Page 47 of House of Embers (Royal Houses #5)

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The Distraction

Bastian’s speech was dull and tedious.

Kerrigan had heard the same insipid thoughts from him when he’d taken over the government in a coup after the council announcements. Blah, blah, blah. Voice of reason. Blah, blah, blah. Proper place in society. Blah, blah, blah. Come together for a new tomorrow.

It was all a step around the fact that he’d killed more Society members in one night than had been killed since the Great War.

He was draining magic from half-Fae and enslaving humans for his work efforts.

He might be speaking to the Fae that he considered of his status, but he was certainly not speaking for everyone.

And it made Kerrigan’s stomach curdle to stand in the room and have to hear his bravado.

Thankfully, it was finally cut short by a small, male attendant rushing forward and speaking urgently into Bastian’s ear. Even with his mask on, she could see the concern sweep across his body.

She smiled deviously.

Gerrond lifted his fingers to his temple. That was their signal. All free to go.

“Are you ready, my love?” Fordham asked.

“Anytime you want.”

They had been backing out of the center of the room and toward the shadows since Bastian had begun speaking, just waiting for him to get the news that Clover’s people had infiltrated his new weapons cache.

She hoped that they’d all gotten out long before he sent in any reinforcements, but she couldn’t worry about something she couldn’t change.

“My apologies,” Bastian said. “I’m needed away from the party for a moment. Please, continue to enjoy refreshments and dancing.” Then he followed his attendant out of the room.

Whispers immediately followed his exit. Kerrigan knew exactly what he was responding to, but the rest of the room was in a flurry of guesswork.

Fordham smirked down at her and then frowned. “Your glamour.”

Kerrigan’s hand went to her jaw. “Yours too,” she said as she watched his hair slowly fade from blond to the midnight tresses. “Time to go.”

They turned as one to the nearest door, colliding with a figure before they could exit.

“My apologies—”

“Roake,” Kerrigan said as panic hit her chest. She could see her own red hair curling at the ends. Viviana’s glamour had lasted even less time than she’d thought.

“What are you—” Roake began as he lunged for Fordham.

But Fordham was a step quicker. He grasped Roake’s arm, and then a second later, they fell into shadow.

Kerrigan glimpsed the nothing for a moment before dropping into an abandoned training room.

The shields might work to keep Fordham from jumping in or out of the mountain, but they did nothing to stop him from jumping once he was already inside.

The second they landed, Fordham punched Roake in the face. “You traitorous bastard!”

Roake reeled back, a cry releasing from his now-bloody lips. Then he threw earth toward Fordham, who shifted easily out of the way, only a few pebbles hitting him in his face.

“You kidnapped Audria!” Roake snarled.

Kerrigan blasted him back from her mate with air. He stumbled a few steps before shielding and redirecting the blast. They’d learned to do that together.

“We didn’t kidnap her. She chose to come with me,” she snarled at Roake.

“She could be dead for all I know!” Roake argued back. He was panting as he held his fists before him as if he could fight his way out of this one.

She didn’t think he could take either of them one-on-one. Kerrigan had outsmarted him once, and Fordham was frankly terrifying in a fight. Roake stood no chance against the two of them together.

Fordham took a dangerous step forward. “You think Audria will ever forgive you for what you’ve done?”

“She’ll see reason,” Roake said, but he didn’t sound certain.

Kerrigan laughed. “Wow. You have really deluded yourself, haven’t you? You fought against us. You let her rot in prison. You had her on a leash once you got her out. Don’t you see what you’ve done?”

“I love her!”

“Well, she doesn’t love you,” Fordham snarled.

Kerrigan wasn’t sure what Audria felt. It was complicated. She had some feelings for Roake, but they were clouded with betrayal. Kerrigan wouldn’t speak for her.

“You’re a Red Mask,” Kerrigan said. “That’s all that matters.”

A sound in the hallway made Kerrigan and Fordham both jerk their heads to the side. A second later, the door creaked open, and a voice called out, “What’s going on in here?”

Kerrigan froze at that voice. “Scales.”

Isa stepped into the room. She was paler than normal, her skin sallow and sunken in. Her eyes were lifeless and her white-blond hair even more so. A black metal band circled her throat. Where it touched her neck, the skin was red and irritated.

Fordham stilled at the sight of that collar, his entire body going rigid with revulsion. “The collar.”

