Chapter Seventeen
Alyssa
It had been a tense night.
I’d slept in fits and starts, waking at every rustle of leaves, every crack of a branch, every shift in the wind.
The forest loomed at the edge of our camp like a living thing, and I could feel its presence even with my eyes closed.
Watching. Waiting. Deciding whether we were worthy of passage or merely prey.
But it wasn’t just the forest that had kept me awake.
I could feel the tension through the bonds with my mates, thick and heavy like a blanket of storm clouds.
They were worried. Anxious. Fighting their own internal battles while trying to appear calm for my sake.
And I knew, without needing to ask, that it wasn’t the Wildling Forest that consumed them.
It was Damon.
Watching him sleep, chained and vulnerable, knowing that a monster lurked behind his eyes. Watching him wake, lucid and himself, knowing that it could change at any moment. The fear of losing him. The desperate hope that we could save him. The guilt of not having done it already.
They loved their brother so much. All of them did, in their different ways. Dean with his fierce protectiveness. Maddox with his tender heart. Ryder with his determined optimism. Even Tank, who wasn’t one of the original brothers, had accepted Damon into his pack without hesitation.
It was one of the reasons I loved them all so much. Their capacity for love. Their willingness to carry each other’s burdens. The way they would walk through fire for the people they cared about.
I just wished I could take some of that weight from their shoulders.
Morning came slowly, grey light filtering through the canopy.
It was more oppressive than the hopeful sign it should have been.
Everyone was packing up the camp in silence, the only sounds the rustle of canvas and the clink of supplies being secured.
No one seemed to want to break the quiet.
As if speaking would make this real in a way that silence couldn’t.
I watched Damon from across the camp. He was standing near the edge of the clearing, his shackled hands hanging at his sides, his eyes fixed on the darkness between the trees. There was a frown on his face, a tension in his shoulders that had nothing to do with the chains.
Memories flooded my mind at the same time.
The visage of the aftermath we’d discovered when we came looking for Damon.
His entire squad had been killed in one of these forests, picked off one by one by creatures they couldn’t see and couldn’t fight.
He’d been the only survivor, and only because Arik had wanted him alive.
Had seen something in him worth exploiting.
But how had he known? How did he know Damon would be the one he needed or was it all just a coincidence?
And now we were standing on the edge of a forest that even the fae didn’t dare enter.
This couldn’t be a situation he felt comfortable with.
Walking into another forest, knowing what lurked in the darkness, knowing that he was compromised in ways that made him a liability rather than an asset.
The nightmare might be quiet now, but quiet wasn’t the same as gone.
And Damon knew better than anyone what could happen when the thing inside him decided to wake up.
I was about to go to him, to offer some kind of reassurance even though I wasn’t sure what I could say that would help, when I felt the flutter of wings above me.
Fizzle descended from the trees, circling once before aiming for my shoulder. But at the last moment, he hesitated. Pulled up short. Hovered in the air beside me with an uncertainty I’d never seen from him before.
I sighed. “It’s fine, Fizzle. You can land.”
He settled onto my shoulder with exaggerated care, as if he expected me to shake him off at any moment. His talons gripped gently, none of the casual confidence that had characterised his movements for as long as I could remember. The distance between us was a physical ache in my chest.
The truth was, I hated it too.
Fizzle had always been the one I confided in.
The one who was there when I woke from nightmares, when I struggled with my magic, when the world felt too big and too frightening and I needed someone to tell me it would be okay.
He’d been my teacher and my friend and the one who had found a way to save me when Arik came for our Court.
And now there was this chasm between us, carved by secrets and oaths and the terrible weight of things left unsaid.
“We need to talk,” I said quietly.
Fizzle’s feathers ruffled, but he didn’t argue. I caught Tank’s eye across the camp, and he nodded, understanding without words what I needed. Space. Privacy. A moment alone with the owl griffin who had shaped so much of who I’d become.
I turned and walked away from the group, toward a small clearing just far enough from the camp to be out of earshot. Fizzle rode on my shoulder in silence, his weight familiar and strange at the same time.
