Page 96 of A Deception of Courts

Then he was gone, the powerful burst of his wings forcing winds down upon me. I squinted against the torrent, feeling the fresh breeze brush the hair from my sodden forehead.

Our allies live.His words played over in my mind.

It wasn’t long before the sky answered my pondering. Stark, white-blue lightning forked throughout the dark, revealing a swell of clouds that rivalled the obsidian of the night. I lifted my head as the sky opened and droplets of ice-cold rain fell upon my face, mixing with my tears.

Our allies live.

CHAPTER 27

The song of impending fatality filled Aurelia’s sky. I didn’t need to see it to know the Hunters were under siege. I heard it in their raw-throated screams and begging pleas, before their bodies sizzled beneath the fire or they were silenced with steel.

The attack persisted until the sky had brightened behind the swell of dark thunderclouds that sparked with the warning of lightning. Still, Erix hadn’t returned for me. Time stretched on uncomfortably. I swallowed the desire to shout for him or cry out a name of someone I’d thought dead. Although the flashes of fire and the bursts of lightning suggested Duncan and Althea had survived, until I saw them in the flesh, I wouldn’t allow myself to hope.

I sobbed when Gyah sliced through the sky, roaring hell-fury across Aurelia. Even from my distance, I could see her maw stained with blood and the mound of flesh trapped between her teeth. There was no stopping me as I screamed her name, begging her to come and free me. The feeling bubbled through the ground and burst out of me without the ability to stop it.

The Eldrae released the corpse within her jaw, which soon revealed itself to be the body of a Hunter. I felt the ground shudder under the impact as it fell from the great height. Then Gyah was out of sight, roaring once again, chasing after her next meal. And yet, within her cry, I felt as though she called out for me.

The patience Erix asked me to keep had grown thin. I couldn’t stand to listen to the unknown battle that raged above ground. My heart threatened to burst if I didn’t help. Blood swelled beneath my nails as I clawed at the narrow walls pressing on either side of me. I attempted to climb up the slick-damp wall and grasp the bar. After the umpteenth try, I hung from the rusted bars as the aged metal sliced into my palms. When I dropped, I howled with a mix of frustration and desperation, my twisted ankle sparking pain up my leg.

Until the iron cuff was removed, my healing and magic would be kept away. And if I wanted to do all the dark things that harboured in my mind, I’d need to be at full potential.

For a moment, I confused the sound of pounding feet with my heart, which was clogging up my throat. Once the sounds had desynchronised, I stopped my struggling.

It was a set of feet. One person.

This was it. Erix was coming for me.

I prepared myself, jaw aching. Would it be Erix, or perhaps Duncan would’ve found me first? Rafaela would tear through the city to find me, tasked with saving me or keeping me from Aldrick’s grasp.

But none of them gloomed over my cell, peering down with a stare overcome with the need for death.

Kayne was back. I fought the urge to cower from him, to force my body into a ball so he couldn’t reach me.

“You are going to do as I fucking tell you!” He panted, face pale against the smudges of ash and blood that covered him. The skin around his nose was bruised and swollen. Dirt, and a burnt smudge of rust, was spread across his neck as though bloodied hands had grasped for it. “Do you understand?”

I traced every detail of him, devouring it all. His panting, frantic breathing. The way his eyes left me and flickered across the unseen landscape. Beads of sweat coursed down his grime-covered face, attempting to clean a path through it. I even glimpsed Kayne’s constellation of freckles beneath.

“How do you feel watching everything you’ve worked for burn around you?” I asked, staring daggers through him as Kayne fumbled with a key from his pocket. He almost dropped it in his rush as he thrust it into the old lock that kept the bars in place.

He mumbled something under his breath.

“I asked you a question,” I said, surprising myself with how calm I felt. “How do you feel knowing you’ve failed?”

“No!” Kayne screamed back at me, slamming his fist into the lock. I heard bone crack and skin rip. “This isn’t the end. I’ll drag you to Elmdew if I have to. I’m so close…”

He swallowed his words, unable to focus on anything but unlocking the gate. Stone chipped beneath the force of the iron gate that Kayne threw open. There was nothing keeping us from one another. Kayne watched me for a moment, glaring down into the dungeon space as he considered his options.

“This ends now,” I said, fists balled and ready at my sides. “It’s over. I would suggest you get a head start with running before Duncan finds you.”

Or before I get my teeth into you again.

Kayne flashed a bloodied dagger and pointed the tip toward me. “I should have killed you myself. It would have saved me the hassle of weeks of lies and secrets.”

“But Aldrick needs me, so you wouldn’t dare–”

“I couldn’t give a fuck what that fey scum wants. It’s whatIwant that matters. And that is to see you dead. Once you are gone, that wretched spell you have placed on Duncan will break. He will come back to me. I will free him from you.”

Kayne’s frantic, demented expression hid nothing of his intentions. I could see from the wide set of his unblinking eyes that he believed everything he spat upon me.

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