Renegade Kingdom (Nymerian Rebels #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Alyssa

Sister.

The word echoed around my mind like a scream piercing through the darkness. It couldn’t be real. There was no possible way. He… Arik.

My gaze moved around the horror of the aftermath of our battle. The dead, the dying, the grieving. It was all too much.

Sister.

It just couldn’t be possible.

Then my gaze locked on the charred remains of The Endless he’d burned alive just to spite me. The soldiers I could have freed if only I’d had enough time. If only I’d been better.

If only.

The touch of a hand on my shoulder cut through the fog of the horror before me.

I spun around, my hand flying to my dagger before my mind could catch up with what I was doing.

The blade was already arching through the air when my eyes locked with Tank’s understanding gaze.

I barely stopped in time, the edge of the dagger biting into the soft skin of his neck.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even raise his hand to stop me.

Tank’s eyes just locked with mine before he gently took hold of my wrists and pulled me against him.

“It’s over, Lys. I’ve got you,” he murmured as I sank into his embrace.

“He said…”

“It doesn’t matter what he said,” he interrupted.

“Not to me. And not to the others. All that matters now is what you do next. You can fall apart. Say the word and I’ll take you out of this place, away from it all.

Or you can stand tall, Alyssa. Show them the Queen you were always meant to be.

Show them there are people who still care, people who will fight.

Show them that this was the action of a desperate man.

And he fucking should be. Because we’re coming for him, and we’re not going to stop until he’s dead. ”

I wanted the first option. Every fibre of my being screamed for it. To let Tank carry me away from this nightmare, to find a dark corner where I could shatter into a thousand pieces and let someone else put me back together.

But I couldn’t. Not with all those eyes on me. Not while I still stood in front of the evidence of what Arik was capable of.

I pulled back from Tank’s chest, letting my hand linger on his arm a moment longer than necessary. Drawing strength from that connection. From the steady pulse of the bond between us.

When I turned, I saw them properly for the first time.

The Endless I’d broken from Arik’s command.

Dozens of them pulling themselves free of their gleaming armour, their movements stiff and uncertain, like creatures emerging from long hibernation.

Some wept. Some just stood there, staring at nothing.

A few had already dropped to their knees beside fallen comrades, the friends they’d been forced to fight alongside, friends they’d been unable to save.

Then they were all looking at me.

At first, I thought it was hope in their eyes. That desperate, fragile thing that survivors cling to when the worst has passed. But the longer I looked, the more those gazes sharpened into something else entirely.

Questions. Accusations.

Who are you? Why should we trust you? You wear his magic. You carry his power. How are you any different?

I didn’t have answers for all of that. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But Tank was right, and if I wanted these people to follow me, they needed to know who they were following.

I stepped forward, and my voice carried across the ruined battlefield with a steadiness I didn’t feel.

“I know you’re scared.” The words felt inadequate, but I pressed on. “You don’t know me, and you have no reason to trust me. Arik took everything from you. Your freedom, your choices, your lives. I can’t give any of that back.”

A few faces hardened. I’d expected that, but every glare still felt like a blade slicing across my soul.

“But I can offer you a choice now. A real one.” I gestured to the carnage around us, to the smoking remains and the bloody snow.

“If you want to fight, if you want to make sure no one else suffers what you suffered, then stand with us. We’re going after him.

There is nowhere in Nymeria that Arik can hide.

Not now, not after everything he’s done.

He’s spilled our blood, taken the ones we loved and we won’t stop until he can never do this again. ”

I paused, letting that settle.

“But if you’re done fighting, if you need time to heal.

.. I understand that too. We’ll arrange safe passage to somewhere beyond his reach.

Somewhere you can rest, heal, try to remember who you were before he took you.

” My throat tightened, but I forced the words out.

“No one here will think less of you for choosing peace. You’ve earned it. You’ve more than earned it.”

Silence stretched across the battlefield. Then, slowly, a woman near the front, her armour half-removed, her face streaked with ash and tears, rose to her feet. Then she gave me a single, shaky nod.

It wasn’t much. But it was something.

