by K. A. Linde
“A little birdie told me that not only did they cease, but they also never even questioned anyone in the Society.”
“What?” she gasped.
“Only the Guard.”
“But it had to be an inside job.”
“You and I know that. I’m sure even they know that. But they protect their own. And you aren’t quite one of their own yet.”
Kerrigan fumed. “I cannot believe this.”
“But can’t you?”
Yes, she could. She’d been so wrapped up in training that she hadn’t even had time to think about the investigation. But if they hadn’t even spoken to anyone in the Society, no wonder it had gone nowhere.
“I’ll figure it out,” she said. “Let me know if you hear anything else.”
“Ah, you want me to spy for you now?”
She glared at him. “Ah. So, you didn’t give me this information freely? I won’t fight for you.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to. Let’s call this one on me.”
“You don’t offer anything for free.”
“I want you to find out who killed him,” he said, lethally calm. “And I want you to make them pay.”
Kerrigan gulped at those words from Dozan. She knew exactly what he meant. What he’d done to get his throne. The throne settled on the blood of his enemies.
She nodded anyway. “I’ll do what I can. Tell Clove I went back to the mountain?”
“My dealer will be taken care of,” he said with a small bow, and then he disappeared into the crowd.
She watched his back, feeling conflicted by his help. She doubted this was all really free. He wanted something out of it. The killer being punished wouldn’t be enough for Dozan. But she couldn’t see the threads in front of her.
Instead, she took the next turn and hurried back to the mountain. She didn’t bother sneaking back in through her side entrance; she went straight through the front doors. The guards looked at her in confusion until she flashed the Society insignia on her trainee robes. They wouldn’t stop a Society member from entering even if they hadn’t seen her exit.
She stopped by her room first when she nearly ran right into Valia.
“Kerrigan,” she gasped. “There you are.”
“What are you doing in my room again?”
“Helly sent me,” Valia said quickly, looking down.
The power dynamic between them had shifted. She hated feeling the gap between them.
“Good. I was on my way.” Kerrigan flung her cloak onto her bed and then followed Valia out.
“You were already going there?”
“Yes. Why did she send you?”
“She didn’t say. Something about training.”
Kerrigan frowned. Well, that could be anything, considering how poorly Kerrigan had been doing with bonded training. Not that she had any interest in talking about that.
“How does it feel?” Valia asked as they approached Helly’s rooms.
“How does what feel?”
“To be one of them?”
Kerrigan sighed. “Tenuous.”
Valia didn’t speak after that. The topic was closed. Nothing could change that Kerrigan had been given what Valia had been denied.
Valia knocked once, and Helly called, “Come in.”
Kerrigan stepped inside, closing the door behind her. “Helly.”
“Oh, Kerrigan, good. She found you.”
“I was already on my way.”
“Oh? What for?”
Kerrigan crossed her arms. “You closed the investigation.”
Helly sighed. “You heard about that?”
“Yes! What were you thinking?”
“It wasn’t my call. The head investigator found no evidence to trace back to the perpetrator. No one had any information.”
“And you didn’t get any because you refused to question the Society members!”
Helly frowned and slowly sank into her seat. “I was overruled in that as well. You must see how it looks. As someone now in the Society, we go through vigorous training. Our life is dedicated to this place. To question our own would mean to question the very methods that put them there.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing.”
“Maybe it is,” Helly said. “But you’re young, and you change much more willingly. The others …”
“So, you’re going to let them get away? Someone within the Society did this, and you aren’t even going to find out who it was?”
“That is the way of things. We have suspicions, and we’re waiting to see if they slip up.”
“You’re waiting for another murder?” Kerrigan gasped.
“Gods, no, Kerrigan. Don’t you know me better than that? I have people being watched. I am doing what I can through the means I have. I cannot publicly accuse people, but I can search out evidence my own way.”
Kerrigan finally sank into a seat next to Helly, her anger turning into resignation. “Why must it be this way?”
Helly took one of Kerrigan’s hands. “The Society has been around for thousands of years. We’re changing incrementally all the time. We’ll do what we can, I promise.”
It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do for now.
“And I called you here because Zina sent me this.”
Helly passed Kerrigan a slip of paper with Zina’s scrawl on it.
I can start training the girl on the Night of the Dead. Let her know, will you, Hell?
Kerrigan shivered. The Night of the Dead was still six weeks away, and just thinking about it made her nervous. “Why do we have to wait so long?”
“With Zina, who knows? If she says the Night of the Dead, then she knows what she’s doing.”
“All right. The Night of the Dead it is,” Kerrigan said, rising to her feet.
Irritation about the investigation hit her. She hated that this place was still so set in the past. And she was starting to worry that one girl wasn’t going to be able to fix it.
27
The Library
“You’re doing just fine,” Audria said, clapping Kerrigan on her back as they headed to lunch later the next week.
“I suck,” she grumbled.
