A Kingdom of Lies (Realm of Fey #2)

CHAPTER 39

Demon.

It stood within the mirror’s reflection not an inch behind Aldrick’s back.

Duwar.

It was inhuman with a towering body crafted from molten rock. It seemed the layer of its hardened skin cracked in places. Beneath glowed a body of deep, burning red that shifted tones from angry scarlet to warm orange.

I felt the creature’s piercing red stare cut straight through me. The presence stole every possible sound from the room so that even the king of Durmain ceased his heavy sobbing. Duwar stood deathly still, only the shifting of its eyes drifting across the room as they drank us in.

“Do you see it now?” Aldrick asked, visibly affected by the unseen, clawed hand the creature rested upon his shoulder. Only in the reflection could Duwar be seen, but its touch was as real as the glass of the mirror itself. “Until now only I have been blessed with the vision of Duwar. Never has another seen what I have seen. Witness what has kept my feet stepping forward in this direction. You see now, don’t you? You see Duwar.”

“It’s a trick,” I muttered, unable to form another reason for what I saw. The creature looked back at me and tilted its head like a curious dog – but no dog had horns that burst through its exposed skull, or cracked lips of scorched earth. “Just another vision you have filled our heads with – an illusion.”

Aldrick looked displeased with my outburst, fighting the urge to look behind him with a face of astonishment. “Is your lack of faith so pungent that even with a god presented before you, you are unable to grasp truth from trick? Robin, what you see is very much real. A glimpse to Duwar in its prison. But not for long… soon you will be free.”

It was disconcerting how Aldrick shifted his conversation from me to the creature that waited behind him.

“This proves nothing,” Duncan hissed, straining against the hands of the guards once more.

Aldrick shot his attention back to the man at my side. His expression pinched, eyes storming with curiosity. “You dare question after all you have seen?”

I slowly reached my hand out sideways until I touched Duncan’s sweaty skin. Aldrick was too occupied to notice, as well as the guards at our backs who were just as shocked as we all were with the scene before us.

Duncan stilled under my touch, then leaned into it. My heart swelled. The moment between us felt as though it could be the last.

“You said you wish to free Duwar,” Elinor spoke up, snatching Aldrick’s attention from the disgraced Hunter general. “But if Duwar is real then what is stopping it from breaking free itself? It has enough power to ensnare you, but is kept locked beneath a thin pane of glass?”

“So much history of Duwar, Altar and the Creator has been left untouched that you all do not know the stories. It is a crime, one worthy of the greatest punishments. But I am merely the Hand, voice of Duwar and speaker of the truth which has been kept from the fey and the humans for too many years.” Aldrick stepped forward, shoulder raising as Duwar released its hold. The creature, silent and burning, watched as the old man stalked towards us. Aldrick reached Elinor and put a single finger beneath her chin. Without much effort he lifted her face upwards, smiling down upon her like she was a child preparing to listen to a bedtime tale. “Duwar has promised a new realm, one undivided by its siblings’ laws and differences, a world with space for those who did not fit in. A home.”

“I can take him,” Duncan whispered beneath Aldrick’s speech. The Hand was too enthralled as he unleashed his story as though he had held it in for many years, desperate to tell a soul.

I looked at Duncan’s profile, keeping my movements muted and my voice equally as quiet as his. “It won’t work.”

Duncan’s scowl deepened, eyes unmoving from the reflection of the burning, molten creature that watched from the face of the mirror. He looked at it as though he waited for proof that it was an illusion.

“I would rather die trying than perish not knowing,” Duncan finally replied, the muscles across his exposed chest tensing.

“… keys.” I looked back to Aldrick, trying to make sense of what he’d just said. “It was my task to locate them. The first key was easiest and most obvious to find. Faith. Destroying the belief bestowed on the egotistical god the humans call the Creator. Complacent that His rule would last forever, the Creator put His forged key in faith itself. The more who worshiped Him, the stronger His lock was kept upon Duwar. The weaker the devotion became… well, do you see now? The barrier between our realm and the hell Duwar has been kept within is thin as a result.”

In another world, during another time, I may have believed Aldrick’s story to be nothing but fiction a parent told a child at night to keep them behaving in the following days, a way of manipulating the na?ve to behave with threats of demonic monsters that would come for you in the darkest of times. But then I looked back to the mirror and saw the very creature he preached about, still shrouded in shadows, its skin glowing as though fire burned beneath it, visible only through the cracks across his rock-hard skin. Eyes slitted like a cat’s, forged from flame and blood, redder than the freshest of blood, glowing brighter than the proudest of fires.

“Indeed,” Aldrick murmured, releasing Elinor’s chin and stalking back up the line. Kayne stiffened, eyes glancing towards Duncan as though he waited for something. The king’s sobbing returned again, this time more frantic and pathetic than before. Aldrick paid him no mind as he continued with his story.

“It is the final keys that were harder to uncover, scattered among the fey courts. They would not have been simple to locate and destroy. More physical than the Creator’s faith, but more elusive. It would require an army to aid me, one I had to create myself.”

“One chance,” Duncan muttered, lips thin and jaw tight. “Together.”

The terrorising screams of gryvern sounded beyond the room, the noise of them increasingly louder than they had been before. Still they searched for me, but Aldrick showed no sign of caring. Was my capture by Doran’s creatures a better fate than the one that waited for me here?

“I can’t.” My whispered reply was laced with defeat. We were trapped in both outcomes. By an old man with a demon at his back, or a bloodthirsty king who would traverse the realm to see me dead.