The tension around us broke. The accusing glares seemed to lessen and for a moment, a single fragile moment, a glimmer of hope sparked inside me.

“Tonight, we honour our dead,” I continued. “We grieve. We honour. Tomorrow, you decide your own fate.”

I turned away before any of them could see how close I was to breaking.

My legs felt like they might give out at any moment, and my hands had started to shake.

I needed to find somewhere quiet. Somewhere I could scream until my throat was raw.

Where the tears could flow and I could just stop pretending that I had everything figured out.

But then I saw Dean, Ryder, and Maddox making their way toward me through the debris, and I knew I wasn’t going to get that reprieve.

Dean’s jaw was set in that hard line I’d come to recognize.

The one that meant he was holding something back, something that was eating at him from the inside.

His gaze kept flickering toward the far edge of the camp, where I knew Damon was being held.

Where his brother sat in chains, a monster wearing his face.

Ryder tried to catch my eye with something approaching his usual irreverent smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. The humor that normally danced there had gone flat, replaced by something hollow.

And Maddox...

I’d reached the far end of myself, the place where all the feelings had just stopped being bearable and became something dull and distant.

And I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the look on Maddox’s face. The tightness in his jaw, the grim determination coupled with the sheer horror in his eyes.

It wasn’t over yet.

I wanted to collapse. I wanted to shake my head and cover my ears as if the childish action could keep it all away.

But it couldn’t.

Nothing could.

Tank moved to my back, his hands on my shoulders as his thumbs gently rubbed across my tension-filled muscles. I knew all of this would be making his bear shake the confines of his mind, roaring in displeasure at not being able to protect me from this. But there was nothing left to fight here.

“Tell me,” I said. I couldn’t keep the quiver out of my voice.

But whatever it was that was haunting one of the men I loved, I needed to hear it now.

I didn’t want to taint anywhere else with the horror of what had happened here.

If there was more, more madness, more grief, more blows to be dealt, let it be here in this gods forsaken place that needed to burn from the face of this realm.

Maddox’s hands hung at his sides, and for the first time I noticed they were covered in blood.

It had dried in the creases of his palms, gathered beneath his fingernails.

He stared at them for a moment like they belonged to someone else, then he looked up determination clashing with the horror as he pulled in a ragged breath.

“Rhidian’s gone.”

The words hit me like a physical blow. My chest seized, the air refusing to enter my lungs. The guilt swiftly followed. I hadn’t looked for him. I’d been so wrapped up in my own pain that I didn’t even wonder what had happened to him.

“Gone?” I heard myself ask, though the word sounded distant, like it came from somewhere outside my body.

“We got separated. I couldn’t reach him in time.

He was already down on the ground when The Endless caught up with him.

He was dying.” Maddox’s voice was barely above a whisper, rough and fractured.

“The wound from The Endless... there was no saving him. He knew it. We both did.” His throat worked as he swallowed.

“He asked me to... he made me promise...”

Maddox trailed off, his gaze still fixed on those bloodstained hands.

Ryder grasped his shoulder in support and I wanted so much to go to him.

To tell him that he didn’t need to tell me.

But my body was locked in place. It was taking everything I had just to stand in this one spot.

I was failing him, just like I’d failed all the other people lying dead on the ground.

“He didn’t want Arik to claim the Summer Court through him,” Maddox continued, each word dragged out of him like it cost something vital.

“If The Endless killed him, if they were the one to end the Summer line... Rhidian couldn’t let that happen.

So he asked me to…” His voice cracked. “His last thoughts were of you, Alyssa. He wanted you to know that.”

The grief I’d been holding back threatened to drown me. Rhidian. The Summer court heir who’d loved me in his quiet, steady way, even when I couldn’t love him back. He’d never pushed, never demanded, he’d simply been there. And now he was gone, and Maddox…

I looked at Maddox and saw a man who was barely holding himself together. The guilt was etched into every line of his face, weighing down his shoulders like a physical burden.

I didn’t think. I just moved. His pain sparked something deep inside me and it was impossible to keep away from him.