Page 129 of Renegade Kingdom
For a moment, standing in the middle of it all with the magic of five courts roaring through me, I thought we could do this. I thought we could hold.
Then Arik’s Endless arrived.
They came from the east. Hundreds of them, marching in lines so perfect they looked rehearsed, their movements synchronised in that horrible, puppet-like way that I’d learned to recognise. Glowing blue light shone through their helm. Bodies that moved because something else was pulling the strings.
I couldn’t unleash everything I had because those bodies belonged topeople. And I refused to be like him, I refused to see them as expendable. They had families. Lives. Names.
They were just people like Damon had been. People who were trapped behind their own eyes, screaming in silence while their limbs obeyed commands that weren’t their own. And they were people who would die if I tore through them with the kind of force I was using on the creatures.
Arik’s strategy crystallised in that moment with a clarity that made me sick. He’d sent the creatures first to force us into full combat mode, to push us to the limits of our power. And then he’d sent the Endless, knowing we’d have to pull back. Knowing I’d fight with one hand tied behind my back rather than slaughter hundreds of enslaved innocents.
He was using people as shields. The way he’dalwaysused people.
“Alyssa.” Damon’s voice cut through the noise, low and steady. He’d moved closer during the initial assault, his shadows forming a loose perimeter around me that the dark creatures instinctively avoided. “I can feel them. The chains.”
“Not yet.” I shook my head, tasting blood where I’d bitten my cheek. “We’ll only get one shot at this and I need to focus to channel it properly. I can’t do it in the middle of this.”
“Then what do we do?”
I didn’t have an answer. The Endless were advancing, filling the gaps between the dark creatures, and our fighters were pulling back because they couldn’t tell the difference between an enemy and a victim at close range. The line was buckling. Rhidian was shouting for a retreat to tighter formation. Ezra was screaming at his people to hold.
The ground beneath my feet was wet.
I looked down.
The grass was red.
Not from today. Not from this battle. The Spring Court had grown new grass over the massacre grounds, thick and green and alive. But the soil remembered. The roots remembered. And now, with the Spring magic singing through my veins, I remembered too. It all flashed in front of my eyes.
The bodies.
They were everywhere. Not real, not visible to anyone but me, but I could see them. Overlaid on the current carnage likea transparency pressed over a painting. Fae who had died here when Arik had destroyed the Spring Court the first time. Men and women and children who had fallen on this exact ground, in this exact field, and whose blood had soaked into the soil that now fed the roots that spoke to me through the bond I shared with Tank.
I could hear them. The dying. The final breaths. The screams cut short. The moment of silence, when the massacre was finished and the only sound was the wind moving through the grass and the slow dripping of blood from the things that had killed them.
My magic stuttered.
The braided cord of power, the five-court river that had been roaring through me since the fight began, hitched. Sputtered. The flow disrupted by something more powerful than external force.
Fear.
Not the sharp, useful kind that sharpened reflexes and quickened the heart. The other kind. The paralyzing kind. The kind that reached into your chest and wrapped cold fingers around your lungs, squeezing until breathing became a conscious effort instead of an automatic function.
I wasn’t the queen of five courts. I wasn’t the woman who was becoming the Mother of Nymeria. I was the girl who had walked through a field of dead and hadn’t been able to save any of them. I was twenty years old and terrified, standing on the bones of people I’d cared about.
The magic faded. The bonds dimmed. The world narrowed to the red grass beneath my feet and the sound of screaming that came from then and now at the same time.
I couldn’t move.
My mates felt it.
I know they did because the bonds were still there, even diminished. Five threads of connection pulling taut with alarm. I felt Tank’s steadiness stagger. Felt Dean’s cold focus waver. Maddox’s warmth flared with panic and Ryder’s defiance guttered like a candle in a hurricane. Even Damon’s shadows reached for me, uncertain, afraid.
Our magic hesitated. The tide of battle shifted, just slightly, just enough. The creatures pressed harder. The Endless advanced.
Someone was calling my name. I couldn’t tell who. The voices from the soil were louder, the dead crying out with mouths full of earth, and I couldn’t distinguish the living from the buried.
Then the bonds spoke.
