Page 128 of A Deception of Courts

No one refused me as I pushed a cot up beside the one Duncan’s body rested on.

I hoped the sickening screech of wood against the stone floor would’ve woken him. It didn’t. Nor did the slight thump as the cots bumped together. Without discarding my dirtied boots, I climbed on and curled my body beside his. I lay with my knees tucked up to my chest and sobbed.

My breathing was erratic. Tears scored down my cheeks, their presence leaving wet scars and turning my skin sticky. I felt the feather-down pillow dampen beneath my face. No matter how loud I cried or how my desperate fingers took hold of Duncan’s stiff hand, he didn’t wake up.

If not for the faint yet persistent flutter of his heart, which danced beneath his skin, I would have believed he was dead. Regardless of what the healers said – what Elinor Oakstorm confirmed with her own magic – Duncan was so still that it was hard to believe he still lived.

Whatever state he was in was no better than death. I’d lost him, and it was all my fault.

The gauze that’d been bound tightly around his midriff had already stained. It hadn’t even been an hour since it was last cleaned and redressed, and already blood forged its way to freedom.

The wound across his abdomen refused to heal. Long gouge marks that had dug so deep muscles and bone had been exposed. I’d not seen it myself, choosing ignorant bliss over torturing myself, but Elinor had described the three long tracks like something had scored Duncan’s stomach.

Two days. It had been two days since the keys were destroyed and Erix and Duncan had returned from the other side. Two days, yet the improvement to Duncan’s situation was minimal. If Elinor Oakstorm hadn’t arrived the night prior to Rinholm, I was confident we would have lost him.Iwould have lost him, for good this time.

“Duncan,” I exhaled his name, defeated. “Wake up. Please, I can’t face this future without you.”

I watched the dark brush of his eyelashes for movement.Nothing. His lips didn’t twitch, nor did his jaw tense. I dared not blink in case I missed a sign that he could hear me. Only when my eyes stung did I pinch them closed, burying my face into the cold skin of his shoulder.

“There is so much I wish to say to you, so many things I need to hear you reply. Please… just… fight this. For me. Come back so I can tell you how sorry I am. This is my doing. My fault. Don’t you dare leave me until… until you get the chance to punish me. Just don’t leave me.”

What little control I had over my breathing was gone as quickly as it came.

Duncan wasn’t kept with the injured fey. With the help of Elinor, a makeshift camp had been erected within Rinholm Castle’s grounds for the rest of those needing help. Elinor had brought as many healers as she could from Oakstorm, even confirming more were on their way. Aldrick had hurt Elmdew and its people greatly in the short time since he had invaded, and many had not made it to see this day.

I couldn’t help but see them as the lucky ones.

Like beetles, her healers scuttled around the camp day and night. It seemed the list of Aldrick’s victims was never-ending. Every hour, more and more fey had been rescued from camps across Elmdew’s lands. In droves, they were brought to Rinholm to be cared for. Even the dead, and there were many, had not been left behind in the terrible conditions they were found in. Pens and cages that even the most feral of animals would not be put within.

I hadn’t been allowed to see them for myself. Not allowed out of these walls. And I understood why.

I wasn’t trusted.

Rafaela was dealt the same judgement. The stone of these walls were no different to shackles bound around wrists and ankles.

We were not trustworthy because of what our actions caused. And I didn’t blame the brief sideways glances Gyah had provided me or how Althea had kept her distance from me in the days that passed.

As Elinor had reiterated, with a look that blended pity and disappointment, it wasn’t that I sacrificed the Icethorn key that was the problem. It was that I didn’t give Althea the chance to make the choice for herself. It was her right as a Cedarfall to claim that power, and I’d taken it from her. Regardless if she knew it was the right choice, it was hers to make, not mine.

And there was no denying that the destruction of the keys was the right decision, but the manner in which it was conducted was nothing but wrong. I was wrong. And the man beside me, whose shoulder was coated with my tears, had paid the price for my betrayal.

A wave of sickness bore over me. I clutched my empty stomach at the pain that coiled and twisted as though a serpent had taken residency in the place the Icethorn key once had.

“Jesibel is healing well.” I spoke the words for the first time since the news had reached me. It was what drew me to Duncan. Selfishly, I required comfort even if I didn’t deserve it. “She isn’t speaking, but at least she is eating and sleeping, although the latter is only in short bursts.”

I swallowed the urge to vomit. Even lying down, I felt the world tilt violently. “Whatever Aldrick did to her… it has affected her more deeply. No healer is able to fix the wounds that linger in her mind. Only time will tell if she will survive those…”

I’d been almost confident that Jesibel no longer had a tongue, considering she refused to talk. But after examination, her choice to not speak was her own. Elinor believed it was because she’d been used against her will to give our information to Aldrick – she’d likely wanted nothing more than to refuse him, and now that desire had caused her to not speak at all.

Of course, it was speculation, but there was no denying that she was hurt. One look in her eyes and it was as if Jesibel wasn’t truly with us.

“Everything I’ve done was to save her, and I couldn’t even do that. She is alive, but not with me. Like you. I hate myself for not working harder to free her. Instead, Aldrick used her against me, and she’ll likely never recover from it. If I had not fixated on freeing Jesibel, perhaps Kayne would never have known her name. He would never have exposed my weakness to Aldrick. She… she would be happily returning to Icethorn with the hope of a future…” I took a deep breath in, mind falling to what I’d learned yesterday. “Althea gave her the second vial of Mariflora because Jesibel refused to leave Rinholm. That’s how she distracted Aldrick enough for Althea to finish him. But… I saw her whisper something into his ear, so I knew there is still hope yet that she will find it in her to talk to me.”

Familiar silence drew out in the moments after my exasperated monologue. Only the feather-soft breathing of Duncan responded. It was both enough and not. I needed to hear him tell me it was going to be okay. To remind me of what we had achieved. It was his opinion that I desired the most. Even if he looked at me with the same disdain and blame as Althea or plainly ignored me like Gyah, at least I would know.

It was the not knowing that ate me up from the inside – sinew, gristle and all.

Most of all, I wanted to know what happened to him when he disappeared through the gate. Getting answers out of Erix was wasted when he treated me with the same frosty emotion whilst still acting as my guard. He’d become a second shadow, hardly leaving me for a minute since he had saved Duncan, and yet barely being able to look at me.

---