Bond training was a nightmare. By the time she finished every morning, she felt like she’d been run over by a carriage. At least yesterday, she’d gotten to take it out on Lorian. She’d fought ferociously until even Lorian seemed almost impressed. Not that he’d ever say it out loud.
“The bond is hard for me too,” she confessed. “I’ve never had anything like this. Fordham makes it look easy.”
Kerrigan glanced over to him and found him already watching her. He met her gaze evenly with an arched eyebrow until she hastily looked away. “He does, doesn’t he?”
“What’s going on with you two anyway?”
“Nothing,” Kerrigan said slowly.
Audria rolled her eyes. “Look, I made the mistake of inviting March to the Season, but you can tell me. Are you two involved?”
“No,” she repeated. “We’re really not. He’s not interested.”
Audria pulled her to a stop. “Kerrigan, you’d have to be blind not to see that he’s interested. It’s palpable.”
Kerrigan shrugged. “It’s not my story to tell. Just know that it isn’t happening.”
“His loss,” she said with a giggle. “If it’s not Ashby March, the most eligible bachelor of the Season, that you want, then we will find you someone!”
Kerrigan wanted to tell her that she didn’t need the help, but it was easier to let Audria ramble than to argue.
They finished up lunch as a team and headed into their history lesson. Luckily, it was the easiest of the three classes. Far easier than her language elective, which she’d taken to brush up on her ancient Fae. She’d had a lot of these lessons at the House of Dragons. By a lot of the same teachers too.
Kerrigan took a seat in the row of chairs before their instructor, a bubbly Fae with long, braided blonde hair, light-blue eyes, and a peach-co
lored pin on her black Society robes to mark her as a member of tribe Zavala, far in the northern mountains.
“Welcome back,” Mistress Movanna said cheerfully. She bounced slightly with each step and pressed thin spectacles up the bridge of her nose.
Kerrigan had rarely seen a Fae have to wear the enhancing glasses. Though Movanna joked it was because she was always deciphering tiny lines of ancient Fae.
“Today, we’re going to discuss the Irena Bargain.”
Roake groaned softly.
Movanna laughed. “I know. I know. We’ve all heard it before. Of course we know all the details. No need to even discuss it, right?”
Kerrigan wanted to nod but had a feeling that Movanna was joking.
“I’ll tell you the story, and you tell me what you think,” Movanna suggested. “Thousands of years ago, Fae discovered an uninhabited world. To their shock, dragons existed here already. The Fae wanted the land for themselves and began a battle between Fae and dragon, which the Fae were losing. One Fae maiden walked alone into the belly of the beast and struck a truce with the dragon leader, Ferrinix. Together, it was the first dragon bond and the beginning of the Society. The Fae agreed to live under Society rule, and twelve tribes split the land for themselves based on their belief of magic. Three tribes to the west in Viland, who believed magic should be used for war. Three to the east in Moran, who thought magic should be used for good. To the north in Tosin, who used magic for efficiency. And three more to the south, who believed magic should be used for nothing or menial things, depending on the translation. Is that what you learned?”
Kerrigan nodded. Everyone else was nodding along as well, except Fordham. He had his arms crossed and looked dubious.
“Fordham?” Movanna asked.
“They tell it differently in the House of Shadows.”
“I believe they would,” Movanna said eagerly. “In fact, I would love to learn the tale from you one day. Tell us one thing that stands out starkly to you.”
“There weren’t twelve tribes,” Fordham said.
“Correct. Correct. There weren’t even thirteen,” Movanna added eagerly. “Thirteen is what we landed on after many of the tribes combined through marriage, enslavement, or war. We started with hundreds of tribes. Not to mention, all Fae didn’t show up at once. We showed up over hundreds of years, different tribes claiming land and warring with the dragons as their territory diminished.”
Audria’s hand shot up. “Why is it taught the other way then?”
“Myth, legend, nationalism, a good story? You take your pick.” Movanna bounced around the room excitedly.
The door opened at the back of the room, and Master Bastian appeared.
“Can I help you, Councilman?”
“Just here to observe. Pretend I’m not here,” he said, shutting the door behind him.
Movanna shrugged. “As you wish. Now, Irena. What do we know about her?”
Noda held her hand up. “She’s a maiden.”
“And Fae,” Roake added.
“Indeed. That’s about all despite depictions of her all over the city. But in the history books, there’s a different picture. She could have been the chieftain of her tribe, sent to kill the dragon, Ferrinix, and instead made a different choice.”
The room was hushed at the pronouncement.
“It’s all fascinating, isn’t it?” Movanna said. “Now, let’s back up and discuss the tribe arrival and what they found.”
Kerrigan listened, rapt, as everything she’d thought that she knew about history was carefully dismantled by a small, bubbly historian. By the end of the lesson, her mind was whirring a thousand miles a minute, and she had three parchments on the Irena Bargain to write before next week.
They all groaned as they got out of their seats to head to magic training.
Bastian clapped his hands once. “I came to inform you that Mistress Zahina is gone for the week, so there will be no air lesson this evening. You are on your own. Use your time well.”
