Page 32 of House of Embers (Royal Houses #5)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Soul

They fled the relative safety of the caves, back through the murky waters, and on the trek back to the mountain. Amita said her goodbyes on the way, disappearing into a forest clearing entirely.

It was fully black when they made their return to the mountain. Cathia stood sentinel, and Tieran landed before her at the otherwise empty entrance.

“You have completed the second test. Last is soul,” she said. “Thiery has left a map to the center of the mountain. Your final test awaits you there.”

Tieran bent his head, and the attendant touched directly between his eyes, not an ounce of fear on her face at being that close to his mouth. A second later, a map flickered before Kerrigan’s eyes as if she too could see the way to the center.

“Whoa,” she whispered.

Why would they just give them a map? It seemed like it was too easy, especially after the last test.

“My thanks,” Tieran said after a moment.

The attendant blinked in surprise before bowing deeply. “You’re most welcome, the great Tieran.”

He rose to his full height at that name—a designation that had likely never been placed on him. After he’d lost his mate and spent years evading the draft into the tournament, bringing disgrace to his name, now, he was defeating the odds.

“Shall we?” he asked Kerrigan.

“Might as well get this over with.”

Tieran launched toward the mountain. The map was like a mark in her mind, a little light that told her where they were going to turn and how far they were from the center.

With no more information than that, they navigated and remained silent, going deeper and deeper into the cavernous Holy Mountain.

The tendrille became more oppressive, as if the very heart of a dragon could be crushed under the weight of the magic dampening.

Her anticipation grew as the hallways narrowed.

How had larger dragons made this trek? Was there another way?

She shivered as the darkness settled over her.

Her magic stuttered this deep, and when she reached for her flames, they came up as sparks.

She could have forced them, but reaching for them caused a little twinge in the pit of her stomach.

As they rounded yet another corner, a light appeared ahead—a soft glow at first, and then it grew brighter as if a small sun was at the heart of the mountain.

Their eyes had become so accustomed to the night that the light hurt to look at, and just as it began to give her a headache, Tieran burst through an opening and into a large, round chamber.

Entrances opened like the spokes of a wheel, a long stone walkway leading from each of them.

At the center was a jagged shard of white crystal roughly the size of a dragon’s head—the source of the light.

“What is that?” she whispered as Tieran landed on one of the walkways.

“I have no idea,” he admitted.

This room didn’t bear the weight of the tendrille, as if it had been hollowed out of this one chamber, and instead, all the magic in the room was housed in the one container.

“This feels like a trap,” she grumbled as she slid off his back.

Tieran blew smoke out of his nostrils. “It is assuredly a trap.”

“Should we touch it?”

“Up for other suggestions.”

But there were none. There was just the crystal in a room clearly built for this express purpose.

“Together?”

“As always.”

Kerrigan and Tieran reached forward as one, and the world went dark.

***

“Another group dead?” a dragon mind spoke to the room.

Kerrigan’s world turned upside down, and she tried to figure out where in the gods’ names she was.

It was a large chamber…no, the council room.

She was inside the Holy Mountain still, but it was different, murkier.

She didn’t know any of the dragons present, and there were many dragons present, a few as large as Gelryn. Some larger.

Tieran surveyed the chamber. “It is a war quorum.”

“Is this present or past? A memory? Is this like the thing that happened with Mei?” Kerrigan asked. Mei had been the last spirit user in Alandria. She had sacrificed her life to end the Great War by putting up the magical wall around the House of Shadows, her own people.

“It must have been stored in the crystal.” Tieran put his claws through the head dragon, and the image puffed like smoke. “When I touched it, it felt like tendrille.”

“But it was white.”

“Pure tendrille can be any shade from white to black. Most of what is mined is gray or black. White is incredibly rare. It is usually from the direct strike of the gods. I didn’t know it could even be as large as the one we touched.”

The lead dragon roared at another smaller dragon who had entered the chamber.

Fire bloomed. Many ducked in terror at his ferocity.

“We cannot lose to these Fae invaders. They may have the numbers and their elemental magics, but they are not gods. They do not determine our fate, and we will not suffer their disgrace on our island any longer.”

“Yes, Ferrinix,” the smaller dragon said, groveling before the larger dragon.

Kerrigan’s mouth dropped open. “Ferrinix?”

Tieran was rigid. “The great one.”

“Scales, are we at the beginning?” she whispered, her gaze surveying the room with new purpose. “This is during the first war, before the Irena Bargain.”

“I think this is the Irena Bargain,” he said as Ferrinix sent all his generals from the room.

Kerrigan shook with utter shock. Ferrinix had captured his memory of what had happened during the Irena Bargain in a crystal. Why would the dragons hide this? And how was this the soul part of the test?

She had heard so many versions of the Irena Bargain over the years.

Some part of her had started to doubt that any of them were true.

Could this be it? Would she finally find out what had happened?

Get the information from the source? Or was this just another version only told through the great dragon’s eyes?

Time skipped forward—more dragons dead on a battlefield, long-range weapons and magical entrapment demolishing their forces.

Kerrigan guessed the dragons were doing the same amount of damage to the Fae, but any loss on either side was a tragedy.

