CHAPTER 22

Jesibel stood before me among wisps of dark shadow. They coiled around her frame like vipers, striking at skin mottled with bruises. Her arms were wrapped around her waist, doing little to cover the torn and stained clothes that hung off her body in tatters. She just stood there, staring at me with wide eyes, torment etched into every line across her skeletal face.

”Jesi?” My voice filled the strange space, her shadows seeming to dance in tandem with the noise. I listened as her name echoed as though I’d shouted it into a barren cave.

The sound was strange and haunting, but truly real.

She didn’t reply. I watched her mouth intently, ensuring I didn’t miss a single movement. Jesibel just stood and watched me.

Even in this dreamscape, I tried to convince myself that this was all the vision was. A nightmare dragged from the darkest corners of my subconscious. Jesibel couldn’t be real. This was just a haunting image of what I believed she’d look like in the clutches of Aldrick.

My arm itched as my eyes fell upon the torn skin on the soft part of her arm. Her wound was angry, violently spewing blood and other unknown yellowed liquids that screamed of infection. Her mark was in the same place Aldrick had drawn blood from me all those weeks ago. I reached a hand to grasp my forearm, only to find that there was nothing to touch. I looked down, and there was nothing but darkness. I was merely a part of it – a part of her shadows.

“Listen to me carefully.”

My attention snapped upward, and Jesibel was inches from me. Even without a body, I could feel her presence. The rancid taste of copper invaded my mouth, forcing its way down my throat and choking me. I reached up to grasp my neck, but I had no hands, arms or body to command.

I belonged to Jesibel in this odd place – I was her toy to play with. Her dream to terrorise.

A patchwork of bruises covered her face, spreading like a necklace across her neck. Heavy, dark circles beneath her carved eyes accentuated her emaciated skull. She looked more like a mound of bones with damaged skin stretched over it.

Unlike the other times Jesibel had been in my dreams, this was different. She wasn’t listening and watching as she worked through my mind. Jesi was no longer just a bystander. She commanded the dream as if it wasn’t mine to begin with.

“ I tried to save you,” I pleaded, forcing all my will into creating a voice in a place where I should not exist. “I came back, just as I promised.”

“ Forgive me, Robin…”

Although she was speaking, her lips didn’t move. Her face was stoic. Almost… calm. Which was the opposite of how I felt. I drowned in her shadows. Jesibel’s eyes were endless and without focus. It seemed she glanced straight through me whilst also seeing me completely.

“I’m doing everything to save you. Please don’t haunt me. I promise I’m trying, Jesi. You are the reason behind all this, I have not given up yet.”

“I know.”

My blood thrummed, which was an odd sensation, considering I didn’t have a corporeal body here. Her response was not meant to taunt me. I expected my consciousness to craft Jesibel to hate me for failing her, for allowing Aldrick to reach her before I could. If only I’d brought the prison break forwards, perhaps I would’ve got to her first.

“Listen to me carefully, Robin. Now isn’t the time for wallowing in your self-pity.” Jesibel’s voice was stern and scolding, snapping me out of my stupor. Her shadows reached out for me, twisting among the mass of black that encased my body. “ You can’t trust me. You can’t trust those around you. I need you to do everything in your power to–”

“I am!” I snapped, shadows recoiling from my fury. “I’m doing everything.”

“No. Forget me, Robin. Do not come looking.”

Jesi was fading. Her skin became translucent, flickering as though she was the sun obscured behind dark clouds. If I had hands, I would’ve reached out for her and kept her in place. But I was forced to watch as her form bled away from me. “Don’t trust them.” Her voice broke in my skull, like the crack of a whip. “Trust no one.”

Her warning was as clear as the sky during summer.

“Who?” I asked. “Who can’t I trust?”

Her mouth parted, the skin at the corner of her lips ripping like paper. Fear sliced through me as Jesibel’s entire body contorted in on itself. I wanted to move back, but I was powerless in this place. Jesibel didn’t make a sound, but the muscles in her neck bulged, and veins burst across her pale face. She was trying to speak, her lips moving in the same formation over and over. But the word she wished to say, the name that would answer my question, betrayed her.

“Jesibel, I cannot forget you. I will not,” I said, hoping those words were enough to calm her – or calm myself in whatever was this dreamscape punishment I’d clearly made.

If I was in control, I had to wake up. I couldn’t bear to watch anymore. Seeing her throw her head back and forth, her black hair sliced to her scalp with grease, blood and gore. I wished to shield myself from the horrific view laid out before me. This didn’t feel like a dream or a nightmare.

She stopped so suddenly it frightened me more than her suffering. Her bloodshot eyes locked with mine, her hands bent into claws. “Beware of the–”

Jesibel was torn backwards by an unseen force, ripped from the floor and dragged into the dark unknown, all before she could finish what she was about to say.

