A Kingdom of Lies (Realm of Fey #2)

CHAPTER 26

The streets of Ayvbury were stained scarlet. Dark blood splashed across the snow-covered ground as though the skies had bled over us. Gryvern circled the air, dropping human body parts as they finished gnawing on bones and flesh. The wet smack of flesh erupting against stone turned my stomach.

We left the church, unleashing a battle cry across the village, which did little to drown out the screaming of the humans still alive.

“Get into your homes!” Duncan bellowed, blade raised proudly, gryvern blood running down across the hilt, covering his hands in a glove of black.

Red, red, red.

Even as I blinked it was all I saw.

Humans scattered like ants, bodies running into the shadowed doorways of buildings. Taking advantage of the gryvern’s distraction, they didn’t waste a moment in following Duncan’s command.

I stood, frigid winds whipping around me as magic pooled from my consciousness. Glancing up, I saw every pair of black, beady eyes pinned to me as though I shone like gold in a world of endless night.

Then, as one, they shot towards me.

Duncan’s cry disappeared, buried beneath the lashings of wild, frozen air that I conjured. It exploded outwards, a wall of unpassable force that raced up to greet the demons. It tore at the ground like unseen claws, catching debris, stone and snow. I felt them as the monsters collided with the barrier of wind and ice, no more than whispers of contact, like bugs crashing into glass as they tried to get to the sweet fruit on the other side.

I was the fruit and they wanted me. And all I could think about was getting them as far away from the humans as possible.

Duncan was beside me, eyes wide with wonder, dark hair tousled and swept back from his face, revealing every inch of his handsome splendour. And like the gryvern, his entire attention was on me, pale lips slack with shock. He looked at me as though I was his god, blinking heavily to see if the image of me and my power would dissipate.

I revelled in his reaction. It alone urged the winds to push stronger, keeping the gryvern at bay.

“I need to get the gryvern out of Ayvbury,” I said. “They want me, and they will follow me out. You need to check on those who are hurt. Kill any gryvern who straggle behind.”

“No.” Duncan’s face pulled into sharp lines of disagreement. “We stick together. You can’t take them alone.”

I found my lips pinching upwards in a pout, brows raising as my eyes flicked between the wall of silver winds and the crackling of ice that turned my fingers blue. “I no longer underestimate myself. Don’t underestimate me, Duncan.”

“Stay alive. Remember, I need you.” His expression was hardened steel. I waited for him to refuse, but instead he held his blade firm and nodded. “I will follow after you.”

I felt like his need had differed from before, as mine had, but I’d question him on it if we survived.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

He looked back towards my barrier, eyes narrowed as he readied his stance. “Just come back to me, Robin.”

I smirked, chest warming even as winter tore around us. “It will take more than this to keep us apart. I need you too, remember that, Hunter. How else do I get my audience with the Hand?”

Duncan smirked and with that I pushed out with my power, sending my winter force racing outwards.

We both moved, Duncan into the village, and me towards the path that led outwards.

My legs rushed forward, boots smacking across the ground, arms pumping at my sides, my entire focus on the stretch of ground beyond the village’s outer homes. Inhuman screeches followed me, the flapping of wings, the monstrous howls as they shadowed me. There was no opportunity to look back, but I only hoped that they all followed.

The gryvern caught up with me quickly, bodies slick as they cut through the sky, wings more forceful than my mundane limbs. I turned, throwing my hands up to touch the creature that reached me first. My goal wasn’t to remove myself from its line of attack, but to greet it. Power pooled around my hands, crackling and frozen. As soon as my fingers gripped the mangled, bone-thin limbs of the creature’s arm the pale skin hardened to ice. All it took was a touch – a thought.

I threw myself sideways, watching the blue-tinged glint of my ice as it completely devoured the flying creature. By the time it hit the ground there wasn’t an ounce of soft flesh left. The gryvern cracked on impact, body exploding in splinters of frozen blood, flesh and bone.

