Page 77 of Renegade Kingdom
Maddox reached over and pinched him.
“Ow! What the fuck?” Ryder swatted at his hand, rubbing his arm in outrage. “What was that for?”
“Checking if we’re still in the illusion,” Maddox said with a shrug.
“It hurt the last time too,” Tank pointed out. “Whatever that jin was throwing at us, it was real enough. The pain was real.”
Maddox looked slightly embarrassed, but then Ryder pinched him back in retaliation, and before they could start bickering like children, I laughed.
I couldn’t help it. The sound bubbled up out of me, unexpected and bright, cutting through the tension and the exhaustion and the fear. Here we were, standing at the threshold of a ruined court after fighting our way through an army of monsters, and my mates were pinching each other like siblings on a long car ride.
Still laughing, I stepped through the doorway.
And everything changed.
Something latched onto what remained of my magic. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to fight it, didn’t have time to do anything but gasp as I felt the connection slam into place. It flowed through me, following the paths of my bonds, reaching through those golden threads to touch each of my mates in turn. I felt it brush against Tank and Dean and Maddox and Ryder and Damon, felt it test each of them, learn them, catalog them.
Panic surged through me. Another trap. Another creature trying to drain us, to use us, to…
But then I realized what it actually was.
It wasn’t trying to drain me. It wasn’t trying to harm us. The touch was desperate, yes, but not hungry. Not predatory. It felt like a hand reaching out from deep water, grasping for anything that might pull it back to the surface. A plea for help, not an attack.
Rather than shake it off, I grabbed hold of it.
Warmth flooded through me. Golden light that felt like sunshine on my skin after a long winter. The connection between me and this place, this court, this seat of power that had been waiting for so long, solidified into something real. Something permanent.
The ground began to shake.
I heard my mates cry out in alarm, heard them rush through the doorway to stand beside me, but I couldn’t focus on them. All my attention was on the magic flowing through me, on the desperate pull of something ancient and powerful finally finding what it had been looking for. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. A connection so deep, so fundamental, that I couldn’t tell where I ended and the court began.
Then the fallen stones began to move. They lifted from the ground, rising through the air with a grace that belied their massive weight. Hundreds of stones, thousands of them, all hovering in the air around us like a constellation of rubble. They almost moved with purpose as they began to fit themselves back together, slot into place like puzzle pieces, recreating walls that had stood for millennia.
Cracks sealed themselves. Broken pieces fused back together. Pillars rose from the ground, straightening, reforming, becoming whole again. And slowly, impossibly, the walls began to rebuild themselves around us. What had been ruins became structures. What had been decay became renewed.
The court was coming back to life.
But it came with a cost, and the power it needed to achieve all this was mine. That power I’d felt drained already after the fight we’d just had. And now I could feel the Court draining me further, could feel my already depleted reserves being pulled into this reconstruction. It was like being a conduit, a channel through which the court’s own power could flow back into itself.But I didn’t try to stop it. Couldn’t stop it. This was important. This was necessary. This was what I’d come here to do. It was what Nymeria had been waiting for. Someone to bridge the gap, to restart the flow of magic that had been cut off for so long. Except I didn’t know how much longer I could keep this up.
I felt the connection reach through my fledgling bond with Damon, felt the court’s magic try to touch him too. For a moment, something shifted, and I sensed the beginning of court magic trying to claim him. The Fifth Court, recognizing a king.
But then it was forced back. Something inside Damon pushed against the connection, rejected it. The nightmare, I realized. The creature inside him was blocking the court from fully connecting, from completing whatever bond was trying to form.
The magic withdrew from him, but the court continued to rebuild. It pulled more heavily on me now, and I felt my knees start to buckle. My vision was going gray at the edges. My heart was pounding too fast.
But I pushed on. Opened myself up further. Let the magic flow through me unimpeded, because this was important. This place needed to exist, because my mother was in here somewhere and I would not let her sanctuary crumble.
A part deep inside of me cracked open and I knew without a doubt that whatever power the Court was accessing was the last that I had. It was the reserve that kept me alive, kept me whole and made me who I was. This wasn’t an infinite pool. These were the last of what I had and a flutter of panic set about in me at the thought that this could be it. When this was gone, I would be too.
But then the shaking stopped.
I blinked, my vision clearing slowly, and found myself standing in a lit hallway. Intact walls rose around us, carved with intricate patterns that seemed to move in the corner of my eye. Torches burned in sconces, casting warm light across stone that looked like it had stood for millennia, undamaged and eternal.
Fizzle was perched on a decorative pillar, looking distinctly relieved.
“I’m getting tired,” I managed to say, though my voice came out as barely more than a whisper, “of being ambushed by doorways in this realm.”
Fizzle actually smiled. It was a strange expression on his owl-griffin face, but unmistakable.
