Page 16 of House of Embers (Royal Houses #5)

Chapter Thirteen

The Capital

Clover

“It won’t be forever,” Clover assured Darby.

She sniffled and swiped at her eyes. The wind whipped her black hair across her face, and she turned away from Clover. “We don’t know how long you’ll be gone. You and Hadrian. Gone without me. I won’t even know if you’re okay.”

“Kerrigan will be able to check in,” Hadrian reminded her. “We’ll be all right. We can take care of ourselves.”

“My little street rat,” Clover crooned with a wink.

Darby burst into tears at the affectionate name. “I can’t.”

Clover pulled her into her arms and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “We’ll miss you, but we’re coming back. Okay? I love you.”

Darby jerked back. Her tear-limned eyes were wide with shock and wonder. “You…love me?”

“I do. I love you.” Clover’s eyes lifted to Hadrian. “I love you too.”

He flushed all over at the words. “I love you.”

Darby hiccuped. “I love you.”

Clover claimed her mouth one more time. Savored the sweet taste of her. Then she pulled away with as much force as she could muster, or else she’d stay forever.

“You ready to fly?” Clover asked, slinging her bag across her back as she approached Gerrond.

The Sayair male was shorter than Clover by a few inches. His clothes were brightly colored—red pants, a pink tunic, and his striking emerald cloak—and his long, honey-colored hair had been tied up into a messy bun at the top of his head. The hair at his nape had been shaved off entirely.

“Have you ever flown before?” he asked carefully.

“Once,” she admitted. “I didn’t throw up.”

“I was part of the House of Dragons,” Hadrian offered.

Gerrond grinned. “Ah, then you are most familiar with dragons. Excellent. It’s a several-hour flight to the city, so we should get going.” He gestured to his dragon with dirty yellow scales. “This is Henrley. He isn’t very talkative, so don’t expect him to say much unless we encounter danger.”

“Is it likely we’ll encounter danger?” Hadrian asked.

“Let’s hope not,” Gerrond said. He turned to Kerrigan, who had been standing off to the side, talking with Tieran as they said their goodbyes. He held his hand out. “May we meet again.”

“Clear skies,” she said, shaking his hand once, hard. “I’ll check in with Clover. Keep her as your contact as we go forward.”

Gerrond nodded. “Let’s hope all is well.”

“And, Gerrond,” she said as he turned away.

“Yeah?”

“Good luck.”

Kerrigan looked like she very much doubted it would go well.

She pulled Clover and Hadrian in for quick hugs and then let them go, drawing Darby to her to watch as they climbed on to Henrley’s back and Gerrond led them out into the sky.

Clover looked back just once to see them waving goodbye. Half of her heart was left behind.

Despite her one dragon flight, Clover was not an easy flier.

She’d left half of her stash of loch behind for Amond, just in case.

She had some in the city. She just had to get to Thea and the RFA—Rights For All—a pro-human and half-Fae rights organization.

But what she wouldn’t give for a cigarette right then to steel her nerves.

But she had been waiting until the pain fully came on before she took a smoke.

She had too little to have one for anxiety.

The discomfort and monotony of dragon riding took over the fear of it within an hour.

Gerrond kept up a steady stream of conversation about the landscape, as if he too had jitters that he needed to dispel.

It was hours before the valley of Kinkadia came into view, and by then, her fingers were frozen and her legs stiff.

“There,” Gerrond said, pointing at an outcropping some distance from the city. “We’ll stop there.”

Henrley took them down toward the ground. As they got closer, Clover realized it was an encampment. People were living here, in little tents and shanties. Not in real houses like in the city or inside a hollowed mountain or anything. Just pitched about surrounding campfires near a little stream.

The dragon landed, and Clover fell over as she dismounted, her legs unable to hold her up any longer.

She certainly was not trained in combat.

Kerrigan’s words about using magic against a stronger force felt certain now, considering Gerrond acted as if the flight had been a leisurely adventure. Hadrian too seemed out of sorts.

“I’m a scholar, not a dragon rider,” he mumbled under his breath as they followed Gerrond toward the encampment.

There were over a hundred people just at a quick glance—cooking, cleaning, laughing around a fire, and children running around playing games with rocks and sticks.

Everyone was dressed similarly to Gerrond, in bright colors and patchworked fabric.

It was a festive atmosphere, unlike what Clover would expect from anyone this close to the capital, considering the turmoil she had lived in there.

Had this been just on the other side of the valley all along? Would she have preferred it?

“This is as close as I can take you to the city,” Gerrond explained. “The drifters set up here in the summer. They’ll move farther south once winter sets in. We caught them at a good time. If all is well, they’ll have a runner set up.”

“A runner?”

“That’d be me,” a female voice said.

Gerrond broke into a smile. “Islay! I didn’t expect you to be this far south already.”

Islay was a brown-skinned Fae with gold eyes and a warm smile. Her dark hair had intricate braids that she held back with a ribbon. She was curvy and sturdy with a bow strapped across her back and wicked-looking knives at her waist. Her boots were thick leather with straps up her calves.

“What have you brought me?” Islay looked them up and down. She sniffed. “City folk?”

Clover held her hand out. “Clover. And this is Hadrian.”

Islay shook and then took Hadrian’s as well. “Soft hands. What’s this about, Gerrond?”

“I have a lot of explaining to do, but I found the half-Fae Kerrigan, and she’s agreed to help the drifters. I’ve allied with her. These are her friends.”

