by K. A. Linde
Kerrigan kept searching until she found Ellerby. He was a short, aging man with a bald patch at the top of his head. He hunched forward slightly with a curved spine, and he had his customary cane in his hand. People speculated that he was arched so because he refused to use his magic. That not using it withered the person from the inside. Kerrigan had no idea if that was true. People would say anything to condemn someone without magic.
By the time Mistress Moran took the stage, Helly still wasn’t in attendance. Kerrigan frowned. She wondered where Helly was. Should she have broken protocol to tell her about the protest being the one from her vision? Unease settled deeper into her bones.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for attending the annual Dragon Blessed ceremony,” Mistress Moran said. “As you know, we at the House of Dragons take great pride in the young souls that we are able to assist within Draco Mountain. The twenty-three bright minds you see before you have lived and worked inside the mountain alongside Society members and dragons. Their training has been extensive, and we’re pleased with the educational advancement of each and every one of our pupils.”
The crowd applauded the introduction. Kerrigan’s heart lessened at the words. They were likely scripted, but from Moran, they were heartfelt. She’d meant everything she said. Even though Kerrigan had been a thorn in her side, she still was proud of her on this day.
“Thousands of years before we stood on Alandrian soil, dragons ruled the island. Our history was fraught. The battles plentiful. Too many Fae and dragons alike died from those ancient battles. But it was one Fae maiden, Irena, who turned the tide of history. She negotiated a compromise, a truce, with the great dragon Ferrinix. And out of that came the first ever dragon bond. Fae and dragon linked until death. Anyone who would take a bond or bow to the supremacy of the dragon-bound society could live in peace. The Irena Bargain still lives today,” Mistress Moran said, quoting their history in hushed, worshipful tones. “And because of Irena’s great bravery, the Society rules all of Alandria. From the western forests of Woodloch to the eastern shores of Viland. To the high northern mountains of Tosin, all the way to the plains of Moran.” Mistress Moran respectfully bowed her head at the mention of her namesake.
“The tribes moved throughout the land, bound to the Dragon Society and its new government. Eventually settled to the twelve that we know and love today. In Woodloch, the warrior tribes, Venatrix, Herasi, and Galanthea. In Viland, the healing tribes, Bryonica, Concha, and Ibarra. In Tosin, the efficiency tribes, Zavala, Sayair, and Erewa. And in Moran, the tribes that resist magic’s call, Elsiande, Aude, and Genoa.”
Each time she called a tribe, the room applauded for their own.
“And because of the tribe system and the supremacy of the Society, we are able to help those who need it most with this bridge between the two—the House of Dragons.”
She swept her arm out to gesture to her students. “They are the bridge. They are the future. Let us celebrate them crossing that divide now.”
The applause was deafening. Moran’s call for their support and their nationalism brought the house down.
Kerrigan beamed with the rest of the crowd. Her feelings of unease dissipated as the ceremony officially commenced. This was what she had been raised for. This was the moment she had been waiting for. Today, she would fulfill her duty to the Society. She would be her own Irena Bargain.
Once the applause died down, Moran continued, “We’ll begin with this end.” She pointed to where Darby stood at the other end of the room. They’d been immediately separated and put into lines. “Darby.”
Darby jolted as if she’d just been struck by lightning. Fear blossomed on her face as she took stuttering steps forward to where Moran stood. Kerrigan didn’t know why she looked so afraid. She knew who was going to be claiming her and for what tribe.
“Darby is training to be a healer,” Moran told the crowd. “She’s dutiful, proficient, and kind. She loves etiquette classes and dancing. Who here has chosen Darby?”
Slowly, a figure materialized out of the crowd. Sonali was dressed in the dark blues of Bryonica. Her gown was regal and beyond reproach. She looked like a princess out of legend.
“I have chosen Darby.” She smiled softly and tipped her chin at Darby. “If you will have me?”
“Yes,” Darby squeaked.
A small titter of laughter came from the crowd. Darby gulped and looked even more frightened as Sonali strode up the steps of the stage. She gently withdrew a sapphire ring from her own finger and slid it onto Darby’s. The house ring of Stoirm. Gods.
“Come,” Sonali said gently, and Darby followed her off the stage and into the crowd below.
And so, the ceremony continued. Twenty-three of the House of Dragons’ best. Kerrigan knew every one of the people selected and cheered for them as they were chosen and moved on. Lyam went to Kenris in Zavala in the north. A peach Zavalan cloth square was placed into the pocket of his suit. He looked positively radiant. His eyes darted back to Kerrigan once before continuing through the crowd. Ayesha to Genoa. Hainfroy to Venatrix. Elenee to Concha. And on and on.
Until it reached Hadrian, who had gone positively green in the face.
“Hadrian,” Moran said.
He stepped forward, and Moran spoke all about his intelligence and studiousness. Kerrigan knew that he had been courting Javel with Sayair in the north. They had one of the greatest libraries outside of Draco Mountain. It was Hadrian’s dream to become a scholar.
But when Javel stepped forward… another person stepped forward too.
Fallon of Galanthea.
