A Kingdom of Lies (Realm of Fey #2)

CHAPTER 7

The King’s Head tavern was as busy as I last remembered it. Even as I trudged through the main street of Grove, I heard the noise of drunkards singing and ale-thick laughter spilling beyond the aged door and iron-framed windows.

I’d waited for night to fall before entering Grove. Unlike with Ashbury, it was best I didn’t make a scene. I left my stag at the village’s outer limits and as far from human eyes as possible. Then I slipped into town during the darkening of early evening; no one paid attention to another cloaked figure fighting their way through the cold breeze that ripped through the narrow street in search of a drink to warm themselves up.

The welcoming stench of stale ale enveloped me as I entered the tavern, bringing a sense of comfort. I’d almost forgotten how strong the scent was, stubborn enough to cling to clothes for days no matter how many times they were washed through with warm water. And the taste of ale… I longed for it.

Most notably, it reminded me of my father. Reminded me what I was here to do.

I kept my head down and hood up as I navigated my way through the wall of bodies before me. To my luck, it was rather dark in the tavern. Only the light of the hearth gave it a warm glow that barely covered the inside of the low-ceilinged building.

The seat I found was in the far corner of the main room, surrounded by shadows. It gave a perfect view to the bar and the countless familiar faces of the barmaids who rushed around pouring pints of amber ale and flutes of more piss-coloured liquids. I caught glimpses of people I recognised as I studied the crowds before me, people my father had worked beside, even those who had treated me with some respect as I’d spent evenings helping behind the bar or cleaning the dirtied mugs and glasses.

Being half-fey never bothered the people of Grove. And if it did, I wasn’t aware. My father protected me from it. That was his legacy. I was under the impression my father’s reputation kept the hate at bay, in this village at least.

Now only I was left to protect myself.

I gripped onto the table as the ghost of my father suddenly played out before me. I imagined him knocking back jugs of beer with friends as he did frequently during a shift. I blinked and saw another taunting memory, one of him carrying a fresh barrel full of drink across one shoulder, not a bead of sweat brave enough to soak his brow.

This had been a home away from home for him. A place, I could now imagine, that took his mind off my mother in the years after she’d walked away from him – from us.

A distraction.

There was no fighting the single tear which trickled down my cheek. Until a hard-edged voice called through the haze, snatching my attention. “If you don’t want a bloody drink then shift yourself, boy. That seat can be for another who’s willing to part with the coin.” I didn’t notice the person standing before me until their foot kicked into my boot, snapping me out of my thoughts.

“Sorry,” I spluttered. “Yes, a drink. I’ll have a drink.”

At least it would dampen this pain.

“I’m not a mind reader. Ale, beer, spirits?” The barkeep leaned in, peaking beneath my hood. “Name your poison – Robin? Is that you under there?”

I pulled away as the woman’s calloused fingers threw back my cloak. “Why didn’t you say it was you?”

There was no point averting my eyes from the speaker anymore, not since my face was exposed, and the two points of my ears with it. Looking up I took in the entire vision of the rose-pinched cheeks and bundle of grey hair.

“Mable.” I forced a smile in greeting, rubbing my cheek as though it had an itch, and not because I wanted to clear any evidence of the tear away. “How’ve you been?”

Mable had worked in King’s Head for as long as Father had. She was a short, round and powerful woman, cheeks speckled with red veins and eyes heavy from age. Mable had a way of always fiddling with her apron, worn and stained from overuse; the stains across its material told stories of the pub’s history far more than any book would have.

“Overworked and under-appreciated. The usual.” She punched out a fist, knocking it into my shoulder. “Where’s your bastard father? Henry hasn’t come to work for weeks. Got the rest of us sorry lot covering his shifts whilst he is off galivanting around doing who knows what, with who knows who.”

My fake and forced smile faltered. Now was the time for me to lie and pass off my father’s absence with a made-up story. But I couldn’t bring myself to.

“He’s gone,” I said through a lump in my throat.

I could see from Mable’s expression that she didn’t know what to make of my comment. Her lips twitched as though she was going to laugh, but then she caught the lack of emotion on my face and she stopped herself.

