Chapter Fifteen
Alyssa
The meeting had barely ended before the guilt settled in.
I watched the room empty, the various commanders and representatives filing out with the quiet murmur of people who had opinions about what had just been decided, but were too polite to voice them in front of me.
The decision not to take the full force into the Wildling Forest was the right one.
I knew that in my bones. But knowing something was right and feeling good about it were two entirely different animals, and the looks on some of those faces as they left told me I wasn’t the only one grappling with the difference.
Tank lingered by the door, his steady presence a constant warmth at the edge of my awareness.
The bear had been unusually quiet during the meeting, which meant Tank was thinking.
Processing. Doing that thing he did where he watched everyone in the room and filed away every reaction for later analysis.
I caught his eye and he gave me the smallest nod, the kind that said I’m here, take your time, and then he was gone too, leaving me alone in the meeting room with the weight of a decision that would affect every person in this court.
I pressed my palms flat against the table and breathed.
We were leaving in the morning. Just us. Me, my mates, Damon in whatever state the nightmare allowed, and Fizzle. Walking into a forest that swallowed people whole, heading for a court that might not exist, on the word of a creature who had been lying to me since the day we met.
When I put it like that, it sounded insane.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Not Tank’s. Tank moved quietly for a man his size, a skill he’d perfected over years of not wanting to startle people. These footsteps were deliberate. Heavy. The walk of someone who was used to making their presence known before they entered a room.
Ezra appeared in the doorway, and the expression on his face was one I recognised because I’d been wearing a version of it for the last hour. Guilt, layered with uncertainty, layered with the stubborn refusal to be the first one to look away.
“Got a minute?” he asked.
I straightened up from the table. “Of course.”
He didn’t come all the way in. Just leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed, a posture I was beginning to understand was less about aggression and more about holding himself together.
“I overstepped,” he said. “In the meeting. I shouldn’t have pushed back on your decision.”
“You disagreed with me. That’s not overstepping.”
“It is when you’re the queen and I’m...” He trailed off, jaw tightening.
The word he didn’t say hung in the air between us.
Nobody. Nothing. A freed Endless with no rank and no title and no reason to be sitting at a war council except that he’d been stubborn enough to rebuild a court that everyone else had written off.
I came around the table and leaned against it, facing him. “You’re the man who took a group of people who had every reason to give up and gave them something worth fighting for. You don’t need a title for that to matter, Ezra.”
He looked at the floor. Then back at me. “Some of the others think I shouldn’t be here. That the freed Endless should follow, not lead.”
“Some of the others haven’t done what you’ve done.”
“That’s not...” He exhaled through his nose, frustrated in the way people got when they were trying to articulate something that lived closer to the heart than the head.
“I’m not fishing for praise. I’m asking whether I’ve put myself somewhere I don’t belong.
Whether my being here, pushing back, having opinions, is making things harder for you. ”
I studied him for a moment. The tension in his shoulders.
The way his hands gripped his own arms hard enough to blanch the knuckles.
This wasn’t about the meeting. Not really.
This was about a man who had spent years with someone else’s will replacing his own, who had clawed his way back to autonomy one painful day at a time, and who was now terrified of discovering that the autonomy he’d rebuilt was unwelcome.
“Ezra. Look at me.”
He did. His eyes were dark and guarded and holding on to something fragile behind all that steel.
“There is a fight coming,” I said. “A fight that is going to determine the fate of this realm and every person in it. Not just the Fae. Not just the shifters. Every single creature who calls Nymeria home. And what you’ve done here, what you’ve built, you’ve given all of these people a chance.
A real chance. Not just to survive, but to fight back. ”
His jaw worked, but he didn’t look away.
“We have to fight,” I told him. “And we’re going to win.
But we can’t do that if we’re not working together in the first place.
I don’t need people around me who agree with everything I say.
I need people who will tell me when I’m wrong, who will push back when they see something I’ve missed, who will bring their own perspective to the table even if it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it’s uncomfortable.”
