Page 70 of House of Embers (Royal Houses #5)

Chapter Sixty-One

The Truth

“Well, this is obnoxious,” Kerrigan said on a sigh.

The trap was familiar. It had been used by Bastian at the coup to hold the dragons back. He’d seized the ones in the aerie and then kept the council dragons out of the fight by caging them. He’d played the same trick on Kerrigan.

Fordham crossed his arms over his muscled chest and waited. She felt warmth down the bond and a whispered, “As if they could keep us.”

A smirk came to her face at his arrogance. Oh, how she loved it.

“Thank you so much for joining us today, Kerrigan,” Bastian said, holding his hands wide. “It’s always a good day when the prey walks into my trap.”

“I bet it is,” Kerrigan said. “You’ve been walking prey into traps for a while, huh?”

He narrowed his eyes at those words. Almost like he could hear the underpinnings of what she was really saying through it all, but then his face cleared, and the facade returned.

“Yes, well, you have done a spectacular job so far with this little rebellion.”

“You really think so?” she asked. “I’ve always wanted your approval.”

Bastian cleared her throat. “As entertaining as your insubordination is, it pleases me that we can end this the way that we started it.”

“With lies?”

“Justice.”

She snorted. “Oh, that’s rich. You think that you can still hand out justice. Your hands are so red that you’ll never get the blood out from under your nails. There is no amount of justice that could be served to cleanse the world of what you’ve done.”

“You’ve said your piece,” he said dismissively. “Allow me to say mine.”

“Oh, goodie. I always love a good monologue. Please tell the assembled audience how the murderer is their champion. I’m dying to see the spin.”

He pursed his lips at her words. “Dying is the operative word.”

“Sure is.”

“You’ve killed as well.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “And my heart will never know peace because of it. Tell me, Bastian, how do you sleep at night?”

“Like a baby.”

“Mmm,” she said as Fordham put a hand on her arm. A warning to remain steady, to not give in to his antics, to only push as far as she could handle.

Bastian didn’t want to just kill her. That had never been his aim.

He wanted to make an example of her. He always had.

That was why he’d raised her up at his side and tutored her as his pupil.

He’d made her in his own image to be the best that she could be.

And then he had countered that kindness with humiliation and suffering and blood.

He wouldn’t be happy until his own embarrassment had been rectified by her cleansing. That much she was sure of.

“I’ve been keeping tabs on you, Kerrigan Argon. The half-Fae who rose above her station, who got a place on a dragon’s back, who joined the council.”

“Partially in thanks to you.”

“Proof that half-Fae were capable of the insidious nature I had always proclaimed that they had. They want to usurp our great Society. They want us to pay for their deeds.”

“Projecting,” Kerrigan muttered.

Bastian rose to his feet, clasped his hands behind his back, and stepped away from his seat.

He was in it now. The speech he’d probably practiced, hoping for her to be there to deliver it.

Or maybe he was going to say it anyway even if she didn’t show.

He’d want people to support his power regardless.

All the better that she was here for it to be delivered directly into her faintly pointed ears.

“You sent a Society member into our midst to spy on us. Gerrond was a good, upstanding rider who wanted the best for House Sayair. He came to me with your duplicitous actions, and you killed him for it.”

“I didn’t kill him.” Kerrigan’s brow furrowed, and Fordham’s grip tightened.

“He’s goading you.”

Kerrigan ground her teeth. “He had him killed.”

“Breathe. He wants you to lose focus.”

Kerrigan lifted her chin and met Bastian’s gaze. He was doing to her the same that she was doing to him. She just had to outlast him. That was all.

“You came into my mountain and killed your own traitor as he double-crossed you. You say that I have blood on my hands, but we all know that your hands are dripping.”

He was right. Not about Gerrond, but she had killed. It didn’t matter for what reason. And he would win people more easily if he painted her as worse than him. He’d proven that people wanted the familiar trappings of the Society and not a revolution.

“You kidnapped one of our riders, a noble in House Bryonica.”

Kerrigan breathed out heavily. Audria. He was still going on about that falsely.

“ Kidnapped is such a strong word.”

“What would you say you did to her after killing the guard, knocking out one of your own friends, and her disappearing?”

A roar sounded outside the arena, and Kerrigan smiled. “That’s probably her right now leading the eastern front.”

Bastian waved his hand away. “A pretty story. You’re a killer. You had your own friend killed to take over a petty human rebellion.”

“That one I’m confused by.”

“What was your friend’s name?” Bastian said. “The human one.”

Kerrigan tilted her head to the side. “I have a few of those. I don’t hate humans like you so you’ll have to be more specific.”

