Page 64 of Renegade Kings

Chapter 23

Maddox

There was no sign of Dean. Ryder and I wandered the corridors, my lion helping us as we searched for his scent. But as soon as we’d got to the first corner in the corridor, it was like he’d disappeared.

“Is this going to be some kind of magic?” Ryder grumbled. “It would just be like Dean to get the sneaky fucker magic.”

“Ha! Probably.” He had a point. Out of all of us, Dean was the one who liked to disappear when doing the whole people-thing got too much for him. It was one reason why he was so good at his job, and why our unit had been so successful.

Thinking back to our time in the human realm felt strange now. It felt like an entire lifetime ago. Everything had changed. We’d changed.

“Do you think Damon will be one of Alyssa’s mates?” Ryder blurted out as we casually strolled through the palace like we didn’t have a care in the world.

Now that was a thought. Would I care if he was? He was my actual brother, and most people would be weirded out about that. I probably couldn’t have done what we did the other night with him there. But it’s not like we’d be doing the group stuff all the time. Would we? We really needed to figure out this situation better. Conversation was really not a strength in our group.

“I don’t know. At the minute, all I can concentrate on is getting him back.”

It wasn’t the only thing I could concentrate on. In fact, I was ashamed to admit that I hadn’t been thinking about it much at all. The guilt was so overwhelming that we hadn’t pulled him out of there back at the Winter Palace that it consumed nearly every thought I had. I couldn’t see past my failure to even think about the future. My mind stalled into a loop of self-loathing, and I was blind to the possibility of having him back with us again.

“We are getting him back,” Ryder said firmly, clasping my shoulder in support.

I nodded numbly. The longer it took, the less likely it seemed. How were we even supposed to get close to him again, let alone break him free from Arik? Everything about this situation seemed as impossible as Alyssa had once tried to persuade us it was.

We should have listened to her.

And the guilt of that thought was nearly enough to overtake the rest.

I sighed and shook my head. It made no sense to keep going in this loop, not when we finally had some kind of plan in place. A direction to move in, finally.

“Let’s look for Fizzle. I have a feeling that Dean is only going to be found when he wants to be.”

“Sure,” Ryder said brightly, bouncing in his steps as we turned and headed in the general direction of the training sands. Someone would probably be out there at this time of day and they’d be able to point us in the general direction of where we needed to go.

As we headed through the corridors, I noticed more signs of life in the palace than we’d seen before. There were soft noises behind some of the doors of people moving about. The clatter of pans came from the kitchens nearby and someone was singing in the distance.

“This must have been a beautiful place back when Alyssa was a kid,” Ryder mused. “Do you think this is where she’ll want to live once we’ve won all our battles?”

Of course, Ryder wouldn’t even doubt that would happen. He’d always had an unwavering faith in us all, even back when we were kids.

I looked around us as we walked, noting the tapestries and paintings that dotted the halls, the soft light that filtered through a nearby window. As my gaze fixed on the shadow of leaves on the corridor floor cast by the decorated metal lattice that covered the glass, my feet stumbled to a stop.

Reaching out, I ran my fingers through the sunbeams, revelling at the sheer sight of them.

“What are you doing?” Ryder asked cautiously, looking at me like he wasn’t entirely sure what to do.

“The sun… it’s shining through the windows.”

I turned to the windows, pressing my hands against the glass as I peered outside.

“It does that in the day, you know?” Ryder said, missing my point.

I glanced over my shoulder at him, confused at how he wasn’t seeing this as well. “Well, yeah. But not this glass…” I looked outside again to confirm I actually was seeing what I thought I was. “The trees have moved.”

A shove at my side had Ryder barging me out of his way as he looked out the window himself. “Huh.”

I couldn’t help but stare at him, shaking my head at how we’d somehow got to a place where this wasn’t something he’d freaked out about.

“This has to be a good sign, right? Whatever Alyssa wanted to do out there must have worked?”