Page 32 of Renegade Kings
My gaze went to the small window beside the door that led into the kitchen gardens. There was a time that it would have been so filled with sunlight that it would have been hard to look through. Now it was dark and shadowed as if it were night outside.
It was the trees. The forest had already made it this close to the palace on this side.
“No one goes out there anymore,” one of the other kitchen workers said when he saw where my gaze had drifted. “Not if they want to come back, at least.”
I winced at the implication that it had got so bad some had walked into the forest, hoping for Nymeria to take them. A person could only take so much loss before they wondered what the hell they were holding out for anymore. I knew that just as well as the people taking shelter here.
“Has anyone figured out what’s happening out there?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“We’d need someone to actually make it back for that to happen,” he said, turning back to the pot he was stirring.
There was a dull tone to his voice, and I knew he wasn’t far from giving up himself. Looking around, I saw the same look on all of their faces. They’d been here fighting this for years with no end in sight. I’d probably have the same look if I were them.
I didn’t know what to do. Was I supposed to reassure them we were going to find a way to fight back? That the Spring Court would be their home for as long as they wanted it? Hell, were these my people now? What the hell was I supposed to be doing right now?
The panic started to set in and I could feel the walls closing in around me until a plate landed heavily on the table in front of me with another dessert sitting in the centre.
“You look like you’ve got the weight of the realm on your shoulders right now.” I looked up and saw her smiling face again.
“I’m sorry. I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Winnett, your majesty.” I winced at the reference, and it just made her smile wider. “Not quite used to it?”
“It’s very new and not really something I ever expected.”
And then my mind started to connect the dots that I hadn’t seen before. The royal mark flowed down the family line. It only passed to another line if that person killed the heir. But I wasn’t part of the family line, if what Fizzle had said was the truth, and I sure as hell hadn’t been the one responsible for killing my parents. So why did I have the mark? Why had it passed to me so easily?
“None of us expected to be here. We’re all just making the best with what we can.”
“Do you mind me asking what happened to you?”
When Winnett didn’t answer straight away, I thought I’d overstepped, especially when the tears filled her eyes. “I come from a village on the banks of The Tolverns. We always thought our biggest threat was something coming from The Wildling Forest. I grew up watching the trees for the things that could hide in their shadows… They came in the night, when we were all asleep. It was the screaming that woke me up. Except it was coming from the room where my children slept and not outside. I couldn’t reach them before The Endless had thrown them into the river, and then the screaming stopped. They took everyone, children, women, men. Anyone who tried to fight back was cut down on the spot. There were just too many of them. We didn’t have weapons. We hadn’t learned how to fight things like them. Nothing stopped them. They didn’t even look at us. It was like fighting an empty suit of armour. There’s nothing inside The Endless. Arik has already taken their souls, they’re nothing but empty shells.”
“No one survived the river?”
“No. Whatever they’d brought with them stayed in the water, but made sure no one made it out alive.”
“You made it out alive.”
She laughed then, but there wasn’t any humour behind it. “Barely. Rhidian found me a few days later. The Endless hadn’t had the decency to finish me, and I was laying in the mud praying for the end. I didn’t see how I could go on without them. Rhidian brought me here and helped me heal. And not just from my physical injuries. Now, I do what I can to help the others he brings. It’s not much, but at least no one goes to sleep hungry when they come here. It’s the least we can do.”
This was the third time I’d heard of Arik using the creatures of Nymeria for his own bidding. We needed to know how he was doing it and stop him because Arik and The Endless we could maybe survive. But Arik and all the creatures of Nymeria? Well, this court had seen enough massacres.
The man at the cooker scoffed, turning to lean against the counter next to him before speaking. “We came here for safety and look at us now. Cowering inside these walls, waiting for Nymeria to find its way inside. All we did was delay the inevitable. There’s no fighting back when even the realm is on his side.”
“But now we have the Queen. She can push back the trees, restore the court,” Winnett argued.
“Yeah? Is that what you’re going to do?”
“Tolith, hush. She only just got here. She doesn’t have to prove herself to you.”
“No, she doesn’t have to prove herself to anyone, and you’re right, she did just get here. She has no idea what we’ve been through, no idea what’s happening. And equally no idea how to save us. She’s no saviour. She’s just as fucked as the rest of us.”
He had a point, and as much as I hated to admit it, I didn’t have a clue what to do about the trees. And they didn’t even know the worst of it. They didn’t know the wild Nymerian magic was mixing with the Spring magic outside and creating something new, something that could be a whole hell of a lot worse than what they’d seen so far. My arrival here had triggered it, and I had no idea how to stop it, how to control it, or what the hell I was going to do next.
“Look, everything you’ve said is true. I don’t know what’s happening here, and I don’t even know what to do next. But I’m here. I’m listening. And I promise you, I’m not going anywhere. There’s a fight to be had here and fighting it means putting everything on the line. I’m willing to do that. That’s all I can offer you. A promise to listen, to fight. I have nothing else to offer you.”
Tolith nodded. The serious look on his face showed he was considering it. He didn’t laugh in my face, at least. Hell, I couldn’t even offer him any hope, not yet. Not until I had some answers about what was happening outside. Which meant only one thing: it was time to go for a walk.