Page 37 of A Game of Monsters (Realm of Fey #4)

At least I wasn’t alone in death.

On both of my sides, warmth radiated from the bodies of two men. I didn’t need to see them to know they were with me. Nothing could keep us apart, not even the endless abyss of the beyond.

I luxuriated between the heat of Erix’s and Duncan’s forms. They filled my senses, their touch something so familiar that even in this strange place of shadow, I couldn’t help but imagine their flesh against mine.

Even if I’d failed the world, they would never leave me.

In this strange state, I wasn’t confident I had hands, but I imagined reaching out with them, only to feel the physical wall of flesh as if I could physically hold it–

“Robin.” Two voices sang from beyond the dark, blending seamlessly together.

“He’s awake, Altar, he is going to be okay!”

I felt the firm grip of fingers wrapping around mine. It was odd, to have death react as though it was as much a living thing as this illusion it awarded me. Then the caress of a hand brushed over my chin, inching into my hairline where it was laid flat.

“Slowly, little bird. Don’t rush yourself,” Erix’s voice called through the haze. He was here. But how? Panic seized me, making me believe he had somehow died as well. How else was he here, in this strange place?

I longed to roll toward his voice and forge my body with his, just to stop this illusion from ever ending.

“Take your time, darling. We’re here. And we’re waiting for you.”

I longed to call for them, to locate them and never let go.

What had Cassial done? Had he followed through with his promise of destroying the realms, and both of them had found me in death?

This was not the peace I expected, and certainly didn’t deserve.

Or was this Duwar, in death with me, tricking and punishing me with eternal torture?

Splitting pain scorched through the nerves in my brain. I must’ve groaned against it, because I was aware of another voice, one that belonged to me, interrupting the gentle hush of Duncan’s encouragement.

Pain and punishment – weapons used against me for my final act.

I deserved it.

The suffering came again, thick and fast, penetrating my skull, turning my bones to sodden parchment. I ached against it, crying out again. And just like that, the touch of the men I loved faded away. I was no longer a corporeal thing – but a mass of the same darkness that surrounded me.

Paradise never lasted long – not for someone who didn’t deserve it. Not for someone like me. I clawed at the remaining scraps of warmth, feeling them fade away like a receding tide. Then, just as the final touch of it disappeared, so did I, down into the belly of the beast that was death.

Jesibel was there to welcome me in the dark. She smiled, clutching not one rose, but a bunch of them, overspilling and red, beautiful as life had been. I knew this was no dream, because when she opened her mouth, I wasn’t greeted with silence. Instead, she offered me words. Words she had long lost to the suffering at Aldrick’s hands.

“Wake up, Robin. The world needs you. Your family need you.”

Voices. More voices, coaxing me out of nothing. I was surrounded by all the people who had perished because of my failure. They’d found me in this afterlife to taunt me. I strained to make them out, or who spoke.

“His heart beats stronger today.”

“It has been two days,” Duncan replied to the mysterious speaker. I knew it was him, even in death I’d recognise his voice. Although he was panicked, his words rushed and chaotic, I imagined myself smiling just at the pleasure of hearing him again. “If any more days pass, we will lose him for good.”

“I’m doing my best–”

“Work faster.” Erix growled – my Erix, with his voice of commanding iron – interrupting the unfamiliar voice. “Harder. Just do not fucking stop until you fix him. Please.”

“He isn’t broken. Robin is fighting. But it’s up to him to determine how strong he is.”

“But what of the antidote? You told us there was an antidote, if that is what we need then that is what you must retrieve.” Duncan was calmer, but even beneath his voice I could hear the undercurrent of pure anger, born from fear. His was frightened about something, his voice lifting in pitch on his final word.

“There hasn’t exactly been the time to locate one, not with half the realm being covered by Duwar’s ruin.”

All noise stopped as though a great hand grabbed my head and dumped me in water. The only thing I heard was the long hiss in my ear. Then, as if that same hand tore me back out the water, the voices returned.