Roake whooped. “Might actually get to bed before midnight.”
Audria laughed as she looped arms with him. “This calls for cake.”
“Everything calls for cake.”
“You have never said anything more right,” Noda said with a laugh.
“Kerrigan, if I can have a word,” Bastian said as she passed him behind Fordham.
“Of course,” she said, waving Fordham on with the others.
“I’ll be in the library. Come find me later,” he said.
She nodded and then turned her attention to Bastian.
“Walk with me, Kerrigan,” he said and waited for her to fall into step beside him. “That was quite a lesson. Mistress Movanna is energetic.”
“She is. It was fascinating.”
“She’s constantly dredging up new information about the founding of the Society. You’ll get to more modern times, and she’ll stop caring,” he said with a laugh. “She considers the Great War modern.”
“That sounds like her.”
“I must confess that I showed up to your lesson for a reason,” Bastian said with a smile. It stretched the side of his face that had been burned from an accident as a child. He grew up in a village in the south, where the closest healer was miles away. It was what had sent him to participate in the Society and try to help those who most needed it. She respected that about him. “I heard a rumor that you were at a recent protest in the city.”
Kerrigan gulped. So much for no one telling anyone that she had been there. “Sir?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not here to stop you. I understand your reasoning for doing it. I was the one who signed the form that sanctioned the protest in the first place.”
“Oh. Well, that was nice of you.”
“It was legal. But there are others who, shall I say, would prefer to quash the protests entirely. I believe they would not look favorably on you attending them.”
“I understand.”
“I want you to be careful. We need people like you in our ranks.”
“I’m being careful.” But was she? She’d shown her face on purpose. It could have gotten back to anyone.
Bastian stopped her with his hand on her arm. “Don’t let Lorian find out, Kerrigan.” Kerrigan shivered at the words. “He is your strongest detractor and will do anything to get you removed from your position. Helly and I can only do so much if he sways the rest of the council.”
Kerrigan gulped and nodded. “Thank you for the warning, sir.”
He patted her shoulder. “Good girl. Now, run off with your friends. I remember my own training and having very little time to relax. Zahina’s absence should free you up for the evening.”
She thanked him and then hurried away. She thought about finding the others for cake, which sounded delicious right now, but her head was buzzing about the protest and Bastian finding out. How much she didn’t want Lorian to find out. And instead, she found herself in front of the library.
The massive oak double doors were open to reveal the stacks beyond. Rows and rows and rows filled with parchment and thick, musty books. The librarian was a stodgy, old Fae male who was a steward like Valia but treated everyone as if they were beneath him. She didn’t mind him that much. She could deal with his ill humor when she was surrounded by the books. The smell of parchment and the feel of endless memory all in one place. It was enough to make her want to skip through the halls.
She bypassed the librarian and searched for Fordham. A part of her felt more connected to him than her dragon. She couldn’t feel a bond with Tieran at this distance, but something about Fordham pulled her to his hiding spot before she ever knew he was there. He scratched out a verse on a piece of parchment. Several had already been discarded next to him, likely burned to ash later if he hated them that much. Her sad, broody prince writing his sad, broody poetry. The only thing he kept entirely to himself. She’d read a sliver of it once and immediately felt as if she was invading his privacy. She’d do anything to know
what was on that paper. What he wrote about when he thought no one else was watching.
“There you are,” she said finally.
Fordham startled. He shoved the paper under a book half the size of the large oak table. The poetry vanishing that quickly. “Kerrigan, you found me.”
“Indeed.”
“What did Bastian want?”
Kerrigan sighed heavily and plopped down in the seat next to him. She hadn’t even planned to come see him. They had barely seen each other outside of classes. They were careful and professional and not at all what she actually wanted from him. But in this moment, she wanted her friend.
“I know that look. What did you do now?” he asked.
She glanced up into those smoky-gray eyes. Her stomach fluttered with that one look. How had she once thought him so sinister? She knew objectively that he was terrifying, but when he looked at her, it wasn’t there anymore.
“I might have gotten involved with a group called RFA—Rights For All.”
Fordham waited. He didn’t interrupt. Just sat there and let her tell her story.
“It’s an organization that is trying to petition the Society for equal protection and rights under the law. A representative on the council, a say in the government, better treatment by the Guard, that sort of thing.”
“I’m sure that’s popular,” he said sarcastically.
“Yeah. Well, more people than I thought, honestly. I went to a meeting with Clover and found out that I’m”—she huffed in annoyance at the next words—“some sort of celebrity.”
He arched an eyebrow.
“I know. It’s ridiculous, but I’m here right now, and believers are taking that as a symbol that the Society is ready for change.”
“Okay.” He still sounded dubious.
“So, I went to a protest and spoke to some people there. We marched through the streets, and it was amazing. I felt so supported. I’ve wanted this for so long.” She shook her head. “But Bastian found out I was there.”
“Is he going to kick you out?” His voice was laced with concern.
“No, he wants me to be careful. If Lorian gets wind of it …”