Page 83 of Renegade Kingdom
“Where are we going?” Dean asked. The question was directed at Fizzle, but his eyes were on me.
“Down,” Fizzle said. And then he turned and walked through a door that I could have sworn wasn’t there a moment ago.
We followed. Of course we did. What else were we going to do?
The passage led deeper than I thought possible. Down through stone that grew older with every step, the crystal veins in the walls pulsing with light that matched my heartbeat. The magic here was so thick I could feel it pressing against my skin, could taste it in every breath. Ancient. Patient. Waiting.
Nobody spoke. Even Ryder, who could usually be counted on to fill any silence with something sharp and funny, was quiet. The only sounds were our footsteps, and that slow, rhythmic pulse in the walls.
Then the passage opened, and the chamber took my breath away.
It was vast. Cathedral-vast, with a ceiling that stretched so high it disappeared into shadow. The floor was smooth stone shot through with veins of gold that pulsed with a faint, steady glow. In the centre stood a throne, though throne wasn’t quite the right word. It was something that had grown from the earth itself, roots and crystal and stone woven together into a seat that looked ancient beyond reckoning.
Yet, it was empty.
“Where is she?” I whispered, though I didn’t know why I was whispering. The space demanded it.
Nobody answered. Behind me, I could feel my mates through the bond. Tank’s steady presence like a hand on my shoulder. Dean’s coiled alertness. Maddox’s grief-tinged wonder. Ryder’s barely concealed awe. And Damon, his thread in the bond still thin and flickering like a candle in a draught. But at least it was present, even if it was still fragile.
Then I heard it.
A whisper. Not words, not yet. Just the ghost of a voice threading through the air like silk catching on skin. It brushedpast my ear and I turned, but there was nothing. Just the breathing walls and the pulsing gold and the vast, patient silence.
Alyssandra.
My breath caught. Because I knew that voice. I’d heard it in the wind on the plains of Nymeria, in the rustle of leaves in the Autumn forests, in the crash of waves against the cliffs of Ice Falls. I’d heard it my whole life in this realm without ever understanding what it was.
“That’s her,” I breathed.
The whisper came again, stronger now, and this time it wasn’t just sound. It was sensation. Warmth spreading up through the soles of my boots, through the stone, through the golden veins in the floor. The air shifted, thickened, and in the space above the empty throne, something began to gather.
Light first. Not the harsh light of the sun or the cold light of the moon but something older, something that existed before either. It pooled and swirled, shot through with veins of shadow that moved like living things. Then colour bled into it. The green of new growth, the deep red of autumn leaves, the white-blue of winter ice, the burning gold of summer. All of it, shifting, never settling, flowing from one into the next like seasons passing in the span of a heartbeat.
The form took shape slowly. A figure, tall and slender, made of everything and nothing at once. I watched flowers bloom across what might have been shoulders and die in the same breath, frost crackling along the edges of fingers that weren’t quite solid. Shadow and light chased each other across the surface of her like clouds racing across the sky.
And then the face settled.
My stomach dropped.
She looked like me. Not exactly. Older, sadder, worn down by something I couldn’t name. But the shape of the jaw, the line ofthe cheekbones, the way the eyes sat. I was looking at a mirror that showed me millenia instead of years. And then, just for a flicker, the features shifted. Sharper. Harder. A cruel edge to the mouth that I recognised from a different face entirely.
Arik’s face.
The features smoothed back to something softer, something that was neither me nor him but somewhere in between. And the eyes. God, the eyes. They held so much. Every season, every storm, every life that had ever been born and died in this realm. Looking into them felt like drowning in time.
“Alyssandra.” The voice was clear now, though it still carried echoes. Wind and water and the creak of ancient wood. “My daughter.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. I’d known. Since Arik called me sister, since the pieces had started falling into place, I’d known what I was. But hearing it from her, from this impossible, beautiful, breaking thing that had made me, was different.
“Don’t call me that.”
The words came out harder than I intended. Or maybe exactly as hard as I intended. Behind me, I felt Dean’s hand brush my back. A question, not a restraint. I didn’t lean into it. I could be strong here.
Nymeria’s form flickered. The flowers at her shoulders wilted, curling brown at the edges. “You have every right to your anger.”
“You’re damn right I do.” The fury was rising now, the thing I’d been carrying since Arik whisperedsisteron the battlefield. “You made me. You madehim. You created two children and set them on a collision course and then what? Sat back and whispered in the wind while he burned your realm to the ground?”
The light in the chamber dimmed. Not dramatically, not like a threat. Like sadness. Like the room itself flinching.