When I stopped, he spoke first.
“I wish an apology could fix the things between us.” His voice was subdued, lacking its usual impatient edge.
“I would apologise a thousand times if it would help. I would prostrate myself before you, renounce every oath I ever took, do whatever penance you required. If any of it would undo the hurt I’ve caused. ”
I stared at the trees, not trusting myself to look at him.
“You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a daughter,” Fizzle continued.
“I watched you grow up, Alyssandra. I was there for your first steps, your first words, your first sparks of magic. I helped your parents nurture your power, taught you how to control it, guided you through every stage of your development.” His voice cracked, just slightly.
“I regret everything. No oath was worth losing you. Nothing was worth this distance between us.”
I sighed again, and it came out more like a shudder.
I knew my feelings were valid. I knew I had every right to be angry, to feel betrayed, to struggle with the revelation that the creature I’d trusted most had been keeping secrets from me my entire life.
But I also knew that I was tired. Exhausted in a way that went beyond physical.
And the thought of carrying this anger into the forest, into the battles to come, felt like more weight than I could bear.
“I hate it too,” I admitted. “This distance. This coldness. I miss you, Fizzle. I miss being able to tell you what I’m thinking without wondering what you’re not telling me. I miss having you by my side without this wall between us.”
“Then let us tear the wall down.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?” He shifted on my shoulder, his talons tightening slightly. “The secrets are out now. All of them. You know what I was sworn to do, why I couldn’t tell you the truth. We’re heading to the one place where all the secrets come to an end. So why can’t we start again?”
I thought about it. Really thought about it, standing there at the edge of the Wildling Forest with the weight of a realm on my shoulders and an impossible journey ahead of me.
Did I want to carry this grudge forever?
Did I want to let secrets and silence poison the one relationship that had sustained me through the darkest parts of my life?
The answer, when it came, was surprisingly clear.
“I need you,” I said finally. “By my side. If I’m going to have any chance of getting through this, I need the Fizzle I grew up with. The one who pushed me and challenged me and never let me get away with feeling sorry for myself.”
Fizzle huffed, and it was such a familiar sound that I felt tears prick at the corners of my eyes.
“Did I teach you nothing?” he demanded, his voice regaining some of its usual impatient snap.
“You never needed me, Alyssandra. You never needed anyone. You were born to do this. Born to save us all. Everything I did, every lesson I taught, every secret I kept, it was all just... shaping what was already there.”
I turned my head to look at him, surprised. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that you would have become this person with or without my guidance. The power was always in you. The courage. The determination. I just helped you find it faster.” His eyes, ancient and knowing, met mine.
“You never needed protecting, even when you were a child. You were a force of nature waiting to be unleashed.”
“No pressure, then,” I muttered, but there was no heat in it. “It kinda messes with your head, you know. Knowing that you were created to do something like this. That your whole existence is tied to a purpose you didn’t choose.”
Fizzle’s beak darted out and nipped my ear. Hard enough to sting, familiar enough to shock a laugh out of me.
“Are you being purposefully obtuse?” he demanded.
I stared at him, rubbing my ear, caught somewhere between indignation and sudden, overwhelming affection. “Did you just bite me?”
“I nipped you. There’s a difference. And you deserved it for being foolish.” He huffed, his feathers fluffing out in agitation.
The laugh that escaped me was genuine this time, rising from somewhere deep in my chest. I’d missed this. Missed his sharp tongue and his casual violence and the way he never let me wallow in self-pity for more than five seconds before dragging me back to reality.
“I missed this,” I admitted, the words coming out rougher than I intended. “Missed you.”
Fizzle’s tail wrapped around my neck, soft and warm, and I felt him relax against my shoulder in a way he hadn’t since before the revelations at Ice Falls.
“I missed it too,” he said quietly. Then, in a firmer voice: “But you need to understand something, Alyssandra. Nymeria may have made you. She may have given you access to the magic, shaped your potential, set you on this path. But she did the same for Arik, and look at where he is now.”
I stiffened at my brother’s name, but Fizzle continued before I could respond.