A Kingdom of Lies (Realm of Fey #2)

CHAPTER 33

I stared deeply into the eyes of Elinor Oakstorm, watching as my name sank into her psyche. Up until now, I’d believed her dead, but the woman before me couldn’t be more alive, nor anyone else but an Oakstorm. I saw Tarron in every feature, small and imposing. Then again, Elinor reacted to my name in the exact same way. Shock, horror, disbelief and… hope.

“It cannot be.” Elinor’s voice shook as she spoke; disbelief creased her features. It was as though she clawed the very words from my mind and spoke them aloud.

I stood there, unable to formulate a response that would make sense.

“It’s true, my lady. Robin, he told me himself. I believe him,” Jesi began, until the sharp retort of the woman cut her off entirely.

“I know who he is. I do not require a name to see the truth in his face.” Frail, bony hands reached out of the iron bars towards me. “And never did I think I would look upon the face of an Icethorn again. But here you are, and my, don’t you look like your mother. Like the reflection of a mirror – beautiful, cold and an Icethorn without question.”

I kept my hands at my sides, trying to hide the violent shaking as I gripped them into fists. It was impossible not to notice the hurt that pinched her brows into a frown. Slowly and with an air of regret, the woman pulled her offending hands back into her cell. Turning my back on the caged woman, I looked at Jesi with a plea in my eyes. “This is a mistake.”

Jesi ignored me, her body almost blocking the pathway back towards the main atrium of the cavern. I had to get away. I would rather have perished than be looked at by those same eyes for a moment longer. Tarron’s eyes.

“If I have said something to offend you, I apologise. But you must understand, I have not looked upon your family for many years. I am shocked, that is all.”

Looking back to the woman, I forced all guilt from my expression. Guilt for knowing what had become of her son. Her family. Guilt for knowing the very reason I was before her in the first place was because of my plot to side with the Hand to ensure her husband’s death.

“They are dead,” I said, matter-of-factly. “My family – because of–”

Do you know that they died because of you? Fuelled by Doran’s jealousy that you had not been given the freedom my mother had? Those were the questions I silently screamed as I studied the shell of the woman before me.

The woman didn’t so much as flinch, instead held my stare indefinitely. “I know why they perished, dearest Robin. And I am so, so sorry for what my husband did. But the Court lives on in you,” she added, breaking the prolonged moment of silence. “Word of the Icethorn heir came only weeks ago with the recent batch of captured Fey. We all believed it to be false. Fake. Made-up stories. Yet now, with you standing before me, I do not doubt your lineage for a moment.”

I held my chin high, searching for a reason to hate the woman from first impressions; thus far I was empty-handed. “Elinor,” I said. “You have been here, in the Below, all this time?”

“I have.”

“I was told that you were taken by Hunters alongside my mother. She made it home. You… you didn’t. Wychwood believes you died years ago.”

“In a sense, I did. Yet I was stolen by the enemy and still live. Julianna’s fate was no better than my own.”

My entire body trembled.

“Jesi,” Elinor said, turning to her. “Thank you for bringing him to me but the matters we have to discuss are not for your ears.”

“Noted.” Jesi bowed her head for a final time, midnight hair falling before part of her face. “Robin – my king – find me if you need.”

I couldn’t reply, not as her sparkling, tear-filled eyes regarded me. Then Jesi turned and left, leaving me alone with a ghost of flesh and bone.

“Robin,” Elinor said when Jesi’s footsteps quietened as she departed. “I remember when your mother told me that her next child would be named as such. Never did I believe it would have been the name given to the secret child of her human lover.”

“You must be sickened then,” I replied. “Your stomach turning sour as you look upon me.”

A heavy sadness passed behind her dull, tired eyes. “No matter what I think of the scum who dwell in the castle above us, your father was different to them. And your mother loved him. Even I could see that. I look upon you and see nothing but a memory of happiness for me. I see Julianna.”

I felt the heavy, burning truth of her words. Part of me wanted to lift a hand to my cheek, remembering the fleeting memory of my mother in my dreams, dark hair and melodic voice. Many had told me of our resemblance, but there was something about hearing it from Elinor that made it more believable.

I swallowed hard, trying to clear the guilt that had lumped within my throat. “I would have thought you hated her for leaving you.”

“Leaving me?” She looked confused, almost taken aback by my comment. “Julianna would never have left me if I hadn’t demanded she did so.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sit.” Elinor gestured to the dirt ground as though there was a chair of comfort for me to rest upon. “There is much to discuss, and it has been many years since another arrival has merited enough interest in me to speak with.”

I did as she asked, lowering myself to the ground on quivering knees. “Why would you have told my mother to leave you?”