I couldn’t work out who spoke, but I listened like a scholar learning the secrets of the universe, clinging onto every little scrap of knowledge.

“We cannot afford to move him until he improves, and yet we also must understand that there will come a time that the option to wait here will be taken from us.”

The voices were becoming muddled, as if my mind was no longer able to determine who said what.

“And you think staying here will help? The ruin is growing by the minute. There is no saying when it will reach here.”

“Robin’s in a too fragile state to risk travel.”

“What about the realms? What about everyone else outside these walls. The world needs us still.”

“My world means nothing without him–”

Crash . I was back beneath the waves of impenetrable dark, limbs helpless and lungs aching for breath. I couldn’t make sense of reality. This twisted hellscape where I could hear the voices of those I loved but couldn’t reach them.

It was like I was dreaming – so deep, and yet my consciousness fought to hold on. This time Jesibel wasn’t here to greet me, and yet I still heard her voice as clear as day, and cold as Icethorn’s winter snow.

Your family needs you.

I exploded back from the dark waters, out into open air as I grasped hold of a sense of my reality.

“Althea, we must not leave. Robin is our only hope of saving the realms.”

My awareness snapped at the name. Althea. Althea Cedarfall. I imagined fire-red hair, wide eyes, a fierce mentality that could go against a gryvern and a Nephilim.

“I’m with Duncan on this,” Erix replied, although it was barely a whisper. I could almost picture him slumped over me, grief stricken and pale.

Althea’s sharp, burden-heavy voice rose up. “We can’t just sit around and wait – what good are our attempts if we are consumed by the ruin.”

“There has to be something which can bring him back to us.”

“Not something, but someone,” Althea replied, sombre as the atmosphere. “In fact, both of you. Guide him back to us. If you want to fight for him, then do it. Remind Robin what he is going to leave behind if he gives up.”

Fight for who? I was hearing them but couldn’t make sense as to what they spoke about. How could they possibly fight for me? I was dead – gone. If only I could tell them that I was okay, and they could move on. If only I could voice the words aloud, but alas, I couldn’t. Because I was dead. The poison made sure of that.

“Little bird,” Erix pleaded, my nickname echoing in the dark.

“Darling,” came the other voice – Duncan. The lilt of his tone sinking into my bones and etching itself upon them. “Fight the shadows. You are so much stronger than they are, so fucking strong. Come back to us. I’m begging you – we’re begging you. We need you, and so do the realms.”

I felt a strange shuffling beside me, as if I was physical in matter but just couldn’t see it. What else was the dark hiding?

“Do you hear Duncan?” Erix whispered, and I could almost feel the soft brush of lips against my ear. I imagined his hand running down my head, brushing strands of hair away from damp skin. “Don’t you dare leave us. You will not do that to us, would you Robin?” He took a deep trembling breath in before continuing. “Come on. I know you can hear me. Follow my voice. Come back. Come back… little bird, do you hear me? Come… back…”

Your family needs you.

Bright blue-white light carved apart the dark, brandishing away the grasp of death. It wasn’t that I’d opened my eyes exactly, but the hot, white light seared through me, snatching me out of nothingness, back to a sense of awareness.

“More, Duncan! More.”

“I’ll kill him – this isn’t working.”

“He will die anyway if you don’t try. Do it again, don’t stop until his heart is stronger.”

More hot light speared through me, burning away flesh and blood, vein and sinew. I felt my body arch against it, spine bending as the bolt of life was passed into me, gathering in my bones, sparking dead limbs to life.

When the pause came, I relished in it. The dark returned, creeping in at the corners of the cosmos of stars around me. Every time death believed it would swallow me whole, there was more light – more boiling heat. It filled me. I glowed from the inside out, like a star against the obsidian sky. And yet I knew death was winning. That was why stars glowed, wasn’t it? It is a strange fact to think of, but I could almost hear my dad telling it to me as we lay on our backs in the middle of a cornfield, staring up at the sky.

