Page 116 of Renegade Kingdom
The weight of what I was saying settled on all of them.
Damon cleared his throat.
I looked at him. He was sitting on a low chest by the window, shadows curling lazily around his ankles, and he had that particular look he got when he was about to say something he’d been turning over for a while. Maddox got the same look. In fact, all of them did. You could tell this was a group of men who’d grown up together and faced all of their troubles as a family.
“I haven’t told everyone this yet,” he said. “Fizzle and I, when we were training. I found something.”
Everyone shuffled nervously waiting for Damon to continue until finally Tank cleared his throat and asked, “What did you find?”
Damon looked at his hands. The shadows there twitched. “The magic cuts bonds. Not just any bonds. Magical ones. Tethers, chains, anything where one being holds power over another. Fizzle set up a test binding and my shadows sliced through it before I even knew it was something they could do.”
Ryder whistled softly. “That’s new.”
“It’s new to me. Fizzle said he’d never seen anything like it either, and Fizzle’s seen a lot.” Damon finally looked up at me. “I’ve been trying to work out how to tell you. It’s the nightmare, I think. The thing living in my head for years taught me what amagical chain feels like from the inside. The shadows know how to break them because I know how it feels to wear them.”
Something in my chest tightened. Maddox made a small sound beside me.
“Why would you be nervous about telling us this?” Ryder asked.
Damon looked at him and I could see the pain in his gaze. “Because we’re all bonded to Alyssa, and because that actuallymeanssomething. But what if I ruin it? What if I accidentally cut the wrong bond? I’m not sure I’m fully in control of this magic. It’s like it has a mind of it’s own.”
I hadn’t considered that, and he was right, it could potentially be a problem.
“Damon,” I started.
“It’s fine.” He gave me a crooked half-smile that wasn’t quite a smile. “I can keep my distance. I won’t let it hurt you.”
I walked over to the spot he’d chosen to isolate himself in and knelt at his feet. “You don’t need to keep any distance from me, Damon. And I don’t think you need to worry about this. The bonds that we share have nothing to do with control. They’re not one sided. Besides, if the shadows were going to sever them, they would have done it already. They’ve had more than enough opportunity.”
“Plus,” Ryder added with a smirk on his face, “It’s not exactly a chore to forge a bond with Alyssa. I wouldn’t mind repeating it.”
The guys laughed and Damon shook his head, a soft smile on his face that screamed of a relief he wasn’t ready to talk about.
It was going to take time for Damon to trust himself. To trust that the nightmare really was gone. It wasn’t fair that this had happened to him, and it wasn’t fair that we were stuck in this fight rather than him having the time to deal with the trauma he’d been through.
I gently squeezed Damon’s knee and stood up to look at the others only for Damon to grip my waist with his hands and pull me down into his lap. I sagged into his embrace, letting my eyes close as I relished the feeling of having my mate so close.
“This is good though, right?” Maddox said quietly. “This feels like the first thing that’s gone our way for a long time. Arik has no idea that Damon can do this, and we finally have an advantage if we can separate him from the Endless.”
“But how do we do it?” Ryder asked. “Damon can’t go around separating them all one at a time. It would take far too long and as soon as Arik figured out what was happening he’d throw everything he had at Damon.”
I felt myself tense at the thought. At the realization that Damon could not only be harmed, but end up back in Arik’s hands once more. Damon’s arms tightened every so slightly around me in response and he softly kissed my shoulder.
“He needs a bridge,” Dean said pushing away from where he was leaning against a wall and starting to pace. “If we can find a way for Damon to reach everyone at once, Arik would never know what was happening until it was too late.”
“I could do that,” I realised aloud. “I could connect with all the chains. I’ve done it before when I freed the Endless at the Ice Falls. I could do it again and act as a bridge for Damon’s magic to follow.”
“The Ice Falls took everything you had,” Dean said quietly. He’d stopped in his pacing and turned to look at me in Damon’s lap. The corner of his lips ticked up slightly in smile and the sight and then he frowned as he no doubt started to run all of the scenarios through his head. Ever the soldier running the tactics. “You were drained more than you admitted afterward. And we’re talking hundreds more this time, simultaneously, that’s not something you have the capacity for.”
“She could.” Maddox spoke from the other side of the room, and we all turned to look at him.
He was leaning forwards in his chair, elbows on his knees, and there was colour rising in his cheeks that had nothing to do with Summer magic. He glanced at me. A silent question.
I nodded.
He took a breath.
“Alyssa and I talked earlier. About what I’ve been feeling through the bond. There’s this... pull. Has been for days. Building since we left the Fifth Court.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I think the bonds want to merge. The five connections we each have with her are trying to weave into a single current and they can’t do it on their own. The magic needs us to help it.”
