by K. A. Linde
Thea nodded. “We’re pleased that you’re here. The streets are full of your name. I must admit that I’m quite excited to meet you in person. We all are.”
“I’m just… me.”
“My dear girl, you are so much more,” Thea insisted. “You defied the odds. You beat them at their own game. You are the only voice for half-Fae in the entire Society. You are more important than you know.”
“Okay, but …” Kerrigan bit her lip. “Look, as much as I want to help, I can’t come out publicly for this.”
Thea frowned. “What do you mean?” She looked to Clover, who shrugged.
“I have a year of training before I’m officially inducted as a full member. They can still kick me out for any offense in the next year. It might not be public that this is the case, but it’s my reality. If you want me to be able to make any change, then I can’t be found here.”
Thea sighed. “Of course this is their stipulation.” She ran a hand down her face and looked to her coconspirators. “Well, this changes nothing about our mission. It would be a lot easier to recruit if we were able to use your name, but we would not like to jeopardize you.”
“And why can’t you use her name?” a voice said, a figure stepping into the dining room.
Kerrigan whipped around and found herself face-to-face with Dozan Rook. She so rarely saw him out of the Wastes that it was a shock to find him here now in all his glory. His burnished hair was brushed back out of his amber eyes. He wore a crisp three-piece black suit with a black button-up shirt and black tie. Only the red R pin on his label suggested that he was a symbol of the Wastes. Not that it wasn’t obvious, just looking into his beautiful, hardened face. A sensuous smile played on his lips.
“Hello, Red,” he purred.
Kerrigan blinked and stepped backward. She hated this reaction to Dozan. The pull that had always been there. It didn’t matter that she’d been obsessed with him at twelve. Her first love at sixteen. Her first everything. She wished that she didn’t react to him at all. Because he certainly never saw her as more than a pawn.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Thea stepped forward, holding her hand out to Dozan. “Mr. Rook, thank you for joining us.”
“A pleasure,” he said. His gaze swept back to Kerrigan. “We should absolutely use Kerrigan’s name. Even if she doesn’t directly show her face in support, alluding to her involvement will give us a certain advantage.”
“We don’t want to harm her chances,” Thea said thoughtfully.
“Give her plausible deniability. Use her name to say that she’s working with us, but if it comes back to her, she can deny ever being there. We only keep her existence between us.”
“It’s a good idea,” Clover said.
Kerrigan frowned. “What if they don’t believe me? What if someone says they saw me here?”
Thea shook her head. “We’ll deny it to our grave.”
Kerrigan hoped it never came to that. And having Dozan here made it even less likely that it would stay silent. “You never answered me. What are you doing here?”
“How do you think they’re funding this little adventure?”
Kerrigan scoffed. “You’ve never spent a dime you didn’t think you could earn back ten times over.”
“Then, you understand why I’m doing it,” he said with an arched eyebrow.
She didn’t. This made no sense. Clover being here made sense. She was an idealist and always fought for those less fortunate. After losing her parents at a young age, she wanted to protect people. To not let others suffer.
Dozan had killed his own family to get ahead. He was the king of the Wastes. He did nothing without a direct return on investment. Including his investment in Kerrigan.
“Dozan has generously offered his services,” Thea interjected. “He has as much right as anyone else to want to see humans and half-Fae be treated more fairly.”
“You offered?” she asked skeptically. She stepped forward. “You never offer. What’s in this for you?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, princess, I’m human.”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped at him.
“Why not? Doesn’t everyone know you’re actually a princess now?” he asked with a self-satisfied smirk.
Kerrigan didn’t know why, but Dozan always drew this side out of her. All she wanted to do was bury her fist in his too-pretty face. The insufferable bastard.
But Clover saw it coming and tugged her backward. “Why don’t we all try to get along? We’re here for the same cause, right?”
“Right,” Dozan said but didn’t drop the look.
Kerrigan breathed in deeply and released it. She was too tired to deal with this. To deal with him. Clover should have prepared her for seeing him. Nothing riled her up more than Dozan Rook.
“I need a smoke,” Clover said. “Come on. Let’s get some air.”
Thea nodded as Clover pulled Kerrigan back out of the room. She brushed past Dozan without a backward look and out into the entrance to the courtyard. Already, the garden was filling with attendees for the RFA meeting, and so they huddled together behind a large gargoyle structure. Clover tried three times to light up a loch cigarette, failing with the matches each time and cursing colorfully.
“Let me,” Kerrigan said. She hadn’t had magic training this afternoon, so she actually had a whiff of magic in her veins. She snapped her fingers and touched the flame to Clover’s cigarette.
She inhaled deeply, letting the addictive drug dull the chronic pain that lashed through her body. “Why do you have to let him get to you?”
“Why didn’t you tell me he’d be here?”
Clover opened her eyes and shot her a look. “You already didn’t want to come. Would you have jumped for joy if I’d told you Dozan would be here?”
“No,” she grumbled.
“Yeah. So, I thought this would be better. I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t. You two just need to bang again or something. The tension is… a lot.”
