Page 18 of A Kingdom of Lies

My jaw tensed as I carefully picked my next words. “I thank you for yourstrainedhospitality, but my stay here has come to an end.”

I raised a hand, willing a gust of frozen wind to screech through the throne room. Gyah and Althea moved in time before my power slammed into them. Instead, it crashed into the doors, throwing them wide until they slammed against the walls beyond.

Someone was shouting after me, but I no longer cared. For I had nothing left to care about. My father was gone. Erix was gone. And I was alone.

And as I warned Doran, there was nothing more terrifying than someone with nothing to lose.

No one had stopped me from leaving Farrador with my father’s corpse resting across the stag I’d claimed. When I reached the outer walls of the city and the grand gates, I almost expected resistance. But what I found was them already open for me.

If anything, it proved that I truly was alone.

For hours I rode without stopping, until the air thinned and snow began to settle over my shoulders, coating the lump of my father’s corpse in white. I didn’t have a destination, but I felt the overwhelming desire to go home. To take my father back to Grove, to our house, and shut myself away from the world.

But I couldn’t bring myself to get that far. I felt the draw of Icethorn land and followed it, passing the marker stones until I was in a different home – one which I’d never known existed months ago.

Only then did I stop. My body moved on instinct. It was better to do something than sit around, staring at the corpse, waiting for my dark thoughts to consume me. So I built a pyre from wood and set my dead father upon it. As wild winds ripped around me, it took countless strikes of the flint and steel from my pack to get the single spark. But that spark was all I needed for the fire to burn. And as it caught and built into an inferno, I laid myself upon the floor, curled into a ball and closed my eyes.

That was when the tears began. Once the flood gates opened, it was as if the anger stepped aside and finally let the grief rear its ugly head. And ugly it was. Painful and sharp, all-consuming and devouring. My broken-hearted sobs that shattered out from my chest and filled the night, blending in sympathy with the crackling pops that were my father’s bones and flesh charring to ash.

I closed my wet eyes as the warmth of my father’s burning body embraced me. I pretended he was here, arms wrapped around me, offering me comfort in the moment I needed him most. There was another I longed to be here. Erix. The man who once offered me everything, but aided in breaking my world apart. I don’t know when sleep finally claimed me, but I was glad for the darkness. For the first time, I wished it took me and never spat me out again.

The leather of the reins rubbed my palms raw. I refused to let go. The pain helped keep me from slipping into my dark thoughts. The little sleep I had next to my father was interrupted as distant howls woke me. I thought it was wolves, but anything could’ve been possible. I almost lay there and waited for them to come and get me. But something told me to keep moving, a focus that I now had and which was all I could contemplate.

An army. I needed an army. But for that, I had to focus on the path ahead instead of looking back at the smouldering pyre that glowed proudly against the night. It was hard not to turn and watch as the glow of orange shrunk in the distance the further the mount clopped away.

I left my father’s body to burn beyond the border of Icethorn land. I didn’t know exactly where I was, but the feeling of being home had told me I was within my Court. But where I needed to go was South, towards the border of Durmain and beyond. And that was where I guided my stag, using the compass I took from Farrador to aid me in the right direction.

I rode for hours, the dark grey cloak tugged tightly around my shoulders to keep out the night. Most of the journey was exposed as I clambered over steep hills laced with snow or passed through empty, forgotten hamlets and villages that reminded me of Berrow.

Icethorn was a quiet place, which was both a blessing and a curse.

Eventually, I gave up fighting the heavy droop of my eyes. Sleep came in brief waves. Not even the horror of what waited for me during sleep could keep me from finally giving in, aided by the steady rhythm of the stag, who showed no signs of slowing.

I woke again only when I nearly slipped from the stag’s side. Time passed in a haze of exhaustion.

Eventually my in-and-out rest broke as I was greeted by clear blue skies and the end of Wychwood forest. Once I passed into Durmain, leaving the snow-dusted ground behind, my focus was sharp as a blade.

It didn’t take long for me to find a human village. My plan was simple. Locate someone who could give me clearer directions back to Grove. But the welcome I received, as the stag trotted into the first village I found, was not what I expected.

Faces looked up at me, all with wide eyes and expressions of disbelief. From both sides of the street, people watched as I rode upon my mount before them. It took me a moment to register that the people were humans, evident from the rounded ears and now more noticeable lack of grace that the fey held.

I turned around, no longer caring for the gasps of those who watched, likely expecting I would lash out. A slow smile spread across my face but it only lasted a moment. I could’ve lifted my hood and hid my ears, but I needed word that a fey had entered human land to spread. It had to reach the right people.

My pocket of happiness for my success was ruined by the realisation that my father was dead. For a brief moment I had forgotten.

All at once, grief rushed over me, intensified by guilt as a result of my forgetfulness. The rage followed swiftly.

But I had to focus.

“Where am I?” I called out, pulling on the reins until the stag stopped in its tracks. I was almost certain I felt the wobble of the mount as though its legs were seconds from giving out.

There was a long pause before someone brave enough to shout at me broke the silence. “Go back to where you came from.”

“No one wants you here.”

“Yes!” Another voice chimed in. “Fuck off.”

All around me humans, young and old, hurled abuse towards me. They, as I would have been before my life turned down its chaotic path, would’ve been shocked to see a fey beyond the Wychwood border. Perhaps that was because they never made it far enough before the Hunters found them. But I’d grown up around humans, and never experienced such a reaction.

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