He pointed to one star amongst many. I found it with ease, because it blazed so bright it was impossible not to see it.

“When a star reaches the end of its life, it burns, in signal to its brothers and sisters.”

“Why?” I heard my young self ask.

“To say goodbye, perhaps. Or maybe the star wishes to use its last moments to light the way for those who will come after him.”

“That’s so sad, father.”

I could almost hear him sigh as another bolt of hot light shot through me, fighting back shadows – banishing death, keeping it at bay.

“We all grieve death, but like that star, do you see how beautiful its final moments are? Even in our final moments, we have a purpose. When we die, our life might end, but for those we leave behind, we gift them a purpose.”

“What’s will be my purpose in life?”

“That is yet to be determined, son. I hope it is a long time until you have to find out.”

I opened my eyes, slowly peeking through one at a time. What greeted me was a dark room, the sounds around me muffled and strange. All I could think about is how terribly my body hurt. Every muscle burned, every bone throbbed and vein stung as though they’d been plucked by something sharp. The pain was close to unbearable, and yet it was fading.

My first instinct was to figure out where I was. The room was small and shadowed by midnight, the walls leaning inwards, the ceiling stout and low. There was something overtly familiar about the smell of the place, but my tired mind could not place it.

But one thing I understood for a fact was I was alive. For a brief moment I had the feeling of relief and amazement.

It was a fleeting feeling, one I didn’t deserve.

It was the terrible taste in my mouth that reminded me of what had happened, the moments that led up to this. It was similar to the taste of rotten meat. The skin inside my cheeks was tender as I ran my tongue over it, aware of the jagged marks left from broken glass.

All this feeling, all this awareness… and not an ounce of kindness to it.

Reality slammed into me, almost knocking out the little wind from my lungs. I felt everything. Not only the ache in my body, and the residual pain housed within my skull – but the bed sheets against my damp skin, the brush of cool wind from the open window in the distance, the press of the mattress beneath me.

Most of all, I caught the gentle snores of two other bodies beside me. I didn’t notice them at first, but as my sensations became mine again, I used the little energy I had and turned to look.

To my left, Duncan slept on a reading chair placed beside my bed. His proud white wings were wrapped around him, his chest rising and falling, his hand stretched out between us, fingers gently laid on the blanket at my side.

To my right, Erix waited for me. His body was stretched out on the side of the bed, curled on his side, his soft breath brushing against the side of my face. His features, although smooth, were still etched from deep exhaustion. Shadows clung beneath his eyes, his forehead creased in perpetual worry lines.

They had never left my side. I knew that fact without question. And yet their joint presence sparked a horror within me, curdling next to something else in my soul that didn’t belong.

A part of me longed to wake them both, but something stopped me.

I recognised a seed of sudden realisation deep in my gut. Like the uncaring teeth of a starved wolf, it sank its maw into my consciousness and locked its jaws in place, refusing to let go.

I was alive, but that wasn’t the only realisation that filled my exhausted mind.

My gaze fixed on the curtainless window at the end of the bed and looked to the night sky beyond, the glittering of stars. Some burned brighter than others, reminding me of the story my dad had told me.

I took a deep breath in, my lungs aching, a slight rasp in my throat. I filled my body with fresh air, banishing the cobwebs that filled me. My throat was dry as stone, my body tired and heavy. It took great effort to sit up, careful not to disturb the men at my side.

There would be a time for rejoicing, just not yet.

Pushing my awareness down my limbs, I didn’t stop moving until I felt the very tips of my fingers. They too were heavy and stiff, but I forced my awareness to make them wiggle. One finger at a time, my body came alive.

Alive .

The words had such sudden meaning, I sat up, feeling the ache across my chest. I sank my teeth into my lip, stopping the cry of pain from leaving me.

My initial instinct was to reach down, running tingling fingers over my torso, feeling the tender burn of recently charred skin. Even in the dull light of evening, I recognised the outline of a hand. A new scar above an old one – fingers splayed larger than the mark Althea had left long ago.

