A Kingdom of Lies (Realm of Fey #2)

CHAPTER 38

There was nothing I could do to stop our group from being ambushed. As I pushed the door open, I knew what waited within. Aldrick told me so, showed me flashes of images; Duncan in chains; Elinor kneeling upon the ground, arms shaking as she fought to hold her bleeding body up.

Duncan had felt unsettled as I urged them towards the specific room. I screamed with my mind, my eyes, for him to listen to his gut and not me. But alas, he did as I said. His blind trust in me would be his end.

Like lambs to the slaughter, I led them all into a dark room where Aldrick waited with a body of Kingsmen. The silver-plated men and women rushed forward and Aldrick’s control on my mind did not waver; I couldn’t even cry out in warning or shock.

“Run!” Duncan screamed to the rest of our party as an iron cuff was snapped around his bulging neck. Like rain upon a fire, the crackling light across his skin fizzled out, the iron severing his new abilities.

Kayne handed the king to Elinor when Duncan cried his warning. Now she was struggling beneath his weight, throwing her off balance and dragging her to the ground. It was clear he feared Aldrick greatly; just his presence alone had him on his knees.

Kayne was backing away when a figure detached from the shadows of the hallway we had left and stopped him. The sole remaining Twin held one knife to Kayne’s throat and the other pressed above his spine; one wrong move and he’d suffer greatly.

“Well, well.” Aldrick limped towards me, wrapped a hand around my shoulder and placed a rough kiss upon my cheek. His touch made me sick. I couldn’t even move my hand to wipe the trail of spit from my cheek.

“If only it was that easy to simply leave through a back door and never return. What did you think would happen to you all? The streets beyond Lockinge castle are full of my Hunters. I would have given you hours before you were returned to me,” Aldrick boasted.

His control over my body and mind didn’t take away my choice to cry. Tears spilled from my wide eyes as I looked over the line of my companions. Duncan’s expression was as hard as stone, but the scar upon his face was not as deep as it usually was when he was livid; that small feathering of softness told me that he understood. My actions were not in fact mine.

“You will not succeed,” Duncan growled, trying to pull free from the three soldiers who held him down. They struggled as he fought, but he still could not break free; it didn’t deter him from shouting his thundering threats. “One moment of weakness and I will end you. That is all it takes.”

“I sense there should be a warning to follow,” Aldrick replied, old fingers tightening on my shoulder until it hurt. “After the power I have gifted you, you turn upon me immediately, General Rackley. Have your years of faith been turned to ash with a mere matter of days with this fey boy?”

Elinor’s lips were pulled into a tight, sharp line. She looked at Aldrick with pure hatred; if her stare was a weapon he would have been covered in deep and agonising wounds.

Aldrick was still hooded, speaking from the shadows he hid within. Were Elinor and I the only ones to know of his true identity?

“It is our little secret,” Aldrick confirmed, his youthful voice echoing across the cavern of my mind. “ Not for long. When my task is complete the people of this realm and the next will not see me as a fey. They will see me as the Hand. Bringer of Duwar. Ruling at the god’s side. A new era.”

“If I had known you were nothing but an old man cursed with the cancer of delusion, I would have never followed your false promises,” Duncan spat as he replied, teeth bared, and arms taut with muscle.

“Ah, but you did not join my army as the others did. Did you, Duncan?”

I watched in horror as Duncan’s eyes rolled back into his head and he pinched his eyes closed. Duncan struggled, not physically but mentally, throwing his head from side to side.

“Get out of my fucking head!”

It was becoming harder for the guards to hold him down. Others had to join, gripping his sweat-slicked skin, and keeping him from breaking free.

“Names,” Aldrick said, drawing out the word as though it was the first time he’d ever spoken it. “Your friend Kayne joined because of the promise for a new world. He heard the words I spoke and, like many others, wished to help bring forth this new realm in the name of the punished and forgotten Duwar. You… You simply wanted names. A selfish want.”

“Get. Out,” Duncan pleaded, eyes scrunched in pain.

“Please…” I said breathlessly. “Leave him. This has nothing to do with him.”

“Not as strong-willed as you first thought,” Aldrick said, speaking solely to Duncan, swatting my pleading away with the wave of a hand.

