Page 108 of A Game of Monsters

“It’s just a storm,” I said, looking back at him. Sleep crusted the corners of my eyes and my mouth had dried. My body was covered in a sticky film of sweat, but it was the best sleep I’d had in a long while. So much so, it took me a moment to work out where we were.

Then I remembered Duncan and turned to his cocoon.

My world shattered at what I found.

The cocoon had broken apart. Half still hung to the ceiling, but the rest lay in dried patches of cracked shell across the floor. Amongst the dried shell and puddles of thick masses of goo, white feathers led like a path toward the window.

And Duncan was nowhere to be seen.

I was up in seconds, standing on trembling knees as I scanned my eyes over the entirety of the room. Erix joined me, sharing in my panic. Lightning cast the room in a stark purple glow. It highlighted the broken shell and missing body.

“I’m sorry,” Erix shouted over another clash of thunder. There was barely a second between the lightning and the world-shattering boom. “I fell asleep when I was supposed to keep watch. I should not have… I–”

As another bolt of bright light cast across the sky, my panic faded to nothingness. I laid a hand on Erix’s arm, wishing he shared the same revelation as I. “Erix,” I said. “This is not a normal storm…”

“What?” His eyes were wide open, fear painted in the bright hues of his irises.

“It’s him.”

Him. Duncan.

Even more snakes of purple light passed over the sky, proud and strong. I knew in the deepest parts of my soul that they belonged to Duncan. For this was his power. I couldn’t explain it, but from the way the panic left Erix’s gaze, he figured it out too. As if the same tether inside of me was also bound around him.

Another unspoken need was my desperation to be taken to him. Erix sensed that. In seconds I was swept up, his muscle-hard arms holding me close to him.

Erix beat his leathery wings against the thick air, the floor falling away from us. Then, with the grace of a dove, we speared out of the window, directly into the sky beyond.

Rain lashed down over Irobel, blinding me. Warm winds whipped at my skin. Erix flew up and up, until the building was nothing but a speck beneath us. But that wasn’t the only thing I noticed.

The sky was full. Not only of thunder and lightning, rain and wind. But of Nephilim. They were everywhere, wings beating, keeping them afloat. My first instinct was to gather my magic, bringing ice to the surface, ready to turn rain to spears that would rip through flesh.

But the Nephilim paid us no mind.

There was a flock of warriors, hundreds of them. No,thousands. Not a single one looked at Erix or me. Their gazes were focused to a spot in the centre of the storm, where another figure hung, white wings beating as purple light sparked and crested around their body.

A body I knew as well as my own, except it was different to the last time I saw it.

“Duncan,” I breathed, almost choking on the name. When I repeated his name, it came out as a desperate scream. “Duncan!”

Perhaps he couldn’t hear me, or maybe he just chose to ignore me. But that didn’t stop me from bellowing for him, over and over, until my throat felt as though it bled.

Erix attempted to fly closer, but the lightning kept us at bay, as did the sky full of Nephilim.

It seemed, with every passing second, more joined the sky.

But from where?

More lightning. More thunder. I watched as the lines of stark light left the white-winged figure. Instead of threading through the clouds, conducting in the warm air and setting the sky on fire, they crashed into the earth, spreading across every island in Irobel – atop statues of stone.

“The Saviour,” I breathed, studying this impossibility. “He really is the Saviour who Gabrial prophesised.”

As Duncan’s lightning struck Irobel, it shattered stone. Not stone, but the statues themselves. And from those statues, more Nephilim flew skyward. An endless stream of bodies. And I watched, from Erix’s arms, as the hope of saving the realms suddenly became a possibility.

Duncan had not only survived the Transfiguration – the Creator’s judgement and the physical change to his body – he was using his fey-given power to free Rafaela’s promised army. And with each strike of burning light, I felt the kindling of hope spark in my chest, growing hotter and hotter until it was impossible not to let it consume me.

Born from two realms. Made, with the blood of the fey threading through his heart.

I smiled, pride beaming from my soul for him. Because Duncan Rackley’s survival had just changed the tide of the future’s fate.

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