couldn’t work it out yet.

“His forgiveness doesn’t matter,” I seethed, tears spilling freely down my cheeks. It was easier to ignore Doran as I focused on my former guard. My Erix. “What was all this for if you leave me?”

“I did it for you.” Erix’s lips twitched.

“That’s not good enough.”

“Robin, I told you to ask me about what I am. I gave you the chance. But you were stubborn and refused to.”

Everything was falling into place. How Tarron and Erix’s relationship was so taut yet so intertwined with secrecy. And Tarron knew, he had to have. He’d called Erix berserker before, I just didn’t place my questioning in the right place. I would never have guessed it was a nickname shared between siblings. Half siblings, but family all the same…

Erix was Tarron’s brother. His blood.

Half Oakstorm. Half monster.

“You see now, Robin? I was within my rights to demand Erix’s return. He is my property. He, like your father to you, belongs to me.”

I could hardly hold a breath. My chest shuddered in rhythm with my heart that hammered within it. Physically, Erix and Tarron shared no similarities, however, as my eyes darted between Erix and the mad king behind him, I could see subtle hints. In the colouring of his hair which had begun to grow over the past weeks and the light tint of King Doran’s eyes.

“What now?” I spoke the haunting thought aloud. “If you’re an Oakstorm by blood, where is your magic?”

“Powerless in the sense you are imagining,” Doran confirmed. I hadn’t seen Erix with an ounce of magic. During all the fights and training, I’d never seen a slip of Oakstorm power. It had only been his controlled, yet buried aggression which kept him swinging a sword.

“Berserkers are nothing but mutts. We qualify for magic different to what you have come to know,” Erix said, his voice a low growl, as though gravel and stone filled his throat. For a moment I was certain the shadows that hung beneath his eyes moved. “I am danger incarnate, as I warned you.”

“You are Erix. My Erix, duty and pleasure, remember! You don’t need to stay with him,” I pleaded to him, praying he felt my desperation and heeded it. My speech was frantic, my eyes flicking back and forth between the two men. “We can leave. Together. He will not fight us here.”

Erix turned away from me in silent refusal. Doran laughed softly as though my begging entertained him greatly. Dread sliced its hateful claws through my soul as I looked upon the man I had known. Who I believed I had known. I was wrong.

“Berserkers are interesting creatures. I admit I regret killing the majority off. I could have had a legion of chaos and destruction at my fingertips much earlier if only I had given them a chance. Or at least more than I do now.” Doran strode towards Erix with pride. “Tarron was almost perfect, in all ways. However, he had one flaw that resulted in his downfall. The inability to listen to commands and follow through as I so wished. I blamed his mother for that. Yes, Tarron should have killed you, however, you burrowed yourself into a pocket of his weakness and, ultimately, it resulted in his demise. Berserkers, well, they are different.”

I could no longer ignore the way Erix flinched as Doran returned a bulging hand to his shoulder. Even his lip lifted into a snarl of refusal, but his body didn’t move an inch. It was as though his mind and body warred with one another. But Erix didn’t fight him off. He complied, allowing the man to touch him as though he didn’t have a say in the matter.

Like he, as Doran said, was being controlled.

“I’ve had enough of this,” I said, my arm going dead beneath the weight of my unconscious father. “Our meeting has finished.”

I looked to Erix, pleading with wide eyes for him to come with me. But with each step I took backwards, my heart broke into one more piece, for Erix didn’t follow.

“Wait, Robin. What is the rush? I have more to share with you. Did your dear father not teach you manners when addressed by your elders?”

“Fuck you,” I snarled. “That’s what my father taught me.”

Doran’s face elongated into a gasp of horror. “Terrible choice of words. How unbecoming of a king.”

I felt nothing like a king. I could pretend all I wanted, but deep down I knew.

“Please, Erix,” I begged a final time. “Come with me.”

“He stays because I command it.” Doran laughed as though he was proud of himself. “He will do everything and anything I so desire. It is the curse of his kind. Once they give in to the darkness, there is no clawing their way back to the light.”

The atmosphere shifted quickly. A sense of danger itched at the insides of my ears and scraped along the bottom of my spine up to the base of my skull.