“Well, wherever he has gone to, tell him he’ll be lucky to have his job back when he returns. Boss is fuming. Anyway, you didn’t come here to listen to my gripes. What are you having?”

“Ale,” I choked out as grief wrapped hands around my throat and squeezed. “Half-pint.”

It was my father’s favourite drink.

Mable nodded, looking everywhere but back at me. As she turned from the table I reached out and grabbed her wrist. “Aren’t you going to ask where I have been?”

If she had noticed Father’s disappearance, then surely she’d noticed mine.

“It’s not my business worrying about what young lads get up to,” Mable replied sharply, as though she rushed out her response because she simply did not want to answer it truthfully. “Two ticks of a lamb’s tail, and I’ll be back with that drink.”

Mable tugged her wrist from my hand. I could’ve sworn she muttered something else beneath her breath as she waddled away from the table like a stiff goose.

Maybe I should’ve raised my hood, but there was no point since those near me had caught a glimpse. The patrons of the pub didn’t look at me in the same way those in Ashbury had. This was different. They recognised me as I recognised the majority of them. Each stare was full of wonder and confusion, but mostly shock more than anything. They were surprised to see me. It shone across their wide, untrusting stares as clear as looking through polished glass. It had me sitting straight with my hand only a hairbreadth from the dagger at my waist, the very dagger Erix had given me.

Erix . I looked down at the table as my head spun for a moment. Father. My stomach jolted aggressively, the thought of them both making me want to vomit across the table. Pinching my eyes closed, I focused on breathing. If I didn’t, I would’ve given in to the anger that itched to be released, but the time was not right.

Not yet.

I was three half-pints down when the door to the pub slammed open. In strode the very person I’d travelled all this way to see. A small twisting of disappointment flooded through me as the only man who’d entered was James Campbell. He wasn’t followed by his reedy friend, the one who had taken my mother’s bracelet the night they both sold me off to Hunters.

James took two steps into the pub, chest heaving as he searched the crowd. I knew who he was looking for long before his stare settled in my direction.

“I want no trouble tonight, James!” Mable shouted across the now deathly still crowd. “Best that you leave before you upset my patrons.”

James was so angry he could hardly formulate a word. All he could do was raise a finger at me from across the room and shout one word. “Outside.”

I raised my empty glass and tipped it from side to side, calling back. “Fancy something to drink? It’s on me. Mable, another two perhaps?”

The gossip of my arrival had reached James, but I’d hoped it would’ve been sooner. A clearer head would be better for this encounter. But at least I was somewhat prepared, whereas James had woken up this morning believing he wouldn’t see me ever again.

Yet here I was.

And there he stood.

He embodied the very reason I’d become what I was now, the reason why Father had to travel to Wychwood, putting him on the path to his death. In my eyes, James Campbell had caused this all to happen when he sold me out to the Hunters.

I couldn’t punish Doran yet, so I needed someone else to face my wrath.

James was the perfect, and only, option.

It took a moment for James to utter something back to me. Perhaps it was his disbelief muting him, or the rage at seeing me in this place when he believed he had gotten rid of me. When he did speak he only managed one, sharp word. “How?”

I kicked out beneath the table, sending the wooden stool on the other side clattering to the ground. “Why don’t you come and join me? And I will tell you everything. Unless you wish for everyone to listen?”

“You have a death wish coming back here, boy.”

I was getting tired of old, hateful men calling me boy. Actually, thanks to him, I was a king.

“I’ll take that as a no,” I whispered to myself, standing from my seat and letting the dark cloak unravel to the ground. “There’s much I wish for. Perhaps death is one of them. But I can promise you I won’t be the one dying tonight.”

“No, no, no,” Mable said, cheeks redder than normal. “Both of you out. Now.”

James grunted like a wild boar, snatching the dirtied blade from his belt and brandishing it before him. The patrons around him stumbled out of the way, some surging for the door, but the majority stayed for the entertainment. The King’s Head was not impartial to a fight.

