Page 3 of House of Embers (Royal Houses #5)

Chapter Three

The Solution

“I wasn’t sure if it was going to get bloody in there,” Wynter said once the council had dissolved some hours later.

“From me or her?” Fordham asked.

Wynter shrugged. “All of the above.”

“Fair,” Kerrigan said as she flopped back into a seat and rubbed her temples.

Prescott shook his head. “Barron is not going to accept any of this.”

“He’s not,” Wynter agreed.

“Before Arbor died,” Prescott said, choking on the word. Arbor was his sister and closest friend, and she’d been killed for treason in the capital. Fordham had recalled Prescott back to the House of Shadows. He seemed to just be coming out of his fugue state. “I…had a relationship with him.”

“With Barron?” Fordham asked, aghast.

“It was purely sexual,” Prescott said. “I stopped it at Arbor’s insistence. He’s a little violent.”

“You think?” Wynter asked with a shake of her head. “What were you thinking?”

“He was a good time,” Prescott said with a shrug.

“Could you rekindle this relationship?” Wynter asked.

“We’d never ask you to do that,” Fordham said quickly. “I wouldn’t risk you.”

Prescott glanced between them. “He’d know it’s a trick. Plus, I’m not who I once was, not without Arbor. Unless…”

“Unless?” Wynter prodded.

Prescott glanced between them. Sometimes it was uncanny how much he looked like Fordham. Before Arbor died, he’d been this vivacious character who could charm the pants off anyone. Apparently that meant Barron Laurent. “Unless you humiliate me and he thinks I’d have reason to defect.”

Fordham pursed his lips. “I don’t like this plan.”

“We should consider it,” Kerrigan said.

Prescott sighed. “If this is how I make up for what happened with Arbor, then I’ll do it.” He came to his feet and ran a hand through his hair. “I should probably go set the stage at least.”

“Pres, you don’t have to,” Fordham argued.

“I know,” Prescott said. “But it’s what Arbor would do.”

Then he left the war chamber behind. Kerrigan’s heart went out to him. He’d been a pawn for so long, and now it looked like he was yearning for redemption.

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Wynter promised Fordham. He just nodded.

“Viviana is also going to be a problem,” Kerrigan added.

“She always has been,” Wynter said. “And now, without our father to temper her anger, she’ll be worse than ever.”

“Suggestions?” Fordham asked.

“Kill her,” a smooth-as-honey voice said, filling the room.

Kerrigan’s head snapped up as Dozan Rook stepped into the war council chamber.

She shouldn’t have been surprised that he knew how to access the room.

He had always been as slippery as a snake and twice as dangerous.

He was dressed in his typical Wastes garb—black suit, red vest, and bloodred cravat with the Rook R pin at his collar.

No matter that the Wastes had been destroyed in the Red Masks’ coup of the city.

Dozan would forever be an underworld king.

“Should I be concerned that there are spies within my halls?” Fordham growled.

Despite Fordham’s displeasure, he and Dozan had learned to work together.

They had both been fighting for Kerrigan.

Dozan had been her first obsession—first everything—but he’d respected Kerrigan’s choice in the end.

Anyway, she was pretty sure something was going on between him and Wynter, even if neither of them would admit it.

“I’ve cleared out the others,” Dozan said with a smirk.

“Do I even want to know what that means?”

Dozan shrugged, unconcerned, as he ran a hand through his brown-red hair and came to Wynter’s side. “I didn’t do it for you,” he said as his eyes moved to Kerrigan’s, “but for her.”

Wynter stepped away from him at that admission. “Regardless of why Dozan is here or his methods, it’s hard to deny that they are effective. We need every manner of tool we can get.”

“And as to his…suggestion?” Fordham asked.

“Killing her is the easiest solution,” Dozan said with another shrug. “Publicly, for her dissent. Then no one will question you.”

“Why am I not surprised the guy who murdered his whole family to become king of the Wastes would suggest this option?” Kerrigan quipped.

Dozan arched an eyebrow and leaned his hip into the war table. “Always here for good advice, princess.”

“Killing her would bring all the Blanchards down on our heads,” Fordham said.

“They’d appreciate the power move,” Dozan argued.

“He’s not wrong,” Wynter said. Fordham opened his mouth to argue, but she held up her hand.

“But it’s not the right move here. We need them all on our side.

We need a power play. Something stronger than you walking into a room with Kerrigan on your arm.

Something bigger than your mother’s ring and our father’s throne. ”

“I’m not marrying Viviana,” Fordham snarled. He thrust his hand toward the door. “That was the bullshit that they argued.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that,” she hissed right back at him.

Shadows bloomed on both of their hands as the sibling argument threatened to escalate. They were still not accustomed to their truce. They hadn’t been raised to do this together. It was all new territory.

“What is your suggestion then?” Kerrigan asked gently.

“A coronation,” Wynter said.