Kerrigan’s eyes widened in shock. This didn’t happen. The negotiations were usually complete before the ceremony to prevent this. And to have Galanthea, a war tribe, requesting Hadrian. It was unthinkable. What could they even offer?
Of course, Kerrigan knew that Fallon was different. He’d been part of the last dragon tournament, but he hadn’t won. He was attempting to change the make-up of Galanthea. But still… Hadrian?
“I have chosen Hadrian,” Javel said quickly, glaring at Fallon.
“I have also chosen Hadrian,” Fallon added. His voice was smooth and confident. Gone was the terrified boy who had entered the tournament five years earlier.
“This is quite unusual,” Moran said diplomatically. She looked to Hadrian with a raised eyebrow. As if to say, Your choice.
No wonder Hadrian had looked sick. He must have known this was going to happen.
“I…” Hadrian said, looking between the two men who would claim him. “I choose…” He stumbled backward a step and then said everything in a rush, “I choose Fallon.”
Moran laughed softly. “Fallon of Galanthea, step forward, please.”
Fallon put his hand on Javel’s shoulder and nodded at him once. An unspoken truce between them for the slight. Then, he came to stand before Hadrian. They were nearly eye-level. Fallon standing only an inch taller. He retrieved a gold torc from his suit pocket, and with the tenderness of a lover, he wrapped the gold Galanthean collar around Hadrian’s throat. His throat bobbed, and then he followed Fallon offstage.
The next three candidates went without fanfare. And then it was Kerrigan’s turn. She was the last one onstage. Everyone was staring at her messy red hair and slightly scandalous pink dress as she stepped evenly, carefully on her new high heels to Moran.
Even though she and Moran had had their ups and downs throughout the years, she gave her an encouraging smile. Kerrigan nodded at her once and then turned to face the crowd.
“Kerrigan is spunky and spontaneous. She loves weapons training and reading. She is fiercely loyal and fiercely competitive. Who here has chosen Kerrigan?”
Her heart raced as her eyes scanned the crowd for Ellerby. He’d been standing off to the right when it all started. But as the ceremony had gone on and worry crept through her, she’d lost him to her blurry vision and fear.
Now… she couldn’t find him.
He… he wasn’t
there.
He wasn’t there at all.
11
The Offer
No one came forward.
Kerrigan’s hands were sweating at her sides. Her throat felt like she’d stuffed cotton balls down it. Her body was frozen in place.
And then she heard it. Laughter. People in the crowd were laughing at her.
Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as shame and humiliation followed sharply. Like pinpricks turning to knife wounds. She didn’t want to cry. No, she couldn’t cry. Not here. Not before these people.
Her ears were ringing. This couldn’t be right. What had happened? Why would Ellerby have left?
“Now, now,” Moran admonished the crowd.
But Kerrigan was still standing there. She was still looking out at the sea of faces. And no one stepped forward. No one claimed her.
One word cut through the crowd—half-Fae.
Half-Fae.
Was that the reason this was happening? Had someone decided that half-Fae shouldn’t enter a tribe? Did Ellerby think that? He’d never made it seem that way in the past. He’d always been perfectly fine with her short ears and not even cared about magic. Everything had calmed down so much in the last five years; she’d been sure it wouldn’t matter.
Or… was she wrong? Had things just appeared to calm down?
Hadn’t she been attacked by Basem Nix in an alleyway for having the audacity to be half and beat him? Hadn’t he called her a leatha?
And of course, she’d known. She’d certainly known it wasn’t great. She hid her magic and her ears enough to know. But it was one thing to know and another thing to know.
To be standing on a stage in front of hundreds of people and not get chosen. To be laughed at.
“I…” she muttered.
She needed to get out of here. She didn’t want to be their amusement. Her father stepped forward, and she shook her head once. Because if this wasn’t humiliating enough, having her father vouch for her might be worse. She didn’t want to be shackled to him for any reason.
She was ready to rush off that horrible stage when the doors to the ceremony room burst open. Everyone wrenched away from Kerrigan’s fate to see who had just entered.
It was a disheveled Helly. Her eyes wide. Her hair out of its tight bun.
“The protests have turned into riots. We need more security to hold them back. Quickly!” Helly cried.
The party fell apart in a matter of minutes. Dragon Blessed were left behind by their new chosen family. Society members burst through the crowd toward Helly. Even Moran, who was hardly a fighter, hastened off the stage.
Kerrigan was left standing all alone. At least now, no one was paying attention to her.
She strode away from her friends and off the stage. She didn’t know where she was going or what she had in mind. She just needed to get away. Away from the life she’d thought she knew and the humiliating laughter from the crowd and the slimy feeling of standing onstage and no one choosing her.
But then she heard her name, and she stalled.
Helly ran to her side. “Kerrigan, the protest…”
“Yes,” she said at once before Helly could ask the question about her visions. “I wanted to find you when I first got here.”
“And the Red Masks?” she asked, pitching her voice lower.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s the same protest as what I saw. But… it could be, Helly,” she whispered.
Helly nodded in understanding. “At least I know it is one and the same. It must mean that this is the beginning.”
“The beginning of what?”
