Page 38 of A Game of Monsters (Realm of Fey #4)

Erix and Duncan took turns soaking my body, but not even their hands could distract me from the oddity surrounding us. Something was wrong, I could read it in the tension-heavy air and the silence of the world beyond my childhood home. There were moments of unspoken words shared between Erix and Duncan – stiffening postures and weighing heavy on their shoulders.

Most of all, the strangest detail was that I was home. Not in Imeria, but back in Grove, where my story began.

I’d recognised that was where we were – back in the rickety house which was now a burial site for lives lost. Perhaps that was the cause of the sombre mood, and yet I knew it was not.

As Duncan ran careful hands down the curve of my back, not speaking a word, I gazed out the narrow window. Even the sky was heavy with darkness. Whispers of strange-coloured clouds swallowed any daylight. Neither Erix nor Duncan paid much mind. Or, perhaps, they simply wished to ignore it.

Whereas I found it impossible.

“Your bruising is fading quicker than I thought it would,” Duncan said as he drew the soft sponge down my spine. I shivered against the warmed water. It hadn’t long been filled by Erix, and yet it was already losing its heat, tainted by the unusual air infiltrating the room from the open window. “I imagine, in a matter of days, the mark on your chest will heal too.”

I curled my legs up to my chin, sparing a quick glance to Erix who sat on the lip of the tub. He barely took his eyes off me. That was the thing about Erix, he had an inability to lie, but when he held something back, he just kept quiet.

And his silence was loud.

“Are we going to talk about it, or carry on pretending like everything is normal?” I asked, bringing the conversation back to the passing comment Erix had said when we woke earlier.

In the reflection of murky water, I caught Erix shooting a glare at Duncan. His circular motions stilled on my back, Duncan’s hesitation screaming in the pause.

Still neither of them replied. Instead, Duncan offered a hand to Erix, who quickly placed a stiff towel into it. “Let’s get you changed and then we can talk.”

“I’m capable of changing myself,” I said, snatching the towel, hands shaking. “You don’t need to treat me like a baby needing coddling.”

“I can speak for us both when I say that we are just wanting to take things slow, you nearly–”

“I’m alive, Duncan.” In turn, I looked them both dead in the eyes. “Can’t you see? My body is healing with every passing minute, and yet you still treat me like broken glass. But I can see in the way you look at me that you know. We all know what is happening, and yet it has not been mentioned.”

How dare I feel so displeased that they kept secrets from me, when I was keeping the biggest secret possible. Perhaps it was my own lies that made me distrustful. But I also recognised my intuition, and there was no denying something was wrong.

“We can talk about it on the journey back to Icethorn,” Duncan persisted, dismissing me.

Erix’s jaw flexed, the muscles feathering in his cheeks. I locked eyes with him – hating myself for using his weakness against him. But needs must.

I was his weakness.

“I. Am. Alive.” I forced each word out, really hammering the truth home. “Whatever is happening, it is time to face it. Please . No more secrets, if anything will kill me it will be that.”

It was my pleading that made Erix wince.

Duncan sagged, wings damp from the moisture-heavy air. “Fine. We can talk.”

“There is a problem,” Erix said next, eyes fighting to glance out the window. “One that has not yet been dealt with, but something that we are constantly working at resolving.”

“We?” I replied. “We are doing nothing but playing house, Erix. Who is we?”

“The realms,” he said, chin jutting out, gaze hardening. “Fey, humans. Icethorn has become a haven for human refugees, just as you wanted. Our numbers, alongside Duncan’s Faithful.”

My skin shivered at his words, the discomfort working down to my bones. “Is it the Fallen who persist as a problem?”

“No,” Duncan answered, hesitantly. “Rafaela and the Faithful are currently passing judgement on the Fallen who survived. They will be given an opportunity to change their ways, and if not, they’ll be reunited with the Creator.”

His answer was rehearsed. As if he’d stood before a mirror and practiced. I could tell from how quickly he replied, and how precise his words were.

“And you are sure Cassial is dead?” I had asked the question, in a variety of ways, about six times since I’d come around from Seraphine’s poison.

“He is,” Duncan glowered, fists squeezing the sponge so tight that water spilled over his white knuckles. “I made sure of it.”

Then where was the celebration? The joy? If this was the tomorrow we fought hard for, it felt as though I was still hanging from tenterhooks, struggling for sense like a fish out of water.

