Page 23 of House of Embers (Royal Houses #5)

Chapter Nineteen

The Diversion

“Hello, Roake,” Kerrigan said.

She tugged Audria back against her, putting her in between the sword and Kerrigan’s throat. She treated Audria as if she were in fact a prisoner. That was an easier explanation than defector, traitor. She didn’t want him to think that—not yet at least.

“Roake, no,” Audria said. “How…”

“How?” he snarled. “You forget that I trained with you both for the year of dragon training. I was part of the team.”

“We didn’t forget,” Kerrigan said, “but we certainly would have liked to.”

His face screwed up with a mix of fury and hurt. Ironic, considering he’d been the one to double-cross their team. A hidden Red Mask in their midst who turned on them all in the middle of a battle in which he should have been at their back.

“You don’t know anything,” Roake said. “I had to.”

“Had to?” Kerrigan asked with a gasped laugh. “Are you kidding me? You had to be a Red Mask? You had to turn against your team? You had to defect?”

“Defect? I stayed with the Society. I stayed with my people. You were the one always running off and causing riots and giving political speeches. You should have just stayed in your lane.”

“Well, that’s rich. I should have just let the Society, the Red Masks, and Bastian slaughter his dissenters and all the humans and half-Fae? That’s what I should have done?” she demanded, her fury a living creature in her chest. “Be more like you?”

He flinched at her words. “We didn’t kill everyone.”

“No, not everyone. You need to keep your enemy close, a reminder of what could happen to others who disobey. But people are still disagreeing with the Society, aren’t they? People aren’t just falling into line like you hoped.”

A spark of surprise lit on his face. “How did you know?” His gaze shifted to Audria. “Did you?”

“As if the houses aren’t speaking among themselves?

As if I don’t have ears, however faintly pointed they are, that can tell me that things aren’t going so well for Bastian and his little coup?

” Her eyes flicked down his front and back up.

“Not going so well for you either. Had to get Audria here out of prison and have her attached to your hip before she would ever consider taking your traitorous ass to bed.”

“Kerrigan!” Audria gasped.

Roake snarled and thrust his sword forward, but there was nowhere for it to go. He would have to kill Audria to get to Kerrigan, and they both knew he would never do that.

“Stop!” Audria gasped.

“Yeah, stop, Roake,” Kerrigan taunted. “It wasn’t enough that they murdered Helly in front of us, stripped away my magic, and imprisoned Audria. What more do they have to do before you realize that you’re on the wrong side?”

Kerrigan needed to keep him talking. He had always been easy to rile, but the last thing she wanted was for him to pay more attention to what was happening in the valley than what was right in front of his face.

“There are no sides,” Roake said.

“That’s incredibly naive coming from you. Bastian wants me dead. I want to live. That sounds like sides to me.”

He hesitated as if considering something for the first time. “Maybe we could talk to him.”

Kerrigan snorted out a laugh before seeing his face. “Oh, you’re serious.”

“If you just comply—”

“Audria, do you think I should just comply? Do you think they wouldn’t immediately kill me and hang my dead body on a pike at the entrance to the mountain?”

“I…” Audria hesitated. “I think they’d kill you.”

“See there, Roake? Audria is sensible at least.”

Roake floundered. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“Correct. It can be so much better. It can be a world made for all, not just Fae, not just the ones that the Red Masks believe should exist. And if you had been listening any of those times I went to protests— not riots —or made any political speeches, you’d realize that what I wanted was equity for the people and Fae alike.

But instead, all you and your kind hear was that we want less for you, that your privilege in government, your privilege as Fae, made you above us and we wanted to destroy that.

When what we wanted was a world where we had equal rights, not at the expense of yours but at your side.

” Kerrigan shook her head. “Instead, you believe that your privilege should come at the expense of the many, and I cannot condone that.”

“Always coming back to my privilege as if I can control the fact that I was born a Fae,” he growled.

“Privilege isn’t inherently negative, Roake.

It’s just something you have based on your birth.

Yes, you’re a wealthy Fae male. That gives you privilege in our society.

It’s only a problem when you weaponize it against the people who you see as beneath you or those who you think threaten your place in our world.

It’s a problem when you start to believe your own propaganda. ”

Roake looked like he was going to burst from indignation at Kerrigan’s words. She hadn’t meant to dive into these feelings right here and now. But once she got going, she couldn’t seem to stop. Her anger coupled with his immense naivety had set her off.

“She’s right,” Audria burst out before Roake could erupt. “She’s right, Roake, and you know it.”

“What?” His gaze swept between them. “You can’t be siding with her. She has you at knifepoint.”

Kerrigan grinned and released Audria. “About that.”

Audria rolled her shoulders back. “Not exactly.”

His jaw dropped as he looked between the two women as if just realizing the trap he’d walked into.

Kerrigan was pretty sure that the rest of her mission was almost over, which meant they didn’t need to keep Roake occupied.

She’d promised Audria that she wouldn’t kill Roake, but did that mean she had to leave him uninjured?

Roake swore and then thrust his sword toward Kerrigan’s throat. She had her sword in her hand, parrying his move with ease. Roake was an excellent swordsman, but he wasn’t Fordham Ollivier. He wasn’t Constantine. And since she had been trained by the best, he wasn’t even as good as she was anymore.

Kerrigan retreated two steps as Roake put all his force behind his swings.

He’d always been that way—more interested in the blade than his feet—but footwork was the core of swordsmanship.

He certainly knew the moves. They’d had to go through them enough that he could follow the Ravendin series she was drawing him into, but it didn’t appear that he’d continued practicing enough to see when she slipped into and out of Kristoffer like breathing.

His next swing went wide. She had an opening. She could have gutted him like a fish and splayed him open from neck to navel. It would have been so easy.

Instead, she tapped his chest, opening a gash against his black Society robes. He gasped in shock before taking a step back in alarm.

“You…you got better,” Roake said, eyeing her suspiciously.

“Thanks for noticing.”

“You could have killed me.”

“Aren’t I so nice?”

His eyes narrowed, his glare contemplative. “You don’t want to kill me. What do you…”

But he broke off as his eyes slid past her to the camp below. His dragon must have been speaking to him urgently. Audria’s was likely already gone from her position. For the first time, he’d realized that this was more diversion than actual fight.

“Sorry, Roake,” Kerrigan said without an ounce of remorse.

“No! No!” he roared and thrust forward. “You wouldn’t.”

Kerrigan went purely on the offensive. And when she let go, she found Roake was no match for her at all. It was only a handful of moves before his blade went flying off into the brush, her blade under his jaw, tipping it upward. He trembled with rage and fear.

“Do it,” he snarled.

“Kerrigan,” Audria warned.

“No, we had a deal, see?” Kerrigan told Roake. “Audria still thinks you can come around, however misguided she may be.”

Roake’s eyes found Audria’s, and he reached a hand toward her as if she could save him.

Then Kerrigan brought the pommel of the sword down on his temple. He collapsed into a pile of limbs on the hard ground.

“Time to go,” she told Audria.

Then Kerrigan activated her mother’s bracelet. A gap opened in the air around them big enough for them to walk through. One moment, she was standing before Roake’s unconscious body, and the next, she was at Tieran’s side.

“Audria,” Kerrigan said, reaching a hand through the door.

Audria wiped a tear from her eyes and then took Kerrigan’s hand, leaving Roake and the Society behind. The door closed behind her with finality.