The question danced between us, flirting with the silence as Elinor prepared her answer. “My home had become unsafe. Your mother wished to help me, during a time when help was hard to come by. I was running. Your mother and I had an ironclad plan, or so we had believed. Escape the Oakstorm court and find a new life. But the Hunters found us not more than a day’s ride away from the Wychwood border. That is where this story begins.”

“What were you running from?” I asked quietly, yet another question I felt as though I knew the answer to.

And I was right.

“Not what, but who. I had to leave Oakstorm, Wychwood – hell, I needed to be clear of this entire realm to protect my child. It was never for me, but for him. I would have traversed the entire world, discovered and unknown, to keep him safe.”

My breathing hitched. “Tarron had a brother…” I remembered the story. It wasn’t only Elinor who was taken by Hunters, but Doran’s other child. His name was just out of reach, no matter how hard I tried to reach for it, it slipped away. Perhaps everything that had happened thus far had made me forget about the details, but I understood without looking further that Elinor was alone in this cell.

Elinor, with the help of gripping to the iron bars, eased herself down onto the floor and sat opposite me. She didn’t moan, but her face winced as though she hurt from the simple action. “You may wonder why I could not judge your mother for her infidelity to her first husband. I know what it is like to fall in love with someone whilst being eternally tied to another. Just like Julianna, I too had a child outside of wedlock. I loved him, but he was not safe in Oakstorm.”

I pieced together the picture Elinor laid out before me, the missing fragments forming an untold story.

“Lovis,”– Elinor choked on the name as though it was the hardest thing she had ever spoken – “was a dear, sweet boy.”

Was .

“I don’t mean to be insensitive–” I stopped myself.

“Ask the question, Robin.”

I swallowed hard. “What happened to him… to Lovis?”

Had he become like Erix and the gryvern? Or had he survived that curse because Elinor was his mother, and her magic was to heal even the darkest of fates?

It may have been an insensitive question, but I harboured far harsher ones in my mind.

“He died many years ago. Killed by the treatment of the Hand and his acolytes. I failed my Lovis. I wasn’t able to provide him with the safety he should have been promised. That is my failure as a mother.”

I looked to the dust-covered rock ground, feeling my eyes sting as though needles pricked into them. “I’m so sorry.”

It hurt to hear of the loss of Elinor’s son, knowing that Tarron also no longer lived. But did she know?

“I am too. I often wonder, if I had not made the choices I did in my life, would I ever have needed to leave Cedarfall? Your mother would not have needed to help which ultimately led to her demise. I should never have had my Lovis. So many lives would have been spared if I had only curbed my longing.”

I understood now why Elinor looked as though she carried the weight of the world across her hunched shoulders. Guilt was a heavy burden to carry, and she bore it all, no matter how misplaced that guilt was.

“Whoever you were running from must have been awful enough to separate you from the family you left behind.” I found myself saying it before I even had the chance to truly think. “It was Doran, wasn’t it?”

Elinor nodded, her sadness morphing to the pinched expression of angry. “Tarron was the spitting image of his father in mannerism and darkness only. All I gifted that boy was his looks and power. The rest, his soul especially, was the perfect mirror of Doran. Tarron did not need me. Doran, on the other hand, required me for what I could bear him: perfect, unmarred children. Yet imagine what he would have done when he found out that Lovis was not of his flesh and blood – death was fated for my youngest child no matter if I stayed or left.”

For a moment my body chilled so deeply that I was certain I was free from the iron cuff at my neck and my power had returned. A shiver sliced across my skin, my mouth drying as Elinor’s truth settled over me.

“Doran was not Lovis’ father?”

Elinor tipped her head, but didn’t once release my gaze. There was something proud about her expression. It hardened the features of her face, eradicating any whisper of sadness that had only a moment before aged her.

“There was nothing Lovis shared with Doran. Lovis was kind. Innocent. Perfect. I had once thought the same about Tarron, but as the years passed by, I knew I had lost him to his father’s warped soul. Unlike Doran’s other children, Tarron was physically perfect. But inside he was just as tormented as his sire. Lovis was different. Entirely, completely and undeniably opposite. It was only a matter of time before Doran noticed. I left believing that I was doing the right thing by Lovis and by me. I have learned that no matter the choices we make in life, there are always countless outcomes. Ones that we do not even consider when making our decisions. This…” Elinor gestured around her. “This is simply one outcome I had never contemplated. Now I am left here to bleed for a man who speaks to demons, without my son, without my future.”

There was a long pause between us. Elinor allowed me a moment to decipher all she had revealed. Questions upon questions layered upon one another and I almost forgot about the urgency of getting out of here. I could have sat there for an eternity speaking to a woman I had believed dead.

“You know my story now. Tell me, Robin, what has happened in your life to end up here, with me, imprisoned by a madman?”