“Speak,” Doran commanded, fingers digging into Erix’s shoulder. “Tell your precious little bird just how correct I am.”

Erix screwed his eyes closed, taking in a deep breath, preparing himself. Then, when his eyes opened, they were slightly lighter than before. That was when he shouted at me. “Run, Robin. Now!”

Erix’s outburst had my blood turning to ice.

“Silence,” Doran bellowed, and Erix’s mouth sealed shut before another word could be uttered. His eyes shifted back to the empty dull sheen that I’d seen this entire time. For that single moment, it was as though a mask cracked and I saw the true Erix behind it.

Fear bridled within me, knowing the pure control Doran had over him.

“Can you just imagine the possibilities?” Doran’s free hand reached down to the bulge in his worn trousers. “Now I have what I require I can lose myself for days with the Mounts who wait for me back at Court. I have many years ahead of me. All it takes is minutes to secure more of Erix’s kind.”

My stomach twisted, bile rising in the back of my throat. “You sicken me.” It was a natural reaction to spit on the floor before Doran. The taste in my mouth was too unbearable to swallow at the thought of the disgusting creature bedding those he spoke of. Doran’s red, swollen hand gripped the space in his crotch and squeezed, gargling a laugh as he revelled in my reaction.

“Surely you are not rushing off, Robin,” Doran replied, frowning. “Not without bidding your lover goodbye?”

I shook my head, unable to look at the empty shell of the man who held the name Erix. A man who I’d spent nights with, lost in his touch and taste. A man whose warm hands had left imprints on my body.

Doran ran his yellowed tongue across his equally yellowed teeth, making a sucking noise that made my skin crawl. “Erix, kiss him goodbye.”

“No,” I spluttered as Erix began stepping towards me. “Stop, Erix, don’t do this. Fight his control.”

I cared little for the warning of Altar as my magic seeped from my body. I would not, could not, let Erix near me, even if a part of me longed for his touch a final time. Because that was what this was, a final time, I knew that truth deep down.

Erix was lost to me.

The greenery around me crystallised as a cool breeze of ice spread. It didn’t deter Erix, who kept coming, even though his boots crunched the blades of iced grass and stone with each step.

Father was growing too heavy to hold as I stepped backwards towards the exit. I couldn’t risk seeing where I walked.

“Robin, do not regret missing the opportunity to say farewell to your love.” Doran’s voice deepened as though he concealed something beneath it. “I admit I never had a taste for boys. Not when the Mounts within my Court present themselves like honey to the tongue. But in this light, I can see what entrapped Tarron. What piqued the interest of my berserker.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Erix,” I snapped, defeated as my back pressed against something hard. I turned to see the vine-wrapped pillar I had walked into. Father slipped from my arm and crumpled to the floor, wheezing upon impact, but I could do nothing to help him now. Not as I held both hands out, pressing them into Erix’s chest with as much might as I could muster. My back arched against the stone as Erix still forced forward, my arms shaking with the effort of keeping his unwanted mouth from leaning towards me.

Ice spread across the leather of his breastplate, devouring the dark material until it glittered beneath my hands. I turned my head to the side, trying everything to stop his mouth from coming closer. “No.”

“No?” Doran called from somewhere behind Erix. “Say it louder. Scream it.”

“Get off me!”

“Louder,” Doran commanded.

“Please…” My voice was broken, shattered like my soul. “Erix, stop!”

Doran spoke to Erix as though he was a dog upon the end of a leash. “Hold.”

And Erix did, frozen in place, his lips inches from my face. I was crying, tears turning to beads of ice as they crusted upon my cheeks. I closed my eyes, turning my head to the side to stop myself from seeing Erix’s shadowed face so close to mine.

“Release him.”

I spluttered as the hold on my upper arms released. My legs gave out, my back slipping down the vine-covered pillar until I was in a ball at his feet.

It took everything in my power not to look back up at him. To my relief, Erix stepped back, stare locked to a spot on the pillar behind me. He moved as though he was soulless, empty and void of who he truly was. It was hard to hate him for his actions, that fact shattering my soul more than I believed possible.

He was mine, but now Erix belonged to another.

“Help the Hunter from the floor, my berserker.”

