Page 71 of A Game of Monsters

“No,” I bellowed as Nephilim took my body, forcing me onto my knees. “My magic… I can’t feel it, Althea.”

“And – mine!” Althea screamed back, continuing to resist her stone bindings. “I can’t feel it.”

A figure swept in front of me, blocking my view of my friends.

“That would be the small deposits of iron which have been threaded throughout your clothes,” Zarrel announced, pacing to where I was being held down by his winged followers. He swung the golden hammer as though it weighed no more than a sack of twigs. Then, as he stepped into me, he held it up, laying the flat cool metal against my chest. “Before you can begin to strip, this room has also been bathed in it. Last night, the food and wine also tainted. For the safety of our guests, above anything else.” Zarrel gestured to the humans whose fear and confusion rippled off them. “We wouldn’t want such devious creatures to threaten anyone else, now that we know the truth.”

At the use of the final word, I felt the draw of power beat between where the hammer touched and my flesh. Rafaela had used it against me once before, but the draw was stronger now, frantic in the hands of a man like Zarrel.

“And yet you stand here,” I sneered, muscles straining, a throbbing vein protruding across my forehead. “With weapons held in your hands. Who are you keeping them safe from, us oryou?”

Zarrel tilted his head, popping a hip to display just how little of a threat he found me. “Well, Robin, that would all depend on you, wouldn’t it? Would you like to tell us all what you have been keeping all to yourself, lying to us – your allies – all this time?”

I squirmed against the pressure of Rafaela’s golden hammer, but its influence was already upon me. There was nothing I could do to stop the truth rising out of me.

“Duwar,” I cried as the name was dragged out of me.

I couldn’t look to my friends even if I wanted to, my focus was on Zarrel, the hammer, and the truth was leached from me.

“Do you see how freeing the truth can be?” Zarrel asked, but didn’t wait for an answer as he pressed on. “Tell me, Robin Icethorn. Where is Duwar?”

I felt the shocked gazes of my friends scoring into me. But my focus was on the golden hammer, and the drawing persuasion as it forced me to speak the truth. I tried to regain control, forcing out the truth in my own way, trying to save myself some of my secrets. “In – Wychwood.”

“Resist it, Robin!” Erix cried out, voice muffled by the blood in his mouth. “Don’t give–”

I could only imagine his sudden silence was a result of another fist to his jaw.

“Butwherein Wychwood, Robin Icethorn?”

I sank my teeth into my lower lip, splitting skin, trying everything to stop the truth from coming out. Zarrel forced the hammer into my skin, making the sway of its power impossible to ignore.

As the final answer came out, I bellowed it across the church, so loud the sky far above would hear. “Duwar is inside of Duncan Rackley!”

Zarrel withdrew the hammer, satisfied with the answer. “Of course, I already know, courtesy of our dearest sister Rafaela. Although for the sake of our relations, I appreciate your cooperation.”

I didn’t have a choice: the hammer had taken away my free will.

In an act of divine fate, I heard the muffled cry of a woman. I snapped my head around to watch as Rafaela, garbed in dirtied clothes, her hunched back stained brown with new blood, was brought out of the shadows. She was held in the arms of two Nephilim, golden blades held at her throat and one at her gut.

One eye had swollen shut, the skin black and blue with bruises. Even her mouth suffered the same fate. But even through her obvious agony, she locked her single eye on mine and said, “I am so sorry, Robin. I had no choice.”

Guilt, the familiar friend it had become, rose within me. I’d seen her this morning, and yet left her in the hands of someone like Zarrel.

“Believe it or not,” Zarrel taunted, “Rafaela is telling the truth, she really did not have a choice. I only needed to use the hammer on her to get the knowledge out of her. Such auniqueweapon, one I have grown rather fond of using since it was given to me.”

From the pain across Rafaela’s face, I knew exactly what means Zarrel had used to extract the information.

All around me, my world was crumbling, and I was helpless to stop it. I fixed my eyes on Erix, finding strength in his unwavering glare. My eyes swept to Althea and Gyah who looked at me like I was a stranger. Then to Elinor, whose soft expression of pity nearly tore me apart like the claws of a beast.

I was a fish out of water, tangled in a net of iron, powerless and helpless.

Then my mind went to Duncan, who was no different. In the moments of chaos, I put together a few pieces of the puzzle. Cassial missing, the gryvern guards protecting Duncan now dead.

I strained against the arms of my captor, not caring for the pinch that bruised my skin. “This isn’t a game. Duncan is dangerous–”

“Duncan is agift,” came a voice from the mirror –withinthe mirror. “In ways that I could not possibly begin to explain with the little time we have.”

Every person in the room turned, human and fey, to find Cassial’s reflection staring outwards from the mirrors. A familiar room behind him, an empty bed layered with chains, a sideboard beside it with the hint of a syringe waiting, the vial full of golden liquid.

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