Islay’s smile broadened. “That’s excellent news.”

“They need a way into the city. They need a way to speak to their other allies. I was hoping you’d have a runner.”

“Aye, that’d be me. But Ruen is with me. We might both go to meet these allies if we’re all on the same side now.”

Gerrond gestured to the pair. “How about that? Will that do?”

A man strode up then. He was human with tanned white skin as if he’d spent long days out in the sun. He had thick, dark hair all over his body and tied up much like Gerrond’s bun. He wrapped his arms around Islay and kissed her shoulder. “What’s going on, love?”

Clover brightened at the sight of a human and a Fae together. It must have been commonplace here because no one blinked at the sight. The encampment was still mostly Fae, but there were plenty of humans too. Half-Fae as well.

“Ruen, darling, we have some resistance fighters to take into the city. You up for it?” Islay asked.

“Always,” he said with a laugh. “Anything to take down those bastards! When do we start?”

***

They didn’t start right away. Clover and Hadrian were brought into the drifter camp.

They broke bread with them and heard their stories, laughing and enjoying the company of a people who had lost so much and still found so much joy.

The last thing Clover wanted to do was bring them more danger, but at the same time, this was what she wanted for everyone.

Gerrond yawned. “I guess I should go to the mountain. I wanted to camp here, but Henrley is too visible this close to the Society.”

“Be safe,” Clover told him.

She had been uncertain about him, on edge that he might turn them in or kill them. But just a few hours with him at a campfire with the drifters proved every one of his stories true. If he was going to betray them, he was going to have to betray himself. She didn’t think he’d do that.

“I’ll check in as soon as I can. I’d very much like to get the drifters in on this war as well,” Gerrond said. “It could turn the tides.”

“We could use that,” Clover agreed.

Gerrond offered her his hand. “To a better future.”

Clover shook his hand and then Hadrian did. As the last embers were dying and the sun disappeared fully behind the horizon, Islay and Ruen hugged Gerrond goodbye and then nodded at the pair of them.

“Ready?”

“As we’ll ever be,” Clover said.

Clover and Hadrian fell into step behind the pair of drifters. They spoke about everyday matters for the hour trek into the valley, but Clover could sense the moment that the oppression of the city hit them. They fell back and put their fingers to their lips.

“Curfew,” Islay whispered.

Clover wished they could have gone out before it got dark to avoid the curfew, but they were too recognizable. The last thing they wanted was for Isa to find them again after her betrayal.

Islay pointed out a guard patrol on the edges of the valley.

As soon as they passed, the four of them slipped into the shadows of the Dregs on the north side of Kinkadia.

They were on high alert, but it was hard not to feel like they were finally home.

Kinkadia was separated into sections—Draco Mountain to the east, the wealthiest mansions in Row before that, the mercantile district in Central, Artisan Village to the south, the nouveau riche on the Riverfront, and the Dregs to the north and west, where primarily humans and half-Fae scraped by.

The Dregs also famously had Dozan Rook’s Wastes, where Clover had been a card dealer.

Except that was long gone, bombed during the Red Masks’ raids for its association with Kerrigan.

Her heart was a little heavy at that thought.

The RFA had relocated twice to keep their people safe in the weeks following the raids. But unless they’d moved again recently, Clover knew exactly where to find them.

It was another hour of dodging patrols before Clover stopped them in front of a hidden cellar door. She knocked on it twice and said the password. The doors were wrenched open, and Thea’s face appeared before her, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Clover!” she gasped, pulling her into a fierce hug. “You’re alive. The news…” She trailed off as she looked past Hadrian to the two new faces before her. “You have explaining to do.”

“These are drifters, Islay and Ruen. They’re on our side,” Clover said quickly.

“Well, come in at once,” Thea said. Everyone shuffled forward, and Thea grasped Clover’s arm. “Kerrigan?”

“Safe.”

Thea breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. And Darby?”

“Safe as well and with Kerrigan.”

“I’m glad.” She put her hand to her heart. “I feared the worst when you didn’t come back and just now, you showing up without them.”

“Isa betrayed us.”

Thea blinked rapidly as she hurried them into a small room with refreshments. “She did not.”

Clover furrowed her brow. “No, she was the one who knew our plans.”

“Isa has been magically collared before the entire Red Mask council,” Thea hissed. “Her crime was not delivering Kerrigan, but you and I both know that it must be because he discovered her duplicity.”

“And he didn’t kill her?” Hadrian asked in shock. “If he knew, he’d kill her.”

“I’m not sure, but the accounts I got were that she fought against it. No one believed the reasoning, and I don’t either. She was working with us. He had to have found out.”

Clover wasn’t sure what to make of any of that or what a magical collar even did. Knowing the Father, it wasn’t anything good. But that was for another time.

“There’s a lot to fill you in on,” Clover told her.

“And where do Islay and Ruen and the other drifters fit into this?”

Islay threaded her fingers through her human lover’s. “We want the same thing that you do, so perhaps it is time that we do not move on. Perhaps it is time that we fight back.”

Thea’s smile broadened. “Now you’re talking.”

“And as for that,” Clover said, “I’ve had a breakthrough.”

“Your father’s amulet?” Thea asked.

Clover flipped it over three times as she murmured under her breath. Then with a draw from the amulet, she pulled fire out of thin air.

Thea’s eyes widened in shock and appreciation. “We’re going to change the world.”