Erix followed Doran’s command, gripping my father’s frail shoulders and hoisting him from the heap he lay in at our feet. I tried to stop him, reaching out for my father, but Erix battered my attempt away. The back of his hand cracked into the side of my face, sending me sprawling back to the ground. Teeth cut into my lips, filling my mouth with blood, stifling my frustrated cry.

“Now…” Doran purred, dragging out the word until it was unbearable to listen. “Shall we end this?”

“Give him back to me… Erix…” I stared deeply into his unseeing eyes, pleading.

I reached out again, winds howling around us like screams that mimicked my inner turmoil. But before I could so much as get off the floor, Doran gave a final command.

“Kill the Hunter.”

“Father!” I screamed as winds ripped up throughout the ruins. The ominous presence no longer warned me to stop. Magic thrust outwards, but a moment too late.

There was no stopping the crack of bone. It sang above my winds, the clearest noise I had ever listened to. I was powerless to stop Erix as he twisted my father’s neck. For a brief moment, I watched as my father’s eyes exploded open, full of knowing before the life drained instantly from them.

All I could do was watch, disbelief storming through me.

This can’t be happening.

This isn’t real.

Dark, scarlet blood oozed from the jagged wound on the side of Father’s neck where bone protruded through skin. It spread down his neck, covering Erix’s hands. Helpless, I watched as it splashed to our feet. And there it melted the ice-covered ground until the foliage drank it.

I blinked once, twice, only to see the greenery turn black. It rotted before my eyes, spreading quicker than my ice until the ground was covered in dead grass and vines.

“Oh dear,” Doran sang, his voice muffled as though he spoke beneath a body of water. It was near impossible to hear through the ringing in my ears. “It would seem I have angered a god and a king all within the same moment. How terribly inconvenient.”

A growl built in my chest and exploded outwards. I first believed the shaking that gripped the world was a result of my fury, but it was the ruins themselves that trembled, caused by an unseen hand.

Erix lost his footing and dropped the lifeless body of my father to the ground. Doran’s pleased face cracked with concern as he watched Welhaven tremble.

“I’ll kill you!” I screamed, black rot devouring the ruins around me. It drained the colour from the beautiful flowers that draped from beams and filled trees. Where my father’s blood spread, so did the decay, until plants shrivelled and the sweet smell of death filled the air.

“Best we be off. Erix, come.”

I jolted forward, nails reaching for flesh, only for the ground to shake so violently I lost my footing. Stone fell down around the scene, cracking against the earth, all whilst Erix walked calmly through the ruin towards Doran, who waited by the dais. There was a hint of fear in the king’s eyes as he looked around the ruins. Dust showered us as the deathly cracks of stone began to explode, no longer held up by the strong foliage as it perished.

Welhaven was dying. Altar’s sacred land had been defiled by my father’s blood and His anger echoed through the air of this place.

But my fury was nothing compared to that of Altar. It boiled inside of me, bubbling like Althea’s flame, so inconsolable the temple could’ve fallen on me and I would’ve welcomed it.

The air grew thick with cold mist as I allowed the magic to be free. In the place where my heart had been was now a storm of ice.

I thrust a desperate hand outwards, battering a wall of frozen wind towards the bloated king. But he cast it away with a gesture of his jewelled hand. “You may have power, but you still do not know it. You do not have the power to kill me, Robin Icethorn. I am your equal in magic. And I shall sleep well knowing I took everything from you.” Doran grinned, lifting a hand before him until the air began to peel in two, revealing his portal of light.

My mind was hardly allowing me a moment to make sense of what had happened. All I knew was fury and a thirst for death.

“You run like the coward you are.” I seethed until the magic in my body ached against the skin, begging for release. “Wherever you go, I will follow.”

“And I will be ready to greet you with my army, whereas you will be alone. No army, no one to fight for you.”

“No, not yet,” I growled, pushing my hands forward as spears of dark ice exploded across the ground. By the time my power ripped towards Doran, he disappeared through his spindle of light which blinked closed behind him.

Ice cracked into the wall beyond the dais, devouring stone and mortar in a second.

I sagged forward as Welhaven crumbled around me. I encouraged my ferocious winds to keep rubble and stone from falling upon me. And then I screamed, unleashing every ounce of pain and anguish as I looked down on the lifeless face of my father’s dead body.