5. Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Alyssa
I couldn’t shake the betrayal. I’d always known Fizzle kept things from me. It made sense when I was in Nymeria before. I was so young, still learning to control my magic, and had absolutely no interest in court politics. I didn’t care that he didn’t tell me everything because, frankly, I didn’t want to know.
But whatever he was keeping from me now, it was big. It was life changing. Life ending.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
Because no matter what had happened throughout my life, Fizzle had always been on my side. And right now, he wasn’t.
He was standing firm between me and Rhidian. If it really came down to it, I didn’t think he’d choose me this time.
“Look, tensions are high right now and everyone has questions they want answers to. How about we move this into the court, get everyone situated, and we can talk this out?” Rhidian moved forward, and Dean bristled at my side.
I’d almost forgotten that I was still holding his hand.
Rhidian nervously glanced at Tank before stopping in his tracks. It was probably the most sensible thing he’d done since he stepped into this clearing.
Tank was barely hanging on by a thread, and the others were just waiting for any excuse. The magic I’d felt slowly waking up inside of me since I’d stepped foot back in Nymeria was practically begging for a chance to be set free. But we were in no state to walk into another fight, and part of me wanted to know what was happening here.
I hated this place. I hated that I’d had so many happy memories and they’d all been crushed in a single moment, drowned in the blood of everyone I loved. But that hate was nothing compared to how I felt about Arik, and if doing this now gave me the opportunity to rid the realm of his plague, then it was worth the risk. It was worth any risk.
I looked at the men standing around me. The ones who were so ready to jump into a fight we couldn’t possibly win. And the guilt struck hard.
Because it wasn’t just me I was risking. It was them as well.
Part of me wanted to tell them to stay here, but I knew it wasn’t even worth suggesting. They’d never let me walk away without them. Not to mention that Dean still desperately needed medical aid, even if he was trying to pretend like nothing had happened.
The fact that he was still standing was pretty insane. His wolf was strong. We’d known it would be when we realised he was an alpha, but this was on a whole different level.
“Fine,” I relented.
Just that one word had the tension in our group dropping in everyone except me.
Because even if we trusted Rhidian enough to believe that we weren’t walking into a trap, I was still walking back into that place.
Tank and Maddox moved closer to me and I could feel a spark of magic shift through the air. My gaze quickly snapped to them both. Tank still seemed to have some control over the bear, but the biggest concern here was Maddox. He’d shifted way before he should have been able to, and he had a volatile magic that he had no control over. I was more worried about him than I was about Dean, who still had a slightly murderous glint in his eye. I should have been a lot more concerned about it than I was right now.
Coming here was a mistake. I thought we’d be able to move quietly through the realm, do what we needed to get done, and then leave without drawing attention. To say that plan had spiralled out of control was a major understatement.
“We need to head to the palace,” Rhidian calmly explained. It went totally against the fact that he still had a sword in his hand— my sword , to be exact. “Once we head inside, it’s all going to become clearer.”
“Or you could just tell us now,” Ryder snarled, eyeing the guy closest to him, and I resisted the urge to slap him around the head.
Starting a fight now wouldn’t help any of us.
Rhidian sighed. His gaze moved to Fizzle, who shrugged, offering no help for whatever Rhidian’s dilemma really was.
“I can’t,” he said slowly. “But maybe I can tell you why.”
He said nothing else and just looked at us curiously. I could feel his men shifting uneasily at the suggestion. Was Rhidian not the one in charge here? Was he working for someone else?
“Are you waiting for permission or something? What the hell is actually going on here?” Maddox snapped.
Yep, the lion was pushing hard. It was impressive that he’d stayed in control for this long, really.
“No, sorry. I just… we’ve been waiting a long time for this.”
My gaze snapped to Fizzle again, who’d stayed firmly in the middle ground. He gave no sign of whether he agreed. In fact, he couldn’t even meet my eyes anymore.
“Arik has a strong control over the people. Sometimes it’s impossible to tell who has taken his side. We have people here who…” Rhidian trailed off, not finishing his sentence, but it was impossible to not fill in the blanks.
My mind immediately went to Damon. Even his brothers hadn’t been able to tell that he was about to betray us. I could see why that would have the people in this realm terrified. If Rhidian had been doing what he’d told us back at the cave, then he had a lot of people in his care who were in hiding. Obviously they were hiding from Arik, but for what crimes? Knowing Arik, it could range from having something he wanted to merely existing. Either way, these people weren’t our enemies.
Probably.
“Fine. Let’s go,” I said again.
There was no point in putting it off. Plus, I had a feeling we were going with them whether we wanted to or not. It was killing me to be so suspicious of Rhidian and Fizzle, but that was what the world had turned into now. Rhidian was right. There was no way to know who you could trust anymore.
With a nod, Rhidian turned on his heel and walked back into the trees. I knew where he was heading, so I didn’t really need to follow him, but I did anyway. This place was part of me. I could find my way back to the palace with my eyes closed.
The guys stayed close to my sides as Rhidian’s men slowly surrounded us and we began our trek. It was the quiet that felt the worst. This place had been so full of life that at times it felt like you could never be alone. Now the silence screamed at me, reminding me of everything that was lost.