Erix looked down to his hands, picking at the skin around slightly pointed nails.

I reached over and laid a hand on his, stopping him before he broke skin. “This isn’t the tomorrow we wanted together. So, tell me what we have to do to ensure it.”

“You have faced enough, little bird.” Erix dropped my gaze, pinching his eyes closed.

“Erix is right,” Duncan added. “We hesitate to tell you because we know what you will do.”

I snapped my head between them, frustration boiling hotter than ever before.

Had they worked out that I still had a scrap of Duwar in me? Was this why they kept me at a distance, keeping the truth from me? Or did they believe I was just too broken to handle what they had to say?

Erix took a hulking breath, lips parting, readying himself to speak. But he was interrupted by a thunderous knock on my home’s front door. For a split second I was transported to another time, when it was my father knocking on the door to wake me if I’d overslept.

Duncan peered to the hallway beyond the cramped bathroom. “We really should get you changed, darling. Our convoy to Wychwood has arrived.”

The water sloshed as he made a move to lift me out of it, but I held firm. As my anger spiked, so did Duwar. I gasped, having to choke back the power or it would threaten to reveal my secrets. Darkness and light thrashed like dancing waves behind my closed eyes, so potent I could almost taste the potential on my tongue.

Then a shout sounded from the door downstairs. “Duncan, Erix – we need to leave. Now . And I will not hear your refusal otherwise I will personally drag you out of this house by the short and fucking curlies.”

Althea. I’d recognise her voice in any life, in any time. Even spoiled with panic and urgency, there was a joy in hearing her, when there had been a time I believed it was never possible.

“Come on, you heard her,” Duncan commanded. “Help me, Erix.”

Both men hoisted me from the tub, standing me bare in the centre of the room. I wrapped the towel around myself just a second before the poppy-red-haired fey came barrelling into the room.

Wide eyed, pale taut lips, Althea scanned the condensation-heavy room before settling on me. Her brow creased as a small chirp left her mouth. Disbelief melted to relief, then her mask quickly crumbled as we crashed into one another, tangling arms and holding firm.

“You are awake,” Althea said, wide eyes fixed on me, holding me out at arm’s length as she took me in from head to foot.

“Do you mean alive?” I asked, words muffled as she dragged me back into her strong embrace.

“Well, yes,” Althea sobbed, laying her chin atop the damp strands of my hair. “Actually, that is exactly what I mean. Gods, Robin. I really thought we were going to lose you for a second.”

“Surprise,” I replied, voice muffled in her embrace.

Althea smelled faintly of char and burning. The scent clung to her skin, her armour and hair.

She took turns holding me close, then pushing me at a distance so she could get a better look at me. Althea shot the men behind me a look of pure annoyance, accusation rushing out of her mouth. “Why did not you send word for me? I thought I made myself clear that the moment you saw any improvement in Robin’s fate, you would call for me. And yet here he stands, bathed and fed, and not even so much as a fucking word.”

Fire sparked on her tongue, shifting the room to an uncomfortable heat.

“Robin deserved a moment of peace after what he has been through,” Duncan said, bristling his white wings. “We made the call that he could have a few hours of normalcy, before we ruin it.”

“Ruin it?” I barked, looking between my three closest friends. There was one person missing. Gyah. But there was no time to contemplate where she was.

I had no peace to ruin, not since I woke still harbouring a part of the problem in me. A part of Duwar.

“You have not told him, have you?” Althea raged, eyes widening a fraction until I noticed the whites of them were bloodshot. “Of course you have not!”

Their joint silence was answer enough.

“What did you possibly think would happen by keeping this from him,” Althea continued, her skin growing uncomfortably warm as magic seeped from her pores.

“To protect him,” Erix said, silver eyes narrowing. “That is all we have wanted to do.”

“From what!” It was my turn to shout, and as I did, a rush of winter ice flashed through the room. Glass cracked; the water in the tub froze solid. It was an uncontrollable power, a level which I shouldn’t have been able to do.

If anyone noticed, no one said it with words.

Except Erix had noticed, of course he had. His eyes barely left me for a second, playing into his never-ending duty to protect me. I expected him to voice his worries, but he forged his lips together.

“From. What?”

“Yourself,” Duncan sighed. “We are protecting you from making the decision we know you are going to make.”