“Clover,” he said as if pulling the name out of a hat.

“Oh, right,” Kerrigan said. “Clover is fine.”

Bastian’s eyes turned to Isa. “You told me that Kerrigan had her killed.”

“You mean you sent Isa to kill her,” Kerrigan said with a smirk. “Yeah, she killed Thea instead. Guess you should have been more specific.”

Bastian hadn’t been prepared for that. His eyes were still locked on Isa, who lifted her chin defiantly.

The woman who wanted to die in the mountain finally had fire back in her expression.

This one defiance led to Bastian breaking character.

He balled his hands into fists and looked like he was going to send one swinging into her face.

“You liar.”

“I did exactly what you commanded,” Isa said, jumping back onto the platform. “I killed the leader of the resistance. That’s all I do for you, isn’t it? Kill people.”

A titter of shock went up around the room as if they didn’t know that Isa was his assassin, as if her mere presence didn’t keep people in line.

“You knew who I meant,” Bastian said, slapping Isa across the face.

A red mark bloomed on her cheek, and for a second, Kerrigan thought that would be the breaking point for Isa. But she just said, “Then you should have been more specific.”

The end of their standoff was a cataclysmic boom that rocked the entire arena. More screams sounded as the precarious new build rumbled and broke apart again down the center, running like a vein through the arena.

Kerrigan grinned as Bastian’s face returned to hers. “I think Clover’s fine.”

“You,” he said, pointing his finger at her.

“Me,” she said cheerfully. “And while we’ve disproven one of your lies, why don’t we start at the very beginning, hmm? I think everyone deserves the truth.”

“Your truth is irrelevant.”

“Oh yeah? The fact that Isa is your actual daughter is irrelevant?”

Bastian’s eyes widened in shock as the revelation rocked the arena.

“That’s why you haven’t killed her, isn’t it?

She’s your flesh and blood. You made her into this assassin and then used her like a puppet.

You collared her. You did everything to hurt her save from killing her.

But what I find strange about this is that there is no official record of Isa’s birth or you having a daughter. ”

Bastian ground his teeth together. “This is irrelevant.”

“Stick with me,” Kerrigan said, pacing the length of the little trap. “We’re not to the good part yet.”

“Kerrigan,” Isa began and then stopped.

“The story goes that you saved yourself from a house fire. Your face and body were burned. And healing couldn’t get to you quick enough because of Elsiande’s backward views on magic. So you used your position in the Society to make sure that happened to no one else. We’ve all heard this.”

The council seemed invested now. They nodded along to her explanation.

“No reports mention a daughter. Especially not one that he saved out of a burning building while his wife burned to death in the flames.” Kerrigan met Bastian’s steely gaze. “You’d be a hero and not just a martyr. Why exactly was the report redacted?”

He fumed. “Do not dare mention her.”

“Who?” she asked. “Your wife? Dionnet.”

Bastian went stock-still at the name he had scrubbed from history—the name that even his daughter seemingly didn’t know.

“So why doesn’t the official record say that she burned to death as you saved your only child?”

The crowd leaned forward, hungry for the answer.

“I found one of Dionnet’s old friends. It was hard to find someone who knew her. Even harder to find someone who would talk to me about it. You did your work thoroughly,” Kerrigan said. “Killed all her friends and family too—just like you killed her.”

“Father?” Isa asked in horror.

“She was working with the humans and half-Fae. You talked a lot of trouble about her being ‘brainwashed’ by the opposition to hurt you. She went to some quack treatment leaving her all but brain-dead.” Kerrigan’s voice broke at the last words.

“Her friend was the last person to see her alive, and she said Dionnet was unrecognizable. And you stand here and act as if you’re doing all this in her honor, when you destroyed everything that made her a person and then killed her when she no longer fit your purpose. ”

Bastian stepped forward. He pointed his finger at her in fury as the council tittered behind him.

“No clever quip now?” Kerrigan asked.

She was finished recounting the draining conversation with Eira, who had been in hiding for much of her adult life on the coast, where Bastian’s agents couldn’t find her.

It had been Ellerby who had tracked her down from rumors and convinced her to flee with them.

It was through Eira and her memory of Dionnet that Kerrigan had finally put the whole picture together.

Bastian cared about nothing and no one except power. Isa was not his weakness. He had killed his own wife and twisted the reality to seem like a savior, to do things in honor of the woman he had destroyed. There was no ounce of goodness left in him.

“Isa, kill her” was all he said in response.

Kerrigan held her breath as she waited for her biggest gamble.

Isa glanced up at her father, the Father, and said, “No.”

A click sounded, and the collar sprang free.