Page 110 of A Kingdom of Lies

“I sense there should be a warning to follow,” Aldrick replied, old fingers tightening on my shoulder until it hurt. “After the power I have gifted you, you turn upon me immediately, General Rackley. Have your years of faith been turned to ash with a mere matter of days with this fey boy?”

Elinor’s lips were pulled into a tight, sharp line. She looked at Aldrick with pure hatred; if her stare was a weapon he would have been covered in deep and agonising wounds.

Aldrick was still hooded, speaking from the shadows he hid within. Were Elinor and I the only ones to know of his true identity?

“It is our little secret,”Aldrick confirmed, his youthful voice echoing across the cavern of my mind. “Not for long. When my task is complete the people of this realm and the next will not see me as a fey. They will see me as the Hand. Bringer of Duwar. Ruling at the god’s side. A new era.”

“If I had known you were nothing but an old man cursed with the cancer of delusion, I would have never followed your false promises,” Duncan spat as he replied, teeth bared, and arms taut with muscle.

“Ah, but you did not join my army as the others did. Did you, Duncan?”

I watched in horror as Duncan’s eyes rolled back into his head and he pinched his eyes closed. Duncan struggled, not physically but mentally, throwing his head from side to side.

“Get out of my fucking head!”

It was becoming harder for the guards to hold him down. Others had to join, gripping his sweat-slicked skin, and keeping him from breaking free.

“Names,” Aldrick said, drawing out the word as though it was the first time he’d ever spoken it. “Your friend Kayne joined because of the promise for a new world. He heard the words I spoke and, like many others, wished to help bring forth this new realm in the name of the punished and forgotten Duwar. You… You simply wanted names. A selfish want.”

“Get. Out,” Duncan pleaded, eyes scrunched in pain.

“Please…” I said breathlessly. “Leave him. This has nothing to do with him.”

“Not as strong-willed as you first thought,” Aldrick said, speaking solely to Duncan, swatting my pleading away with the wave of a hand.

Duncan’s eyes snapped wide, and he panted, lips and chin wet. He looked deranged; a wild animal caught within a trap. He didn’t plead for Aldrick to withdraw from his mind anymore, instead he stared at a spot on the floor as his dark-forest eyes filled with stubborn tears.

“Does it change anything for you?” Aldrick asked, releasing me and stepping forward. “All these years and you have wished for something that is pointless and useless. Names are not as powerful as you have been led to believe. What will you do with the information you have sought?”

I couldn’t catch a breath as I watched Duncan retreat from this room and this world before our very eyes. No longer did he struggle. The guards did not relax their holds, but I could see that he had given up fighting now. Whatever Aldrick had revealed within Duncan’s mind had broken him.

“Talk to me, Duncan,” Kayne shouted, breaking his silence as he looked worriedly towards his friend. “Come on, boy. Say something to me.”

Duncan ignored Kayne. Perhaps he didn’t hear him through the roaring of whatever information he had gleaned from Aldrick.

Kayne turned his attention towards Aldrick. Still, he was the only one who didn’t look upon the old man with horror. There was still a gleam of admiration for the Hand, even if the wince across his face told me that he struggled with it after what he had witnessed.

“What of the Hunters?” Kayne said. “Those creatures likely hunt them through our streets. Should we not be fighting them? Helping the innocents who wait within their homes for the beasts to pick them off one by one?”

Aldrick shook his head. “It would seem a disgruntled fey king waits outside our walls. And I wonder who led him here.” Aldrick’s hollow eyes flickered to me. “Those creatures are known as gryvern and only Doran Oakstorm can control them. Twisted and evil creations of the very king who sent them. War is upon us, but I will not waste my precious Hunters in fighting beasts. This war is not for them. They are here for something and when they retrieve it… they will leave.”

At this Duncan looked to me. So did Elinor, whose stern expression cracked and revealed concern for me. A name whispered across her lips.Doran.

“Do not worry.” Aldrick leaned into my ear and whispered, his lips uncomfortably close. I could not pull away as his strong will still gripped me firmly. “I will not give you up that easily. As a show of my good faith, and my desire to work with you and not against you, we will kill Doran Oakstorm together. That is what you wished for, was it not? My help in defeating him? You came all this way for an army, an army I can give you. With your help we will create one. Look at Duncan Rackley. Do you see what your blood can do now?”

“Monster,” Elinor snarled. “I have faced men like you before and believe me, it will never end in your favour.”

“And you would know one wouldn’t you, Elinor Oakstorm? Robin came all this way because of your dear husband. As did you. Both for different reasons, but it is poetic that you share such a similarity, is it not?”

“From the arms of one, to the prisoner of another. Yes,” she spat, “I do know a monster and you are the greatest of them all.”

Aldrick laughed, deep and rumbling, like the warning of thunder through dark-stained skies. The remaining Twin echoed his chuckle as she paced behind the line of my companions, each of them on their knees, the human king still sobbing into the stone slabs at his feet. Not a single guard had to hold him down; he was no threat.

Dark lines sliced down the Twin’s grief-crazed face. Her hair was a tangle of wild and messy strands. Her clothes stained with the blood of her sister.

“Please,” Kayne said, flinching as the Twin came too close. “The more time we waste the more people will die at the hands of those… the gryvern.”

“And their lives will not be wasted,” Aldrick snapped, displeased with Kayne’s sudden interruption. “Have you not seen what I can do for those who die? Look at your trusted companion. Stabbed in the heart, yet still he lives. Ask yourself why that is.”

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