Duwar unfurled within me like a serpent in a fragile box. I closed my eyes, wincing against the sensation. And then, whispering into my ear, Duwar told me the truth. In truth, I think I knew it from the moment I came around from the Gardineum. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.

I saw flashes of the moments before Cassial was killed. How we warred for Duwar, only for him to unleash the power in a storm at his back.

Cassial’s final act. The reveal of his plan if I attempted to go against him.

“It is Duwar, isn’t it?” I asked, eyes opening to see a room locked in tension. “Cassial is dead, but the seed of chaos he released in the realms is still a problem.”

“Yes, Robin. Cassial has left his mark on the world, a mark that we are struggling to scrub clean,” Althea said, and for the first time I noticed just how exhausted she really was. Slumped posture, the dark circles beneath bloodshot eyes. This was the appearance of a woman who had not stopped fighting an enemy, whilst I had luxuriated in a bath, giving into this pretend illusion of a tomorrow with the men I loved.

My hands balled to fists at my sides.

Althea released me, moving back toward the door, which she gripped for support. “Cassial may be gone, but his final act has truly put the realms under threat. And it is growing. Nothing we have done so far has been able to stop it, no power held by any of the fey can dispel it. If anything it feeds this shadow of Duwar, giving it more power, encouraging it to spread faster.”

“Tell me everything ,” I demanded, still dripping water onto the panelled floor, body simmering with distant aches. And yet I stood tall. “I need to know it all.”

Althea nodded. “Get changed first. We must leave Grove immediately, as the storm Cassial unleashed is spreading in this direction fast. Gyah is waiting for us outside with a handful of mounts for the journey. Once we are safe in Wychwood, we can further discuss all that we have learned in the days you’ve been unconscious, and then we can plan how to fix this, once and for all.”

Safe? I shook my head, pinching my eyes closed as a sudden spear of pain shot through my skull. “It sounds an awful lot like we are running from the problem.”

“I hate to admit it, Robin, but running from Duwar is the only option we have. Nothing can stand against it, no power is strong enough to quell its thirst for devouring,” Althea replied.

Except, I was alive, and with that, there was a part of Duwar still lingering inside of me. This was why Duncan and Erix didn’t speak. Why they had a hesitation to tell me what was happening. Because they had worked out what lingered inside of me, and what I would do with it.

“I can fix this,” I said, more to myself than anyone else.

“No, darling,” Duncan said. “What this power is capable of outside a mortal or immortal body is unlike anything you can imagine. There have been Faithful I have sent to attempt to accept it into their bodies, but the power tore them apart. Fey too. Cassial has released a power back into the realms, poison with his intention for destruction.”

“The same goes for one of my gryvern,” Erix added, regret darkening his silver eyes. “And they met the same fate. Fey, human – brave souls have attempted to take the loosed power of Duwar into them, and they all perished. It is not just ruin that spreads, but death itself.”

And yet Duwar was more than death. It was life too – it gave the fey power, it gave the world a purpose before it was banished to its dark void. Duncan had shown me that, spreading vines and flowers over the crumbled remains of Imeria castle. “And yet the issue still persists, and I still have part of that power inside of me.”

I clutched at my chest as if my nails could sink through flesh and drag it out of me just to prove what I was saying.

“What?” Althea gasped. “You what, Robin?”

“I took that vial after Cassial expelled Duwar inside of me,” I said. “He didn’t trust me with all of it and kept a part for himself. We can run, but it will continue to spread, I don’t need to be a scholar to know that.”

Althea asked Duncan and Erix the question that I knew was pointless. “How long have you known?”

Duncan straightened, inhaling a sharp breath before replying. “I would recognise the echo of that power in any life.”

Because he had shared it, Duncan knew on a deeper level. Or maybe, the path he saw this ending in, the one the Creator showed him, meant he always knew I would accept the power.

Either way, that didn’t matter now. What mattered was using the second chance Seraphine had given me. Doing something worthy for the realms.

There was something in the way Erix looked at me that revealed his thoughts were in line with mine. That was why he hesitated to speak before, that was why he could barely look at me without it seeming like he was looking at someone already lost.

Because he knew what I had to do.

“Robin,” Duncan said, shivering with unspent power, fingers flexing beside him as if he wanted to reach for me and never let me go. “I know what must be done, but that doesn’t mean I want to accept it.”

“Then you will not refuse me when I ask you to take me to it, will you?” I asked.

