Page 54 of A Deception of Courts

“What if I hurt you?”

I held his gaze as my fingers reached back for his bracelet of iron. The moment the tips touched the metal, I felt the drawing, draining pull. This time, I didn’t pull away. “I would forgive you.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if I wasn’t put in a position that required the need for me to apologise to you?”

I shook my head. “For a man with such big balls, you’re scared of a little lightning?”

Duncan smirked, exhaling a long breath out of his nose. “Never have I heard little in relation to me before.”

“Exactly,” I replied, weaving my fingers beneath the bracelet and folding them over until the thin chain bit into my skin. “Facing your truth is the first step to living with it.”

“I love you,” Duncan breathed.

Before I changed my mind, I ripped the bracelet from Duncan’s wrist, snapping it into two pieces which fell from my fingers onto the floor at our feet. “And I love you, all of you.”

Duncan lowered his chin, pinched his eyes closed and gave in to the heavy breaths that took over his body. His face screwed up as he waited for the lightning to come.

I felt his power in the surrounding air, hot and crackling. Small veins of light danced across the layer of his skin. The hairs on his arms stood to attention. I gripped his hands and squeezed, urging him to calm himself.

“Duncan, you control the power. Remember, it doesn’t control you.”

It took a few moments of tension until Duncan gathered enough of himself to look back up at me. The glow of his green eyes intensified as his power coiled within them. He hardened himself before my eyes, his strong chest rising and falling as he focused on putting a lid on the power.

I waited for him. Giving him the moments to regain authority. “You can do this.”

Before long, the strands of purple light faded, the air returning to normal.

“Would you look at that,” I said. “Duncan Rackley is finally free.”

“As long as I have you, I’ll always be free.”

I narrowed my eyes on him, contemplating just how many things I wanted to do to him now he’d accepted his fate. “Now, back to the conversation of carrying me to bed–”

Outside of the tent a scream pierced the night. The sound ripped claws into my heart and shredded it to pieces, snapping our attention to the exit. I couldn’t explain it, but the noise was filled with grief. It hit me in the chest, powerful, dreadful, so strong that it encouraged my eyes to fill with tears without me understanding what it was I cried for.

Even after the howl stopped, it still rang in my ears. The sound drew me to my feet. Duncan, too. The peace lasted a moment until the sound came again. But this time, when the scream returned, it was not one of grief. It was born from anger. Burning, overwhelming fury that thorned itself into my soul and made me prepare for action.

I’d heard the sound before, once, upon the oceans when the Draeic flew overhead.

It was a cry of war.

Not a warning or a threat – but a promise.

And I knew exactly who’d expelled it.

CHAPTER 16

I gazed down upon Gabrial, refusing to look away, my body equally as rigid and cold as her corpse.

Her remains had been laid out across the table for all to see, blood soaking into the wood and staining the air with the harsh tang of copper.

The blood was everywhere. Once-golden hair was now stained russet, her roots were so dark with gore that it looked as though her scalp had turned to obsidian. I was thankful for the two identical pins that’d sewn her eyelids closed. When she’d first been presented to us, they’d been wide and all seeing. It had taken a lot of encouraging for Rafaela to release her. She’d clung on to the body of the smaller warrior, the pain etched into her face with lines so deep they could’ve been scars.

Rafaela was drenched in Gabrial’s blood, too. Her once-white tunic was splattered with the gore, spreading across her torso until it looked as though it was Rafaela who bled. But there was no denying that Gabrial was gone.

Before Elinor saw to Gabrial’s eyes being closed, I knew I’d never forget how little white was left in the young girl’s eyes. They were stained black as though her pupils had ruptured and the colour bled out of their confines.

It had been hours since Duncan pried the dead body from Rafaela’s grasp. Since then, Gabrial had been cleaned and cared for. Her skin had been washed, and her body prepared for her death rites. Although, little could be done for the ribbons of skin that’d been clawed from Gabrial’s body. The bleeding had stopped, but the damage was unrepairable. It was impossible to know what had been skin or torn strips of clothing. Face, chest, arms, neck, legs, hands. There wasn’t an inch of Gabrial’s body that’d not been tortured.

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