Page 91 of Renegade Kings

“Rhidian is not at the Summer Court because he was cast out,” Fizzle told me. I’d spent enough time with the owl gryphon by now, though, that I could almost hear the gaps where the things he wasn’t telling me should have been. “He will play his part in this, and together, we will either save Nymeria or die with it.”

“But whoever is currently on the throne there doesn’t have the royal mark like Rhidian does, right? Why would the people accept them as a king or queen in that case?”

“The Summer Court isn’t like you’re thinking. They value strength above all things. The royal children are actively encouraged to eliminate their competition for the throne. They’re taught to lie and scheme to prepare them for the political moves they’d need to keep power should they ascend to the throne. Rhidian was never strong enough in their eyes. He didn’t want to make it to the top by climbing over his siblings. He wanted to rule through fairness and show his people an easier way to live. His mother has the throne now. The people probably don’t know that she doesn’t bear the mark, and if they do, they will no doubt believe it’s only a matter of time before she eliminates Rhidian and takes it for herself,” Fizzle explained.

We were closing in on our suite of rooms now, but the conversation had intrigued me so much that I didn’t even register that the doors hung open as we approached.

“So, Rhidian’s mother will kill him to claim the throne?”

It felt so wrong. The bear inside me would never understand trying to hurt someone within his family. The sleuth was the most important thing in the world to him after his mate. We might have left ours back in the human realm, but we’d formed a new one here with Alyssa and the others. There was nothing we wouldn’t do to protect it.

“Yes. Gladial is honour bound to claim the life of her son if she wishes to keep the throne. If she bears no other children, it will pass to the next in her family line.” There was a hint of sadness in Fizzle’s voice as he spoke, and I just hoped it wasn’t because he knew something from this damn prophecy that the rest of us weren’t aware of.

“She won’t ever get the chance,” Alyssa growled as she picked up her pace and walked through the doors of our suite. “Gladial doesn’t deserve the throne, and the people of the Summer Court deserve a leader like Rhidian. Someone who will show them that life without conflict is possible if that’s what they want. They deserve a king who will put their needs before his own. Not someone who will move them like chess pieces in a game to win as much power as possible.”

Maddox turned at the sound of her voice. The three three of them stood near the fireplace, talking, as we entered the room.

My attention moved to Fizzle, though. His eyes were fixed on Alyssa, but rather than being proud of how she was slowly stepping further into the role she should have always had, he looked sad. I knew then that Rhidian was destined to be bleeding in the dirt even if there was some kind of hope for the rest of us, and for some reason, it just made me want to fight even harder.

“How is he?” Alyssa asked the others. There was only one he that she could be referring to, and from the exhaustion on Maddox’s face, it didn’t look like getting Damon into his cell had been all that easy for him.

“He’s… I don’t even know. One second he’s Damon, and the next he’s… whatever’s controlling him.” Maddox hesitated before adding, “We need to fix this and we need to do it quickly. Damon isn’t the kind of man that will suffer through this if he sees this other being, or whatever it is, as a threat.”

We all heard the implication even if he didn’t say the words.

If it came down to Damon, or protecting his family from whatever was controlling him, Maddox clearly thought that Damon would make the ultimate sacrifice. It wasn’t hard to understand when I knew we’d all make exactly the same choice.

“Hmmm.” Fizzle hummed, and I felt the pinch of his claws as he prepared to take flight. “Don’t lose faith in him yet. There may well be a way. Rest. We have a long journey tomorrow and we leave at first light. Don’t expect the journey to be easy. You still have a lot of training to do. You can run and practice. Even a toddler can multitask to that degree.”

And with that last parting insult, he spread his wings and flew back the way we’d come.

“Did he come here just to insult us?” Ryder asked, looking genuinely bemused.

“That’s a compliment in Fizzle’s book,” Alyssa said with a yawn. “He’s upgraded you from baby to toddler. You should be proud.”

“I don’t think… wait, when did he call us that?” Ryder seemed to be finding his outrage and honestly, after the day we’d just had, it was nothing but amusing.

Alyssa cocked her head to the side as she thought and then laughed when the memory finally reached her. “Yeah, you probably don’t want to hear about it.”

It was a single light hearted moment to end a strange and twisted day. Damon was back, and yet he wasn’t. We were currently in an even more dangerous position than we had been this morning, and yet all I could think about was sleep. I felt almost content. Relieved that the waiting and not knowing what came next was finally over.

We had a plan. A course of action that could turn into a huge step forward in our cause. Now we just needed to salvage some kind of energy to get through it all. We had no other choice. Failure was death, and I might talk about being willing to lie down my life to save the woman in front of me, and I would without a second hesitation, but damn, I wanted that life at her side at the end of this whole mess. I wanted the kids, the grandkids, the happy moments and even the sad ones.

I wanted it all.

And that was what I was fighting for.

Chapter 35

Alyssa

Apart of me wanted to pull off my shoes and dig my toes into the soft white sand of the shore as I stared out at the rising sun just peeking above the horizon. Five ships were anchored out in the cove, their sails rolled tight as they waited for our forces to start the tedious process of rowing out to board them.

It had taken nearly a full twenty-four hours for us to pack up the supplies we needed and then walk in convoy through the trees. We walked through the day and straight through the night, hardly taking any time to rest throughout. The people who had been sheltering at the Spring Court were too terrified of lingering amongst the trees, despite my reassurances that they wouldn’t be harmed.

It was understandable. They’d experienced the danger first hand when the forest had turned against them, and the whispers were already spreading about how the trees had taken down an army of Endless, the most feared monsters in all of Nymeria right now.

It didn’t matter that they hadn’t been killed. It didn’t even seem to matter that I’d been the one in control or that those Endless were now free and walking amongst us. No, they stared out at the unmoving sentinels of the forest in fear, and I couldn’t exactly blame them for it.