There wasn’t a moment to marvel at the destruction I’d caused before the next gryvern was on me. But at the back of my mind, I felt satisfied knowing I had taken one down alone, killed yet another one of Doran’s puppets, all without releasing the full storm within me.

I ran onwards, putting as much distance as I could between Ayvbury and me.

I got a few steps before more reaching talons clawed at my back. Skidding to a stop, I turned to face the horde. Gryvern clambered over one another as they flew towards me, fighting each other as though they were starved, desperate for the last piece of meat to fill their bellies.

I greeted them with a smile, breath coming out in misty clouds. “Come and get me.”

It was easier controlling my power with a physical movement, like a horse being controlled by reins, I held onto my control with a firm grip, casting hands upwards so the force of winter followed.

Blades of jagged, mountainous ice speared up from the frozen ground. The earth split as the knife-edged talons reached for the gryvern that flew above. They had no time to act, not as I impaled them like pigs over a fire, others crashing into the ice without a chance to move out of the way. Many died in that split second, blood hissing as it dribbled down the spikes of ice. Others were trying to break free to no avail, wings torn apart by my ice-made blades.

The sky broke with the keening screams of monsters.

So, you feel pain. The thought was dark and terrible. Suffer.

The horde was more than halved now, the remaining beasts forced to change course to careen around the death between us.

I didn’t want to look away from the scene. It was glorious to watch. Each gryvern flew with the face of Doran, as twisted and hideous as the fey king’s soul. And seeing them captured in death was a beautiful thing. If only Doran was here to witness it. I wouldn’t let a single one return to him. Their absence would tell Doran what I needed him to know.

He failed, again .

I picked the gryvern off one by one, toying with them as I ran only to stop and unleash more frozen horror. It was a game of chase, one where the prize was survival. And I would win. A trail of bodies was left in my wake, providing me a clear path back to the village without the need for a map or compass.

Each one I killed, I killed for Abbot Nathanial. For the humans who I didn’t know, the ones the gryvern had slaughtered in search for me. This was for them – all of them.

And more than anything, it was for me .

There was no requirement for a weapon made of metal, not when I was one created from flesh, bone and fury. I released the full extent of my magic, sharpening flakes of snow to tear at leathered skin and turning any gryvern foolish enough to reach for me to glass. I fought so hard, delirious with power, that I hardly noticed when their advances stopped.

Blinking, I looked before me to see nothing but empty skies. Unlike Ayvbury’s red stained streets, the ground here was stained black, the smell of death pungent in the winds that coiled around me. Gryvern littered the ground, limbs not even twitching as a fresh layering of snow fell upon their stiffening limbs like a blanket.

I called the magic back, willing its return into every corner of my being. The world seemed to calm before me, whereas the thumping of tension in my head persisted, the feeling melting from one of pleasure to discomfort after using so much magic.

Blinking, I saw the devastation before me from a different view, one no longer fuelled by power and fury. I looked to my hands, clean of blood and evidence of the horror I had caused; then I looked back to the bodies which caused a clawing of dread to slice through me.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, a gryvern splayed out across the ground, body covered in cuts and gashes that spilled black gore in a pool beneath it. One of its wings was ripped from its back, lying at an angle to its side. Its chest heaved with rasping breaths, blood splashing from the creature’s mouth. I stepped up to it, the tips of my boots an inch away. Those wide, endless eyes flicked towards me as the creature weakly snapped its jaws in my direction.

Despite the many I’d battled against, there’d never been the opportunity to study one up close. What I noticed astounded me. It was its ears. Much like my own they ended in pointed tips, not the round, human-like curves I’d seen on the others. My mind raced, flicking through memories for some hint that I had noticed such a thing before. No memory rose to aid me.

Doran had convinced the world that the gryvern were human-made. Whereas they shared the features of the fey.

