Page 164 of A Game of Monsters

Althea nodded. “Get changed first. We must leave Grove immediately, as the storm Cassial unleashed is spreading in this direction fast. Gyah is waiting for us outside with a handful of mounts for the journey. Once we are safe in Wychwood, we can further discuss all that we have learned in the days you’ve been unconscious, and then we can plan how to fix this, once and for all.”

Safe? I shook my head, pinching my eyes closed as a sudden spear of pain shot through my skull. “It sounds an awful lot like we are running from the problem.”

“I hate to admit it, Robin, but running from Duwar is the only option we have. Nothing can stand against it, no power is strong enough to quell its thirst for devouring,” Althea replied.

Except, I was alive, and with that, there was a part of Duwar still lingering inside of me. This was why Duncan and Erix didn’t speak. Why they had a hesitation to tell me what was happening. Because they had worked out what lingered inside of me, and what I would do with it.

“I can fix this,” I said, more to myself than anyone else.

“No, darling,” Duncan said. “What this power is capable of outside a mortal or immortal body is unlike anything you can imagine. There have been Faithful I have sent to attempt to accept it into their bodies, but the power tore them apart. Fey too. Cassial has released a power back into the realms, poison with his intention for destruction.”

“The same goes for one of my gryvern,” Erix added, regret darkening his silver eyes. “And they met the same fate. Fey, human – brave souls have attempted to take the loosed power of Duwar into them, and they all perished. It is not just ruin that spreads, but death itself.”

And yet Duwar was more than death. It was life too – it gave the fey power, it gave the world a purpose before it was banished to its dark void. Duncan had shown me that, spreading vines and flowers over the crumbled remains of Imeria castle. “And yet the issue still persists, and I still have part of that power inside of me.”

I clutched at my chest as if my nails could sink through flesh and drag it out of me just to prove what I was saying.

“What?” Althea gasped. “You what, Robin?”

“I took that vial after Cassial expelled Duwar inside of me,” I said. “He didn’t trust me with all of it and kept a part for himself. We can run, but it will continue to spread, I don’t need to be a scholar to know that.”

Althea asked Duncan and Erix the question that I knew was pointless. “How long have you known?”

Duncan straightened, inhaling a sharp breath before replying. “I would recognise the echo of that power in any life.”

Because he had shared it, Duncan knew on a deeper level. Or maybe, the path he saw this ending in, the one the Creator showed him, meant he always knew I would accept the power.

Either way, that didn’t matter now. What mattered was using the second chance Seraphine had given me. Doing something worthy for the realms.

There was something in the way Erix looked at me that revealed his thoughts were in line with mine. That was why he hesitated to speak before, that was why he could barely look at me without it seeming like he was looking at someone already lost.

Because he knew what I had to do.

“Robin,” Duncan said, shivering with unspent power, fingers flexing beside him as if he wanted to reach for me and never let me go. “I know what must be done, but that doesn’t mean I want to accept it.”

“Then you will not refuse me when I ask you to take me to it, will you?” I asked.

Duncan’s eyes downturned to the floor, Erix stepping in and laying a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Their silence was answer enough.

I walked past them, toward the narrow window set into the far-off wall. Setting my gaze out across slanted rooftops and farm lands, I found what I was looking for. Or it found me.

A mass of darkness, a wall of pure power that swallowed the sky and the land behind it.

I clutched onto the window frame, sodden wood snapping beneath my hands.

“It’s moving toward us,” I said, watching the mass of darkness roll over fields, shadow-made talons gouging earth before swallowing it whole.

“And it has, for days now. Countless miles it has consumed, and yet as of this morning it changed its course to this direction,” Althea said. At some point she’d come to stand beside me, a comforting hand laid on my shoulder. “Rafaela believed it is searching for something, a replacement for Cassial. Now I know why.”

Tears filled Althea’s eyes as she realised what had to be done.

Turning my back on the view outside, I looked to Duncan, who would understand my next words better than anyone. “Me.”

“Yes, darling. Like calls to like.” Duncan stepped out of Erix’s embrace. “Give it to me. I brought it to the realms, let me be the one to fix it.”

I shook my head, smiling at his ease of putting himself before me. “No, Duncan. And I am not scared of it.”

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