Duncan’s eyes snapped wide, and he panted, lips and chin wet. He looked deranged; a wild animal caught within a trap. He didn’t plead for Aldrick to withdraw from his mind anymore, instead he stared at a spot on the floor as his dark-forest eyes filled with stubborn tears.

“Does it change anything for you?” Aldrick asked, releasing me and stepping forward. “All these years and you have wished for something that is pointless and useless. Names are not as powerful as you have been led to believe. What will you do with the information you have sought?”

I couldn’t catch a breath as I watched Duncan retreat from this room and this world before our very eyes. No longer did he struggle. The guards did not relax their holds, but I could see that he had given up fighting now. Whatever Aldrick had revealed within Duncan’s mind had broken him.

“Talk to me, Duncan,” Kayne shouted, breaking his silence as he looked worriedly towards his friend. “Come on, boy. Say something to me.”

Duncan ignored Kayne. Perhaps he didn’t hear him through the roaring of whatever information he had gleaned from Aldrick.

Kayne turned his attention towards Aldrick. Still, he was the only one who didn’t look upon the old man with horror. There was still a gleam of admiration for the Hand, even if the wince across his face told me that he struggled with it after what he had witnessed.

“What of the Hunters?” Kayne said. “Those creatures likely hunt them through our streets. Should we not be fighting them? Helping the innocents who wait within their homes for the beasts to pick them off one by one?”

Aldrick shook his head. “It would seem a disgruntled fey king waits outside our walls. And I wonder who led him here.” Aldrick’s hollow eyes flickered to me. “Those creatures are known as gryvern and only Doran Oakstorm can control them. Twisted and evil creations of the very king who sent them. War is upon us, but I will not waste my precious Hunters in fighting beasts. This war is not for them. They are here for something and when they retrieve it… they will leave.”

At this Duncan looked to me. So did Elinor, whose stern expression cracked and revealed concern for me. A name whispered across her lips. Doran .

“Do not worry.” Aldrick leaned into my ear and whispered, his lips uncomfortably close. I could not pull away as his strong will still gripped me firmly. “I will not give you up that easily. As a show of my good faith, and my desire to work with you and not against you, we will kill Doran Oakstorm together. That is what you wished for, was it not? My help in defeating him? You came all this way for an army, an army I can give you. With your help we will create one. Look at Duncan Rackley. Do you see what your blood can do now?”

“Monster,” Elinor snarled. “I have faced men like you before and believe me, it will never end in your favour.”

“And you would know one wouldn’t you, Elinor Oakstorm? Robin came all this way because of your dear husband. As did you. Both for different reasons, but it is poetic that you share such a similarity, is it not?”

“From the arms of one, to the prisoner of another. Yes,” she spat, “I do know a monster and you are the greatest of them all.”

Aldrick laughed, deep and rumbling, like the warning of thunder through dark-stained skies. The remaining Twin echoed his chuckle as she paced behind the line of my companions, each of them on their knees, the human king still sobbing into the stone slabs at his feet. Not a single guard had to hold him down; he was no threat.

Dark lines sliced down the Twin’s grief-crazed face. Her hair was a tangle of wild and messy strands. Her clothes stained with the blood of her sister.

“Please,” Kayne said, flinching as the Twin came too close. “The more time we waste the more people will die at the hands of those… the gryvern.”

“And their lives will not be wasted,” Aldrick snapped, displeased with Kayne’s sudden interruption. “Have you not seen what I can do for those who die? Look at your trusted companion. Stabbed in the heart, yet still he lives. Ask yourself why that is.”

“Blood,” Elinor said quickly. “He steals it from our bodies and puts it into the vessels of his followers. Just like my dear husband ,” she mocked. “Your Hand is no different. He creates beings that should not exist under Altar’s or the Creator’s rule.”

“Right and wrong,” Aldrick replied. “The result of my work does not belong to me, Altar or the Creator. These are the children of Duwar. Beings who do not belong. Beings who are not claimed by either the fey’s god or the human’s beloved Creator. Just as Duwar did not belong among its siblings, Duncan and the rest of my Hunters do not have a rightful place among the realms. That will all change soon enough. We will become a world of beings crafted of pure power and chaos.”

“Do you wish to say anything?”

Suddenly, my voice was mine again. Aldrick’s claws pulled free from the flesh of my mind, allowing my control to return.

“Burn. In. Hell ,” I hissed, spittle flying past my lips.

“That judgement does not belong to you, Robin Icethorn. I think it is time that you all see for yourselves the promise of a future that is coming.”