James paced towards me, looking down the edge of his blade as he spoke. “I could sell you again, you know. Probably would get more this time around.”

I paid careful attention to the reaction of those around James. People I’d smiled alongside, grown up amongst, to see if they were shocked to hear James’s revelation. People I saved by claiming the Icethorn court and preventing a war that they never expected. But there was not a single wince. Even Mable’s expression stayed stoic.

They all knew. All of them.

They had known what James and his accomplice had done to me. Who they had sold me off to. Which made it easier for my conscience to deal with what was to come.

“Come closer and say that again,” I spat, hands lifting at my sides. “You were lucky the last time, but I can promise you it will be different now. Go on, I urge you to try.”

“Don’t play games with me.”

Pressing fingers to my lips, I stifled a dramatic gasp. “Trust me, James, I’m taking this very seriously. I’d go so far to say I’ve never felt more serious about anything in my life. Look…” I plucked the golden-hilted dagger and threw it with vigour, the blade’s tip sinking into the wood flooring between James’s boots. “No weapons besides the one you hold like a child. Come, let’s dance this out like men.”

“You are no man,” he snarled, lip curling over stained teeth. “Fey–”

“Don’t… excite me.” My shout reverberated through the room in a cloud of rolling mist. Glass shattered as my frozen touch met with tankards upon tables, held in hands, and panes between window frames. The ground was littered with shards, crunched beneath the heavy boots of people who left the pub with haste. “Be careful what you call me, Mr. Campbell. A wrong slip of the tongue could cause you great harm.”

James stood still, hair quivering by my conjured winds. I wondered if any of the other patrons watched with the same fearful gaze that spread across his face. The knife James held shook as his fingers gripped tighter. It was about all the movement he risked as I paced through the parted crowd towards him, my lingering freeze of magic still present in the air around us.

“Lost for words?” I asked quietly, as though he was the only one in the room. “Do you have nothing else to say to me now you see who I am? What I am!”

More people scurried from the pub, the door slamming wildly behind them. Those brave enough to watch placed themselves behind tables and black-painted pillars for protection.

“All I know,” he began, lips curling into a cruel smile, “is I could’ve gotten far more coin for you in the first place. Whispers say that the Hunters favour those with magic. You are dangerous. I did the village a favour by trading you off the first time. It will be the same again.”

I sighed, disappointed at his reply. In a different world, during another time, a kinder choice of words may have saved this man’s life. Now, all it did was solidify the taste for blood that had settled within me since Father’s death.

“Don’t stop,” I encouraged him, arms wide in welcome. “Tell me just how you feel. Come on, I can take it.”

“If we had the chance, you would’ve been driven out of this place years ago, you and your scum-fucking father.” James sucked in a disgusting gargle of snot and spit then gobbed it to the floor at my feet. I looked down, stomach churning, like the splatter of green and yellow liquid dribbling into the grooves of the slabbed floor. “Believe me, boy , you are nothing I have not seen before. Do not think you’re special, for I’ve traded many of your kind for coin over my years. The only difference is you made it back. Your tricks do not scare me. Know that.”

“I don’t wish to scare you, James.” Even with the knife now pointed inches from my chest I felt calm. Calm knowing that the blade would do little to stop me. It felt like I’d won before I’d even made my first move.

“Where’s Henry?” The way James said Father’s name made my skin shudder. “Sent his little creature to battle on his behalf, did he?”

My chin lowered to my chest as though a sudden weight on my shoulders was too heavy to bear. I looked up at James through narrowed eyes, fingers flexing at my sides.

“You have brought this on yourself,” I said. “Sealed your fate the moment you picked me as your next trade. This is the path you choose to walk, I am simply ensuring you meet that path’s end–”

“James, enough! Leave the boy and go.”

I turned my head to look at Mable as she pleaded from across the bar a final time. Her voice was an unexpected anchor, dragging me out of my darkened thoughts. Her face, although stern, was soft and familiar, a face I had looked upon for years, one that had lined with compassion for me and my father during that time.

She was different to James Campbell. Mable was kind. The way she looked at me now with furrowed brows and lips pursed with concern reminded me that not everyone had the same thoughts as James.

