Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Alyssa
Iforced myself to eat.
The rations were meagre. We had nothing but hard bread and dried meat that tasted like leather.
I chewed and swallowed mechanically, not letting myself think about it.
My body needed fuel. It didn’t matter that every bite felt like sawdust in my mouth, that my stomach rebelled against the intrusion.
I had to be strong for what came next. Whatever that was.
We’d walked for two days to get back to the ship.
Two days of putting one foot in front of the other.
Two days of silence so thick it felt like a physical weight pressing down on all of us.
Two days of watching people fall and not get back up, of leaving bodies behind because we didn’t have time to bury them, of pretending we couldn’t hear the dying gasps of those too wounded to keep going.
We’d lost so many along the way. People who’d survived the battle only to succumb to their injuries on the march.
People who’d simply... stopped. Sat down in the snow and refused to move, their eyes empty, their will to live extinguished.
We couldn’t force them. We couldn’t carry them all.
So we left them. We had no other choice.
Lingering here would mean death for all of us.
It was only a matter of time before Arik was able to get more of his soldiers to come after us.
The silence around the survivors was chilling. No one had the energy to talk. All anyone could do was put one foot in front of the other and pray they made it to the ship before their legs gave out.
And now we were here. Finally. The ship loomed before us, its dark hull a promise of safety that felt almost too good to be true. Food. Medicine. Shelter. Rest.
But even as relief washed through me, it was tainted by grief. Because Rhidian should have been here. This was his ship. His crew. His home.
I stood on the dock and watched them load his body onto the deck.
They’d wrapped him in sailcloth before carrying him aboard, the white fabric stark against the grey morning sky. His men moved with the careful reverence of people handling something sacred. Someone was crying. Quiet, muffled sobs that cut through the silence like a blade.
There was talk of burying him at sea. The ocean was where he’d been happiest, they said.
Where he’d want to rest. I wasn’t sure about that.
I was starting to wonder if I’d known him at all.
He’d loved me for so long, and I’d never been able to love him back the way he deserved.
And now he was gone, and I’d never get the chance to try.
Fizzle would know what Rhidian would have wanted. The little guardian had spent years working with him, guiding him, while I’d been in the human realm living a different life entirely. Fizzle probably knew Rhidian better than I ever had.
The thought made guilt twist in my stomach. I’d been ignoring Fizzle since the battle. Shutting him out, refusing to hear his explanations, punishing him for his secrets. And all this time, he was probably hurting too. Grieving for Rhidian in his own way.
It stung that I still cared enough about him for that to bother me.
I tore my gaze away from Rhidian’s shrouded body and made myself walk up the gangplank onto the ship.
Every step felt wrong. Like I was trespassing in a place that had once welcomed me.
Rhidian’s presence was everywhere here. In the worn wood of the railings, in the smell of salt and tar, in the quiet efficiency of his crew.
And now he was gone, and all of it felt hollow.
Damon walked past me toward the hold, his steps measured and deliberate.
He didn’t need to be told where to go. He was heading straight for the cells where we’d kept him before.
Where he’d kept himself, really. He knew he was dangerous.
Knew what the nightmare could do if it took control at the wrong moment.
So he walked himself back into chains without anyone asking him to.
Maddox followed silently behind him, his expression unreadable. He’d stayed close to Damon throughout the entire march, watching over him the way Damon had once watched over the rest of them. The brothers were taking care of each other, even when they didn’t know how to talk about it.
Damon had been... different, these past two days.
More present. More himself. He’d stayed close to the children from the camp, watching over them, making sure they ate, that they slept.
I hadn’t seen the nightmare surface once since before the battle.
Or at least, I didn’t think I had. The nightmare wouldn’t have cared about children.
Wouldn’t have spent hours coaxing a terrified little girl to eat her rations or carrying a boy who’d walked until his feet bled.
That had been Damon. The real Damon. Still in there, still fighting.
It gave me hope. Fragile, dangerous hope.
I made my way to the cabin Rhidian had given us. Our cabin, now, I supposed. It felt wrong to claim it. Wrong to be here at all without him.
