Page 50 of House of Embers (Royal Houses #5)

Chapter Forty-Two

The Escape

Gerrond fled.

Kerrigan cursed under her breath and rushed after him, but there were even more guards than she had first thought, and they had parted to let the weasel traitor past. Now Kerrigan and Fordham were facing off with more than a dozen guards.

They could probably handle it after everything they’d done when her magic was on the fritz.

If she wasn’t careful, they’d get backed into the vault and trapped all over again.

“Ford,” she yelled as she knocked out a guard and kicked another in the chest.

“We can’t get to him,” Fordham grunted. He drove the guard’s own sword through his shoulder.

“I know.” She disarmed the next guard, gaining herself a weapon that she bashed into the side of his head.

They needed to get out of here. The shields were down now. They could jump again.

“Truth or dare!”

“Right now?” he growled, shoving his elbow into the face of another guard. A second was sneaking up behind him, and Kerrigan let her knife fly, landing in the guard’s eye. He screamed and fell over. Fordham just grinned. “Thanks.”

“Can we get moving?”

“You know that isn’t what we called it in the House of Shadows,” he said as he dropped another guard to her ass.

“Challenge or consequence,” she snapped back as she rushed for Fordham. “Is that satisfactory for your memory?” A guard jerked her back by the dress, and she heard it tear down the back. She kicked him in the kneecap. “You’re lucky I didn’t like this dress.”

Then she slid their fingers together. Fordham kicked one more guard in the solar plexus as he reached for them.

“Don’t let them jump!” another guard roared. He lunged for them, but Fordham had already touched the shadows, enveloping them in the nothing. Kerrigan didn’t even get the satisfaction of watching the guard tumble forward into oblivion, because they were already gone.

A moment later, they clattered to the ground in the hallway in front of the greenhouse.

During their year of training, she, Fordham, Audria, Roake, and Noda had taken a night off and headed to the greenhouses with a few bottles of faerie punch.

One game of truth or dare—that the House of Shadows called challenge or consequence—later, and Kerrigan and Fordham had hooked up in the foliage.

It was enough of a clue for Fordham to take them where she wanted him to go without the guards knowing what they were discussing.

As Isa had suggested earlier, the greenhouse exit was less guarded than before.

There were only two guards present. One had fallen asleep with a bottle in the crook of his arm, the shield he was supposed to keep up already forgotten.

The second guard yelped at the sight of them and backed away slowly.

“Uh…where’d you come from?” she asked.

“Just passing through.”

“You’re…you’re her ,” the guard said.

Kerrigan smiled. “Always a good time to be recognized.”

The guard looked down at her sleeping—possibly drunk—guard mate and took another step back rather than forward. Smart girl.

“We’re just passing through,” Fordham growled.

The guard nodded. “I was at my spot the whole time and never saw anything.”

“That right?” he asked, stalking toward her.

Kerrigan grasped his arm. “Not terrifying right now. She’s letting us go, aren’t you?”

The guard nodded. “They…they killed my brother.” She glanced down the hall as if expecting someone to hear. “He was half-Fae. They drained his magic and then killed him in the streets. I…I wanted to give up my job then, but…”

“You should have,” Fordham said. “We can’t make a stand if we’re not all together.”

She bit her lip. “I understand. Good luck.”

Kerrigan took Fordham’s hand, and they exited into the greenhouses.

“How do you know she’s not going to turn us in?” Fordham asked.

“She’s not.”

“You thought that about Gerrond too.”

“Fuck Gerrond.” Kerrigan sighed heavily. “She might turn us in, but we’ll be long gone anyway.”

“How did you know to exit through the greenhouses?”

“Isa told me.”

Ford glanced into the darkness of the greenhouses as if waiting for the trap to fall. “It’s a trick.”

“I don’t trust her,” Kerrigan told him immediately. “Well, I don’t know.” She winced. “Maybe I do.”

“She has a collar on.”

“Yeah, and she wanted it on as much as you did.”

He cringed. “You couldn’t get it off?”

“She wouldn’t let me try.” Kerrigan bit her lip. “She asked me to kill her.”

“I wanted to die rather than have the collar on, but I had you to live for,” he said sympathetically. “If she has no family…”

“She told me that she’s Bastian’s daughter.”

Fordham glanced at her in alarm. “Like his real daughter?”

“She said that the fire that gave Bastian the scars, he had to make a choice whether to save Isa as a baby or his wife, and he chose Isa.”

Fordham winced. “So his wife died in the fire?”

“Yeah, and she claimed that’s why Bastian is doing all of this.”