It didn’t belong to my hand, but to another. Small scars spread outwards across pale flesh like serpents… like lightning.

As I brushed my finger over the tender skin, my mind was filled with a bright bolt of light. Duncan’s magic lingered. Had it been his light that guided me back? Re-sparked my struggling heart, as he refused to let me go?

I moved my hands atop the outline of my new scar, no longer caring about the pain. Instead, I was full of wonder, looking at just how large the familiar outline was. The skin was coated in a thick salve that made my fingers stick together, webbing as though sap had been plastered across the new wound.

Questions thrummed through me, most notably: what had happened?

I should be dead, but here I was, alive and breathing – not completely well but alive nonetheless.

I scooted to the end of the bed. My body was mine, and yet I felt some disconnect. As though it was not my consciousness that filled my limbs, but something else, belonging to another.

I used the final dregs of strength to push off the edge, wobbling on weak legs. I used the wall to steady myself as I came into view of the window. And in it, I saw my reflection.

I knew what I’d find before I saw it.

Duwar – looking back at me through its eyes. Except it wasn’t a demon, but my face just… different. Bright with power, features sharp and otherworldly. A light encased my skin, haloing my reflection as though I was imprinted in glass like the windows of Abbot Nathanial’s church.

The horror of it, the reality that I had somehow survived the poison that was meant to kill me, came flooding in. Unable to look at myself, I tore the metal handle of the window from its clasp and pushed it open. With unnatural force, the window slammed into the wall outside, shattering glass.

“Robin!”

I didn’t care who called after me, which one of my loves shouted my name.

Not when I got my first look of the world outside, a familiar street with close-knit homes, narrow streets and a view of patchwork fields now full of pitched white tents. I didn’t get a chance to truly understand where I was, before a panicked gasp sounded at my back.

“Little bird, you’re–”

“Alive,” I said, skull thundering, lungs aching for proper breath, I looked behind me to see both Duncan and Erix were alert.

Erix was pale as the sheets he lay upon, looking as if he’d seen a ghost. Duncan’s verdant eyes glittered with tears, his brow pinched but his lips curved in a smile of pure relief.

Disbelief rang in every crease and line across their handsome faces.

To them, I’d survived. The truth of the fact was far worse. Because I was not the only one to defy death.

The shard of Duwar had survived alongside me.

Both men looked at me as if I were an apparition, seconds from fading from view. I wished that was true. Knowing what I had survived, and kept with me, was enough to shatter my soul.

“I… just needed some fresh air,” I said, sagging back onto the bed as my limbs gave up on me.

In seconds, Erix’s arms were around me, gathering me to his chest. Duncan joined, the bedframe bowing beneath his added weight as he forged his arms around me.

I pinched my eyes closed, wishing to enjoy their touch – whilst suffering inside, knowing what I continued to harbour.

“Not everyone can face death and survive. And yet you have. Robin, you must not rush this,” Duncan said, longing to reach for me, to lay fingers on me and prove that I was real. “Take your time, do not give your body any more of a shock than it has had.”

“What matters” – Erix leaned his forehead onto my shoulder, gasping out his words – “is you came back to us. You fought hard, and for that I will be forever thankful.”

I couldn’t speak. Words failed me. Even if I wanted to say something, there was a lump of iron in my throat, keeping me from uttering a sound.

Duncan shifted until he knelt before me, Erix still at my back. His eyes roamed over me, settling on the new wound on my chest, then back to my face. I could see he was looking for proof that this was not real – but then his expression softened as he came up empty handed.

“Did I… Did I hurt you?” Duncan asked, eyes flicking back down to my chest.

“No.” I lifted shaking fingers and pressed them to my tender skin. “I saw your light and followed it back to you.”

Duncan practically melted at my words. Then he gathered me up, soft wings wrapping around me, whilst Erix’s folded in from the back. I was encased in them both, unable to think of anything but their touch, their scent – the very real pressure of two bodies.

