Page 11 of Court of Lies and Deceit

The moment that I’m safely in Haldia’s arms, Draven whirls towards Orion. Haldia gasps, and almost drops me, when Draven suddenly grabs the Unseelie King by the collar of his shirt and yanks him closer.

“If she dies, so does your city,” Draven growls in his face.

I suck in a sharp breath as a vision explodes before my eyes. The beautiful city is no longer visible around me. And neither are my companions. Instead, all I can see is myself. And Tommen and Jeb.

I’m lying on the floor. Blood coats my forearm, staining the shredded fabric of the sheer robe I’m wearing and turning it red instead of white. The short silk nightgown I’m wearing has slid up around my waist, which reveals a vicious stab wound in my thigh. Blood wells up from it and trickles down over my skin. My eyes are sliding in and out of focus, and my chest barely rises with ragged breaths. A few steps away, Tommen and Jeb are crouching in attack positions.

It makes no sense. Because instead of looking up from the floor, I’m looking down at myself from a position by the door. But the vision is so vivid, soreal, that it makes fear crawl across my skin like tiny spiders.

Then the vision disappears, as if it was yanked away by a ruthless hand.

I gasp. My head spins and my heart pounds in my chest. Blinking, I try to focus on the world around me again.

Draven has released Orion’s collar and staggered several steps back, and his face is ashen as he stares at the Unseelie King.

Orion locks merciless eyes on Draven. “If you ever put your hands on me again, I willmake sureshe dies.”

Rage flashes across Draven’s face, but I don’t have time to see what he does, because Haldia abruptly turns around and hurries into her house. Threats and harsh voices are cut off as she closes the door behind us.

Her house is cozy. Full of books and plush armchairs and soft fabric. Several potted plants line the windowsills.

I drag in a deep breath, which sends a spike of pain through my chest, and try to get my mind to focus properly again.

“What was that?” I press out between bursts of pain.

“What was what?” Haldia asks as she carries me into another room.

“I saw… myself. Dying.”

“Ah.” She gently sets me down on the sturdy table in the middle of the room. “The king has nightmare powers.”

I frown. “What?”

She rounds the table so that she is standing by my head instead. My shirt has slid up my stomach, and I try to reach up to pull it down again, but I find that I can no longer lift my arms. Panic crackles through my body. Swallowing, I try to force the dread down.

“Though I suppose it’s not really nightmares as such,” Haldia says while she lifts her hands and holds them to the sides of my head. “King Orion can pull bad memories from people’s heads and make them relive them. He can show them both to the person who carries the memory, but also to whoever else he wants, so I assume the memory you just saw belongs to someone else.”

My heart jerks as I finally understand the vision. Draven. I was looking at myself through Draven’s eyes when he broke the door down to save me from getting killed by Tommen and Jeb during the Atonement Trials.

A slight prickling sensation begins inside my head. I grit my teeth.

“Oh dear,” Haldia says. Her blue and purple eyes meet mine as she tilts her chin and looks down at me from where she is still standing by my head. Her hands remain hovering close to my temples. “You have a lot of repressed emotions and memories in your head, girl.”

I glance away, suddenly embarrassed. Of course I have a lot of repressed stuff in my head. I have spent my entire life swallowing down my real emotions so that I wouldn’t upset the people around me. I couldn’t show any anger or sadness or frustration or any other uncomfortable emotion since it might set off my parents and make them argue again.

Even with strangers, I couldn’t let them see any of my negative feelings since that would only make them dislike me even more than they already did. Sharing my grief or venting my anger would just make them see me as a drain on their energy. As a burden. As an undesirable person who brought negativity into other people’s lives.

So contented, but not too strong, happiness is all I have ever been able to show others.

Everything else, all the rage and the fury and the sorrow and jealousy and all the negative emotions that I have been drowning in all my life, have been locked up tight inside my chest. Buried underneath a thick lid. Never to be let out.

“But that is not my job to fix,” Haldia continues. “The ice fire and your severed spine is.”

I return my gaze to her face. To my surprise, she looks almost a little sad. Her words were straight, almost a little hard, but the expression on her face tells me that she sympathizes with me more than she’s trying to let on.

“I’m going to put you to sleep now,” she suddenly declares.

I panic. “Wait, I?—”

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