But the moment shattered when James’s sloppy shout revealed his next move.

I turned as he lunged the final inches towards me. It was selfish of me to pinch my eyes closed so I couldn’t see what happened next. I exhaled a powerful breath; conjuring a wave of frozen air that spread out before me, ensnaring my attacker in thick mists.

The piercing of James’s knife never made it past the charcoal grey tunic I wore.

It was the screams of those who watched that had me prying my eyes open. Before me, encased in jagged blades of ice, was James Campbell, frozen in place with his mouth captured in an eternal cry, the sound still echoing in my mind.

I stumbled back a step, a hand pressed to my chest.

Come on. My inner voice was a screaming storm. Come on.

Where was the feeling I had expected? The relief. I expected this revenge to piece my heart back together. Yet it still rattled in pieces within my chest. I waited and willed it to return to me. To make me feel something. Anything. It had been part of my plan from the moment I left Farrador.

If I couldn’t avenge Father’s death by ending Doran’s life, then I wanted to go to the man who had started this all. But as I looked on upon him I still felt the same endless hollowness within me.

“You’ve killed him…” Mable’s voice shook as she walked towards me. I barely heard her over the ringing in my ears. I watched as she reached out to James’s body to touch the encasement around it. Could she see how James’s skin had turned a dark, bruised blue beneath? How his final breath seemed to have caught in a pocket of ice beyond his frostbitten lips?

As her finger touched James, he broke apart.

It wasn’t exactly Mable’s touch that shattered the ice, but me.

My fist clenched and James Campbell broke apart. I almost felt bad. Almost . Mable’s gasp of horror itched up my spine as the crack spread wildly across James’s body.

I couldn’t move as he crumbled at my feet. His limbs and body cracked as though his skin and bones were made from glass, spreading out in small pieces across the tavern’s floor.

Someone gagged, followed by the splattering of vomit across the stone floor. Others cried out in revulsion. And all I could do was watch as the bloodied, shattered mess of a man smashed into countless pieces. I studied the smattering of ice, blood and flesh, finding it impossible to believe that a body had even stood before me.

“Get out, Robin.” Mable smacked her fist into my arm, pounding over and over. “Get out! Get out!”

I didn’t know it then, but her hearty sobs would haunt me for a lifetime.

“I’m not sorry.” My lips hardly moved as I spoke. “He deserved this. He did.”

I was trying to convince myself, repeating my words over and over as Mable continued slapping and hitting me. My feet began to move as my mind was completely numb. Even as my boots trampled over the crunching of ice and flesh, I couldn’t truly register what was happening. What I’d done.

Where is the relief I desired?

Why am I not fixed?

Something heavy crashed into my back, sending me stumbling forward. A metal tankard clattered to the ground. Then another hit me, pain spreading across the side of my face. I raised a hand to my cheek and felt something warm. Blood coated my fingers as I pulled them away. The remaining patrons of the pub threw things at me, bellowing for me to get out, calling for guards to arrest me.

Murderer. Killer. Evil.

I allowed the words to settle in my soul. They were right after all. I was all of those things.

The door to the pub crashed open, cracking against the outer wall, as I was driven out into the night.

Blood trickled down my face from the cut across my cheekbone, mixing with the tears that had begun to fall freely. I couldn’t clear them away as I still held my arms above my head to stop the objects from hitting me.

It was dark in the street outside of The King’s Head. The world seemed to spin violently, as though the street shook beneath my feet. Night was endless, every single star a witness to my actions as I put distance between the pub and those who wished me pain for what I had done.

I stopped suddenly, eyes pinching shut as a flash of burning red fire exploded before me. The fiery snake spread in a wall, surrounding me on all sides. Panicked at the sudden, unnatural flame, I whipped my head back and forth, searching for the source, already knowing who had found me. My attention became fixated on a parting in the smouldering wall as two figures stepped through; like a curtain it separated, rushing back together once they both stood in the centre of the roaring fire.

Althea Cedarfall swept through flame without fear or hesitation. “Robin, what have you done?”