I bolted upright in bed, gasping for breath. My hands grabbed greedily for my body, just to make sure it was there. My skin was damp to the touch. Even the sheets of the bed had gripped to my skin in places slick with sweat.

Just as my mind caught up with reality, I caught the tail-end of a noise beyond the building. I first believed it was just the remains of the dream, but the noise repeated to prove me wrong. It wasn’t Jesi’s success at warning me but something else.

It was the trill cry of a bird, mocking Jesi’s cry.

“It’s okay, darling. I’ve got you,” Duncan said, leaning up on his elbow with tired, heavy eyes. I melted into his firm hand, which drew circles across my back. “You’ve had a nightmare. You are safe.”

I fixed my stare on the blanket of night sky beyond the window. How long had I been sleeping? The candles had burned out completely, but the day still seemed leagues away. “It was awful,” I gasped, burying my face in my hands.

“Talk to me.” The bed creaked as Duncan forced himself to sit up. “I’m here to help, so let me.”

I exhaled into my shaking hands, unable to rid myself of the dream. Even the taste of blood still lingered in my mouth. I ran my tongue across the insides of my cheeks to check if I had bitten them during sleep.

Duncan gave me a moment to compose myself. Then I drew free of my hands and faced him.

“I’m fine,” I forced out the lie, unable to convince myself with my shaking voice, let alone Duncan.

“You’re quite obviously not fine, Robin.”

My sticky legs clung to the sheets, so damp I thought I’d pissed myself from fear alone. Luckily for me, and Duncan, it was only sweat. “There isn’t even peace for me in my dreams these nights, that is all.”

Or peace in waking, for I soon remembered the last time I woke in Berrow from a nightmare. Different arms had waited to comfort me, arms belonging to Erix. Of course my waking mind went straight to him, it liked to punish me no matter my state.

“I just need a moment,” I exhaled. “Once the dregs of that dream pass, I’ll be okay.”

Duncan was clearly not satisfied. He’d seen me struggle to sleep, lying awake some nights, or those I did sleep I’d wake looking more exhausted than before. And yet, those times he didn’t pry. That luxury had long gone. “Why do you not want my help–”

“Duncan, please! Just… just give me a moment?” I snapped, unable to hold back my sudden fury.

“I’m only trying to help,” he said, his hand pausing its rubbing motion on my back. “What good am I to you if I cannot do even that?”

My mind spun, the desire to run from this conversation a siren song I couldn’t ignore.

Duncan swallowed hard as I jumped from the bed, leaving his hand hovering in the air where my back had been only seconds before.

“I just need to breathe.”

The silence Duncan responded to me with was more painful than a knife to the chest. Instantly, guilt overwhelmed me. I shouldn’t have spoken to him like that. I was exhausted and shaken, but he didn’t deserve that.

“I’m sorry.” I stood before him, chest heaving with the urge to hold back my sobs.

“Don’t, Robin, you don’t need to apologise to me. I understand.” He didn’t need to tell me he was hurt. I could see it in the wince of his forest-green eyes, the downturn of his mouth at its corners.

Even in the face of my mistreatment, Duncan still had my best interests at heart.

Selfishly, I turned my back on him and paced toward the window. It wasn’t Duncan who experienced my wrath next, but the window that wouldn’t open no matter how hard I pried at the handle. Time and weather had merged the wooden frame with the windowsill. The more I forced it, the more it refused to budge.

“For fuck’s sake,” I cried out, slamming my palms on the glass. The wave of anger came as suddenly as the first, and left just as fast. I pressed my head to the cold pane and exhaled, watching my breath fog beneath my lips and blur the view of Berrow from beyond.

“I need some air.” I turned from the window to see Duncan standing helplessly beside the bed. The landscape of mountainous muscles across his stomach and chest were taut as he regarded me. He gripped the bed sheets enough to shield his modesty, trembling from his own anxieties.

I was a puzzle of missing pieces, one he wished to put together but never would be able to.

“I thought we agreed you would not leave me again,” Duncan said, attempting to offer a smile.

“Are you planning on stopping me?” I replied, unable to control the torrent of emotion in my voice.

I hated how I sounded, but I couldn’t change it. My defeat and exhaustion were in control, and I couldn’t do anything but allow it to puppeteer me. They say you took your pain out on the people you loved the most, but Duncan deserved more than this version of me. That is why I had to leave.

“No, I won’t stop you, Robin. You know that.”

Did I wish for him to say otherwise, or was the disappointment conjured by something else? “I do.”

“Get the fresh air you need, and I will be here waiting for you, ready to talk this through when you are ready.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to thank him, but I couldn’t say it.