I didn’t realise how long I’d been standing there, staring at nothing, until Ryder’s voice broke through the fog.
“Alyssa.”
I blinked. He was at my side, his hand running gently down my arm, his voice soft with concern.
“Hey,” he said. “Where’d you go?”
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak. I didn’t know where I’d gone. Somewhere dark. Somewhere I couldn’t seem to climb out of.
Ryder didn’t push. He just guided me further into the cabin, his movements gentle and unhurried. The others weren’t here, it was just the two of us, alone in the quiet space that still smelled faintly of Rhidian’s presence.
“Come on,” Ryder said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“There’s too much to do,” I protested weakly.
“Tank and the others are organising medical care and food. The crew are already bringing out the supplies. There’s nothing you need to do right now, except take a moment to look after yourself,” he reassured me.
Ryder helped me undress with careful hands, peeling away the layers of dirt and blood and exhaustion that had accumulated over the past days.
There was nothing sexual in it. Just tenderness.
Just care. He found a basin of water and a cloth, and he washed the mud and blood from my skin with slow, gentle strokes.
I stood there and let him. Let someone else take care of me for once, instead of trying to hold everyone else together.
“The others should be here, doing what they need as well.” I finally managed.
“They will when everything is organised outside. But for now they’re giving you space,” Ryder said. “They’ll be here soon.” He wrung out the cloth and continued his work, carefully washing the grime from my arms. “We figured you needed a minute.”
A minute. Like a minute could fix any of this.
“You’re all treating me like I’m broken,” I said quietly.
Ryder paused, his hands stilling on my shoulders. Then he met my eyes, and there was no pity in his gaze. Just understanding.
“Aren’t you?”
The question hit harder than it should have. Because the answer was yes. Of course it was yes. I was shattered into a thousand pieces and barely holding myself together through sheer stubbornness.
Sister.
The word echoed through my mind again, unbidden. That moment on the battlefield when Arik had looked at me through those cold eyes of one of his Endless and called me…
Sister.
Something hot and fierce surged up through my chest. Not grief this time. Not despair.
Anger.
“Fuck him,” I heard myself say.
Ryder’s eyebrows rose. “What?”
“Fuck Arik.” The words came faster now, pouring out of me like poison from a wound.
“Fuck him and everything he’s done to this world.
Fuck his armies and his nightmares and his endless fucking games.
He took Rhidian. He took Damon’s mind. He’s taken so many people and destroyed so many lives and for what?
Power? Control?” I was shaking now, my hands clenched into fists at my sides.
“He called me his sister like that was supposed to mean something. Like I was supposed to care. Like I’d suddenly fall at his feet because we share some connection I never asked for. ”
The magic was rising inside me. I could feel it building, responding to my fury, filling the cabin with a pressure that made my ears pop.
“Well, he can rot in whatever hell Nymeria has waiting for him. Because I’m coming for him. I’m going to tear apart everything he’s built and make him watch. Then when it’s all done, I’m going to be the one standing over his body. Not the other way around. Never the other way around.”
I was breathing hard by the time I finished, the words leaving me emptier and somehow lighter at the same time. The magic crackled around us, sparking along my skin, and when I looked up, Ryder was smiling.
“There’s my girl,” he said softly.
The smile transformed his face. Made him look like the Ryder I’d first met. The one with the irreverent grin and the spark in his eyes, before the weight of everything had started to crush him.
I took a breath, trying to calm the magic still swirling through me. But as I reached for control, I felt something... strange.
A pull. A resonance.
Ryder felt it too. I could see it in the way his expression shifted, the way his eyes suddenly glowed with a hint of his wolf. His magic was pushing against mine, not fighting it but... reaching for it. Like two halves trying to become whole.
“Do you feel that?” he asked.
I nodded slowly. “It’s like... like our magic is trying to…”
“Twin together,” he finished. “Yeah. That’s exactly what it feels like.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, both of us caught in the strangeness of it. This was new. This was different. Something about all of our magic being together felt like it was on the verge of becoming something more. Something powerful.
A knock at the cabin door shattered the moment.