Elinor spoke up again, shouting towards Aldrick with a sense of misplaced urgency. “Why would Duwar entrust you? Of all people, Duwar has chosen an old man to encourage its return. I cannot make sense of it.”

Aldrick stopped just before he reached Duncan. He turned on his heel, crooked body bent inward at his shoulders as though he held the weight of the future upon his back. “It matters not how Duwar believed me worthy. Ask yourself, why did Altar choose the families of those who rule Courts in Wychwood? Why did the Creator make soldiers of his own, only to discard them out of trepidation that they would, like he had with Duwar, overthrow him?”

That was something I had never heard of before. Abbott Nathanial had mentioned angels before, but I’d put that down to his aged mind. Was he right all along? There was no room to question Aldrick on his mention of the Creator’s soldiers as he continued.

“Perhaps it was my willingness, or lack of selflessness and pride, that captured the attention of Duwar. Whatever it may have been I am merely thankful that it was I who was chosen. When the final keys are destroyed and Duwar is free to take their rule across the realms, you will have the privilege to ask the question again.”

“I would rather die,” Elinor replied, causing a cold shiver to race up my spine.

“Unfortunately, that is not a privilege you have. Ensuring you live is highly important. I need you for Duwar’s sake.”

“To poison more like me?” Duncan said, spit falling down his chin.

“Precisely.”

The screams of the gryvern intensified, finally causing a reaction in Aldrick. He frowned, tired eyes glancing towards the door. “Seraphine, I think they have seen enough.”

She didn’t respond.

In fact, one look around and I could see that Seraphine was nowhere to be seen.

“Robin,” Duncan pleaded. “Please, it is now or never.”

Aldrick turned his back on our line and walked towards the mirror, searching the shadows of the room behind it as though his puppet waited within. “Seraph–”

He never got to finish his word. The mirror toppled, falling upon Aldrick, and there was nothing the old man could have done to stop it; Duwar’s form shifted, shrinking from view before the glass crashed down.

Aldrick was lost beneath shattered glass.

Standing behind the mirror, chest heaving and arms outstretched, was Seraphine, her face as white as snow. “Get them out of here!”

Kingsmen, in the panic, released us and sprang forward to help. At least that was what I believed until they turned on one another. Swords pierced through backs, perfectly placed between chinks of armour. When the blades were pulled free, they were covered in the dark sheen of blood.

Duncan was up on his feet, throwing a fist towards the back of an unexpecting guard’s head. It connected with a crack, bone upon bone. The guard fell. I caught the glimpse of broken skin across Duncan’s knuckles for a brief moment before he threw yet another fist at a new target.

“Stay with me,” Elinor said, gripping my arms and pulling me back. Kayne was beside Duncan then, joining in the fight. They fought, side by side, creating the perfect barrier between the chaos and us.

“What the fuck is happening?” I spat, eyes scanning the room.

“I don’t know,” Elinor replied.

Soon enough the fighting stopped. It started and ended so quickly. Human guards lay at the feet of our allies, boots crunching over shattered glass and puddles of blood.

Seraphine stood among the crowd, an unwavering calm amongst a tidal wave of chaos. “We do not have long.”

Duncan stepped forward, fists covered in his and other’s blood that were still held firmly before him. “You just killed the Hand.”

“Aldrick is not dead. He is demon-touched,” Seraphine replied sharply. “It would take far more than that to kill him. Now, if you do not come with us, then there will be nothing to stop him when he takes control over all of our minds again.”

“Why would you do it?” I shouted, tugging free from Elinor whose nails scratched into the skin of my arms as she held on with such ferocity. It was clear that the guards who were left standing were allied with Seraphine. They stood before her, a barricade of flesh and steel.

“Because a rather handsome price has been put upon your head and I wish to claim it. It would be easier to take you willingly, so I suggest you cease your questioning and we leave.”

“No,” Duncan said as Seraphine took a brave step forward. “No one leaves this fucking room until you tell us what is going on.”

Seraphine shared a look with me that suggested I already knew what she was doing. And in a strange sense, I did. I had seen that look before, many weeks ago, upon the face of a girl who had been promised money for my head. Instead, Seraphine’s expression was not as twisted and malicious, but still captured the same hunger that had glinted in the eyes of Briar.

“We are all Children of the Asp,” Seraphine confirmed my thoughts. Assassins. Hired mercenaries. “Usually, we work alone, but the price for Robin’s return is too delicious to ignore. Enough to share.”

Duncan had seen Briar himself and understood the danger associated with that title, how skilled the assassins were.

“Doran,” Elinor said, voice shaking with a fear that was all too real.

Seraphine hardly spared her a glance.

“Who sent you?”

“Sent?” Seraphine laughed. “We have always been here. We are everywhere. Hidden amongst crowds, placed among the realm for when we are required to act. Aldrick just didn’t suspect anything because of the Mariflora we’ve been ingesting for how ever long. It doesn’t stop him entering our head, but it keeps us in control. We just played along.”

“Answer his fucking question,” Duncan growled. Even with the iron cuff strangling his throat, I could sense the power that dwelled within him.

Seraphine looked directly at me, a glint of pleading in her stare, perhaps created from the trunk of coins she saw when she looked at me, but I hoped for something more genuine.

Then she replied with words that sliced through the tense room. “A friend sent us. Not Doran Oakstorm, but someone who wishes to see you alive by dawn.”