Page 85 of Renegade Kingdom
I immediately knew what I would ask for. There was no question, or deliberation. I turned to look at Damon. At the shadows under his eyes, at the way he stood apart from his brothers like he didn’t trust himself to get too close. The nightmare had stolen everything from him. It had used his body as a weapon against the people he loved. And now a god was offering me the power to rip it out of his head forever.
“Remove the nightmare from...”
“No.”
The word cut through the chamber like a blade. Everyone went still. I turned, and Damon had stepped forward, the shackles clinked around his wrists, and the sound echoed off those breathing walls like a heartbeat.
“Damon...”
“No.” He said it again, quieter this time, but with an iron certainty that stopped me mid-sentence. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at Nymeria. “Don’t waste it on me. Bring back Rhidian.”
Silence. The kind of silence that has weight to it, that presses against your skin and makes it hard to breathe.
“Damon, she can free you,” I said, and my voice broke on the wordfreebecause I wanted it so badly. I wanted to see him without this sentence hanging over him. I wanted to see the brother my mates talked about. The real Damon, the one the nightmare had buried.
But even as I said it, the torn feeling was already there. Because Rhidian’s name was sitting in my chest too. The boy I’d known since I was small. The friend who’d loved me with everything he had and never once made me feel guilty for not loving him back. Who’d died with a sword in his chest and my name on his lips.
I wanted both. And there had to be a choice.
“This should be my decision,” Damon said, and his voice was steady. Clear. The clearest I’d heard it since before the nightmare took hold. “My nightmare. My sacrifice to make.” He straightened, chains pulling taut, and met my eyes. “I’ll take the bite instead. Dean is an alpha. He can give me the wolf. And the wolf can fight the nightmare.”
Behind me, Dean made a sound. Low, rough, caught somewhere between protest and something else entirely. “Westill don’t know if that will work. You wanted to wait to see if Alyssa was strong enough.”
“Not anymore,” Damon agreed. “We’re out of time and waiting is foolish. But I know that Rhidian died protecting this realm. I know he was a good man.” His voice faltered for the first time, and his eyes moved past me to land on Maddox. “And I know what killing him did to you.”
Maddox made a sound. Small, broken, barely there. But in the silence of that chamber, it was deafening.
“I’ve been watching.” Damon’s voice was barely above a whisper now, but it carried to every corner of the room. “Through the fog, through the nightmare, through every moment that thing let me surface just to see what my body had done. I’ve beenwatching. And I saw you, Maddox. I saw what it cost you.”
Maddox was shaking. I could feel it through the bond. A tremor that started deep and worked its way out until his whole body was vibrating with it. His eyes were locked on his brother’s face, and whatever he saw there was undoing him.
“I couldn’t protect you from the nightmare,” Damon continued. “I couldn’t stop what it did to our family. But I can do this. I can take this weight off your shoulders, little brother.”
The words,little brother, broke something in the room. I felt it crack through the bond like a fracture line, felt every one of my mates react to it. Ryder’s breath hitched. Tank went utterly still. Dean’s hand on my back pressed harder, and I could feel the war in him. Wanting to argue, wanting to protect, and knowing that his brother had earned the right to make this choice.
And Maddox. Maddox, who felt everything, who carried every wound and every death like stones in his pockets. Maddox broke open. The tears came silently at first, then with a raw, gutting sound that I felt in my own chest like a physical blow.
“You can’t...” Maddox started.
“It’s my decision.” Damon’s voice was steady. Certain. The voice of the oldest brother who had been putting himself between his family and harm since long before the nightmare took him. “Rhidian died because of what Arik is putting this realm through. For something I was a part of, even if I wasn’t given a choice to be. Let me bring him back. Let me do this one good thing with the curse I’ve been carrying.” He looked back at me, and there was no plea in his eyes. Just quiet, unshakeable resolve. “Let this be my choice, Alyssa.”
I looked at him. I looked at the empty space in my heart where Rhidian had been since I was a child. My friend. My constant. The man who’d loved me first and most faithfully and who I could never love back the way he deserved.
And I thought about golden light. Magic coating his body as they cast him into the sea. Would it even be possible.
I turned to Nymeria. The tears were running down my face and I didn’t bother wiping them away.
“Bring back Rhidian.”
Nymeria looked at Damon for a long moment, and something passed between them. The god who had inadvertently created the nightmare that had destroyed his life, and the man choosing grace instead of freedom. She slowly, painfully, stood from her throne and walked toward us. Only stopping when she was barely a step away. She reached out one flickering hand and touched Damon’s face, and where her fingers met his skin, light bloomed.
“You were always stronger than what lived inside you,” she said softly.
Then she turned to me, and she smiled. Tired and sad and proud all at once.
“You are everything I hoped you would be, Alyssandra. And so much more than I deserved.”
Those were her last words.