I left the dying gryvern, moving between the bodies as I searched for a reason to believe myself crazy. But my exploration only caused the dread to tighten in my gut. Many of the dead gryvern had the pointed ear tips, much like myself and the fey King who had sent them, but others had the curved edges of a human. I knew little of the pack-driven creatures beside their want for fey blood and the truth of Doran’s control over them.

But I’d believed their origins to be linked to the humans in some way.

I was wrong.

A darkness hung over Ayvbury, the cloud of smoke and ash blotting out what little sun there was.

With the back of my blood-stained hand, I cleared clumps of ash as they clung hatefully to my eyelashes. At first it had disgusted me, knowing that each flake of ash was caused by the burning of flesh as a great fire devoured the bodies of the gryvern beyond the village. But the thought alone was not as horrific as the smell. It clawed at the back of my throat, stung my eyes and twisted my gut into knots.

Ayvbury was silent for the most part, all but the sudden wails of humans as they uncovered their loved ones beneath the mounds of snow and ash. It set me on edge.

“There is nothing more to be done here,” Duncan said, voice dull of emotion as he studied the hell before us. “It’s been made clear that our help is no longer required. We should leave before their grief sharpens and turns its focus on us.”

Duncan was right. I’d felt the human’s disdain towards us the moment I had run back to find him; hateful, burning looks were shot my way. And I couldn’t blame them. My presence had brought this horror to their homes. There was nothing I could’ve done or said to return life to the bodies that they mourned over. Children, husbands and wives. Homes destroyed. Streets littered with dark stains of blood.

“How far is Lockinge from here?” I asked.

“By horse,” Duncan replied quietly, fussing over the bloodied blade he still clung to, “two days. By foot, close to a week. We could steal a horse from the village’s stables, I think it would go unnoticed–”

“I’ll not give them another reason to hate me. Stealing their livestock is not an option, Duncan. We go by foot if that’s the case.”

I couldn’t do it, couldn’t take something from these people that didn’t belong to me, after I had been the cause of so much loss already. Part of me wanted to beg for them to understand, to sympathise with what I had lost, turn their hate towards the enemy beyond the Wychwood border, to Doran. But this was not the time.

“This is not your doing, Robin. These people may not see it now, but one day they will.”

“Such wise words are wasted on me,” I said, feeling hollow in my core, knowing what was to come. “We should have left days ago when we had the chance. Instead, I chose to give in to this stupid little… whatever this is between us. It’s done nothing but distract me from my goal.”

Duncan inhaled sharply, breathing through his clenched teeth as though my words had stabbed him in the chest. I would’ve felt the pang of guilt for my harsh words, but I was already drowning in it. Duncan was quiet for a moment, watching the humans intently who regarded us with just as much fear as the gryvern who had attacked them.

When he finally spoke, it was with a tone I’d not heard from him in days; short and sharp, like any useful knife, he replied, “There is a long journey ahead, Robin, far too long to wallow in self-pity.”

“Then let’s go.” I made to move, but Duncan grasped my wrist.

“Are you sure you want to do this,” Duncan said, eyes wide, brows creased. “If… if you say you’ve changed your mind on meeting with the Hand, I will release you – let you go.”

“What about those names you need me to collect?” I asked.

Duncan refused to look anywhere else but me when he replied. “They don’t matter.”

“What does then?”

He released my wrist, letting my hands fall back. “You.”

One single word pierced me deeper than any arrow could hope to do. This was my chance to turn back. To walk away. But then I remembered all those innocent fey hidden in a prison that no one knew about.

I had to do this for them. For answers – for their freedom.

“My mind hasn’t changed on the matter,” I said.

“Okay.” With that Duncan turned on his heel, pacing back towards the church.

I bit down on my lip, holding back the urge to call his name. But then I looked back at the scene of destruction and lost all ability to worry about Duncan and his feelings. I punished myself by glancing at every human I could see, studying their faces, remembering them. To imprint them each in my mind so when the time came to kill Doran it was for them as much as me. It was the least I could do.

But first I still needed an army, just not the one I originally set out for.