Kerrigan snorted. “Not happening.”
“Why not?” Clover winked at her. “Waiting for a prince to come to his senses?”
“No,” she muttered. “I don’t think that he will.”
“So, if Fordham has friend-zoned you, why not get some of that pent-up energy out with someone else?”
Kerrigan’s cheeks heated at the thought. It’d be as easy as breathing. Hooking up with Dozan wasn’t any different than fighting with him. The only time they both relaxed in each other’s presence was in the afterglow. Maybe a few rounds would help her get over the prince taking up all the thoughts in her head, but it didn’t mean it was a good idea.
After Clover’s cigarette, they returned to the room. Dozan still stood, poised and ready. Kerrigan made no further comments about him being there. She sat through the planning session until the sound of voices in the courtyard was loud enough to draw them away.
“If you do not wish to be a part of this, I would recommend keeping your cloak up,” Thea said. “Stay out of sight.”
Kerrigan nodded and tugged her hood back over her very recognizable hair. Thea retreated to the entrance to the courtyard and greeted the awaiting crowd.
“You’ll be okay back here?” Clover asked. “Hadrian said that he’d meet me.”
Kerrigan nodded. “Go see him. Tell him I miss him.”
“Will do,” she said and then darted after a blue-haired Fae who looked out of place in a sea of humans and half-Fae.
Dozan stepped up to her side. It wouldn’t do for the king of the Wastes to be seen in that crowd either. His involvement would have to be as secretive as Kerrigan’s but for more nefarious reasons. He stopped when he was just off of her shoulder. He towered over her a full head, and she could practically feel him breathing into her ear.
“You did this,” he said gently. Not his normal accusatory tone.
“Did what?”
“This.” He gestured to the swelling crowd of people fr
om their vantage point. “It wasn’t the RFA people that managed to get this many people here. It wasn’t the message of equality and unity that Thea has been spouting for over a decade. It wasn’t even that they’d killed the only witness they had that could get them to the Red Masks. It was you.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You proved to them that they could win.” He brushed a red curl into her cloak. She shivered at the touch. “You’re a symbol.”
“I’m just a person.”
His gaze caught on hers. “You’ve never been just anything.”
Thea raised her hands to the sky. “Today, we speak for those who have long been cast in the shadow, who have no voice, who have no hope. Today, I bring you hope!”
The crowd roared with approval. Their voices raised to the skies, chanting for the end of this oppression. Wanting what the Fae already had—equal rights, a place in the government, a way out from under the boot of the Society.
The same thing that Kerrigan had always wanted when she was pushed aside. When she was called a leatha in a dark alley and abused for her half-Fae heritage and abandoned at the foot of the mountain for the state of her ears, the human side of her blood. For all of those times that people had told her no and the one time she’d looked back at them and demanded her place in front of the entire world. People were here because of that moment when she’d told the Society that she belonged and they’d agreed with her.
Hope swelled in her chest. An unfamiliar feeling that flickered to life, tentative and unsure. For the first time, she saw what the world was capable of if they all looked at those who oppressed them and demanded their due—freedom.
19
The Assassin
ISA
Isa crossed her arms and leaned against the pillar in the back of the courtyard. The woman with the shaved head had been yammering on equality for an eternity at this point, and she couldn’t process any more of this propaganda. Humans and half-Fae were treated poorly. Sure. But they were beneath Fae. So, why was that a surprise to anyone?
If she didn’t have to be here, she would have avoided it all together. But no, Daddy’s orders.
“And when we finally had a witness, when we finally had the leader of the Red Masks in jail, they allowed someone to murder him.”
Boos rose from the crowd. Isa smirked at the depth of her dirty work.
“Basem Nix died inside the mountain, which means our enemy lurks within those hallowed walls. If we don’t fight for what is right, they will never listen!”
Isa tuned the leader back out. She wasn’t wrong. There were Red Masks in the mountain, but they had no hope of stopping the movement. So quaint.
At least something interesting had come out of being here. She’d noticed Kerrigan’s friends amid the crowd. The little blue-haired Fae and the human indentured to Dozan Rook. She had no idea what the former was doing here. He was a full-blooded Fae. He’d been selected into Galanthea tribe by a former tournament competitor. What more could he want? Obviously, growing up with Kerrigan and befriending this loch addict had addled his brain.
There were a handful of other Fae in attendance but mostly humans and half-Fae. She’d never understand what they were doing here. But then again, she’d grown up with Father.
“Thank you for your time, and I’ll see you next week!” the woman at the front said, projecting her voice with some kind of magic. She was only half-Fae but had enough magic to do that. It was almost impressive.
But that was Isa’s cue. She’d done her job. Now, it was time to get out of there.
She slipped back through the garden and out onto the alleyway that led toward the Square. Most of the humans were heading west toward the Dregs, but Isa cut east toward the Row. Not everything in the Row was the enormous, aristocratic mansions, the age-old plots of land passed down generation to generation. Deeper in this part of town were rows of townhouses, each a different bright color to match the layout of the streets. Moneyed Fae, who hadn’t had families living here since the dawn of time, could still afford the townhomes and were welcome by the Fae Home Association that governed who could and couldn’t purchase in the district.
