Page 71 of House of Embers (Royal Houses #5)

Chapter Sixty-Two

The Father

Bastian nearly fell as he scurried back, away from his daughter. “How did you do that?”

Isa’s hand went to her bare neck. The skin was red and bruised and flaking like an old wound. Whatever the collar had done to her, she had been rejecting it a long time. “It’s gone.”

Kerrigan smirked at her mate. “You were right.”

“Usually am,” Fordham said.

Fordham had not been able to get out of his collar. He could not defy Iris. But Isa had proven that she could defy Bastian’s commands, and it had been Fordham’s idea to push at those edges to see if maybe, just maybe…Isa could do what he could not.

“Can we bust out of this then?”

“Suppose so.”

Fordham took her hand in his. “I love you,” she breathed as shadows enveloped them.

There had been some debate about whether they’d be able to escape a trap like this with their shadows.

Was the magic actually a shield? Because Fordham couldn’t jump through shields into another place.

That was why he hadn’t been able to get into the mountain.

They had thought that if he was able to get underground, he might have been able to jump them into the mountain where it wasn’t being shielded.

They hadn’t had a chance to test that at the time, but it had felt worthwhile afterward.

The good thing about this particular trap was that there was no bottom. So instead of jumping forward and onto the stage, which was what Bastian would expect, Fordham jumped down.

They landed in the underground tunnel system that they had both used when Fordham had been in the dragon tournament. It was mostly storage for all the aspects of the arena but was used as staging for the contestants as well.

Fordham laughed. “Wasn’t sure that’d work.”

Thankfully, they’d had a backup option. Since Alura was on the council, she could have let them out. But it was nice to know they didn’t have to do that.

By the time Fordham made his second jump, Isa was stalking across the platform to her father. The council members were scurrying as if to escape the stage. Collectively they had just woken up to the reality that they could lose.

Fordham pulled a sword at the same time as Alura did. She might have been disabled, but the woman was ferocious . Fordham and Alura wrangled the council into the center of the stage, holding them at sword point and the promise of death.

Kerrigan stalked toward Bastian as he was speaking swiftly in low tones to his daughter. “It’s over, Bastian. It is time to surrender.”

“Never,” he snarled.

He opened his mouth to say more, but Isa was faster. A blade slid into her hand, and she drew it across his throat.

“No more lies from you,” Isa said flatly.

He shot out a garbled noise that sounded like Isa’s name, then fell backward onto the platform, blood flowing freely from his throat.

Isa stepped over him, flipping the blade in her hand as she caught his chin and forced him to look at her. “This is for my mother, Dionnet.”

Then she stabbed him through the eyeball, embedding the blade in his brain. She released him and he fell backward, dead.

Kerrigan stood firm, refusing to feel anything about how Isa had ended it. It was her kill. Bastian had hurt her most of all. And in the end, Kerrigan was not an assassin. She would never be what Isa was.

Isa plucked the Ring of Endings off Bastian’s finger and slid it onto her own. The only treasure she would take for her victory.

The two women squared off on the platform as chaos continued to reign, the person who had hurt them most in the world dead between them.

Kerrigan held her hand out. “Thank you.”

Isa nodded once and then took her hand. “He earned that.”

“I don’t know that I could have done it.”

“You could have,” Isa said honestly. She glanced back down at him. “But I wanted it to be me.”

“What are you going to do now?”

Isa met her gaze, her hand fluttering to her neck. “Is that not up to you as the victor?”

“I believe that you have been commanded long enough in this life.” Kerrigan gestured to Bastian. “That earned your freedom.”

“They won’t like that.”

Kerrigan shrugged. “Some won’t.”

“And you? You’re okay with it?” Isa asked. “I tried to kill you multiple times.”

“You could have killed me a hundred times and you haven’t. That tells me which side you’re on. The rest I can deal with.”