I rushed to clothe myself before I changed my mind. It would be easier for me to crawl back into bed with Duncan, but I forced myself to keep moving.

“I won’t be long,” I said, as if he’d asked. Duncan didn’t say a word, instead he just nodded.

Part of me wanted Duncan to remind me what happened the last time I walked out on him. Maybe it would have the power to cut through my tantrum and stop me. But Duncan kept silent as he watched me from the edge of the bed.

He only spoke when I gripped the door handle and turned it. His voice was loud above the screeching of the worn, tired metal.

“Robin, just promise me you’ll come back to me.”

The pain in his voice almost buckled my knees beneath me.

“Always,” I whispered, my voice calming as my strength dwindled.

“All I want is to help you, Robin, but I can only do so when you want it from me. So, when you are ready, I will be here to talk about what has upset you. If you don’t wish to share it with me, then I will not ask again. But promise me, you will come back.”

“I said I will.”

“No,” Duncan growled deep within his throat. “Promise it.”

I felt as though his reaction was born more from just my reaction to the nightmare. And from the way his gaze moved to the door I stood before, as though settling on something in the distance that neither of us could see, I wondered if he thought of Erix, too.

“I promise,” I said.

I forced myself out of the room, down the creaking stairs and out into the cold street of Berrow. My feet carried me away from the house as I embedded myself into the silence of the town as its new occupants slept. Not that I cared for the cold, but I naturally drew the cloak around my shoulders until the torrents of winter winds were kept at bay.

It was easier to count my steps as I walked aimlessly through Berrow. Counting kept the visions of Jesibel buried. But it wasn’t only her face that haunted me. In waking, it was Erix. I found my mind demanding to know if he’d left. Did I want to know that he had gone again, or did I wish to find him lingering in the dark room within the abandoned house I’d last seen him in?

Neither thought filled me with any warmth, neither question I had an answer to.

I kept walking, kicking mounds of snow and ice that had drifted into piles at the edges of the path. Only the moon guided me through the town, not that I cared about getting lost.

It was only when my feet were tired, and my mind finally felt like my own, that I heard the noise again. The sound that had been both within my dream and welcomed me when I had woken from it.

The squawk of a bird. Not entirely uncommon during the late hours, but usually I’d expect the hoot of an owl. Whatever this was sounded different – familiar.

And it was close.

I slowed my footsteps and lightened my weight. It was as I rounded the corner of a side street in Berrow that I saw him . Huddled within a cloak, just like I was.

“Kayne?” I said, wading through the shadows into the alleyway. “Problems sleeping again?”

The Hunter didn’t seem surprised to see me. He drew back his hood and exposed the grimace that always seemed to be plastered across his freckled face when presented with me. “Sleep hasn’t been kind to either of us recently, has it?”

Something about his words cut me deep.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked, already knowing he could ask me the same. Issue was, I was king, and he was still an ex-Hunter. My goings didn’t matter as much as his.

“Night-time stroll to clear the head. I could ask the same of you though, Robin. Are you expecting to find someone else out tonight?” he asked, brushing past me with a harsh shoulder as he walked back out onto the main street. I looked down the alley, searching for someone or something else. But Kayne was alone – at least he was now.

“I don’t know what you are suggesting,” I replied, voice as cold as the winds ripping around me.

“Perhaps you came to find Erix and thank him for saving Duncan in a more… private manner?”

My eyes narrowed on him, just as Kayne’s smile widened. “What did you just say to me?” His accusation felt like a slap to the face.

Kayne was already creating distance between us, but it didn’t take much for me to catch up. I reached out and grasped his forearm before he could run away from the conversation. My fingers gripped his skin, hard. In the dark part of my mind, I enjoyed his grunt of surprise.

“Get your filthy hands off me!”

I made sure they dug deeper. “Your attempts to irk me with your comments are wasted.”

Kayne shrugged himself out of my grip, his face was flushed scarlet, lips pulled into a firm white line. “What do you want, Robin?”

He spat my name at me like it was a disgusting, spoiled piece of food in his mouth.

“A simple night-time stroll to clear my mind, and yet here you are, ruining it with your mood. Dare I ask what gets you out of bed?”

He flashed me a sickly smile. “What does it matter to you what I do with my time? You aren’t my keeper.”

All my pent-up anger came rushing out at once. This time it didn’t shy away from it, or hold guilt for the person at the other end. Better Kayne than Duncan. “I asked you a question. I suggest you answer it.”

Kayne stepped in close. His breath itched at my face, his towering posture making me smaller before him. But I didn’t feel small, not with the power readied beneath my skin. I didn’t so much as flinch as his boots cracked into mine. Kayne lowered himself until his nose was inches from mine, glaring down the length of it as he regarded me. His shallow breaths came out in silver-lined clouds beyond his pursed lips. “You don’t trust me, do you?”