Duncan’s eyes downturned to the floor, Erix stepping in and laying a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Their silence was answer enough.

I walked past them, toward the narrow window set into the far-off wall. Setting my gaze out across slanted rooftops and farm lands, I found what I was looking for. Or it found me.

A mass of darkness, a wall of pure power that swallowed the sky and the land behind it.

I clutched onto the window frame, sodden wood snapping beneath my hands.

“It’s moving toward us,” I said, watching the mass of darkness roll over fields, shadow-made talons gouging earth before swallowing it whole.

“And it has, for days now. Countless miles it has consumed, and yet as of this morning it changed its course to this direction,” Althea said. At some point she’d come to stand beside me, a comforting hand laid on my shoulder. “Rafaela believed it is searching for something, a replacement for Cassial. Now I know why.”

Tears filled Althea’s eyes as she realised what had to be done.

Turning my back on the view outside, I looked to Duncan, who would understand my next words better than anyone. “Me.”

“Yes, darling. Like calls to like.” Duncan stepped out of Erix’s embrace. “Give it to me. I brought it to the realms, let me be the one to fix it.”

I shook my head, smiling at his ease of putting himself before me. “No, Duncan. And I am not scared of it.”

There wasn’t an ounce of a lie in my words.

I looked back out the window, drinking in the rolling clouds of pure darkness. “Duwar is broken. Two parts of a whole. And it is no different to my own desperation of searching the realms for you if you were taken from me. If you take me to Wychwood, Duwar will follow. This is not something I can run from.”

“I can’t just accept that you are the heart of its desire, Robin,” Duncan gasped.

It was in that moment I understood that the reason no one had given me answers was not because they knew I couldn’t handle them. But because they knew what I would do when I found out.

“ I can save us,” I said, not needing to further explain myself.

It was as if Erix was ready for me to say those four words, because he broke, pain etched in the single word that came out of him. “I hate the world for making it so, but I trust in your strength, Robin. I believe in you.”

I dared not move. My body was trembling, my power barely containable. Except it wasn’t my power that was responding to the conversation. It belonged to another, the broken part of Duwar, left to wallow inside of me.

“I must go to it,” I said, glad Althea was holding me up. “I can at least try.”

“Please,” Duncan said, this time shouting it, spittle flying out of his mouth. “Give it… to me.”

The time for others sacrificing themselves for me was over.

Closing the space between us, I entered the bubble of affection that me, Erix and Duncan created just from our proximity. “Duncan, I must do it. And for that, I need your support. Remember what you showed me Duwar was capable of, spreading new life across the ruins of Imeria Castle? I can do it again, I can – I must at least try.”

Duncan blinked heavily, releasing a breath full of tension. Then he looked from me to Erix. “It is our duty to support him, to stop him from putting himself in any further unnecessary danger.”

“Even I must learn that we can’t always do that, Duncan,” Erix said, drawing a soft hand over Duncan’s forehead. “Stand by him, not against him.”

“Robin is not your broken little bird, Erix. And he is certainly not your incapable fey boy bound in chains, Duncan.” Althea straightened, growing taller, shoulders rolling back. She did not wear a crown on her forehead, but she stood as if she bore one made of pure fire. “He is a king. And above that, he has already proven he would give his life for these realms. Aid him in this decision. He will need our belief in him to succeed.”

Duncan looked up at me again, tears brimming in those eyes that I loved so much. And when he spoke again, it was with words that sang of his acceptance. “It is not our belief that matters. Robin trusts in himself, so I must accept that. I believe in him, but he too believes in himself. That is enough.”

My heart swelled in my chest. I clung to the feeling, refusing to let it go. I mouthed my thanks, knowing how much this was hurting Duncan.

“Then the fate of the realms is in the best hands, little bird,” Erix said. “You have my support.”

Duncan lowered his head in defeat, chin to chest, leaning into Erix’s side for support. “I could never stop you, Robin. You know that–”

The ground rumbled, shaking the foundations of my home. Dust fell from the rafters, furniture toppled over, glass smashed. Althea was in the door frame in seconds, breathless and panicked.

“Time to go?” Althea said, the glint in her amber eyes singing of her worry, but she too believed in me. After all, it was all their love and support, their patience in me, that moulded this very moment.

“How close is it?” I asked, sensing the tugging inside of me.

Althea’s panicked eyes flared with fire. “Duwar’s practically knocking on the front door for you.”