Page 158 of A Game of Monsters

To my left, Duncan slept on a reading chair placed beside my bed. His proud white wings were wrapped around him, his chest rising and falling, his hand stretched out between us, fingers gently laid on the blanket at my side.

To my right, Erix waited for me. His body was stretched out on the side of the bed, curled on his side, his soft breath brushing against the side of my face. His features, although smooth, were still etched from deep exhaustion. Shadows clung beneath his eyes, his forehead creased in perpetual worry lines.

They had never left my side. I knew that fact without question. And yet their joint presence sparked a horror within me, curdling next to something else in my soul that didn’t belong.

A part of me longed to wake them both, but something stopped me.

I recognised a seed of sudden realisation deep in my gut. Like the uncaring teeth of a starved wolf, it sank its maw into my consciousness and locked its jaws in place, refusing to let go.

I was alive, but that wasn’t the only realisation that filled my exhausted mind.

My gaze fixed on the curtainless window at the end of the bed and looked to the night sky beyond, the glittering of stars. Some burned brighter than others, reminding me of the story my dad had told me.

I took a deep breath in, my lungs aching, a slight rasp in my throat. I filled my body with fresh air, banishing the cobwebs that filled me. My throat was dry as stone, my body tired and heavy. It took great effort to sit up, careful not to disturb the men at my side.

There would be a time for rejoicing, just not yet.

Pushing my awareness down my limbs, I didn’t stop moving until I felt the very tips of my fingers. They too were heavy and stiff, but I forced my awareness to make them wiggle. One finger at a time, my body came alive.

Alive.

The words had such sudden meaning, I sat up, feeling the ache across my chest. I sank my teeth into my lip, stopping the cry of pain from leaving me.

My initial instinct was to reach down, running tingling fingers over my torso, feeling the tender burn of recently charred skin. Even in the dull light of evening, I recognised the outline of a hand. A new scar above an old one – fingers splayed larger than the mark Althea had left long ago.

It didn’t belong to my hand, but to another. Small scars spread outwards across pale flesh like serpents… like lightning.

As I brushed my finger over the tender skin, my mind was filled with a bright bolt of light. Duncan’s magic lingered. Had it been his light that guided me back? Re-sparked my struggling heart, as he refused to let me go?

I moved my hands atop the outline of my new scar, no longer caring about the pain. Instead, I was full of wonder, looking at just how large the familiar outline was. The skin was coated in a thick salve that made my fingers stick together, webbing as though sap had been plastered across the new wound.

Questions thrummed through me, most notably: what had happened?

I should be dead, but here I was, alive and breathing – not completely well but alive nonetheless.

I scooted to the end of the bed. My body was mine, and yet I felt some disconnect. As though it was not my consciousness that filled my limbs, but something else, belonging to another.

I used the final dregs of strength to push off the edge, wobbling on weak legs. I used the wall to steady myself as I came into view of the window. And in it, I saw my reflection.

I knew what I’d find before I saw it.

Duwar – looking back at me through its eyes. Except it wasn’t a demon, but my face just… different. Bright with power, features sharp and otherworldly. A light encased my skin, haloing my reflection as though I was imprinted in glass like the windows of Abbot Nathanial’s church.

The horror of it, the reality that I had somehow survived the poison that was meant to kill me, came flooding in. Unable to look at myself, I tore the metal handle of the window from its clasp and pushed it open. With unnatural force, the window slammed into the wall outside, shattering glass.

“Robin!”

I didn’t care who called after me, which one of my loves shouted my name.

Not when I got my first look of the world outside, a familiar street with close-knit homes, narrow streets and a view of patchwork fields now full of pitched white tents. I didn’t get a chance to truly understand where I was, before a panicked gasp sounded at my back.

“Little bird, you’re–”

“Alive,” I said, skull thundering, lungs aching for proper breath, I looked behind me to see both Duncan and Erix were alert.

Erix was pale as the sheets he lay upon, looking as if he’d seen a ghost. Duncan’s verdant eyes glittered with tears, his brow pinched but his lips curved in a smile of pure relief.

Disbelief rang in every crease and line across their handsome faces.

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