Isa’s fingers drifted to it as her eyes went from Kerrigan to Fordham and then Roake before going back to Kerrigan. Her face was perfectly neutral as if she had only been checking on a disturbance and was hoping to break up a fight, not find her greatest enemy within the shielded mountain.

“Isa! Kill them!” Roake commanded.

Isa’s eyes narrowed on him, and now they were predatory and furious. As if Roake thought he had the right to tell her what to do—as if he thought she had no free will of her own.

“You do not command me,” Isa told him. “If you got yourself into this, you can get yourself out of it.” Then she put her hands up and backed out of the room.

“She was wearing a collar,” Fordham said. “I’d recognize it anywhere. It was the same one I wore in Domara. I’m going to get it off her.”

“No, I’ll take it,” Kerrigan said with a frustrated snarl.

“Kerrigan,” he said, his voice on the brink of self-destructing.

“Deal with Roake,” she snapped, giving him an objective to keep him from falling apart.

Kerrigan raced after Isa, drawing a knife from her skirts. It didn’t matter that Isa was a liability. She would tell Bastian that Kerrigan was here, and she simply couldn’t have that.

Kerrigan threw all her energy into her air magic as she twisted it toward the assassin. Isa turned at the last second and bounded against the wall, executing a back flip to avoid Kerrigan’s magic.

“Go back,” Isa told Kerrigan.

“I can’t have you ruining all my plans.”

Kerrigan blasted her with fire magic. But Isa moved like water. One second, a fireball was going to singe her body, and the next, she was in front of the wave, unharmed.

“You don’t want this fight.”

“Maybe I do,” Kerrigan told her. She flipped her blade, letting shadows circle it. “You killed Thea!”

Isa didn’t even blink at her new talents. “Yeah, and I saved Clover.”

Kerrigan narrowed her eyes. “What does that mean?”

“I was told to kill the resistance leader. Who is that?”

“Thea.”

“Wrong,” Isa argued, making no move to come at Kerrigan. “Clover is the leader, but I convinced the collar to let it be Thea.”

“Convinced the collar?” Kerrigan didn’t know that was possible. If it was in fact the same one that Fordham had worn, he hadn’t been able to convince it of anything.

“It wanted the rebel leader’s death, but Clover did not deserve it.”

“Neither of them did!”

Isa shrugged. “I had no choice. I have no more choices. And yet I was able to make this one. I chose Thea over your Clover.”

“That doesn’t make up for what you did. You deserve to die for your cowardice.”

“I should have died long ago. What difference does it make? Send me back to the fire, and let me burn along with my mother.”

Kerrigan narrowed her eyes. Isa sounded hysterical. “Fire then.”

Then Kerrigan pulled up her fire magic once more and twirled it in her hand as a warning.

Isa stared into the fire as if she were happy to step into it.

“He had to choose, you know? The humans had come to destroy our life. He either saved me or her—his little girl or the love of his life. I was carried out in a bundle in his arms, and she burned to death in the all-consuming flames. I went to that assassin school. He used his burns to take over the Society. All in her name.”

Kerrigan blinked at her. “Wait…”

Kerrigan had heard this story before. Well, parts of it at least. Bastian had been burned horribly in a fire and had used that to issue reform across all of Alandria. No one had mentioned if others had been in the house when it was burned—certainly not a wife and child.

“You’re his daughter?” she whispered. “His real daughter? That’s why you’re not dead.”

“Yes. And she is the reason he does all this.”

Kerrigan’s mouth hung open as the pieces clicked together. “Bastian saved you and not his wife, and he is destroying the world because of her. One wrong does not allow for a lifetime of atrocities. It does not absolve you either.”

“I do not seek absolution.”

“Then we’re back to death,” Kerrigan said, thrusting her knife forward.

Isa sighed. “Are you going to kill me, Kerrigan Argon?”

“If I have to,” Kerrigan snapped. She could feel the thread of her shadow magic back to Fordham. If she tugged just a little, she could jump behind Isa and destroy her. It would finally be over.

Isa put her arms out to the sides. “Do it.”

Kerrigan hesitated. “What?”

“Kill me.”

Kerrigan waited for the trick. “I won’t fall for this.”

Isa tipped her head back and laughed. It was a loud, manic sound, as if she had lost herself.

“Please, Kerrigan. No one else will do it. I have nothing left to live for. I am an instrument of the Father. If you do not kill me when he has not ordered me to take your life, you will never have the chance again.” She strode forward.

Kerrigan tensed, waiting for the moment when Isa would flip the script.

