Page 72 of House of Embers (Royal Houses #5)

Chapter Sixty-Three

The War Tribunal

At the end, the Society fell the way Bastian had—with some garbled words and then silence.

Kerrigan’s team took over Draco Mountain, declaring their victory.

There was no resistance within the mountain.

The guards had been emptied to defend the streets and the arena.

The Society members who remained had been in the air with their unbonded dragons.

Many had fled and were still being hunted down to be held accountable. It was a long process.

The decision of what to do with the council members had already been made before they left for their fight. Should they kill them all along with Bastian? Should they put them up for trial? Kerrigan had voted for trial. It had been a close vote, but she’d won.

Today, the official military war tribunal had been cast for the first Red Masks trials, which was to decide the fate of the nineteen council members who had sat on the council for Bastian and the Red Masks. Alura was the only one exempt, as she was a double agent for Kerrigan.

They’d wanted Kerrigan to sit on the tribunal, but she had declined.

She couldn’t possibly remain impartial to their crimes.

A new government council was a different story.

She wanted to be a part of that. But declaring whether these cowardly Fae had done enough to deserve death belonged to someone else.

Especially since people were still upset that she had let Isa go.

Many believed Isa should be up on charges with the council members. Kerrigan allowing her to wander off after killing Bastian, no matter the circumstances, had probably been enough to keep her out of the tribunal.

So they had set up a group of judges—two Fae, two half-Fae, two humans, two dragons, and one elected head of council.

In the end, Kerrigan had only met Islay from the drifters and Dyta from the dragons.

The head of council ended up being the dragon speaker, Lowan, of all people. Kerrigan considered that fair.

They’d deliberated for hours after days of testimony from the accused. Now they all held their breaths to find out the verdict.

Fordham squeezed her hand. “Maybe we should have just killed them all.”

“We wanted it to be just. We wanted an account of all that had happened. We wanted everyone to know the crimes of the Red Masks, to not be able to turn a blind eye to the atrocities.”

And atrocities there were, in spades. More than Kerrigan could ever bear to consider.

Tens of thousands dead, thousands more imprisoned on false charges, more drained of their magic and left practically brain-dead after the loss.

Homes were looted, people displaced, property seized.

The Dregs were still on fire from their destruction.

Bastian had done this.

Kerrigan had not stopped him in time.

They all deserved to burn. And still she was glad that it was out of her hands.

Lowan returned to his seat at the head of the tribunal.

“As for the case of the ten council members,” he said, listing out the first ten, “who are charged with a litany of crimes against the state including…” Then he droned on with the page-long list of war crimes. “We find them guilty of all charges.”

A gasp went up around the room.

“And we sentence them to death by hanging.”

Another gasp. The ten council members who had admitted to their crimes and had shown zero remorse just stared forward. They had been emotionless to this point, almost reveling in what they had done. They deserved this death.

“For the nine remaining council members,” he said, listing their names, “who were charged with crimes including aiding and abetting the fall of a government…” Then he continued down his list of additional charges that were only slightly less severe than the first set.

“We find them not guilty of all but the first charge.”

Kerrigan’s mouth dropped open. How was that possible? Had they not heard the testimony that they had delivered? They had been involved. They had done this. Maybe not as terrible as the others but…

Fordham put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down. “You wanted justice.”

“Yeah, but…”

Lowan called over the angry voices. “You have been sentenced to life in prison.”

Kerrigan’s ears were ringing as everyone wanted to have their voices heard about the outrage.

She had wanted justice. Fordham was right.

This didn’t feel like justice. This didn’t feel like sliding her blade through their chest. But she wasn’t an assassin.

She was a leader. And sometimes leaders did things they did not enjoy.

This would always be one of them.

“Come on,” Fordham said, taking her hand.

Together they left the courtroom behind and navigated the mountain. She needed to walk off her anger. Lowan knew what he was doing. So did Islay and Dyta and the other tribunal members, and still it infuriated her.

“Justice,” she grumbled.

“You wanted them alive.”

“I know. I know.”

Fordham slid his fingers into hers and kissed her hand. “We’ll make do.”

“I wish we’d found Benton and Bayton,” she said instead of dealing with her roiling emotions about the tribunal.

“There were no humans or half-Fae in the mountain.”