Aldrick looked towards the Twin. “ Seraphine , it is time we show them.”

The Twin, Seraphine, nodded, sheathing her blades at her waist. It was strange to understand that she had a name; she was a nameless puppet in my eyes.

“Go to him,” Aldrick said to me, hand urging me to move. “Be with your love and witness this together. Perhaps you will both understand what it is I work towards. Now go.”

“Fuck you,” I managed as my feet began to step forward and I walked, without my own doing, towards Duncan. As I joined his side the guards took a hold of me, dragging me to my knees. I bit back a gasp as my bones smacked into the stone ground. With the echo of a haunting laugh, Aldrick finally retracted from my mind.

“I didn’t mean to–”

Duncan stiffened beside me. “I know.”

I longed to reach for him, but the guards held me firm. Elinor looked down the line at me, eyes brimming with worry. I could see the question within her stare, and I nodded subtly to answer. I’m fine.

There was a screech of wheels, an awkward, unrhythmical squeaking as Seraphine struggled to pull a large object covered in a deep red velvet cloth. Aldrick stood still, hands clasped before him, as Seraphine guided the object behind him. From my view point it looked as though it was a large frame, and Aldrick was the painting trapped within it.

“The humans have followed the Creator for centuries, all without seeing Him, hearing His command or feeling His presence. The fey believe stories of Altar and how He created the four Courts from His blood and gave His children access to magic that placed them above anyone else. Stories. That is all it has been to each and every one of you. I cannot blame you for thinking me a fool, a cruel old man preaching the promise of a god that has been erased from the realm’s stories.”

Seraphine moved towards Aldrick and reached for his cloak. With bated breath, I watched, knowing what was coming. Slowly she lowered it, exposing the face of the man beneath, and the two points of his ears.

Kayne released a sound that was both a gasp and a growl. I was silent as Aldrick finally revealed his truth before us all. Even the guards who held me relaxed their hold as they too shared their shock at what they witnessed.

Aldrick had revealed himself as the very being that he had commanded his Hunters to hunt. He was fey and that truth snatched the sound from the room entirely.

He smiled, flashing stained teeth as he surveyed each of our reactions.

“I don’t understand.” Kayne broke the silence. “You cannot be…”

“Fey? Was the possibility far from your mind, Kayne? Was it truly that hard to imagine that one of their own could sign the seal of command that demanded the fey to be rounded up like cattle and brought here? I am part of both realms, Wychwood and Durmain, just like Robin here. It is why Duwar chose me to herald the new world, to create an army strong enough to fight for them. Free them.”

“You tricked us,” Kayne shouted, finally fighting back against those who held him. “Why?”

“It is time you see why I’ve done all of this.” Aldrick tipped a head towards Seraphine, who grinned. She reached for the velveteen sheet across the large object and gripped a fistful.

I studied the hard, sharp profile of Duncan, who did not take his eyes off Aldrick for a moment. His lip was curled, his scarred face pinched deep in disgust at the man he saw.

“History will remember the names of those who witnessed Duwar before freedom was granted to them. And each of you will help in shattering their bindings and bringing the possibility of a new realm, one combined in Duwar’s name. There is still much work to do, but the wheels are turning.”

Seraphine yanked the cloth and it fell from the object, gently fluttering across the floor. It was a mirror, golden frame carved with intricate designs of stars woven among vines and flowers. The golden-painted surface had become worn in areas, revealing an uglier truth of ancient wood beneath it. The mirror held within the frame was equally as aged. In the corners were webs of small cracks spread across like greedy fingers wishing to claim the entire surface of the mirror.

Someone sucked in a sharp breath. I didn’t look around to see who it had been as a strange movement caught my attention. Something was moving. I looked harder, narrowing in on Aldrick’s back which was reflected in the mirror, then to the hand that reached out and wrapped around Aldrick’s shoulder. There was nothing in the room to explain what it was we saw.

This was no ordinary mirror. It was a window, revealing a realm that was not ours. The figure stepped forward from the darkness slowly. At first it was only the hulking outline that I could see. I blinked, unable to believe that what I saw was not one of Aldrick’s mind tricks. But it was as real as the floor beneath my knees. As real as the hands of the guards who still held me down.

Then I found myself muttering a name I had never believed I would call out for. “Altar, help us.”