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Rafaela was almost… comfortable.

“What… what if I can help you get it. That forgiveness.”

“This is not your responsibility–”

“Yes,” I interrupted before she could say another word. “Yes, it is.”

Perhaps it was the urgency in my tone, or the desperation, that had Rafaela looking back to me. I buried my face in my hands until she reached up and peeled my fingers away.

“Something plagues you,” she said, reading me with those all-seeing dusky eyes. “I sense a darkness in you, a plague of worry that you should not host.”

“You’re right,” I said, bringing my voice to a whisper. “It brings me no joy to admit this, believe me.”

“Admit what?” Fear flashed behind her eyes. “Tell me… Robin.”

I leaned in, preparing to say the very thing I’d come all this way for. But being here, kneeling beside her, I didn’t imagine this would be the situation we’d find ourselves in.

“Duwar… is here,” I mouthed, fearful that the admission would echo out of the Below and fill Lockinge Castle until everyone heard.

Rafaela laughed, her sickly tinged skin creasing. “The gate has been closed forever, three of the keys destroyed. Duwar is no longer a threat to this world.”

I laid a hand on her arm, begging her to believe me with my stare alone. “Duwarishere, Rafaela. I swear it.”

Perhaps it was the hot, vicious tears running down my face which convinced Rafaela, or something else, but her laughter faltered, her sore lips straining into a pinched line.

“Where?” She looked around me, snarling as though she wasn’t pained and suffering. Rafaela looked like the warrior she was, with or without her wings.

“It is…” I choked, bile burning the back of my throat. I pinched my eyes closed, seeing Duncan’s body in the dark of my mind, tied down to a bed, weak and close to death. “It’sinsideof Duncan. Possessing him, controlling him.”

I watched as the pieces of a puzzle slotted together in Rafaela’s mind. How Duncan had disappeared into Duwar’s realm, only to be saved by Erix. The clawed mark across his chest, the agony and suffering he experienced in the days he was unconscious back in Rinholm.

“Are you certain?” Rafaela asked, voice soft but deadly.

I nodded, because I feared if I spoke again, I would crumble to nothing but dust

Rafaela took her time to sit up, wincing as she did so. “Duwar possesses a mortal’s body, because it could not leave its realm entirely – not without the use of the final key.”

I nodded again, numb to the core.

“Then Duwar is weak,” Rafaela growled. “If it is in a mortal body, then Duwar is subject to mortal wounds. You must kill it – before they find out.”

She had just confirmed my previous theory, whilst also confirming how I could not do that.

“This is Duncan we are talking about, not some nameless mortal. I cannot just kill him,” I said through gritted teeth. “That isn’t the advice that I have come to you for. Nor will you slaughter a human, or anyone else offering. Not if there is another way to solve this issue.”

“There is no other way.”

I bristled. “You vowed to protect humankind.”

“If Duwar is here, in our world, all vows are null and void. They will bring ruin to everything.”

I scrambled with my words, rushed and desperate to get them out. “You once told me of people in Irobel who conversed with Duwar and were bound in labradorite. An eternal prison.”

Rafaela’s eyes widened, working out the very plan I’d formed in my mind. “You wish to bind Duncan in labradorite?”

No,not Duncan.“Yes. And I need your assistance with doing it. That is why I am here, Rafaela.”

Rafaela took my request in, working out the possibilities silently in her mind. “It is out of the question.”