This was why the Society had started, even if she despised what it currently stood for.

Night fell. Troops returned to the mountain. The Fae camped at the base of the lake. It ran red with blood.

Ferrinix sat on the banks. He waited and watched. These creatures were supposed to have remained in Alfheim. He Who Reigns was not supposed to send more to these shores. This was dragon domain . Humans had lived here first, but they now worshipped the dragons. As they should.

Kerrigan knew all this as if she were inside Ferrinix’s head.

The ache he felt at being deceived by the one who had sent them here.

He Who Reigns was the most devastating being in the known universe and Kerrigan’s grandfather.

She was glad to have never met him. If all the Doma and dragons knew to fear him, it would do her no good to meet the monster.

Ferrinix didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to protect his people.

He did not want to consort with the Fae.

He did not want to cede land to their kind.

They bred quicker than dragons and would soon take over the world.

He didn’t know how to stop it without wiping them clean off the map. It was the only way.

With his decision made, he turned to leave. A shift in the winds to the northern bank made him turn. Out of the darkness, in a cloak of shadows, a maiden stepped out of the nothing to stand before him.

He had never seen this power. The possibilities were terrifying even for a dragon.

Irena stood before him, more beautiful than even history could depict her.

She looked shockingly like Titania. If Kerrigan had not stood in the presence of the mother of the Fae, she would have thought Irena was Titania.

But as she neared Ferrinix, Kerrigan could see the slight differences.

Her hair was more white than blond, her features sharper than Titania’s full face, her eyes keener, more cunning, but less all-knowing.

She wore all black like an assassin ready to take out her mark.

The shadows of the Ollivier line swirled around her hands.

“What are you doing here, child?” Ferrinix asked, exhaustion in every line of his features.

“I have come to end it,” Irena said in her melodic tone.

“You think that killing me, if you are even capable, would be enough to end this? Your people are a plague on our lands. Another ruler will rise up. Another dragon will take my place. You will lose.”

“Where else do you think we can go?” she demanded.

“I do not care.”

Irena took another step forward. She had no visible weapons on her. Was she there to kill Ferrinix? Was she the assassin that one of the tales had set her up as?

“You should care. We could be allies.”

Ferrinix rumbled, the red flush of fire against his throat. “Allies? To our enemies?”

“We do not need to remain enemies.”

“That is all we are.” Ferrinix looked down his snout at her. He was tired. He doubted this small thing could kill him. But wouldn’t it be glorious to have one last fight with the shadow thing at his feet? Maybe it would determine the end of this war.

“We are the same,” Irena said. “We were both cast out from our homelands. We can no longer claim Alfheim. The Doma have sent us on. We have nowhere else to go. Let us lay claim to this land together. Let us ally.”

He did not care about her plight, only the atrocities they had committed and the dragon blood on their hands and the land the dragons owned.

“No,” Ferrinix said and then blasted fire at her.

But Irena moved through her shadows as if through air.

One second, she was there, and the next, she was on Ferrinix’s back.

He roared and burst into the sky. The girl remained atop him as if this were not her first time riding the winds.

She barely stumbled as he went straight toward the moon high above.

She clung to him as he looped around, and then she ran up his back until she was at his neck.

He moved into a tight corkscrew, trying to dislodge her. He had never had a rider on his back. That had been one of the disagreements in the last days of their time in Domara. His forebearers had fled to keep the Doma from using them as brute animals. He would not become one.

“You gave me no other choice,” Irena yelled.

Then, out of the shadows appeared a black metal crown. It had luster in the moonlight, shining with the glow. But it seemed to suck the light in rather than reflect it. And as she lifted it high, anticipating Ferrinix’s next move, she dropped the crown onto his head.

They both fell, dropping out of the sky like the dragon had been shot with an arrow through the heart.

Irena screamed as she pinwheeled her arms. Ferrinix couldn’t move.

Whatever this crown had done, it had affixed to his head.

And in his mind, it was suddenly no longer silent. There was another voice.

“The magic comes with a price. Your life for hers. Her life for yours. Your line forever bound to theirs. Any dragon who attempts to evade the call will perish. Any Fae who refuses the bond will see their house in ruin. A bargain sealed with the magic of He Who Reigns. A new age beckons.”

***

Kerrigan and Tieran were ripped out of the dragon’s memory. Her head ached, and she had no concept of time.

The Irena Bargain was a lie.

She had always suspected it was. But this was so much worse than she had anticipated. Irena had used a magical artifact to force Ferrinix into a binding. Their lives and all their kin’s lives were bound to this new bargain done with ancient dark magic.

The consequences had been severe. All dragons had to secure a rider or else die .

No wonder Thiery had forced Tieran to the tournament.

He had no idea how close he’d come to dying instead.

And those Fae who ignored the bond went to ruin.

Look at the House of Shadows, all these long thousand years, how it had rotted in on itself.

Honestly, even her own House of Cruse had been suffering without a dragon rider in the line.

It was all part of some ancient ceremony that had ended the carnage and created a new legacy.

“Thiery was right,” Tieran said. “I never wanted this burden.”