Page 27 of Renegade Queen
“Hey! I can be complex!” Ryder protested. Unfortunately for him, it just set the rest of them off laughing at him, so he pouted even more.
“I’m not exactly sure about the answer. Some people think it has something to do with the magic in the air. Personally, I think it’s because Nymeria doesn’t want them there,” I explained.
“It’s weird how you talk about it like it’s a person,” Maddox pointed out, and I just shrugged.
They’d get it once we were over there.
My eyes found Tank again, standing and watching the whole thing transpire. He was suspiciously quiet, and I knew from experience that when Tank was quiet, something was bothering him.
“You ready for this?” I asked him.
His eyes searched my face briefly before he nodded and moved to my side. I wanted to say the feeling of confidence that flowed over me was strange, but it wasn’t really. Tank had always had a reassuring presence about him, and knowing that he would be with me through this made me think that maybe we could do it. Maybe Damon had somehow found a way to survive.
“It’s not too late to change your mind,” Tank told me, and I sucked in a breath in surprise.
It wasn’t what I’d been expecting. To be honest, between deciding I would help and getting to this point, I’d never taken a moment to consider if it was a good idea.
I could see the others watching me closely now. Obviously, they didn’t want me to change my mind, but the way they let me decide for myself was something to be respected.
The last time I’d stood here, looking at this circle of stones before us, I’d just run for my life and barely made it through alive. Everyone I loved was dead, and I had nothing but my hate left to live for. It took decades for me to push that toxic ball out of my mind and start to live for something else. And now here I was again. Getting ready to go back to that place.
The place where it all started.
Fuck! The place where so many things ended.
I looked at the guys around me, and a second of doubt crept to the edges of my mind before I pushed it away. They didn’t have anyone else to help them. This was their only chance to find out what had happened to their brother. No matter what waited for me on the other side, I couldn’t abandon them. Tank was right; it was long past time I went back. More than just ghosts were waiting for me in Nymeria, and I couldn’t hide from them forever.
My heart felt like it was about to explode from my chest, but before I could break into a full-blown panic attack, I felt a hand slip into mine. I hadn’t realised how disconnected from the world I felt until that one grounding touch. When my head sleepily turned to see who stood beside me, I was surprised to see Ryder standing there.
“Just breathe,” he told me, looking more serious than I’d ever seen him. “We’ve got you, and we won’t let anything happen to you.”
Treacherous tears started to form in my eyes, and I frantically blinked them away. He couldn’t know what I’d been through, although he could probably make a guess. And he had no real idea of what awaited us in Nymeria because if he did, there was no way he’d sound as confident as he did. But the fact that he was trying, that he could see my pain and was willing to stand beside me, meant something. Yes, he could just be saying that because he didn’t want me to back out, but I genuinely didn’t think that was the case. After all, now that they weren’t exactly human, I could just send them through and stay on this side. I wasn’t about to do that to them, though. There was a reason why we’d all been brought together, and it wasn’t because of General Asswipe. I needed them just as much as they needed me. I needed the excuse to go back there, to face the horrors of my past and, hopefully, kick it straight in the balls.
Looking up at Tank standing on the other side of me, I saw nothing but the soft smile on his face and an emotion in his eyes that I knew we needed to talk about, especially with how the men around me were starting to make me feel.
If there was ever a chance this would work, I was pretty sure it would be with the four men standing around me.
“Here goes nothing,” I mumbled, taking a deep breath and letting my magic flow.
There was no pull, spell, or sequence of events to coax the magic into existence. It didn’t need it. Magic was as natural to me as breathing. I didn’t need to ask it to rise to the occasion because it was already with me through every step of my life.
I felt the first stone in front of me vibrating in a key that registered deep inside my body. It was the same frequency that sang through Nymeria if you took a moment to listen closely enough. It whispered through the mountains and the rushing river waters; it was the sound that was recognised by all the creatures of Nymeria on a cellular level. Like the distant memory of a heartbeat in the womb. It made my soul light up in a way I’d almost forgotten, and I suddenly felt alive again.
As the stone reached the key it was searching for, my magic flowed to the next one in the circle, and it started to build the harmony we needed to open the portal.
I felt the yank in the centre of my being as the stones pulled the magic they needed from me. I was lucky I’d been able to use the moon on this side to recharge; otherwise, this process would have been impossible. Hence, why fae were banished here. The magic needed to build the song of Nymeria, which opened the portal, was more than most banished fae could sustain in this realm. What I’d never understood, though, was why no one had thought of banding together to share the load. Perhaps they were relying on the fact that, at the end of the day, none of them had anything to go back to; that was how most people felt once all their family and friends had been slaughtered in front of them.
It wasn’t until four of the six stones had reached their required key that I started to worry I didn’t have enough to open the portal. It had been so long since I’d used magic at this level that I hadn’t considered how much opening the portal would drain me.
“This is going to take a lot. You need to be prepared that I might be incapacitated once we reach the other side,” I warned the others.
“That would have been helpful information to have before we started this,” Dean grumbled, but when I caught the look on his face, it wasn’t the annoyance I’d expected to find there. Instead, he seemed more concerned.
He’d already lost one of his brothers; the thought of putting the other two in danger would be enough to make even the strongest person start to spiral.
Tank shuffled closer to me, but I didn’t have time to bask in that warm, fuzzy feeling he was bringing out in me because my magic flowed into the fifth stone, and it robbed the breath from my lungs.
Fuck. This wasn’t good. It shouldn’t be this difficult. Not for me.