Page 69 of A Kingdom of Lies

I scoffed, almost choking. “Need me?”

“That’s right. I need you very badly, Robin Icethorn.” Duncan winked, turning my uncomfortable shivers to a tender quiver, like cool breath over my skin.

“You spend a lot of time mocking me for a man who needs me more than I need him. I could freeze your skin, harden your bones until they were no different to shards of fragile glass. Leave you within this attic all without much effort at all. So, tell me, Duncan Rackley, why should I bringyouwith me?”

A cloud passed over Duncan’s expression, narrowing his eyes and pursing his lips into a line so straight they paled. If my hearing was stronger, I might’ve heard the wheels in his mind turning as he conjured his answer – or as he decided whether to make his response truthful or not.

I waited, watching as Duncan finished the dregs of his bottle. Once it was emptied he discarded it on the floor and reached for the next. Lifting the new bottle to his mouth, he pinched teeth around the cork and pulled, the pop shattering the quiet between us.

“I require an audience with the Hand as well.”

“Excuse me?” I said, unsure if I’d heard him correctly.

“Have I not expressed that we share similarities?” Duncan said, his grin faltering. “I also need to speak with the Hand personally. One on one. Delivering him a fey royal will grant me that.”

“And here I had been left to wonder why you became so involved with helping me. Even freeing Althea to stop Briar. Standing against Erix when he came for me. You need me, far more than I need you.”

“Well, if you say it like that, then yes. Tell me, Robin, what are you going to do with this information? The power is quite literally in your hands. The choice is all yours.”

I sat up straight, uncrossing my legs in the chair and rooting them back on the floor of the attic. It was impossible to discern if the room spun because of what I had uncovered, or if it was the bottle of wine I had downed. “Is the Hand truly mysterious, so much so that a general of his Hunters cannot even request his time?”

Duncan shrugged, clicking his tongue across teeth. “You say it as though I’ve not already thought about or tried that approach too many times to count.”

“You know my reasoning. Is it not fair that I know yours, since you’ve been plotting to use me this entire time?”

“Oh, Robin.” Duncan pouted, gaze trailing me from head to toe. “Has my deceit hurt you? Did the wine make you forget who I am, and what you are? Do not grow comfortable because enemies break bread and drink from the same cup. They both do so with poison painted across their lips.”

“Stop doing that,” I groaned.

“What?”

“Changing the subject when it doesn’t proceed down a path you are comfortable with.” I stood from the chair, bottle tight in my hand and legs swaying as though the church was built upon wild seas. “Just answer the question, Duncan.”

If I was honest with myself, I never believed he’d tell me. In the short time I’d come to know him I was prepared for the subject to change, or him to choose silence other truth.

Then he did the opposite and spoke the truth. I believed that’s what it was the second the words left his mouth. I read the honesty in every crease across Duncan’s forehead, and the heavy emotion that darkened his eyes. Most of all, Duncan looked nowhere else but at me. And his truth cut deep like a silver-forged blade.

“Names. Names only the Hand has access to. Dangled over my head from the moment I left Abbot Nathanial until now. A promise of the names of those who stole the lives of my parents. Names I would do anything to get,” Duncan revealed, voice gritty with tempered emotion. “That’s why I need you.”

Perhaps it was the wine that made me take steps towards him, forcing me to cross the candle-lit room with nothing but the desire to provide Duncan with some form of ease. He shivered with the feeling that haunted him, not sadness or anger, but something guttural and wild. Desperation. A scorching desire that would have made him do anything to appease it. A feeling I knew all too well.

Duncan watched me with large, wide eyes. He didn’t even flinch as my hand reached the side of his face. The tips of my fingers met his skin first, melting upon him until his cheek rested in my palm. His skin was warm. The scent of him freshly washed was as beautiful as a breath of fresh, winter air.

“What are you doing?” he asked, allowing me to step between his legs which he parted with a shuffle of his feet.

I peered down at him, feeling a lump form in my throat as I replied. “You’re right, we do have many similarities. I wish it was different circumstances for the both of us, but here we are, products of the world around us. How can I look at you any different for what you desire when I wish the same for another?”

In a single moment, the tension between us shifted, guided by my unseen hand.

Duncan discarded the bottle, careless of the wine that spilt across his sheets. With straight, strong arms, he pushed himself upwards, face coming to meet mine with nothing but a sliver of distance between us.

I didn’t move back, but the momentum caused my hand to fall from the side of his face like the tears he fought so hard to keep from spilling.

“After everything I’ve done to you, to your friends, to the fey, what do you see when you look at me?”

“I see a man who’d do anything for his family,” I replied, voice no more than a whisper. “And I see a boy with scars, some visible but most unseen, looking for a remedy to ease their discomfort. I see you, Duncan Rackley.”

His expression softened, the creases around his eyes dissolving into nothingness. For a moment I obtained a peek at the boy he would have been before, free from haunting torment and twisted desire for vengeance.

---