Page 11 of A Deception of Courts

“What do you want with us…king?” the man spat, still treating me as anything but the title he used. That word felt more like a curse. I couldn’t blame his distaste for royalty when, collectively across the courts, they had done little to help him or the rest of the captured fey, who had been abducted, forgotten and killed over the years. I didn’t have the time to tell them the truth – that Wychwood never knew of the Below’s existence.

“Your name?” I asked, offering a steady hand. “How about we start there.”

He contemplated my question, confusion sparking across his fatigued gaze. “Names are earned.”

I nodded, almost expecting his reluctance. “Then let me do exactly that.” My hand snaked into my breast pocket. The slim, crafted key that was a newly made copy of the one I’d pried from Peter Torr’s dying hands met my fingers and slipped into my grasp. I pulled it free. His shoulders broadened as I stepped toward him, eyes locked on his freedom.

“What are you doing?”

“Earning your trust.” I spoke as loud as I could muster, wishing that enough of the fey could hear me, and then spread my words throughout the crowd. “I made a promise to return and free you all. This is no place for the fey to be kept, and I wasn’t willing to turn my back on you. I couldn’t go on living my life pleading ignorance to what I found during my last visit.”

Wide-eyed, the fey looked down the length of his swollen nose as I raised my steady hands towards the worn iron cuff at his neck. It took a moment to find the small hole which the key could enter. It’d been rusted over from years of being left. But I found it and with little force, the key fit inside, turning with ease.

It seemed the entire prison inhaled at the same time, including myself. I withdrew my hands and allowed the cuff to break apart. It fell to the ground in twin pieces with a satisfying thud.

He stood there, dumbfounded, with his eyes fixated on the iron that rocked to a stop by his boots. If he blinked, he would have released the tears that clung desperately to his lashes. When he finally looked back at me, his skin had paled. Even his voice was broken as he spoke through a dry, clogged throat.

“Michal,” he said. “My name is Michal.”

My chest filled with an abundance of gratitude. I allowed myself a moment to swell with the realisation that I had done it. I had followed through and freed a fey. One of hundreds, but it was a start.

“Michal, I’m going to need your help if we are all to get out of here. I have ships waiting for us all to board, ships that will take us away from Lockinge for good. But, for that, we must work together.”

Michal seemed transfixed by his newly gained freedom, dirt-covered fingers raised to his neck. Disbelief crackled across his face as his fingers met the red-raw skin hidden behind the iron for countless years. “Tell me what you desire of me, and I shall do it.”

I placed my hand on his shoulder, thankful for the strength of his form. With my spare hand, I presented the silver key to Michal. Hidden within the inside pocket of my jacket, I had a fistful of spares ready to hand out. If we had a chance of getting out of this place quickly, then our small group would need all the help we could get. It is why we had many copies of the keys cut, each ready to pass through the crowd when the moment was right.

“Help me free as many of these fey as you can,” I said, leaning my face toward his. The relief which filled me was so honest that it made my limbs shake. “Don’t stop until every person within this prison feels the same elation as you. Can you do that for me?”

Michal nodded, breath hitching as the silver passed into his hand. “It would be my honour.”

The crowd buzzed with uncontrolled energy at what they had witnessed. I already heard the whispers spread like wildfire throughout the chasm of prisoners. Those closest to Michal begged him to free them first, swallowing him entirely into the throng of bodies until I could barely hear him over their pleas.

I gathered steel inside my lungs as I took a gathering breath before throwing out my shout across the cavern for all to hear. “Once the iron is removed from your necks, please gather yourselves by the gate. I know you wish to leave, but you must wait until we are all ready. There is no knowing what waits for us when we depart, so it is best we do so together. We are broken when separated but unstoppable as one.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Duncan looking at me. I felt his stare before I saw it. Like phantom fingers, his eyes trailed me from foot to head. His prideful grin echoed in the glistening damp that clung to his dark eyes. My heart skipped a beat, and I packed that image of him away into the back of my mind. It was a vision I wished never to forget.

Time was inconsequential within the cavern beneath Lockinge. It should have mattered, but it didn’t follow rules. There was no telling how long it took to work ourselves through the crowd. Althea, Duncan and I pushed ourselves deeper into the crowd, my hands aching as I gripped the key, moving it from one iron cuff to another. It took no time at all for the pocket of spare keys to empty as others like Michal joined our effort.

There were tears. Shouts of glee. Some fey fell to their knees, and others displayed flashes of unlocked magic. I thought I heard the roaring of a beast, followed by the blur of deep, russet fur passing among the crowd. Looking through the moving swell of bodies, I was confident I’d seen a bear. Powerful, thick limbs pounded atop the ground, which quaked beneath their force.

It was a shifter. A fey with the ability to transform into its animalistic form. The clamour shook the dust from the cavern’s walls.

Althea noticed it, too, tears glistening like jewels across her hazel eyes. Pride swelled in every line and crease across her face as she moved her key from neck to neck until the ground was littered with broken castings of iron.

I risked a look toward the gate of the prison. Kayne and Seraphine controlled the crowd, which boiled with the desire to escape this place. They had been forced up a few steps beyond the gate but did well to handle the crowd.

An undeniable panic ate away at my nerves. I half expected a surge of Hunters to flood down from the ground far above and into the prison to stop us. Every passing moment that they didn’t arrive did nothing to calm me. It only prolonged the impending doom of what could happen and urged me to work harder, faster, as I moved deeper into the cave.

My mind was a storm. Destructive and powerful, unable to focus on a single person as faces blurred before me. With every person I worked to free, another was at the forefront of my mind. A name slick across my lips.

Jesibel.

I searched for her. Looking to Duncan and Althea to see if they were the ones to find her and take the iron from her neck. They both knew of her. She had been pivotal to my brief stay in the prison. Her name is embedded into the story of my visit and the connection with Elinor.

I knew I wouldn’t have survived without her intervention all those weeks ago. And every day since, her face had been embedded in my mind like a knife in the flesh of an enemy. Obsidian eyes and midnight hair, Jesi represented the Icethorn Court and everyone who had been exposed to this treatment after my mother and her family had been killed by Doran’s gryvern. I was doing this for her and every soul that had been affected by the chaos of the realms.

Yet I could not find her.

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