Page 78 of A Deception of Courts

If I was in control, I had to wake up. I couldn’t bear to watch anymore. Seeing her throw her head back and forth, her black hair sliced to her scalp with grease, blood and gore. I wished to shield myself from the horrific view laid out before me. This didn’t feel like a dream or a nightmare.

She stopped so suddenly it frightened me more than her suffering. Her bloodshot eyes locked with mine, her hands bent into claws. “Beware of the–”

Jesibel was torn backwards by an unseen force, ripped from the floor and dragged into the dark unknown, all before she could finish what she was about to say.

I bolted upright in bed, gasping for breath. My hands grabbed greedily for my body, just to make sure it was there. My skin was damp to the touch. Even the sheets of the bed had gripped to my skin in places slick with sweat.

Just as my mind caught up with reality, I caught the tail-end of a noise beyond the building. I first believed it was just the remains of the dream, but the noise repeated to prove me wrong. It wasn’t Jesi’s success at warning me but something else.

It was the trill cry of a bird, mocking Jesi’s cry.

“It’s okay, darling. I’ve got you,” Duncan said, leaning up on his elbow with tired, heavy eyes. I melted into his firm hand, which drew circles across my back. “You’ve had a nightmare. You are safe.”

I fixed my stare on the blanket of night sky beyond the window. How long had I been sleeping? The candles had burned out completely, but the day still seemed leagues away. “It was awful,” I gasped, burying my face in my hands.

“Talk to me.” The bed creaked as Duncan forced himself to sit up. “I’m here to help, so let me.”

I exhaled into my shaking hands, unable to rid myself of the dream. Even the taste of blood still lingered in my mouth. I ran my tongue across the insides of my cheeks to check if I had bitten them during sleep.

Duncan gave me a moment to compose myself. Then I drew free of my hands and faced him.

“I’m fine,” I forced out the lie, unable to convince myself with my shaking voice, let alone Duncan.

“You’re quite obviously not fine, Robin.”

My sticky legs clung to the sheets, so damp I thought I’d pissed myself from fear alone. Luckily for me, and Duncan, it was only sweat. “There isn’t even peace for me in my dreams these nights, that is all.”

Or peace in waking, for I soon remembered the last time I woke in Berrow from a nightmare. Different arms had waited to comfort me, arms belonging to Erix. Of course my waking mind went straight to him, it liked to punish me no matter my state.

“I just need a moment,” I exhaled. “Once the dregs of that dream pass, I’ll be okay.”

Duncan was clearly not satisfied. He’d seen me struggle to sleep, lying awake some nights, or those I did sleep I’d wake looking more exhausted than before. And yet, those times he didn’t pry. That luxury had long gone. “Why do you not want my help–”

“Duncan, please! Just… just give me a moment?” I snapped, unable to hold back my sudden fury.

“I’m only trying to help,” he said, his hand pausing its rubbing motion on my back. “What good am I to you if I cannot do even that?”

My mind spun, the desire to run from this conversation a siren song I couldn’t ignore.

Duncan swallowed hard as I jumped from the bed, leaving his hand hovering in the air where my back had been only seconds before.

“I just need to breathe.”

The silence Duncan responded to me with was more painful than a knife to the chest. Instantly, guilt overwhelmed me. I shouldn’t have spoken to him like that. I was exhausted and shaken, but he didn’t deserve that.

“I’m sorry.” I stood before him, chest heaving with the urge to hold back my sobs.

“Don’t, Robin, you don’t need to apologise to me. I understand.” He didn’t need to tell me he was hurt. I could see it in the wince of his forest-green eyes, the downturn of his mouth at its corners.

Even in the face of my mistreatment, Duncanstillhad my best interests at heart.

Selfishly, I turned my back on him and paced toward the window. It wasn’t Duncan who experienced my wrath next, but the window that wouldn’t open no matter how hard I pried at the handle. Time and weather had merged the wooden frame with the windowsill. The more I forced it, the more it refused to budge.

“For fuck’s sake,” I cried out, slamming my palms on the glass. The wave of anger came as suddenly as the first, and left just as fast. I pressed my head to the cold pane and exhaled, watching my breath fog beneath my lips and blur the view of Berrow from beyond.

“I need some air.” I turned from the window to see Duncan standing helplessly beside the bed. The landscape of mountainous muscles across his stomach and chest were taut as he regarded me. He gripped the bed sheets enough to shield his modesty, trembling from his own anxieties.

I was a puzzle of missing pieces, one he wished to put together but never would be able to.

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