“Cassial?” I said the name in question, feeling as though I had to hold my breath as I waited for my answer.

“Dead,” Erix confirmed. “Four days ago, now.”

Relief was short lived. I knew he was dead; I’d seen his head part from his shoulders, no one could survive that.

“I’ve missed four days?”

I couldn’t believe how much time had passed. All I knew was that I had survived, and so had Duwar. Whatever state the world was in, it was forever going to be under threat.

“Duwar–” the name got stuck in the back of my throat. “Is still a problem, isn’t it?”

Those voices I had heard beyond the dark were not illusions or punishment. It was my subconscious listening in to a world that I was slowly vacating.

A world Duncan and Erix had given me a second chance to experience.

“That’s not for you to worry about right now,” Duncan said, doe eyes wide with concern. “What matters is that you have survived, we haven’t lost you.”

Right now – but still a problem. That was enough to answer my concerns.

Duncan was undoubtedly burdened by something. Erix shared in his feeling. Both men believed Cassial, but they did not rejoice. They did not tell me everything was okay.

Because we all knew it wasn’t.

“I took the poison… I should have died.”

“Seraphine tricked you,” Erix explained, silver tears falling from silver eyes. “But most of all, she tricked us too. Robin, if I’d known what you had on you, I wouldn’t have agreed to leave you… I would’ve fought tooth and nail at your side…”

“Erix, don’t.” I grasped his hand, squeezing. Mine was steady, evident against the violent tremble of his. “Please, you don’t need to hold onto guilt or regret.”

Those were emotions for me to wear proudly.

Mouth dry, I managed a final question as the exhaustion built to new heights within me. “How did she do it?”

“There will be time for us to catch you up, darling.” Duncan ran his hands over my face, still utilising his touch to prove I was real, and not some figment of his deepest wishes. “For now, you must rest. You’ve flirted with death and survived it. Your body is going to take some time to heal from what you’ve endured.”

That wasn’t true. Every second, I could feel myself gaining in strength. It was Duwar, filling me with power and possibility, stitching together the frayed threads that had weakened me.

“No,” I pleaded, pinching my eyes closed, wishing I could rejoice in this moment instead of fear it. “You must tell me what I’ve missed – please. I need to know everything.”

Duncan shared a look with Erix. I caught Erix’s subtle nod out the corner of my eye.

“Just time, darling. That is all that you have missed,” Duncan said, offering a smile that was void of any sadness. There was only relief across his face, disbelief and reprieve.

I didn’t believe him, and one look in my eyes told Duncan as much, so he continued.

“Cassial is dead. The Fallen have been stopped and the Game of Monsters prevented – all because of you, darling,” Duncan said.

“You… you knew this was going to happen,” I accused, drawing back as much as my body allowed. “Everything you told Gyah to do, the instructions you gave Seraphine… you knew.”

Duncan gritted his teeth, regret darkening his gaze, which refused to leave me. “I did. The Creator showed me an outcome, and the threads to pull to make it happen.”

“Seraphine died…” I choked, an image of her headless body flashing through my mind.

“Seraphine sacrificed herself to save Althea,” Duncan corrected. “However, those were not my orders. I would never have told her to do what she did… not knowing the outcome. Trust me.”

I did, one look in his eyes and I knew that Duncan was telling me the truth. He, like me, toyed with guilt as if it was an old friend.

“The realms are safe from Cassial,” Erix added. “That’s what matters. Seraphine did not die for nothing.”

How could the world be saved, when the crux of the danger lurked within me?

I didn’t know I was crying until Erix leaned over and swept a thumb across my cheek. “Eroan told us about the vial Seraphine left you. He was confused as to why she would leave you a store of Gardineum, so didn’t question it.”

Gardineum. Impossible.

“But it was gold,” I stammered, knowing neither Duncan nor Erix had seen the poison Seraphine used on the ship to Irobel. “It should’ve killed me.”