“Oh,” Kerrigan said. “Actually…”

Dozan nodded. “Not a bad idea.”

Fordham stalked away from the table. “Must we?”

“It’d be public. It’d be undeniable. The entire kingdom would be present to see you crowned.”

Fordham paced back and forth across the room with his head bowed. Wynter was still listing the many virtues of why a coronation should fit into their plans despite a war on the horizon, but Fordham seemed unable to hear her.

Kerrigan knew that look, had seen it on his visage back in Domara when he had been enslaved and lost to Iris’s torture.

“Hey,” she said softly, putting her hand on his sleeve to stop him.

He cast his gray eyes upon her, looking as if he were coming out of a deep fog. “Hmm?”

“Where did you go?”

He shook his head. “There must be another solution.”

“A wedding,” Dozan quipped, his voice laced with derision.

“We’re trying to make them like him,” Wynter reminded him. “Marrying a half-Fae will not make them more amenable to Fordham’s throne. No offense.”

“None taken,” Kerrigan said. Wynter was only being pragmatic.

“They will if she does her new party tricks at the ceremony.” Dozan drew a rainbow above his head like a banner. “Think, Kerrigan controlling some dark shadows. A new portal opened at her behest. A live beheading of the former queen.”

“Dozan,” Kerrigan growled.

“Come on, princess. I know you want to show off, get back in the ring.”

“This isn’t the Dragon Ring.” She clenched her jaw and turned her back on Dozan.

That wasn’t the problem here. She’d been one of Dozan’s best fighters in his fighting pit.

She was still one of the best fighters and had only improved in her gladiatorial endeavors, but that sort of thing wasn’t going to win a war.

“We need to focus on what’s ahead of us.

If the wedding will do that, then sure, let’s get married.

If not, then we need something else to win people over.

Because we cannot beat the Society alone. ”

That was the crux of the problem. They had to cater to the House of Shadows, because how else were they going to stop an all-powerful dragon-rider government? They held all the cards.

“Will a wedding fix it?” Kerrigan asked Fordham. “With all the bells and whistles?”

He paused as if contemplating the idea. “Do you want to get married here? I always thought…” He sighed. “I always thought you’d want to get married back home in Kinkadia or at Waisley.”

Her heart constricted. She hadn’t put much thought into her wedding day.

She’d believed that she would be forced to marry her betrothed, Lord Ashby March, until they had sidestepped that with Fordham outranking him.

He’d been a welcome casualty the night the Society fell to the Red Masks.

So the idea of a wedding had always felt like more nightmare than anything to her.

The idea of marrying Fordham? Well, that was something else entirely.

Now that he had her thinking…what did she want?

Waisley was her home in Bryonica. She’d adored the estate as a child, but Kinkadia was where she had grown up.

She knew the streets like the back of her hand.

Would she give either of those dreams up to marry Fordham inside the cold Ravinia Mountain to satisfy his people?

Yes.

If it worked, she’d do it.

“If I get to marry you, then it doesn’t matter.”

He frowned at that assessment, as if he didn’t like that she was giving up a dream for him. As if he wasn’t the dream.

“I’ll do it,” Fordham said, turning away from Kerrigan. “The coronation.”

Kerrigan blinked. “But I thought you didn’t want to.”

“I’d rather that than sacrifice our wedding for their depravity.”

“A white knight,” Dozan drawled lazily.

“What is so bad about this coronation anyway?” Kerrigan asked. “Aren’t they just going to put the crown on your head?”

Wynter winced. “It’s a bit more involved than that. They do it the old ways.”

“Meaning?”

“Kathiria e sendera,” Wynter declared.

Dozan met Kerrigan’s gaze, and they both shrugged.

“My ancient Fae is a little rusty,” Kerrigan said.

“A denouncement,” Fordham said. His gaze lifted to the room as he squared his shoulders to go into battle. “A contention of my right to the throne and a fight to the death.”

A fight to the death might have been fine six months ago, before Domara. Fordham was a weapon. He’d slain people on battlefields before she was even born. But since his enslavement, she didn’t want to put him in that position.

They were at war. Death was a necessary aspect of that. They weren’t going to walk away from this unscathed. But that didn’t mean he had to kill his own people in the process.

“Ford,” she muttered.

He pushed away from the table to knock twice at the door. It swung open to reveal his chief attendant, Adelaide. “How may I assist you, Your Majesty?”

“Begin preparations for a coronation.”

Adelaide was too well trained to balk at that request. She tipped her chin. “As you wish.”

“Send invites to the entire populace, and let it be known that an official kathiria e sendera will be in effect for any who wish to challenge my right as ruler.”

To this, she just blinked. “Of course.”

Then she backed out of the room and hurried away. Oh, to be a fly on the wall to hear what she really thought of all this.

“It is done,” Fordham said, like a new collar wrapped around his neck. He held his hand out to Kerrigan. “We have our final audience for the evening.”