Destined for Greatness ✔️

Chapter 46

And now she was standing in the centre of her youth. She had no words to describe what it felt like to be back there. It was like she had stepped into one of her nightmares. Only in her nightmares and memories there were screams, there were flames, there were corpses. Now there was only silence. Dead silence.

After the battle, when the royal army had set all the buildings aflame, the fire had spread to the woods, burning down a large portion of the forest. The fire had raged for hours, until it started raining. Had the weather not turned, the entire woods would have burned to a crisp.

Ryleigh remembered waking up on the side of the river. In the memory she had carried with her for fourteen years, she woke up cold and alone, but now she knew Cerise had been there. After altering her memory, however, she had left, leaving Ryleigh and Jade alone once more.

If it had hurt Cerise to leave her behind, she didn't show it. That woman Ryleigh thought she knew, that motherly love that she knew was in there, had been nowhere to be seen. Ryleigh had tried to struggle to her feet, but the silver and the water had weakened her to the point where she couldn't rise. She had pulled at Jade, praying that the girl was still alive. She was, and Ryleigh made sure to erase her memories of falling into the river before she woke up. She didn't want Jade to remember nearly drowning. The girl would have enough on her plate dealing with the fact that everyone was dead, and she was too young to take the full weight of it on her little shoulders.

Jade hadn't woken up for another hour, and all that time Ryleigh had sat beside her, trying to regain enough strength to walk, but only growing weaker. She hadn't been sure whether there were still guards around and she knew she had to get Jade out of there. Far, far away. But she couldn't.

Eventually, just before Jade woke up, Parker's voice had filtered through what remained of their pack-link.

"Anyone there?" had been the question. He'd been twelve at the time, and he hadn't been able to hide his panic or grief. His voice was shaking, but strong. Uncertainty filtered through his tone, like he knew he was asking the question to empty air alone. She had responded. Had told him that they were washed up somewhere on the side of the river. She had no clue how far they had drifted off. It took another couple of hours, but Parker had found them. He zapped both of them to a secure location, where nine others were waiting for them. Paige was one of them, busily flitting around to heal the extensive injuries of the survivors. Once they had all been healed, they left and never returned.

Until now.

Ryleigh looked around her. The corpses had been cleaned up. Courtesy of Alder, probably. Was there a shallow mass grave somewhere near? Somewhere the soldiers had dumped all their mangled bodies? Ryleigh wished they'd had the chance to send their loved ones off to the afterlife themselves. Give them the proper rites. But they couldn't, because there had still been guards around at the time.

Blackened wood lay in heaps on the floor – remnants of their houses, school, hall. Some structures still stood, covered in ash, barely keeping upright. One sigh of the wind and they'd collapse. The field was dry as bone, the ground blackened. No life in sight. The river flowed in the distance. Ryleigh's feet started carrying her there.

There was the bridge. No one had set it on fire. It was overgrown with ivy and lichen, but structurally sound. Ryleigh stuck her hands in her pockets and started walking along the river side. Perhaps she'd find her way back to where they'd washed up. She wasn't sure how far it was.

For the longest time, guilt had broken her from the inside out about not having fought until the end. She knew she had saved Jade's life, which was worth everything, and she knew that her fall into the river and the festering silvered arrow were punishment enough, but she still felt like her place had been on the battlefield. She should have been there to the bitter end. She should have died with the others. No matter how many people told her that it wasn't her fault, that she'd done the right thing, that it was a stroke of luck, divine intervention – whatever – it had never eased her conscience. A captain goes down with his ship, and just like that, an alpha goes down with her pack. That's how it was supposed to be. Of course she wasn't the alpha. Corbin was, and he had, indeed, gone down fighting. When Parker found him, he'd been on the brink of death. Paige had only just managed to revive him.

Poor Paige. The amount of silver she had to extract from the survivors' bodies that day was horrendous. It nearly killed her, but she hadn't let it stop her. She'd gone on and on until everyone was sure to live, and then she'd passed out.

Ryleigh shook her head. She didn't want to feel any respect for Paige. Paige had made her choice, just like Jade, just like Cerise.

They'd traded stories, afterwards. Ryleigh had told them what had happened to her and Jade, and the others had told them how the battle had ended. How they, all in different ways and at different points during the battle, had collapsed due to their injuries, and were considered dead by the soldiers. Parker had received a blow to the head that had knocked him out, but he hadn't gathered much injuries besides that, so he had been the first to wake up after the soldiers had gone, and he had looked at every corpse, checked every pulse, just to make sure there was really no one left. And when he did find survivors, he took them to a safe place and continued his search. Paige soon helped him, her injuries having healed on their own while she had collapsed from a silvered arrow to the chest. Together, they'd gathered everyone still breathing, Ryleigh and Jade being the last two.

Corbin had told her how he had watched Cerise die. He hadn't elaborated on it in any detail, but she had died in front of his eyes, run-through with a spear. She had been dead on impact. No last words. In hindsight, Ryleigh realised that that had just been the easiest manipulation. That way, Cerise didn't have to invent a last conversation, which was hard to fake convincingly. She just had to make him believe he'd seen her collapse and die, which was relatively simple.

For the first time in months, Ryleigh felt sympathy for her father. For all his faults, he had loved Cerise with all his heart and all his soul, and he didn't deserve this. None of them did.

She stopped when there was a rustling behind her. She'd gotten to a rougher area of the river, where bushes lined the edge of the forest. She turned around. In front of her, fourteen years older but hardly changed at all, was her mother. 

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A/N: After all these years, Ry will see her mother again. I did promise drama, didn't I? 

Thank you for reading!