Page 87 of Renegade Kingdom
Tank hadn’t moved. But his eyes were on Damon too, and I knew that look. The long view, the steady assessment, the quiet recognition of exactly what kind of man was standing in those chains.
But Damon still stood apart from all of them, and on his face was something I hadn’t seen before.
Peace.
Not happiness. Not relief. But the quiet, hard-won peace of a man who had been trapped inside his own body and had just proved, in the only way that mattered, that the nightmare had never touched who he really was.
The chamber was dim now. The golden veins in the floor had gone dark. The throne sat empty, and the walls had stopped breathing, and where a god had been, there was only absence.
But the absence didn’t feel empty. It felt like potential. Like the space after an exhale, waiting for the next breath.
Nymeria was gone. And the realm she’d built was settling onto my shoulders with a weight I couldn’t yet comprehend.
But I wasn’t holding it alone.
I looked at my mates. At Tank, steady and sure at my back. At Dean, watching his brother with new eyes. At Ryder, silent for once, his jaw tight with emotion he couldn’t joke away. AtMaddox, kneeling on the floor, learning how to breathe again. At Damon in his chains, standing in quiet, hard-won peace.
And then there was Rhidian. Alive. Gasping on the floor of a dead god’s chamber, blinking golden light from his eyes, trying to make sense of a world that was now going to be completely different because he was a fae without magic inside of it.
The old world was ending. The courts, the crowns, the ancient lines of power that had divided this realm for centuries. All of it was coming undone.
And something new was about to begin.
But first, we still had Arik to deal with. Because if I could feel the change in the world that Nymeria’s absence had created, so would he. And if he was going to make his final stand to try and claim it all, he had to do it now.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Dean
The dead man was eating soup.
That was the thing my brain kept snagging on. Not the empty throne. Not the silence where a god used to be. Not the weight that had settled onto Alyssa’s shoulders like something visible, something I could almost see pressing down on her. No. My brain, in its infinite wisdom, had decided to fixate on the fact that Rhidian was sitting at a table in the Fifth Court, alive, dripping golden light from his hair, eating soup.
Maddox had made it. Of course Maddox had made it. The second we’d returned from the chamber, Maddox had gone straight for whatever passed as a kitchen in this place and started cooking. That was how he processed. Some people punched walls. Some people cried. Maddox apparently made soup.
The wolf paced in my head, restless. He’d been restless since the chamber. Since Damon had stepped forward and saidnowith more certainty than I’d heard from him in years.
I was leaning against the doorframe, watching. That’s what I did. I watched, I assessed, I positioned myself between threatsand the people I loved. It was an old habit I never wanted to shake. Holden’s training. I’d always be a soldier. A fighter.
Rhidian looked wrong. Not physically. Physically, he looked fine. Better than fine for a man who’d been dead. The golden light had faded to a faint shimmer on his skin, and apart from the rough voice and the slight tremor in his hands, you wouldn’t know he’d spent days as a corpse. But there was something missing. A hollow space where power used to sit. I could feel it, or rather, I could feel the absence of it. Like a tooth that had been pulled. The socket was still there but the thing that filled it was gone.
He didn’t seem bothered by it. If anything, he seemed lighter. His shoulders sat differently. The rigid posture of a man who’d carried the knowledge that one day he’d have to wear a crown didn’t want, and his family were more than happy to kill him for.
Ryder sat across from him, doing what Ryder did best. Talking. Filling the silence. Making it easier for everyone else to just exist without the pressure of figuring out what to say to a man they’d mourned.
“So you don’t remember anything?” Ryder asked, chin propped on his hand. “Nothing at all?”
“Gold,” Rhidian said. His voice was still rough, like gravel over glass. “Just gold. And warmth. And then cold, and water, and stone under my hands.” He looked down at the soup. “And then Maddox.”
Across the room, Maddox’s hands stilled on the counter. Just for a second. Then he went back to whatever he was doing, but I could see the set of his shoulders. The way he was holding himself together with effort.
I’d felt it through the bond when Rhidian had told Maddox he was grateful. Felt the guilt crack open and start to drain. It wasn’t gone. That kind of weight didn’t disappear in a single conversation. But the worst of it, the sharp edge that had beencutting Maddox from the inside every day since Ice Falls, had dulled.
Good. One brother healing.
Then my eyes found Damon.
I knew what to look for. The slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. The way his fingers curled and uncurled against his thighs. The nightmare was still in there, and even caged behind Damon’s will, it was pushing. Testing. Looking for cracks.
