Page 15 of House of Embers (Royal Houses #5)

Chapter Twelve

The Collar

Isa

Isa knelt, her head on the ground. Sweat beaded on her temple and neck. It ran into her bodice, leaving a trail on the black fabric. Her hands were bound behind her back. Her face throbbed from the punch she’d taken from the Father.

This was better than what was to come.

At least here, alone, she could suffer the humiliation in silence and darkness—her constant companions. Even before she’d been sent to the assassin school, she had preferred her own company and the comfort of the night. Now, it was all that was sustaining her.

A stream of light filtered into the pitch-black room. She flinched at the assault to her eyes, which had become accustomed to the darkness.

“The Father requires you,” a female voice snarled.

Isa stretched her aching limbs and came slowly to her feet. She was head and shoulders taller than the other woman, but somehow the other woman was more imposing. It probably helped that she wasn’t chained.

The woman grasped Isa’s arm and hauled her out of the dark room and into the light. Isa blinked rapidly as the woman shoved her in the back to keep moving. Years of careful, stealthy footwork kept her from falling on her face. Still she missed a step and had to hasten to keep herself upright.

She held her head high even as fear crept in on the edges.

She missed even a year ago when her biggest fear had been if she’d ever actually get enough money for her and Valia to leave this life behind.

Valia had been her sister in all but name at the assassin school they’d been raised in—until the Father had killed Valia for her duplicity, stripping her of her magic, which killed her.

When he’d discovered Isa’s own treachery, she’d thought he’d kill her too.

He could forgive her in what appeared to be her working against him—poisoning the guard, liberating a convict, and infiltrating Kerrigan’s friends—if at the end, she delivered Kerrigan Argon to him.

But she hadn’t. Clover hadn’t told her that Kerrigan was back.

There was no news to send him. Another spy had confided that to him.

And as his fist had slammed into her face—his most prized possession—she’d had to come to terms with the fact that the Father would kill her.

He was the Father and her father —her real father.

A masochistic, vindictive monster. And her own flesh and blood.

Something she had pushed so far down that until that moment, when he’d found out about her double cross, she hadn’t even let herself consider that he remembered.

But he had. It was her saving grace. He’d killed Valia, but he had something else in mind for Isa.

She stepped through the double doors to the council room filled with Red Masks.

The organization had been her home since he’d created it.

She had been raised in it. She’d been there the night that they’d rioted in the streets and burned the human Lament churches.

Still felt satisfaction in seeing the ruined church on the square.

They stared down at her as she passed, and an unfamiliar feeling hit her—shame.

Was her shame for being caught? Did she still want to be one of them? Or was it something else? Something more complicated?

She sort of…hated them.

And that was what she felt shame for—for listening to the Father’s bigotry. For believing in his ascension. For following along.

She’d wanted to kill Kerrigan Argon for so long. She still sort of wanted to stick a blade in her heart. But the rest wasn’t what she had thought success would look like. Her father was wrong .

Her chin lifted when she reached the center of the room and met his eyes through the metallic red mask that could not even be removed in death.

He’d been fitted with a red metal prosthetic after he had been burned back home in Elsiande.

Somehow it completed his fearsome look instead of detracting from it.

“Welcome, one and all,” the Father said. “Today I sentence a daughter of the Red Masks for her crimes. Today I decide the fate of one of our own who has failed in her task to bring me Kerrigan Argon.”

She blinked long and slow in surprise. So…he wasn’t going to tell them of her betrayal. Only that she had one task and hadn’t completed it.

He didn’t mention her betrayal.

He wasn’t killing her.

She tilted her head to the side. Why was he doing this? She had never seen him act like this with anyone.

Well, not since her mother…

Something she absolutely could not think about right now.

“Isa,” he continued, “you’re too valuable to keep locked up. So I have something special just for you.”

He gestured to two Fae who walked forward with a square, black velvet box. It looked like it would hold a fancy necklace. One of them popped the box open, and Isa’s blood ran cold.

“What?” she gasped, stepping backward. But the female was still there, pushing her forward.

Nestled in the pitch-black velvet center was a solid black collar made out of tendrille with an onyx gemstone at its center. The entire thing radiated malice. Had this been hidden away in the depths of the Society vault?

“You can’t put that on me!” she said, her resolve breaking at the sight of it.

“This is what you’ve earned,” the Father said as he made for the stairs toward her.

Isa took another strategic step away and threw her head backward into the woman’s head.

It crunched into her nose, which spurted blood.

Then Isa turned and kicked up into the woman’s solar plexus.

She fell to her knees, and Isa shot another pointed strike to her temple that dropped her to the floor.

Her arms were still behind her. There were hundreds of full-blooded Fae in the room. The Father was coming after her. She could never escape. But she’d never forgive herself for not putting up a fight.

The guards came for her next.

“Two on one with my hands behind my back,” she snapped with a deadly smile. “It’s almost a fair fight.”

The guards laughed as if she was joking. She was not.

She launched at them. Her years of training kicked in like a switch in her mind. There was a reason she was the most fearsome assassin who had ever come out of the school. Isa was and always had been a natural at it.

The Father waited until she’d disarmed the first and put him on his back before saying, “Enough, Isa.”

“You cannot do this,” she said, throwing herself at the second male. He seemed better prepared for her ferocity than the first, but still she took him out in a matter of seconds.

“I am the Father,” he roared. His magic radiated out of him, pinning her in place. She dropped to one knee as her mind trembled under his power. Blood ran from her nose, down her lips, and over her chin. “You will obey me.”

Finally, when it stopped, tears were in her lashes and there was desperation on her too-beautiful face, satisfaction on the faces of those assembled. Applause rang out at his outburst, as if it were a show and not her life.

The collar opened with a soft click as the Father stepped up to where she knelt before him.

“This is for your own good,” he said.

“Please,” she whispered as he circled her throat. “Mother wouldn’t have wanted this.”

“Don’t,” he snarled, “mention her in my presence.”

The room shuddered as his outrage turned to a physical press against their senses. Isa had to close her eyes to suffer through the pain.

The lock clicked into place.

“Now you are mine,” he told her with a wicked smile. “Stand.”

And she could do nothing else.