Something shifted in his expression. Not softening, exactly. Ezra didn’t soften. Not after everything he’d been through. But the sharp edges retracted, just slightly, like a blade being sheathed.
“You told me once that you’d rather die on a battlefield than become one of the Endless again,” I said. “That conviction? That refusal to be controlled? That’s exactly what I need at that table. Don’t you dare apologise for it.”
He was quiet for a long time. Then he uncrossed his arms, and the movement looked like it cost him something. Like letting go of the armour, even briefly, required an act of conscious will.
“The people I’ve trained,” he said. “They’re ready. Not for the forest, I understand that. But for whatever comes after. When Arik responds to what you’re doing, and he will respond, they’ll hold the line.”
“I know they will.”
The ghost of something that might have been a smile crossed his face. It was gone before it had a chance to settle, replaced by the familiar scowl, but I’d seen it. That was enough.
“I’ll have the perimeter reinforced by morning,” he said. “And supply lines to the forest edge in case you need to fall back.”
“Thank you.”
He nodded once, sharp and decisive, and turned to leave. Then stopped. Looked back over his shoulder.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “you made the right call. About the forest. I can see that now. Sending two hundred people into something like that would have been a massacre.”
“I know.”
“Just wanted you to hear it from someone who wasn’t afraid to tell you if you’d been wrong.”
He left before I could respond, his footsteps fading down the corridor with the same deliberate weight they’d carried on the way in. I watched the empty doorway for a moment, then let out a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding.
The guilt was still there. It would probably always be there, that quiet companion that whispered you’re not doing enough every time I made a decision that prioritised caution over action.
But it was quieter now. Smaller. Filed down by the reminder that the people around me were not followers waiting for orders.
They were fighters waiting for a chance.
I sighed softly and pushed away from the table, needing a change of scenery. Some days it felt like this chaos would never be over. That life was turning into one long battle and I didn’t know if I had in me to keep up this fight if there would never be an end in sight.
Tank was in our room when I found him.
Not doing anything in particular. Just sitting on the edge of the bed, forearms braced on his knees, looking at the window with the expression he wore when the bear was talking and he was listening.
The late afternoon light caught the planes of his face and turned them golden, highlighting the strong jaw, the broad shoulders, the hands that could crush stone and also, I happened to know, trace the curve of a hip with a gentleness that made my breath catch.
He looked up when I entered. The bear’s thoughtful expression melted into something warmer. “How did it go with Ezra?”
“How did you know I was with Ezra?”
“I know the face of a man who needs reassurance but would rather chew his own arm off than ask for it. He was hovering outside the meeting room when I left.”
I closed the door behind me and leaned against it.
These rooms was simple, and I’d always loved them because of that.
Spring Court architecture leaned toward organic shapes, walls that curved instead of cornered, windows that let in more light than any practical design should allow.
The bed was massive, built for royalty even though I’d never realised that before, and it dominated the space in a way that made my thoughts drift in directions that had nothing to do with military strategy.
“He thought he’d overstepped,” I said. “Pushing back in the meeting.”
“Had he?”
“No. He was right. And I told him so.”
Tank nodded. The approval in his expression was quiet, the way all of Tank’s emotions were quiet.
Not absent. Not suppressed. Just calibrated.
Measured out in careful doses, as if he’d learned long ago that the world responded better to restraint than to excess.
I couldn’t believe that it had taken me so long to see him as more than just the friend I’d always assumed he wanted to be.
We’d lost far too much time together from uncertainty and complacency, and now we didn’t know how much longer we had left.
“You’re good with people,” he said, pulling me out of the dark thoughts. “Better than you think.”
“I’m good at making it up as I go along and hoping nobody notices.”
“Same thing.”
I laughed. It came out tired, frayed at the edges, and Tank heard it. I watched his expression shift, the observation sharpening into concern, and I held up a hand before he could ask.