Both men shared a look, brows furrowed over confused eyes. “It was an intense dose, yes.”

It was never the poison I had expected. I ran my tongue over my lips, no longer feeling the torn skin that the broken vial had torn apart. “Seraphine tricked me over and over.”

Then I began to laugh, the sound rupturing from my belly and out of my dried lips. I told them both of the poison Seraphine had used in the ship, how she put the small vial between her teeth and spat out the gas-like liquid across the Nephilim. They listened in shock, reality sinking in that I really was prepared to end myself to save the world.

“Once an Asp, always an Asp. But her deceit saved you, and has given the realms a second chance,” Erix added as I lifted fingers to my ear, half expecting brain matter to have leaked out of them.

“I saw the path ahead,” Duncan echoed his earlier sentiment. “And you lived in it. We lived in it.”

Reality was not kind or careful – it hit me with the force of an exploding star. “She tricked me into believing I would take the poison. She knew I would do it–”

“She saved you,” Erix answered before laying a kiss upon my crown. “Seraphine knew, on the chance that you ingested the poison, you’d not suffer. If you used it against Cassial, it would give us the chance required to end him–”

So that is what they believed had happened? I didn’t have it in me to tell them the truth, not yet.

Be selfish.

I couldn’t ruin this moment, not for them and not for me. In time I would have to tell them both how wrong they were. But that would come, just not yet.

“I heard you, both of you, calling for me,” I admitted, taking my time to look them both in the eyes.

“And you came back to us,” Duncan said, catching yet another tear as it spilled down my cheek. “Just in time.”

“We knew you would, little bird.”

I couldn’t fathom what had become of the world outside this door, but just for now, I wanted to forget it. To push to the back of my mind the knowledge of what I still had to do.

“Would you lie down with me,” I said, pleading edging my tone. Not that I needed to, because the moment the request left my lips, Erix and Duncan obeyed.

“Of course, we have some time to spare,” Duncan said, sharing a look with Erix that suggested a silent conversation between them both.

It took little effort for them to get me back under the sheets. Erix to my right, Duncan to my left. It was a miracle I was alive – and a miracle the bed did not crack beneath our conjoined weight.

I didn’t speak until we were nestled against one another, sharing heat. I began to shiver, not from the cold, but from the reality that of what would happen when I finally was brave enough to get out of bed.

“How long do we have?” I asked.

There was something great and unspoken between us, and yet I knew we all could not ignore it for much longer. It was a gaping yawn of truth and burden that was keeping us away from truly celebrating the tomorrow we’d wanted.

Peace wasn’t here yet, and we knew it.

“Forever, gods willing,” Duncan replied, laying his arm over my stomach, anchoring himself to me. And still I sensed something in his voice, a truth that he was holding back, the same that I refused to voice aloud. Or was that seed of doubt Duwar, poisoning me from the inside, making me distrust the world around me?

“We will have our tomorrow, Robin. And every tomorrow that follows after the next. You… have given the realms the final chance it needs, and there will come a time to enjoy the bounty of your actions. But for now, you should rest.”

I didn’t argue with that. I couldn’t, because if I opened my mouth to speak, I feared I’d only ruin the moment for them both. For now, I would be selfish and enjoy the peace of their lack of knowledge.

I would afford them some time to revel in their relief before destroying it.

But first, I had to ensure their tomorrow was secure, before leaving them all to enjoy it. Seraphine may have tricked me into thinking I would destroy Duwar. What she didn’t account for, was that I was a man of my word.

Neither Duncan nor Erix had told me of the danger lurking outside this room, but the shard within me shared whispers about it.

Taking what I thought was poison had simply postponed my ultimate task.

The outcome, no matter how my mind screamed for me to pretend otherwise, was inevitable.

A part of Duwar still lingered within me, and from the faint tugging in my gut, drawing my attention to the window ahead of us, I knew that the other half was out there somewhere, waiting for me. Needing me.

Calling for me .