“Should I?”

Kayne’s laugh sliced directly through me. I watched as his gaze flickered around me as though he searched for something. When his attention returned to me, his voice was louder and more confident. Each word he spoke felt as though it came directly from the centre of his chest. “What would Duncan say if he knew his beloved and his longest friend disliked one another?”

“He already knows, why don’t you go and ask him?”

There was no denying the way his eyes widened a fraction, proving my reply was news to him.

“But it’s nice that you finally found the confidence to admit it aloud,” I added. “Do you feel better getting that secret off your chest?”

“You don’t deserve him,” Kayne hissed suddenly. I flinched as his spit landed upon my cheek, but didn’t dare to brush the droplets away.

I broadened my shoulders, trying to match his physical prowess. “And you do?”

“Yes!” His eyes bulged. “More than you could even begin to understand.”

There was no warning before strong hands pushed at my chest. Pain jarred up my back as I landed on my ass, the skin on my palms ripping across the stone and ice.

A growl erupted from me as I pulled on my magic. The cobbled ground beneath my splayed, bleeding hands cracked with ice. Even the winds rejoiced with my desire to hurt Kayne back. But the magic’s glee lasted only a moment.

“Hurt me, go on, and you’ll have to explain yourself to Duncan. Will you lie and come up with a justifiable excuse to victimise me with your magic? What will he think of you for being the one to hurt, or worse, kill his closest childhood friend?”

The freezing winds calmed, and the ice melted. My grazed palm stung as the cold infiltrated the cuts that crisscrossed them. “You cannot manipulate me, Kayne.”

He knelt down before me, eyes glowing from within. His voice calmed and was now only a whisper. “Here, let me help you up off the floor. It’s not place for a king now, is it?”

I drew my lips back, flashing my teeth up at him. I looked at Kayne’s hand as though it was a snake, ready and poised to strike me.

“Robin?”

Kayne’s smile faltered as my name rang out over the night. We both turned to look for the owner of the voice. I didn’t need to see her to know who it was, her voice was steel sharp and familiar.

“Is everything okay over there?” Althea Cedarfall asked, fire flaring suddenly as it bloomed within her hand like a rosebud. It cast light and shadows across her pinched expression, then over the scene: me, splayed out on the ground, and Kayne hovering above me.

I acted fast. I took hold of Kayne’s hand before he could pull back. His weak gasp revealed he never expected me to accept his offering. He quickly shifted his weight to support me as I pulled myself up, using him as my anchor. Disgust laced across Kayne’s face as the melted ice and blood smeared across his own hand before I pulled away.

“Who knew it was so treacherous out in these streets?” I replied, grinning at the concerned Althea and the fearful Kayne. “Thank Altar for Kayne. If I was alone, I could’ve really hurt myself.”

“Yes,” Kayne laughed, shuffling awkwardly from one foot to the other. “You could have.”

“So, not sleeping is an issue we all have then, Althea?” I asked. “Seems to be the common theme tonight.”

Her wary gaze swung between Kayne and me like a pendulum.

“I thought I heard you outside and, funnily enough, I was right,” Althea replied, wide, distrusting eyes coming to settle on the Tracker. “It was either me who came out looking, or Gyah. And I think we can all agree that I was the preferred option, wasn’t I, Kayne?”

The bud of flame became a tower in her hand, making the Tracker wince. His face paled to a sickly pallor, eyes diverting to the ground.

He may not have feared me, but I couldn’t say the same for his reaction to Althea, or the promise of Gyah.

“All is well, Althea,” I said.

She didn’t believe me, and nor did I want her to. Her clear, judging disbelief twisted her face into a scowl. It had the effect I wished it to have on Kayne. All his bravado had slipped, and he was quieter than I had heard him before.

“ We didn’t mean to wake you,” I added. “Did we, Kayne?”

He kept silent, knowing that saying the wrong thing would end up with him as a pile of ash.

“Well, you did.”

Kayne swallowed hard and took steps away from me. He mumbled something beneath his breath. It was a mixture of an apology and a goodbye. Althea’s amber stare followed him until he was out of view, and his footsteps were no longer audible.

Just like that, he was gone.

“Wish to talk about it?” she asked, eyes tracking Kayne until the shadows swallowed him.

I shook my head, looking over my shoulder. Perhaps I wasn’t the only puzzle with missing pieces. There was no working Kayne out. “Not tonight,” I said. “I should get back to Duncan before he comes looking for me.”

“Robin…” Althea pressed. “I can sense your distrust for the Tracker, it’s so potent that I can taste it.”

“Don’t worry.” I smiled at her. “I have everything well under control.”