Kerrigan sighed. “Does that mean he killed them all or they fled?”

Fordham shook his head. “Even the council members couldn’t give a satisfactory answer to that.”

“I can’t live not knowing.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of it. We haven’t been able to leave for dealing with all these problems,” Fordham said. “I’ve barely even been back to the House of Shadows. They may be in hiding.”

“They could be anywhere.”

“We’ll keep looking,” he promised. “Now, come with me. Your next appointment awaits.”

A second later, they jumped from their position deeper into the heart of the mountain. Kerrigan hadn’t been in this room yet. Her hand rested on the door, and she almost couldn’t manage it. But then Fordham covered her hand, turning the knob and opening the door.

There was the portal door. She’d jumped through it twice. Once to join Fordham in the final of the dragon tournament. Once to fall through to Domara.

Bastian had done a hell of a job trying to break the portal.

The shimmery iridescence that normally revealed the permanent portal was gone.

Only the stone archway remained, with scattered pieces littering the floor.

As if Bastian had taken a sledgehammer to it in his fury and left what remained behind when it would not yield to him.

Kerrigan touched one of the scars. “What a monster.”

“Do you think you can fix it?”

“The beautiful craftsmanship?” she asked with a smirk. “Don’t think I’m that skilled.”

“The portal,” he said on a laugh.

Kerrigan blew out a breath. Her magic had slowly recovered from use of the crown.

Sometimes she still woke in the middle of the night feeling as if she were holding the thing and it was sucking out her magic, but the crown was safely hidden away in Ravinia Mountain and her powers were at her fingertips.

Still, she hadn’t tried to do anything this powerful since.

“Guess we’ll find out.”

Fordham stepped back as she moved to the center of the portal.

When she made the portals with her mother’s bangle, they were extensions of her own magic.

She could only go to places that she had been before.

And when they were tied off, they still drained her.

It wasn’t a forever solution. In a perfect world, she could tie off a bunch of portals and make transportation much easier between the houses of Alandria.

But she couldn’t leave them connected to her magic.

She was hoping that the portal gate would show her how it was done. If she could reconnect this to Emporia, then maybe more gates could be created to hold Kerrigan’s portals without draining her eternally.

She closed her eyes and ran her hands along the markings still visible on the stone archway. She could feel the magic in them. Not ancient Fae but some other long-lost language. One that she could use. One that her mother’s bangle seemed to recognize.

With a twist, the bracelet latched on to her arm and Kerrigan drew a portal door into the archway, thinking of the beautiful country of Byern with its mountainside castle and rolling hills—Cyrene’s home.

For a second, the distance overwhelmed her.

Emporia was four months by sea. It was less time by dragon flight, but even still, the distance was so great that no dragon would make the crossing unless under duress.

This would be the farthest she had ever pushed, and she didn’t know if she had enough of her mother’s strength to do it.

Then it was like the magic shifted.

A bridge formed. Not in the place she had been envisioning—a meadow she had landed in on Tavry’s back in battle when she had gone with Helly—but to another gate.

The gates knew each other.

It was the only way she could describe it. They were meant to join. She didn’t know where this one was. It was dark and shadowed. She had never been there before, so perhaps it would not give up its secrets until she answered the call.

Another moment and Kerrigan could see all the potential gates in Emporia.

There were at least a dozen—as if all the countries in Cyrene’s world had once been connected by these shadowy gates as well and they had fallen over the years as Kerrigan’s had.

If she pushed past that, she could feel the gates left abandoned in her own world.

Within the House of Shadows, the Holy Mountain, each of the dozen houses—they were all already there, all waiting.

If she wanted to, she could connect them all.

“Yes,” she breathed.

With a blink, it was done. The gates all glowed as one, connected and functional. She held on with a shudder as the final one in Byern materialized and the shimmery iridescence once again filled her portal door.

“To Byern,” she whispered. And then she stepped back, breaking her connection to the portal, her magic gone with it. But the door remained.

In its place was a ruin of a castle.

“You did it,” Fordham breathed.

“I connected them all. All of them in Emporia and Alandria. There’s one to the House of Shadows,” she told him as a tear fell down her cheek. “One in each of the houses.”

“What a magnificent creature you are.”

She laughed. “Shall we walk through?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

They took one step thousands of miles away and went to find Cyrene to tell her the good news.