Isa’s eyes cut across the fractured arena. “They’re going to hunt me down and kill me. I’ll never be safe.”

Kerrigan frowned. Isa was right. “There’s another way.” Kerrigan jingled her mother’s bracelet.

Isa caught the meaning with a lifted brow.

“If you ever want to see a different world.”

Isa considered it before jumping off the platform. “If I do, I’ll know where to find you.”

And Kerrigan watched as she disappeared into the chaos.

“You can’t just let her go,” Alura argued. “She was his right hand.”

“I know,” Kerrigan said.

“Then stop her!”

“She’s as much a victim as you and me at this point, Alura.”

“We should put her on trial and let the world decide her fate.”

Kerrigan sighed. “If they can catch her, then we will.”

“ You can catch her.”

“But I won’t,” she told Alura.

Alura shook her head. “You’re making a huge mistake. She’s going to come back and kill you.”

“I don’t think so,” Kerrigan said, returning her attention to the cowering council members.

Fordham and Alura had used the trap Bastian had deployed against them around the council members.

None of them had a jumping ability, so they were secure for the time being.

They would need to pay for their crimes.

“You’re all under arrest for treason, sedition, and acts against the government.

You’ll be held in the dungeons until we form a new council to determine your fate. ”

They all spoke as one, but Kerrigan was already turning away from them.

“Alura, you’re in charge of the council now. I’ll send in some soldiers to back you up.”

“Are you sure about Isa?” Alura asked one more time.

Kerrigan had already lost the assassin, and she was confident that if Isa didn’t want to be found, no one could root her out. “Yeah.” She tipped her head to the side. “Fordham?”

“Way ahead of you,” he said, eerily calm. Then across the bond. “You did the right thing with Isa.”

“They’re not going to see it that way.”

“Then they can answer to me.”

A moment later, Tieran and Netta landed in the arena. Kerrigan patted Tieran affectionately before climbing on his back. There was still much ground to cover for this war to be officially over. The battle had been won, but she didn’t yet know what it looked like on the other side of these walls.

They flew over the arena and back into the fray. Dragons were still fighting in aerial combat, but the ground forces were decimated. Clover’s magical artifact minefield had done more damage than she had anticipated. Dead guards littered the ground as far as the eye could see.

“The dragons are surrendering,” Tieran explained. “Zina is negotiating their full surrender, and her dragon, Vox, is putting down those that do not concede.”

Kerrigan breathed a sigh of relief. “Direct some to help Alura in the arena, since the aerial forces look like they have it under control. Then I want to check on Clover’s army. That blast looks bad.”

Tieran circled twice before landing amid the rubble before the arena. A moment later, Netta landed next to him.

“Things look taken care of up there,” Fordham said.

“Just cleaning up,” Kerrigan agreed.

“A healer! We need a healer over here!” a voice screamed on the battlefield.

And it wasn’t the only one.

Darby had been right to say that the humans and half-Fae were going to need more help on the battlefield than the Fae. Whatever happened here had gone seriously wrong.

As Kerrigan marched forward, she noticed just as many dead soldiers wearing amulets as guards. “It went wrong. Oh gods, Clover!”

And then Kerrigan was running, heedless of everything else going on around her.

Clover was blackened from head to toe, her brown skin smudged with soot and debris.

Hadrian had her head in his lap, tears streaking his face.

Darby had a bag open at Clover’s side, metal instruments discarded to the side with bloody fragments of metal on a sheet.

Clover’s chest was a map of bloody wounds from the removal.

Kerrigan skidded to her knees beside her friend. “What happened? Is she already…”

“She’s breathing,” Darby said, “but barely. We need Amond. I don’t know…I don’t know if I can save her.”

Kerrigan jerked up, and Fordham held his hands up. “I’m on it. I’ll go get him.”

She nodded thankfully as he rushed back to Netta. “You can do this, Darbs. I believe in you. You’re a great healer.”