Isa thought it was a fine thing to have rules for all of that, but the association itself was horrid. They had rules from lawn height to exterior paint and everything else in between. It would have been fine if they’d addressed it all the same for everyone, but it was a bunch of petty people on power trips.
She slid into the shadows as the gentry strode by, arm in arm. She ducked down the back alley that led to Father’s home here and rapped thrice on the back door. She uttered the magical password that let her bypass his warding. If she hadn’t been keyed to the door, the password wouldn’t have worked, and she’d have likely been knocked out.
Luckily, she was. She pushed the door open to the home, slung her cloak on a hook, and then traipsed through the artfully decorated room to her father’s study. Most of the servants had already gone home, save for his butler, who always made himself scarce when she appeared.
She took a deep breath at the entrance, reminding herself who she was. That she had no reason to fear him. She had proven herself time and time again. She would continue to do so. So long as he didn’t discover the money she’d hidden away. The hope she had to escape this life that he’d richly provided for her. Nothing for free, of course.
“Isa, do stop hovering and come in,” Father barked from the study door.
She winced at the tone of his voice. Then, she cleared her face of any expression and pushed her way inside. She was beyond wondering how he had known that she was standing there.
Isa moved swiftly across the room to where he was seated in the lush office behind a mahogany desk that overlooked massive bay windows out to the Row beyond. She bent onto one knee, offering fidelity. “Father.”
He placed his hand on the top of her crop of pure white hair. It was the one feature that he disliked on her. Her face could stop carriages. She had been a beautiful child, developing into a distressingly stunning young woman. She could have become a member of the aristocracy, flitting about at the Season, looking for a husband like every other brainless debutante. But Father had seen something else in her and employed her skills to assassin craft. She’d taken to it like breathing.
“You may rise,” he said finally. “What is the word?”
“RFA had a huge outpouring at the meeting. Almost exclusively half-Fae and humans. They’re planning a protest against the Society. No details yet, just getting people invested and wanting them to tell their friends. It was much more well attended than the last one I went to.”
“And the girl?”
Isa shook her head. “No, sir. No sign of Kerrigan. Though her friends were there.”
“Which ones?”
“Clover and Hadrian,” she said, plucking their names out of memory. “The blue-haired …”
“I know who they are,” he said dismissively. “You’re sure she wasn’t there?”
“I saw no sign of her. They kept alluding to her involvement, but if she was there, then she was well hidden.”
Even from her. And Isa knew all of Kerrigan’s moves. She’d studied them extensively in the month she tried to kill the girl. Her hands still ached for her knives at the thought. The one who had gotten away.
Father had said she couldn’t finish the job, but Isa hoped he would change his mind before this was all over.
“She’ll be there,” Father said with a nod. His eyes cast past Isa’s head to the window. The promenade of families displaying the goods before the Season began. “And when she is, we’ll be ready.”
20
The Testing
“How’d you do?” Noda asked, panting slightly as she stepped out of the water-magic test.
Kerrigan shot her a thumbs-up because speaking wasn’t in the cards yet. Three weeks had passed since the meeting with the RFA. She’d gone back each Friday night after her training with Tieran to listen to Thea’s inspir
ational words. And all the while, she’d gotten better and better at all of her training—physical and magical. They’d all spent hours upon hours working on building their stamina so that they could get to this moment—testing.
To move forward at the end of the first four-week boot camp, they all had to pass a series of tests. Otherwise, all of them would spend another four weeks training and not working with their dragons. They’d pushed each other even more after they found that out, improving at alarming rates.
“Same,” she said. “Water was easier than fire.”
“No way,” Kerrigan said, finally recovered. “Water was terrible.”
“You suck at water though,” Noda pointed out.
“Fair.”
Then, Roake stepped out of the air final. His face was pale, and he was shaking.
“You okay?” Kerrigan asked.
Roake glanced blankly at them. “That woman …”
“Air is the hardest,” Noda agreed, looking at Roake with pity. “Come on, Roake. Let’s grab some food before you do your last magic test.”
“Sure. Food.”
He stepped past Kerrigan and into the dining hall. Kerrigan was too jittery to eat. She had air to do after passing water and earth this morning and fire a few minutes ago. They had to run Alura’s obstacle course this afternoon in the arena and then go straight into Lorian’s sword-fighting test, and they didn’t know what it would be. Kerrigan had never been in the arena as a competitor. She’d flown in as a winner of the tournament, and that was the extent of it. She was both excited and nervous about the prospect. The others had that advantage over her.
Fordham stepped out of the dining hall. He’d had his break for testing this go round. “She still in there?”
Kerrigan nodded. Audria was in the earth test, which was her weakest element. She’d never fully planted herself in the earth to work with it like the rest of them.
“Wonder how it’s going.”