Chapter Twelve #2
“You’re the real thing,” she said simply.
“Nymeria’s last chance. We can see that now.
” Something hard settled back into her expression, but this time it was directed outward.
At the war. At Arik. At the future she’d chosen to face instead of run from.
“We’d rather die on a battlefield, if that’s to be our fate, than risk becoming one of the Endless again if Arik wins. He doesn’t get to have us back.”
The conviction in her voice hit me somewhere deep.
These people had been stripped of everything.
Their magic, their freedom, their identities.
And here they were, choosing to fight. Not because they thought they’d win, but because the alternative was worse.
Because surrender meant becoming hollow again, and they’d tasted enough of that to know that death was preferable.
“We’re glad to have you,” I told her. “All of you.”
Vera nodded curtly, then turned and jogged back to her people. I watched her go, something warm and fierce expanding in my chest.
“More soldiers,” Dean observed quietly. “Good.”
“More people to protect,” I countered.
“Both,” Tank said. “Always both.”
We turned back to the path through the trees and began the walk to the palace.
The freed Endless and Rhidian’s crew fell in behind us, a procession that was far larger than it had any right to be.
Our footsteps were muffled by moss and fallen leaves, and the forest seemed to breathe around us, alive and welcoming in a way I’d never experienced anywhere else.
Light filtered through the canopy in golden shafts, and small creatures I didn’t recognise watched us from the branches with curious, unafraid eyes.
But as the palace came into view through the thinning trees, I stopped.
It wasn’t empty.
Smoke rose from chimneys that should have been cold.
Light flickered in windows that should have been dark.
And as we stepped out of the treeline into the courtyard, I could see people.
Dozens of them. Moving through the grounds, carrying supplies, training in the open areas with weapons and the faint shimmer of magic that looked tentative but real.
My magic flared instinctively. Beside me, Tank’s claws extended fully, his bear surging forward. Dean drew his blade in a single fluid motion. Maddox’s shift rippled beneath his skin, his lion ready to explode from him at a moment’s notice. Ryder’s hands crackled with static.
Then a figure emerged from the palace doors, and I laughed.
The sound burst out of me before I could stop it. Surprised, relieved, disbelieving. Because walking toward me with a familiar scowl on his face was the last person I’d expected to see here.
Ezra stopped at the bottom of the steps, crossed his arms, and looked at me with an expression caught somewhere between annoyance and grudging respect.
“Took you long enough,” he said.
I stared at him. The last time I’d seen Ezra, he’d been newly freed from Arik’s control.
The first Endless soldier I’d ever freed.
He’d been hollow-eyed and barely standing, his body moving like it had forgotten how to take orders from its own mind.
I’d wondered then if the damage Arik had done to him was something he’d ever recover from.
The man in front of me now looked nothing like that.
He’d filled out, gained muscle and colour in equal measure.
There was steel in his stance and clarity in his eyes and a confidence that came from having built something worth protecting.
And behind him, the Spring Court was alive in a way it hadn’t been since we left.
Since we last walked up to these doors and found Rhidian had made himself at home inside.
The memory ached in my heart in a way I knew would never leave me and yet I was relieved by it all the same.
Because even through the grief, it meant that memories of Rhidian would never fade. I owed him much at least. .
“Ezra.” I closed the distance between us, shaking my head in disbelief. “What are you doing here? How did you... what is all this?”
He glanced over his shoulder at the bustling courtyard. “What does it look like?”
“It looks like people keep moving into my court without asking,” I said, and the grin on my face was impossible to fight.
Something shifted in Ezra’s expression. The scowl softened, just slightly, into something more complicated.
He looked at the freed Endless filing through the courtyard gates behind me, their expressions shifting from wariness to wonder as they took in the training grounds, the supplies, the evidence that someone had been preparing for exactly this moment.
“I was going to leave,” Ezra admitted. “After everything. I was done with it. Done with the fighting, done with this realm, done with all of it. I was going to cross the ocean and find somewhere new. Somewhere that had never heard the name Arik.”
“What changed?”
He was quiet for a moment, his gaze dropping to the ground before lifting back to mine. When he spoke, his voice was different. Stripped of its usual gruffness. Almost reverent.
“I had a dream,” he said. “A woman came to me. I didn’t recognise her at first. She talked about the land, about how it was crying out for help.
How the magic was fading and the realm was dying from the inside out.
” He paused, choosing his words carefully.
“She talked about heroes. About how the land needed people willing to stand and fight for it. I thought she was talking about you at first. But the more we talked, the more I realised it wasn’t just you she meant.
It was all of us. That you couldn’t do this alone. That no one could.”
A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with the cold. A woman in a dream. Talking about the land crying out. Nymeria. My mother, reaching out to the people of her realm. Still fighting even from wherever she was trapped. Still trying to save what she’d created, one dream at a time.
“So I started making my way here,” Ezra continued.
“Figured if there was going to be a last stand, the Spring Court was where it would happen. It was the only court still standing free, and it’s where you’d come back to eventually.
” His mouth quirked into something that was almost a smile.
“And as I travelled, others found me. People who were looking for you. People who’d heard rumours about what you did outside the town.
About an Endless being freed. About a woman with golden magic who could break Arik’s chains with a touch.
” He gestured at the courtyard. “People looking for the place where they were going to finally take a stand.”
I turned slowly, taking in the full scope of what he’d resurrected.
It was like seeing a mirror image of Rhidian.
There’d have been no living with him if he’d made it back here with us today and seen this happening again.
Training grounds where people sparred with weapons and the faint shimmer of awakening magic.
Cook fires where food was being prepared, the smell of roasting meat and baking bread drifting across the courtyard.
Supplies being organised and stored in orderly rows.
A makeshift armoury where weapons were being repaired and sharpened.
This wasn’t a refugee camp. This was a base of operations. A foundation for war.
“You did all this?” I asked.
“There was already the basis for it in place that someone had started before. It was just waiting for someone else to finish it,” Ezra said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You were busy.”
Tank stepped forward, extending his hand. Ezra took it after a brief hesitation, and something passed between them. An understanding.
“How many?” Dean asked, scanning the courtyard with tactical eyes that were already cataloguing defensive positions and supply levels.
“Forty-seven, as of three days ago,” Ezra replied. “With the ones you have with you we’re looking at close to two hundred.”
“Two hundred against Arik’s army,” Ryder murmured.
“Two hundred who chose to be here,” Ezra corrected, and his voice carried the weight of someone who understood exactly what that meant. “That counts for something.”
He was right. It counted for everything.
I looked at my mates. At the freed Endless filing into the courtyard ahead of us, eyes wide as they took in what Ezra had built.
At Rhidian’s crew, already moving to introduce themselves to the newcomers, sharing information, comparing notes.
At Ezra, standing in front of a court he’d brought back to life through sheer stubbornness and a dream from a goddess who refused to give up.
Something was building here. Something bigger than any of us. Bigger than courts and prophecies and ancient grudges. A movement. A rebellion forged from the broken pieces of a realm that had been told it was beyond saving.
And for the first time, it felt like we might actually have a chance.
“All right,” I said, squaring my shoulders. “Show me what you’ve done. And then we need to talk, because we’re not staying. We’re passing through.”
Ezra raised an eyebrow. “Passing through to where?”
“Somewhere that’s supposed to be a myth.” I smiled at the look on his face. “I’ll explain on the way.”
We walked into the Spring Court together. And behind us, the trees closed the path, sealing the forest once more.
Protecting its own.
Gathering supplies was about to hopefully get a whole lot easier, but moving this number of people through a forest any sane person wouldn’t dare to enter, was starting to look more like an impossible challenge.