Page 37 of House of Embers (Royal Houses #5)

Chapter Thirty-One

The Coronation

Kerrigan was glad that she’d opted out of her ceremonial gown. Pants were much easier to sprint in. Her magic was pulled in tight as she reached for her trusty air magic and blasted Barron with the force of her powers.

The air hit him square in the chest, and he reeled back a handful of steps. His eyes shifted between them as she entered the fight. Both he and Fordham had pulled out their blades, and sweat dripped down their foreheads.

“Need your leatha to fight your battles, Ollivier?” Barron taunted.

Fordham glared at him. His midnight hair had fallen forward into his face. “She makes her own decisions.”

“That’s right,” Kerrigan said as her fire magic answered her call.

She and Fordham had been fighting together so long that instinct took over.

As soon as her magic headed toward Barron, Fordham moved, thrusting forward with his sword.

Barron narrowly avoided Kerrigan’s fire and met Fordham’s advance with one of his own.

Their blades rang against each other as the two sword masters tried to cut the other one down.

Even Kerrigan was impressed with Barron’s footwork.

He didn’t have their specialized training or experience in fighting to the death in the gladiatorial ring, but Barron had been on battlefields.

He fought with a ferocity that could be gained nowhere else, but he had been banking on fighting Fordham alone, whether through the denouncement or on his own terms. He didn’t understand what it was to rely on someone else as Kerrigan and Fordham did.

She would put her life in his hands every time.

Barron shoved Fordham back. Lightning crackled in his hand, and he blasted a bolt forward. Fordham jumped out of the way, disappearing into his shadows and appearing on the other side of the grass in a blink.

“You coward,” Barron said with a taunting laugh. “You and your blasted shadows. You believe that you’re better than us.”

“I am,” Fordham said with a grin. “I am better than you.”

Barron faltered for a second, as if he hadn’t thought that Fordham would voice that thought. “You are nothing but a cursed bastard son.”

Fordham laughed, stepping away from another lightning bolt.

He appeared at Kerrigan’s side next. “Cursed. Yes, the line was cursed because of our people’s insistence on enslaving others.

The second that was over and I took the throne, our people began to prosper again.

With the return of the dragons, we will once again be great, and none of that has anything to do with you. ”

“You’ll die either way,” Barron said, holding his sword pointed at Fordham’s chest. “And I’ll smile to watch your dragon fall with you.”

Kerrigan dove out of the way as another lightning bolt rocketed toward them.

Fordham had jumped in the other direction.

Three jumps. How many more did he have? They were short distances, and Fordham was stronger than ever, but Barron didn’t know that.

He seemed to be trying to prolong this bout so that Fordham was worn down. Kerrigan couldn’t let that happen.

“No one would accept you as king,” she taunted, her shield pulled up tight around her. The lightning crackled against its surface before the shield shattered. She shrieked and threw herself sideways, narrowly avoiding the blast.

“Everyone will accept the Fae who kills the king,” Barron boasted.

But Kerrigan had been the distraction, and Fordham jumped behind Barron. His blade slid forward through flesh and blood and bone. Barron cried out in pain, but then his hand clamped down on the blade. Blood flowed from his palm as he lit the sword up with lightning.

Fordham yelled as the strike hit him true and he dropped the sword. He shook his hand out as he stumbled back and fell to a knee, his head hanging low.

“Ford!” she cried.

The current had zapped through him quicker than either of them could blink, but it had hit Barron as well. He was on his knees, wrenching the blade from his side, blood flowing down his uniform. He came slowly to his feet. His white hair was fried and sticking up as he turned to face his opponent.

“Long live Laurent,” Barron snarled as he raised his sword to deal the final blow.

“No!” Kerrigan shrieked.

She didn’t know how it happened, didn’t take the moment to think about the consequences.

She grasped the shadows like a warm blanket and threw them over her head.

She was underneath, in the dark nothing, a blink of black that was all encompassing.

When Fordham used the shadows, she had always gone directly from one place to the next, but as she wielded them herself, she could see that other place that existed within the shadows.

She stepped out on the other side, having shadow-jumped the dozen feet to stand between Fordham and Barron’s blade. It sliced into her shoulder at the same moment as she wielded enough fire to burn down the world.

Barron shrieked as it scorched through his face, clothes, and skin all in one fell swoop—the fire she held back for so long unleashed on the person who had threatened to kill her most beloved. Fordham fell back as he called desperately for a healer.

Kerrigan dropped to the ground as the pain in her shoulder came back to her all at once. “Oh gods.”