She wished that she hadn’t let Isa walk off with the Ring of Endings, but it had been her bounty, and she hadn’t thought to fight for it at the time.

“I’m not Amond.”

“We don’t need you to be Amond,” Kerrigan told Darby as she took one of Clover’s hands. “We just need you. Amita needs you. Clover needs you.”

Darby scrubbed tears from her eyes and nodded. “Okay. I’ll try again.”

She closed her eyes, and the water magic came to her at first like the tears from her eyes and then a small puddle and then a stream, as if she were draining all the water from their vicinity.

“Hold her steady,” she whispered.

Then Darby directed the water over Clover’s body.

She pushed down, down, down, with both hands on Clover’s chest, where the wounds appeared to be deepest. Blood flowed freely, painting Darby’s hands crimson as she worked her magic.

Healing magic was intrinsic. It could be studied to improve, but you either had it or you didn’t. Kerrigan never had.

The use of healing magic took from the user as much as from the recipient. Without Clover’s amulet up and running, Darby was using solely her magic for this healing, draining her own reserves to bring her back from the brink.

Kerrigan was still shaky from the metal crown, but she could help in this way, and she would. She put her hands on Darby’s shoulders, and then she pushed her magic, letting it flow from her to Darby.

Darby gasped as the extra power bolstered her. This wasn’t something that could be done often. Helly and Fordham had done it for hours when Kerrigan had fallen into her magic sickness and had drained them both nearly as much as Kerrigan. But without it, she surely would have succumbed.

She couldn’t survive if Clover didn’t. None of them could.

Isa had been right to say that Clover was the leader. She was the leader of it all. The glue to their resistance. Kerrigan was the face, but it was her human friend who had sparked the whole thing.

Clover had been the one to first rebel. Clover had been the one to get Kerrigan to go to protests. Clover had been the one to push her to become the symbol. Clover had gotten them this far. She had to be here to see it come to fruition. She had to be.

“Hadrian,” Kerrigan said, taking his hand too.

And then a drop of his magic flowed toward Darby too.

It was that final piece of him that tipped Darby over.

Clover’s wounds began to knit together, healing over until her stomach was once again whole.

Kerrigan concentrated even harder as if she could see deeper to whatever internal injuries were at the crux of the problem. And she pushed more and more.

From one moment to the next, Clover inhaled sharply and then coughed. “Gods,” she rasped.

Darby dropped her hands with a gasp. “Clover!”

Kerrigan squeezed her hand. “You made it. You made it through.”

“You’re okay,” Hadrian said. “You’re okay, sweetheart.”

“We still need Amond,” Darby said through her tears.

“Fordham went to get him. We’ll do all we can.”

Darby nodded and squeezed her hand. “I can’t believe I did that.”

“I can,” Kerrigan told her with a sad smile. “You’ve always been brilliant.”

It was a painful twenty minutes as more soldiers died from the blast before Fordham returned with Amond, who took over for Darby, checking Clover’s wounds and then smiling at his pupil.

“You did it exactly right. She’ll live. She’ll have a nasty scar, and we won’t know about long-term side effects until she fully recovers, but I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

Darby cried all over again.

Dragons landed all around them, Kerrigan’s generals forming up around her.

Wynter and Dozan together, breaking the news about Audria and Roake.

Zina hobbling over to explain about how Mendy had fallen.

Noda and Viviana leaned on each other. Viviana’s side had been clawed through by a dragon, and Amond had already patched her up as best he could.

Fallon crossed his arms and declared that he preferred his book and fashion to the battle.

They’d all been through it. Not one of them had made it out without a scar. Physical or otherwise, they would hold what had happened here today inside them forever.

“What do we do now, Kerrigan?” Viviana asked with a wince.

“Plans, princess?” Dozan teased.

“Of course she has a plan,” Wynter said with a smirk.

“My love?” Fordham asked as she looked away from them toward the mountain that housed the Society.

“We live.”