I took a deep, shuddering breath, and chose to tell my truth clearly, just as she had shared hers. “I came for an audience with the Hand. To barter with him for his army and power. Then I heard about the Below, and those desires shifted. Although my being here, in the pits of the castle with you, is not how I imagined my welcome, I’m no more deterred from what I desire from the Hand, but the army I want is here.”

“So you’ve come to save us?”

I swallowed hard. “I have come to try.”

“And what brings you to ask for help from your enemy right at his doorstep?”

I looked at her with a storm in my eyes. “To kill Doran Oakstorm.”

Elinor rocked back, a small fluttering gasp escaping from her. She brushed the loose waves of brown curls from her face, not wanting a single strand to obscure her view of me. “And what has he done to you to bring about such a desire?”

My jaw hardened; teeth gritted together as I replied. “He took everything from me. And I vow to do the same in return.”

I told Elinor almost everything. How Doran had plotted and succeeded in the murder of the Icethorn Court. How he pointed the blame on the humans to cause a war, doing so because of his jealously that my mother returned but Elinor never did. I told her of my father and the lengths he took to keep me from the realm of the fey and how it ultimately ended in his death at the hands of Doran Oakstorm.

The only thing I held back, finding myself swallowing the admission at the last moment, was what had become of Tarron – what Erix did to him, because of me.

So much death left in my wake, in such little time.

And all because of Doran’s infatuation with a woman who never loved him as he had led me to believe she had. It was clear, from everything I’d heard and learned, that Doran never knew of Elinor’s infidelity. He believed Lovis to be his son just as Tarron was. Elinor was his prized love after all, the only one who gave him children whose blood was not infected with the berserker lineage.

If Doran had known, would he have gone to the lengths he had? Would my family still be alive?

I blinked and saw a storm of gryvern. I saw Erix and his mutated and tormented appearance. So many lives devastated because of a secret. Secrets were destructive – secrets were the world’s greatest evil.

“I understand,” Elinor finally said, a hint of reminiscence in her gaze. “We have all been forced to make choices and I can understand now how you have ended up before me. But I feel as though I should ask you something. Something I wish someone had asked me.”

“Please,” I replied softly. “Ask me anything.”

“Will it be worth it? In the end, when Doran and his presence has been removed from this world, will it bring you whatever it is you seek?”

My mouth opened, lips parting for my initial confirmation to come out. But silence responded. I couldn’t answer. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Because I didn’t know what it was I longed for. My family? Revenge? It wouldn’t bring them back, I knew that. They were gone no matter what happened tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that.

“You do not need to answer me yet,” Elinor said softly, although her voice still hummed with the air of command, which had not vanished during the many years in this dark cell. “I am not going anywhere, and time is very much a luxury we have in the Below.”

“I’m here now,” I said. “I have no choice but to keep moving forward. It is too late to give up, but my focus is on saving you, Elinor. Saving everyone in the Below. Doran must die, but even I know that my desire is not as potent as those around me who want their freedom.”

“Freedom, what a funny and long-forgotten concept. And what will you do to accomplish that?”

I shook my head, not knowing the answer. “Anything, no matter what it takes. I will set you all free.”

“And what of Doran, the reason you first embarked on this journey?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but closed it again like a fish out of water.

“It is never too late to change one’s mind, Robin,” Elinor added. “Simply alter your desires and join a cause worth fighting for.”

“And what would that be?”

Elinor frowned, her entire face pulling downwards in displeasure. “When you meet the Hand, you will understand the pure size of the evil that is coming to this realm. Doran’s will be nothing in comparison. There will be a time in which his misfortune will be brought to his door, and I would argue that now is not it.”

I stood quickly. Part of me wished to stay with Elinor and question her about my mother, but the burden her words put upon me had singlehandedly shaken my world. Bowing as one would to a queen, I bade her farewell. “Thank you for your time.”

Elinor stood abruptly too, reaching a hand beyond her cage. “Wait, Robin.”

I couldn’t look at her as she pleaded for me to stay.

“May I be selfish and indulge myself with a final question?”

I hesitated, facing towards the path I had walked down. “How could I refuse a queen?”

She sighed, a hitch in her breath. “Tell me of my firstborn. Tarron. Do you know if he is well? How he has fared to the years of being left in his father’s care?”

It felt as though a sharp and boiling hot needle was pierced through my chest. A part of me whispered that I should just walk away, leaving her with some hope that Tarron was in fact alive, but I couldn’t lie to her.

“He died,” I said quietly, wishing for the cave to swallow me entirely.

There was no need to tell Elinor of the details, nor did she ask.

Instead, her small, broken voice changed into one of strength and relief as she replied, “Then he has found peace, and my Lovis is no longer alone on the other side.”