Page 4 of Renegade Kingdom
And somewhere, in the depths of my mind, that word still echoed.
Sister.
But I kept walking. Ignorance was bliss right now, and part of me realised it changed nothing. Arik would still die by my hand because that was the only way this madness could end.
Chapter Two
Maddox
Iwatched Alyssa walk away, and my lion roared in my mind.
He pressed against the edges of my consciousness, a warm weight trying to reassure me that everything was as it should be. The lion didn’t understand guilt. Not the way I did. To him, it was simple. Rhidian had deserved a good death. A warrior’s death. And I had given him that instead of condemning him to die at the hands of an abomination.
I wished I could see it that clearly. I wished life was that simple. But reality was never wrapped in pretty reassurances, it waited until you were at your lowest and then it pushed you even further down and laughed when you tried not to break.
Alyssa moved through the soldiers, stopping to speak with the wounded, crouching beside those too broken to stand. I could tell she was struggling, I could always tell. Even before the lion, even before I knew what she was to me, for some reason I felt her deeper than anyone else I’d ever met. But even with the weight of everything she carried, she kept going anyway. That was who she was. The woman who carried everyone else’s pain on top of her own and somehow still found the strength to keep moving.
The looks of distrust on the soldiers’ faces were already beginning to change. I watched suspicion soften into something closer to respect as she spoke to them, touched their shoulders, helped them to their feet. They were starting to see what we’d known all along.
“How is this collection of broken people supposed to go on to fight Arik,” I murmured, the thoughts slipping through my lips before I could stop them.
It wasn’t a thought I was proud of. These people had been through so much, fought so hard, it was wrong to think of them as anything less than the warriors they’d proven themselves to be.
But I could see it on their faces. I could see how close to the edge they all were. Asking them to keep fighting was far too much. But who else was left if they all walked away from this?
“They can because they must,” Dean said simply.
“Don’t rule them out just yet,” Ryder added. “People are capable of incredible things when it comes to protecting the people they love.”
“And what about when all the people they love are already dead?” I asked grimly.
“Then revenge is a powerful motivator,” Dean pointed out.
Revenge. The word settled into my chest like an ember, and my lion rumbled his approval. Yes. That was something we could both understand.
“What happens now?” Ryder asked, his gaze still tracking Alyssa across the battlefield.
Dean’s jaw tightened. “We need to get her out of here. She’s running on fumes and fury right now, and when that crashes...” He shook his head. “We need to move back to our camp. Give her space to process everything.”
“To process losing Rhidian,” I added quietly.
The name alone was enough to make my mind recoil. My lion pushed forward again, that steady presence trying to cushion the blow, and I let him. I couldn’t remember anymore what it had been like to be alone in my own head. Before the shift, before everything changed. Now there was always this other consciousness sharing space with me, and right now I was grateful for it.
The burn across my forearm flared, and I looked down without meaning to.
The mark had spread since the last time I’d checked. Intricate patterns wound across my skin like vines made of golden light, etching themselves into my flesh in swirling designs that seemed almost alive. Rhidian’s magic. The Summer Court’s legacy, passed to me in his final moments.
And smeared across all of it, dried into the grooves of the pattern, caked beneath my fingernails, darkening the lines of my palm, was Rhidian’s blood.
I stared at my hands. At the way the blood had mixed with the mark he’d given me, as if his death and his gift had become one and the same thing. In some respects it was, one wouldn’t have been possible without the other. But the magic felt less like an inheritance and more like an accusation. A curse branded into my skin that I would carry forever.
You did what needed to be done, my lion reminded me.He chose you. He trusted you.
That almost made it worse.
“Maddox.”
I looked up to find Dean watching me, and I braced for the accusation. For the doubt. For someone to finally say what I’d been thinking—that I should have found another way, that I’d taken the easy path, that Rhidian might have survived if I’d just tried harder.
