Page 17 of A Deception of Courts

When Duncan finally replied, it wasn’t with the resistance I expected. “You could ask me to jump from this very spot, and I would do it. How could I ever refuse you, Robin?”

It was more a statement than a question. I was his weakness, as much as he was mine.

“Thank you,” I exhaled, not wanting to blink to miss the storm in his dark eyes.

Duncan sighed through a weak smile, one that never reached his eyes. He pressed a kiss on the crown of my head, holding it there for a paused moment.

I thought the spark I felt was simply from the shock of his touch. But as he pulled away, his eyes glowed a molten blue. His wrist was naked of the iron bracelet. I knew the spark was from something else entirely – magic.

The iron bracelet fell from his clutch, allowing the electrifying strands of his new power to coat his skin like snakes of bitter, fiery light.

“Go,” he whispered, urging me away from his body, which ignited and crackled with snakes of purple light. “Run!”

Leaving him was the hardest thing I’d done, and yet it was my only option. I didn’t stop moving, Althea alongside me, until I stood before the stretch of dark waters far beneath the castle.

Wild wind whipped at my black hair, obscuring my view of the battle across the ocean. Above me, ominous clouds flooded the sky at an unnatural speed. Thunder rumbled in warning, roaring as though a creature of nightmares hid among the clouds, waiting to burst through and devour the world.

Looking back up toward Lockinge Castle, I could see the heart of the phenomenon. Upon the worn stone wall of the balcony stood Duncan, with his hands raised to the sky, like a child willing their parent to pick them up. The bolts of blue-purple light that burst from his hands suggested something darker.

Duncan’s mutation, a result of the concoction of fey blood Aldrick had inserted into his heart, had cursed him with powers that should never have been possible. He called for the wild storm to close over the world. He enveloped the world in shadows, only illuminated by sudden tongues of forked lightning. Duncan seemed limitless.

“It is working,” Althea shouted above the storm. It took a strong will to look at her. Back straight, chin raised in defiance. The Cedarfall heir watched the horizon with boiling intent. One might’ve wondered if she was in control of the storm that brewed ahead of us from the look in her eyes alone.

I could seeexactlywhat she meant. The white-winged creatures scattered across the skies as the bolts of lightning whipped down upon them. Duncan’s lightning was chaotic, clashing into the ocean without prejudice.

Since our escape from Aldrick, Duncan had been adamant to keep his power buried by the iron bracelet. He told me he didn’t want it – admitted his fear of it. But I knew he was wrong. He simply didn’t trust it. Yet.

Duncan was uncontrolled and fuelled purely on desperate instinct – but his intention was exactly where it needed to be. And for that, I was thankful.

Although he looked like a god, calling down streaks of light from the skies as though they were his strings, and he was the puppet master of the storm, he’d reach his limit soon.

That was when Althea and I would act.

I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood. Although unpleasant, the distraction stopped me from looking back at Duncan.

“If this doesn’t work, we risk everything,” Althea reminded me, rolling the dark sleeves of her form-fitting tunic up to her elbows. Freckle-covered arms now exposed, she shook them as though stretching them out in preparation.

“And we lose everything if we don’t take the risk,” I replied, my heart jolting at the sight of the strange, winged creatures dodging with poise and ease through the lightning strikes. There was something familiar about them. I couldn’t focus on one long enough to claim answers, for they swooped and dived, flying with a speed that made them blur into figments of ivory and gold. “I refuse to fail after everything we have done. For our sakes and theirs.”

I thought back to the freed fey who waited in the castle. Kayne, Seraphine and her small army of Asps would have their work cut out for them, trying to keep some sense of calm among the crowd when a war quite literally raged outside of the castle’s protective walls.

Suddenly the human city was now the safest place for them to be.

Confident pleasure sparkled in Althea’s gaze as she locked her eyes with mine. She nodded first. I replied with a curt tip of my head. “Then let’s not let them down,” Althea said, rolling back her shoulders. “Ready?”

I took a step toward the water that rushed back and forth upon the shore. Foam and seaweed tumbled over with the tide.

“Set fire to the sky,” I said, facing out at the waters toward the pandemonium. Duncan’s power had separated the fight but had not stopped it entirely. That was our task.

“Oh, how I have wanted to hear those words.”

Heat exploded behind me, but I was already running from it. I didn’t need to look back to know that Althea had released her power completely, just as Duncan had.

And now it was my turn.

The shallow waters turned to solid ice beneath my feet. It was as though winter seeped from my body with no thought or physical action. My power devoured the ocean surface willingly, flooding across the dark blue until it glistened like diamonds. There was no room for hesitation as my boots met the layer of ice.

This was not just magic, it was the power of Icethorn – a gift of being its king.

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