“That, we will see,” Helly said evenly. She shook herself. “You were still onstage with Moran when I burst in. Was the ceremony not complete?”
“Oh, it was finished,” she said viciously.
Helly cocked her head to the side. “What happened?”
“No one chose me.”
Helly frowned. “That’s impossible.”
Kerrigan shot her a deadly look. “I do not jest.”
“Helly!” a voice called from the hall. “We need you to direct people.”
She waved at them. Her gaze was still on Kerrigan. “We will figure this out,” she told her confidently. “After this is complete, we will find a place for you.”
“Helly!” that voice yelled again.
She sighed and brushed a hand on Kerrigan’s shoulder before rushing out after the other Society members. The doors were closed and barred from the inside as the protests raged on in the night beyond.
Kerrigan only made it a dozen feet away from the stage before her friends caught up with her. Hadrian put his hand on her sleeve, but she pulled away. She didn’t want comfort like this. If anyone asked about her well-being, she might not be able to hold in her tears. The shape of humiliation still raged through her stomach, and she didn’t wish to unleash it until she was well and truly alone.
“Kerrigan, I’m so sorry,” Darby whispered.
“We never expected this to happen. Not in a million years,” Hadrian said.
“No,” she agreed. “In fact, it hasn’t happened in the nearly thousand since the inception of the House of Dragons.”
“It’s bullshit,” Lyam snapped, sharp as a whip.
That almost dragged a smile from her features.
“Lyam,” Darby admonished.
“It’s true,” he cut right in. “The whole thing is beneath the House of Dragons and the Society. They should have never let that happen.”
“He’s right,” Hadrian said softly. “I don’t know how it could have happened. You had already negotiated with Ellerby. He’d been your choice for months.”
“Yeah, and then he disappeared right before my turn came,” she told them.
Darby blinked in surprise. “He disappeared?”
“Yes. He just vanished. Left the room before he could pick me.”
“That’s odd.”
“Sabotage?” Lyam questioned.
Kerrigan shrugged. “Or a change of heart because of these.” She swept aside the braids in her hair and revealed her slightly pointed ears.
Darby shook her head. “It can’t be. That’s the lowest of the low.”
“You don’t know what it’s like out there, Darbs.”
Hadrian cut in, “We don’t. But the Society is honorable. They would never have let that happen. They took you in, knowing you were half.”
“And things have changed,” she reminded them. She gestured to the protests outside. “That isn’t normal either.”
“But they’re not protesting you,” Lyam said. “They’re protesting the tournament.”
“And you do remember the last time people started to protest the tournament?”
Her friends collectively fell silent. They remembered. They remembered that fateful night. She had come back bruised and bloody. Lucky not to be dead. Her world had never been the same.
“I can’t just stand here,” Kerrigan finally said. “I need to go see what’s happening with the protests.”
“What?” Hadrian asked.
“Kerrigan, just wait here. The Society will handle it.”
Maybe they would, but she hated standing around and feeling useless. She needed to do something. She had enough magic to help the Society if the protests got out of hand. And she wanted to be there to see if her vision came true. If the red-masked figure appeared again.
“There’s a back way out,” Kerrigan said.
They’d walked every inch of this building in the years before. Younger Dragon Blessed always helped prepare the ceremony, as surely as they had this year.
“Kerrigan, don’t go,” Darby said.
“Come with me.”
Darby shook her head. Kerrigan saw in Hadrian’s eyes that he couldn’t do it. When she turned to Lyam, she was expecting a similar no from him. He’d lost so much of his edge of adventure in the last year. One day, he’d been her right hand, and the next, he’d confessed his feelings and been d
etermined to protect her.
But what she saw on his face today was what she remembered from so many years in the past. She couldn’t help her own face from mirroring it.
“I’ll go,” he agreed.
“Lyam!” Hadrian and Darby said together.
“We’ll be back soon,” Lyam told them.
Kerrigan just nodded, and they were off. They passed through the crowd barred inside, slipped through a side exit into a servants’ corridor, and then followed it until they reached a back entrance. Lyam unbarred the door as Kerrigan used her magic to lift the lock. It would be dangerous to leave it without barring the door again. But it was much harder to do magic when she couldn’t see. Instead, she flicked her wrist and put a bit of rock against the handle. She spelled it so that if someone tried to open the door, she would be alerted. It was a trick that she’d learned while living in the House of Dragons when everyone wanted to sneak into each other’s rooms.
“If something happens, we can rush back,” she told Lyam.
He nodded. “We should be quick.”
Kerrigan agreed. The pair slunk through the shadows. They couldn’t get too close to what was happening. Kerrigan was far from inconspicuous. She was still in her pink party gown, and if that wasn’t enough, her red hair was a beacon. Together, they crept along the side of the building and turned the corner to catch sight of what was transpiring.
Kerrigan was almost disappointed to see the Society members working in perfect synchronicity. That the humans she’d witnessed were being herded back into orderly lines, save for a few who had clearly acted violently. The Society Guard were hauling about a dozen past Kerrigan and Lyam’s hiding spot. Her gaze was trained on those people as she wondered if they were the same ones from her vision. She knew there had to be a reason that she had seen them… seen this whole protest.