Page 11 of Renegade Kingdom
But looking around at the broken people scattered across the hillside, I wasn’t sure how many of them would make it there.
Some of the injured looked bad. Really bad. The kind of bad where every hour mattered, where the difference between reaching the ship today versus tomorrow might be the difference between life and death. And the hike was going to take us at least two days, maybe longer because we’d be slowed down by the wounded. We needed to get moving soon. Within the hour, if possible. Every minute we delayed was a minute someone might not have.
My bear stirred at the thought, pressing against the edges of my consciousness. He could sense my concern, and it was making him restless. The bear didn’t understand complex logistics or medical triage. He understood threats and protection. Right now, all these wounded, vulnerable people registered ashisto protect, which meant their suffering was making him agitated.
Calm, I told him.We’ll move soon. We’ll get them to safety.
The bear grumbled but settled slightly. He trusted me, even when he didn’t understand what I was doing. That trust had taken time to build. The bear and I hadn’t always been so in sync, and in some respects we still weren’t. But we’d found our balance eventually. We’d learned to work together. And the everyday became easier to bear. But it was in the dark moments, in those moments when tempers flared and emotions ran high, that he became almost impossible to control. Because he wanted to rage, to rip, to tear, to scream out his anger at the world. And there were times when I wanted that too. Times when I wanted to let him rampage and bring the world to its knees.
Instead, I stood and began walking through the camp, stepping carefully over sleeping bodies, checking on the wounded, taking stock of what we had and what we needed. It was a habit I’d developed over the years. A constant assessment, this perpetual awareness of my surroundings. The bear intensified it. I couldn’t enter a space without automatically cataloguing exits, identifying threats, evaluating the people around me.
The freed Endless were scattered throughout the camp, distinct from our original group by their haunted expressions and the way they flinched at sudden movements. They’d shed their gleaming armour. Or most of it, anyway. But they still carried themselves like soldiers. Like people who’d forgotten how to be anything else. How long had they been trapped inside their own bodies, watching the horrors that Arik had committed while he controlled them like puppets?
I watched them as I walked, and I sorted them into categories in my mind. It wasn’t kind, perhaps, but it was necessary. These people had been mind-controlled for gods knew how long. Not everyone was going to come out of that intact.
There were the grateful ones. I could spot them by the way they looked at our group, at Alyssa especially. Their eyes held something like worship, like she’d pulled them from drowning and they’d spend the rest of their lives trying to repay the debt. They wanted to fight. Wanted revenge. Wanted to make Arik pay for what he’d done to them. Those ones, at least, would be useful. Dangerous, maybe, in their zeal, but useful.
Then there were the broken ones. My chest tightened as I passed a young woman curled into a ball, her body shaking with silent sobs. She hadn’t stopped crying since we’d freed her. Beside her, a man sat perfectly still, staring at nothing, not responding when someone spoke to him. Catatonic. Gonesomewhere inside himself where the horrors couldn’t reach. I didn’t know if he’d ever come back.
The angry ones were easier to spot but harder to handle. I caught one of them glaring at me as I passed. A middle-aged man with a jagged scar across his face and fury burning in his eyes.Why didn’t you save us sooner?that glare said.Why did so many have to die while you took your time?I couldn’t blame him for the anger. I might feel the same way in his position. But anger like that was volatile. It needed somewhere to go, and if it couldn’t find an enemy, it would turn on the nearest target.
The suspicious ones watched me with narrowed eyes, tracking my movements like I was a predator circling their camp.How do we know you’re not just another master?I could practically hear them thinking.What’s the catch? What do you want from us?Trust, once shattered, wasn’t easily rebuilt. These people had been controlled, used, violated in the most fundamental way possible. Of course they didn’t believe that anyone would help them without wanting something in return.
And then there were the guilty ones. Those were the hardest to look at.
I passed a woman sitting apart from the others, her hands clasped in her lap, her gaze fixed on them with an expression of absolute horror. I knew that look. I’d seen it on Maddox’s face yesterday. She was seeing blood that wasn’t there anymore. Remembering things she’d done while under Arik’s control. Kills she’d made. People she’d hurt. And she remembered all of it.
How do I live with that?her posture screamed.How do I go on knowing what my hands have done?
I didn’t have an answer for her. I wasn’t sure anyone did.
The tension in the camp was palpable. I could feel it pressing against my skin, could sense the bear responding to it with a low, constant growl at the back of my mind. These people were on edge. All of them, in different ways, for different reasons. But theresult was the same. This place was a powder keg waiting for a spark.
We needed to get moving. Give them something to do. Something to focus on. A mission. Purpose. Before the tension found an outlet in violence.
As if summoned by the thought, a shout rang out from the other side of the camp.
I was moving before the sound had fully registered, my bear surging forward with a snarl. Two of the freed Endless were on their feet, squaring off against each other. A man and a woman, both of them with their fists raised, both of them screaming words I couldn’t quite make out from this distance.
“You were there!” the woman shrieked. “I saw you! You killed him, you killed…”
“I didn’t have a choice!” The man’s voice cracked with desperation. “None of us had a choice!”
The woman lunged.
I caught her before she could reach him, wrapping my arms around her from behind and lifting her bodily off the ground. She thrashed against me, screaming, her elbows driving into my ribs hard enough to bruise. But I was bigger, stronger, and the bear was lending me his strength. I held her until the fight started to drain out of her, until the screams turned to sobs.
“Easy,” I murmured, keeping my voice low and steady. “Easy. I’ve got you.”
“He killed my brother,” she gasped between sobs. “I watched him do it. I was right there and I couldn’t… I couldn’t stop…”
“I know.” I didn’t know, not really. I couldn’t imagine what it had been like for them, forced to watch their own bodies commit atrocities. But I could offer comfort, at least. I could be a solid presence in the midst of her grief. “I know. But it wasn’t him. It wasn’t either of you. You were both victims.”
“He still did it. His hands…”
“Were not his own.” I gentled my grip as she stopped struggling, shifting from restraint to something closer to an embrace. “The only one responsible for your brother’s death is Arik. He’s the one who deserves your anger. Not this man. Not yourself.”
She went limp against me, all the fight draining away and leaving nothing but exhaustion. I caught the eye of one of the spring court fighters who’d traveled with us and nodded toward the woman.