But she just leaned into the tip of Kerrigan’s knife. “Do. It.”

“This is a trick.”

“Does it look like it is to you?” Isa asked, sad and desperate.

Kerrigan opened and closed her mouth. This was not the Isa she had thought she would be fighting. Isa was defeated. Killing her would be a mercy, but still…could she do it when there was another option?

“I could try to remove the collar,” Kerrigan said.

And for a moment, that made Isa pause. “You cannot remove it.”

“Fordham wore one. My mother was able to get it off. I could try…”

“Try,” Isa said hollowly. “And what would I do with it gone?”

“You could run away. Get out of the mountain. Escape him and take on a new life.”

“There is no new life for an assassin,” Isa said. “There is only death.”

And the words were so final that there was no sufficient response.

Isa waited. She stood there expecting the blow from Kerrigan. She met her gaze and nodded once with finality. Still Kerrigan couldn’t do it. She should. After all Isa had done and all Bastian was doing to her, she still could not kill her—not if she was no longer an enemy.

“I would prefer death, and even you will not give it to me,” Isa said on a sigh.

“Listen to me, Kerrigan Argon. Take your own advice. Flee this place. Take the greenhouse exit. It is the least guarded. I don’t know how you got in, but it is time to leave.

He will find you, and then he will send me after you, and I will not stop until I have your blood on my hands. ”

Kerrigan stepped back. “Until then.”

She watched until Isa disappeared down the hall. Maybe it was the wrong call. Isa was a monster. Bastian could control her. But maybe they could find a way to get the collar off. Maybe that would change everything.

She jogged back to Fordham, who had subdued Roake and found something to tie him to a chair. But he did not look okay.

“The collar?” he asked.

“As you suspected.”

He closed his eyes and breathed out long through his nose. “We have to get it removed. It is no life, wearing it.”

“She said as much, but that is not our current mission.”

He nodded, coming back to himself as if he had made a decision. “You’re right. One thing at a time.”

Kerrigan sighed and squeezed his hand. “We’re short on time.”

Fordham still seemed jarred by the conversation, but he just nodded and said, “Magic at the ready.”

The next second, she was pulled through the nothing. Fordham had admitted to being outside the vault door one time before, but it was shielded at all times by guards. They had to take out the guards before he could jump them through the solid tendrille door.

The moment they landed in the hallway, Kerrigan felt the magic suppression like a physical blow.

Fordham had warned her, but she hadn’t quite anticipated this.

She had felt it at the heart of the Holy Mountain, but this was possibly even worse.

Draco Mountain was older and denser. She was glad that she had accessed her magic ahead of time.

She wasn’t sure what it would feel like to reach for it, perhaps like the time she had been in the iron dungeons.

Iron wasn’t exactly dangerous to Fae, but it felt like shit and made their magic weak. There was probably iron here too.

“Left,” Fordham said before he jumped down the hall, landing behind the first guard. The guard made a strangled noise before Fordham twisted his neck at an unnatural angle.

Kerrigan dove to the left at the same moment, tackling the second guard. They collided on the ground with a heavy thud. Kerrigan punched him in the face three times before the bigger male shoved her backward with a blast of water.

Her gown was soaked, and she spit out the water that had gotten in her mouth.

A second later, she sucked the water back out of her attire and hurled it in jagged spikes toward her opponent.

The temperature turned up as Fordham dealt with another guard somewhere nearby.

She didn’t have time to assess that he was all right as she stabbed the guard with the water and followed it up with her knife.

The male gasped as the blade slid through his shoulder. He punched Kerrigan in the kidney. She grunted and yanked the blade out. A slew of curse words left his mouth, but she wasn’t done. She brought the handle down on his temple and watched his eyes roll back in his head before he collapsed.

“Kerrigan!” Fordham yelled.

She whipped around, barely missing a thrown blade. Then she launched her own at the female guard. It hit her in the center of her chest, and she fell backward.

A shiver ran through Kerrigan as she watched the woman bleed out. She hadn’t wanted to kill them all, but that was naive. The guards were another tool of the Red Masks. They clearly hadn’t hesitated to attempt to kill her. And yet…

“That all of them?” she asked, shaking herself out of it.

“I think so.”

“You have another jump in you?” she asked. “It’s pretty oppressive down here.”

“One more,” he agreed. “Unless you can suddenly open vaults.”

“No such luck.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist, and they disappeared through the thick vault doors and onto the other side.