“Great. One death for thousands of deaths. Seems fitting.”

“I wasn’t saying it made sense, only that it’s the most we’ve ever gotten from anyone about what happened in Bastian’s past. I didn’t know he had a daughter. It explains why Isa is still alive. She must be his weakness. He saved her life. He can’t kill her without killing his wife all over again.”

“It’s a reach,” Fordham said. “We don’t even know if any of it is true.”

“And how would we find that out?”

Fordham shrugged. “No idea. I don’t find it relevant. He’s our enemy. He killed and he deserves to die, as if the collar he placed on Isa’s neck isn’t indication enough.”

“Yeah,” she agreed as they came to the end of the greenhouse. “‘The more we know about our enemy, the better equipped we are to take them down.’”

“You’re quoting Kristoffer to me?” Fordham said on a sigh. “The great general was right, but he was still killed by his enemy.”

“Then we need to be smarter than him.”

“And she’s truly his daughter? How does no one tell that part of the story? He’d be a hero.”

“I don’t know, but it feels important.”

Fordham shook his head. “We’ve all lost people. I don’t feel sorry for him.”

“I do.”

“How can you feel sorry for him?” Fordham demanded. “After what he did to you!”

“Not for the rest. He deserves all he’s going to get. But for her,” Kerrigan told him. “I feel sorry for her and for the loss of her. Look at Tieran with the loss of his mate. I couldn’t imagine the loss of mine.”

“I’d die first,” Fordham said.

She squeezed his hand. “Yes.”

“Well, at least Isa’s intel about the greenhouses seems to be accurate,” Fordham finally admitted.

He glanced through the open doors of the greenhouse, which were currently unguarded. Apparently the inside shielding was all they had on this side of the mountain. Not wanting another experience of slamming into a giant vault door, they’d checked out the exit just to be sure.

“Open the portal here,” he said.

“Oh,” Kerrigan said, fiddling with her mother’s bangle. “About that. I don’t have enough magic.”

“What? You were full.”

“Trying to open it in the vault tapped me out. My last shot was taking down the shield.”

“A great shot, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

Fordham sighed. “Well, Netta is getting anxious. I’ll jump us closer to our dragons.”

“Don’t jump too far,” she reminded him.

“I know how far I can jump,” Fordham said, sliding an arm around her waist. He pressed a kiss to her lips. “With my mate.”

They jumped to a familiar aerie in the Vert Mountains. It was the same place they’d landed when they first returned to Alandria, when they discovered that their friends and family were still living and Bastian had ambushed them.

Kerrigan had decided then and there that she would fight Bastian on her terms. And none of that had changed. This mission might have failed, but it had proven that Bastian and his allies were vulnerable.

“Finally,” Tieran said down their bond. “Netta was upset that she couldn’t reach Fordham while you were in the vault.”

“Well, we’re out.”

“Care to share what happened?”

“We were trapped. Gerrond is the mole.”

“Did you kill him?” Tieran demanded.

“He got away.”

“Pity,” Tieran said. “Should we worry for Clover and her drifter troops?”

“Gerrond admitted that he had not consulted them. I don’t think they’ll be on his side, but we’ll need to warn her.”

“Wonderful.”

“How close are you?” Kerrigan asked, peering through the darkness for her dragon.

“Start your run now. I’m not landing.”

“Gods,” Kerrigan hissed aloud. “Here we go.”

Then she dashed across the rocky ground and, without waiting for confirmation, dove off the side of the mountain.

She was in free fall for a matter of seconds before Tieran snatched her around the middle.

He continued through the motion, swinging her upward over his head.

She kept her scream behind her teeth as she landed on Tieran’s back.

She was wobbly before she dropped to her knees.

She’d gotten good at that in her year of training, but it had been a minute since she’d done it. And it was still terrifying .

“Better than I thought you’d do,” Tieran teased.

“Thanks,” she said sarcastically.

“Gelryn, Dyta, and Ordrax have requested backup now that Netta and I have our riders. More Society dragons have arrived.”

“Great,” she grumbled.

Back into the fight.

She had hoped that the distraction would be enough, but since Bastian had likely been warned by Gerrond, he would know that their dragons would be here. Of course he had taken the opportunity.

And worse, she couldn’t open a portal for their escape. They’d have to fight this out or risk fleeing.

She cursed into the wind as the battle came into view. It was immediately apparent that something was wrong. And it was not that there were a half dozen Society dragons in view. She recognized some of them, but none were Bastian or Alura or any of the other council members.