“Audria,” Fordham yelled.

“I’m coming!”

Fordham pressed a kiss to her head. “Breathe, love. One, two…”

Then the sword was pulled from her shoulder with a shriek. Kerrigan could barely see as Fordham took Barron’s own blade and stalked toward the horribly burned figure.

“Prescott was better than you ever were,” Fordham said right before lopping Barron’s head off.

It rolled in the grass and came to rest a few feet away. The open-mouthed terror still shone in his eyes and the burned visible jawline.

Audria’s water magic touched Kerrigan’s shoulder, a soothing more than a healing, but she would take anything over the searing pain.

Fordham dropped to a knee at her side. “Must you always put yourself in danger?”

“Hey,” she choked out. “I saved your life.”

“You shadow-jumped.”

“Yeah. I guess I did.”

“Impressive.”

She laughed and then winced as the pain magnified. “Have to keep up with you.”

“Come on. I’ll shadow-jump you to Amond,” he said, sliding his hands under her legs and shoulders. “Unless you want to do the honors.”

She cried out as she was lifted into the air. “Ass.”

He chuckled as he took them into the shadows.

***

“All hail His Royal Majesty King Fordham Ollivier!”

All the nobility assembled were on their feet, applauding his ascension. The silver crown was nestled in his dark locks. A ceremonial sword was in one hand, and the other held a silver-and-emerald scepter. He held them up as the cheers rang all around him.

Kerrigan had been healed by a rattled and slightly drugged Amond.

So much for giving up loch entirely. He’d had to take a dose recently to help with the healing of her father.

She wasn’t sure he would have been able to heal Prescott if they’d managed to bring him.

He’d barely been able to settle Kerrigan’s shoulder, and it was just a wound from a blade, not magical.

Another problem for another day.

For now, she was seated to Fordham’s left in her shiny silver gown. If there was an objection to her presence, it wasn’t felt due to the overwhelming support for Fordham’s reign—killing Barron had done the trick.

The congregation filtered into a ballroom where a party was going to go on all night.

Fordham was supposed to be there to let his subjects bestow gifts on him and his family.

Kerrigan could tell he was barely holding it together, that he would not make it a whole night in the presence of the noble Fae of the House of Shadows.

But she said nothing as she took his arm and followed him out of the throne room and to a balcony that overlooked the rest of the assembled Fae. A huge feast had been prepared for the coronation. Dancing, drinking, and merriment would go on long into the night here as well.

Adelaide repeated Fordham’s entrance with an amplified voice for the crowd. “All hail His Royal Majesty King Fordham Ollivier!”

Fordham lifted his hand to wave at the thousands of subjects that were now entirely his responsibility.

Kerrigan lifted her hand as well. She knew they did not hate her after her fight, her show of force by using shadow jumping, but she was not prepared for their roar of approval at their union.

Maybe a wedding would be possible now that the coronation was over.

It all felt like just one step on a very long road.

“Do I deserve this?” Fordham asked as he stared down from the mountain.

“To be king? Yes.”

“When Prescott was killed due to my own folly.”

“Prescott was killed because of Barron Laurent.”

Fordham sighed. “Because he discovered that he was working for me.”

“We always knew it was a risk.”

“Doesn’t make it better.”

“No,” she agreed. “It doesn’t. I wish that we did not have to put our friends and family in danger to win this war, but it is a war we are waging.”

Fordham nodded. “I know. And good people die in war. I have lived it many times. I know I would not trade the outcome for your death, but it feels like the curse is circling ever closer, despite what Titania told us.” His face was grave as he clenched his jaw.

“My mother, my father, Dacia, Arbor, and now Prescott—my whole family is perishing. If Wynter…”

“That won’t happen,” she told him.

“You cannot promise her safety. Nor yours.” Fordham’s gaze cut to her. “Wynter is going to bond a dragon. We both know it. As soon as this coronation is over, I’m sending our greatest fighters to see if a dragon will bond them, and Wynter will be one of them. She is in as much danger as ever.”

“You cannot keep us all safe. The world is not safe. We are fighting for a better tomorrow.”

“And how will we do that when even the bonding is a death sentence or a curse?”

Kerrigan frowned. “I did have a thought about that.”

He huffed out a sardonic laugh. “Tell me it’s a safe thought.”

“When I saw the memory from Ferrinix, it said that the metal crown bestowed the curse on the rider bonds from the magic of He Who Reigns.” Kerrigan bit her lip before adding, “And if we find the crown once more, I might be able to use the same magic to change it.”