As we continued our walk, my attention drifted and I let my gaze wander out into the trees. The forest had changed. Of course, it had. I hadn’t been amongst these trees for decades. But there was a stillness here that, coupled with the silence, felt almost ominous.
“Why are they doing that?” Tank murmured, subtly moving closer to me to make sure I could hear him.
I knew what he’d noticed. The guards Rhidian had brought with him weren’t so much as guarding us as watching the forest, and none of them were straying off the path. Which was strange because this wasn’t the Wildling Forest, this was the Spring Court. The forests here were part of us. The dangerous creatures of Nymeria didn’t live here.
Or at least they hadn’t.
“I don’t like this,” Dean complained from my other side. When I grinned in response, he almost looked like he was dreading what would happen next, but then I caught the glint in his eye.
He’d always be by my side. They all would be.
I stumbled forward, pretending to catch my foot on a tree root, and went down to one knee. Tank and Dean may have been aware of what I was about to do, but I could see how hard it was for them to let me fall.
The group came to a stop. The guards were almost frantic as they scanned the surrounded trees, as if looking for whatever was about to attack.
I didn’t take long. Bracing my hand on the ground, I let my magic flow. This was my home and my magic was as much a part of it as I was. It welcomed the feeling of reuniting with the place that had seen its birth.
But something was wrong. The land felt almost dead. There wasn’t that dancing playfulness of Nymeria reaching back for me. There was barely anything.
I slowly rose to standing, and Fizzle locked eyes with me. “Find what you were looking for?”
I didn’t answer him. The fact that he was perched on Rhidian’s shoulder having a whispered conversation was hard enough to accept. But now, everything he said just fuelled my distrust of him further. It felt sarcastic, judgmental, and not in his usual way. Even after all that time I’d spent in the human realm, I never thought I’d lost Fizzle. Across all that distance, I’d still considered him my friend. Had it all been a lie? Was I just too young to see it before?
Maddox stepped between us and it didn’t take a genius to know that he was glaring Fizzle down. A volatile shifter wasn’t exactly someone to take a chance on, and thankfully Fizzle knew it because he turned away, his attention returning to whatever whispered conversation he was having with Rhidian.
The guards who had been jittery before looked worse now. They regarded the path before us with suspicion, their gaze moving back to the trees as hands reached for weapons.
“What were you looking for?” Ryder asked as he leaned forward to whisper into my ear.
I glanced around us. Rhidian and Fizzle were far enough ahead that they wouldn’t hear us if we were careful, and the guards were paying more attention to our surroundings rather than us.
“I was trying to join with Nymeria’s magic. Get a feel for the land,” I whispered.
“And?” Tank asked.
I could hardly believe what I was about to say. Not just because it should be impossible, but because of the implications. “There’s barely anything left.”
The guys fell quiet. I could see them thinking. They wouldn’t understand what was happening here. Why it shouldn’t even be possible. Or at least I didn’t think they would.
“I thought you said that Nymeria was made of magic?” Dean asked in confusion.
“It is. Which is why this is bad. This land almost feels like it’s dying. It… it feels like the human realm.”
There was no time to say anything further because the trees were thinning and I was already catching glimpses of buildings as we got closer to the town that surrounded the palace.
I was the last member of the royal line for the Spring Court. No one else had survived the massacre. This court’s magic ran through my blood, and I could feel my magic reaching out to connect with the land, even though there was nothing there to answer its call.
An icy feeling of dread grew inside me and I had no idea what it was coming from. I didn’t want to be back in this place. I didn’t want to see the abandoned places that had once been so full of life. But more than that. This wasn’t my life anymore. This was what I’d left behind and even though I was back in Nymeria once more, the Spring Court wasn’t something that I ever wanted to see again. It wasn’t my home. How could it be?
“I don’t like this,” Dean said, moving so close to my side that his arm brushed against mine as we walked. “We don’t know why they want you back here. Given who you are and what is wrong with this place, I can’t help but feel like we’re being marched to your execution.”
A low growl flowed from one of the others, and the guards looked at us with suspicion. As if only now realising that we were holding a conversation they couldn’t hear, they all moved closer and Dean glared at them in annoyance.
It was actually impressive that he hadn’t flown off the handle already. His wolf had to be pushing him to take down the threat.
But marching me to my execution seemed slightly dramatic, even for a newly made alpha.
He understood less about this world than I did, and I had no clue what was going on here. Nymeria WAS magic. To find a place in this realm without it shouldn’t have been possible. Yet, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Rhidian and Fizzle clearly thought I was the one who was going to fix it. But how was I supposed to fix a problem when I had no idea how it existed in the first place?
It was very unlike Fizzle to not be up-front with me about something like this. He never coddled me. He never hid the scary truth about my magic and all the risks that it posed. It was why I’d always considered him my closest friend. Not because of the time we spent together, but because we shared everything.
Except now we didn’t.
And I couldn’t even be angry with him about it. Because I hadn’t just left Nymeria, its people, and my place in this world behind.
I’d left him.
He’d been all alone and I couldn’t punish him for continuing to fight for the world I’d abandoned him in.