House of Shadows: Royal Houses Book Two

by K. A. Linde

  Fordham moved into position, as if the change in rank had no effect on him. He was the crowned prince. This was his battle, his sister, his people.

  “It doesn’t have to be this way,” Fordham said in answer to his sister.

  “Oh, I think it does. I felt your magic on the battlefield. I could feel your whore beside you. The wall is down, and you still want to imprison us,” Wynter said. “We’re not too happy about that.”

  “I want freedom for my people, not war and bloodshed.”

  “Then, you are not truly one of us any longer.”

  Wynter smiled dangerously and then raised her hands, pulling the shadows toward her. Fordham snarled and launched himself at her. The acolytes bellowed, and Kerrigan couldn’t keep her focus on Fordham any longer. She raised her sword, letting the magic pull in close around her as she fought the first of Wynter’s fanatics as Aisling went for Alura.

  Kerrigan met sword to sword with the smallest female. Her eyes were rabid and hungry. Kerrigan couldn’t believe her strength as she buffeted Kerrigan back.

  “You are not worthy,” she gritted out.

  Kerrigan ignored her, pushing her back and then swinging the blade wide as flames raced up the length of it. She shot them toward the girl, who ducked and rolled out of the way. Water crashed into Kerrigan’s side, and she tumbled sideways. Her sword went wide, falling into the river.

  Kerrigan caught the edge of the dock before she could go into the racing water with it. Then, Roake was there, pulling rocks from the ground and hurling them at the acolytes, as if he were playing Dragon Eggs. They collided heavily with a pair of acolytes, bowling them over and crashing them into the wall. Kerrigan hoisted herself up and did a somersault to gain more traction as she threw a blast of air. One acolyte got caught in her storm and was whipped around in a cyclone before crashing into the water.

  Audria had taken out a handful of their own while Alura clashed with Aisling. Wynter and Fordham kept appearing and disappearing with their dark shadow magic. Kerrigan hoped he had enough energy for that. He’d already pushed it further than he should. Wynter was probably well rested, waiting for this very moment.

  Alura called out a command, and then they all engaged as they had been practicing for the last year. Together, they weren’t the might of ten thousand soldiers, but it was the force they had to get through to be able to retreat to the safety of their dragons and get back into the fight.

  Then with a shout, Aisling thrust under Alura’s guard and slashed across her ribs. Alura cried out in pain. Kerrigan could barely look as she fought her own acolyte. They were well trained. Better than them maybe even. But she couldn’t stop. Not even to help Alura.

  Kerrigan had no concept of how the rest of the battle was going. Just this moment as she hit, blocked, parried. Her magic didn’t wane. It responded instinctively. Air, water, fire, earth. A marvel of combinations that pushed the acolytes farther and farther back, away from the burning docks and to the door into Lethbridge.

  Alura was wounded. She struggled forward but retained her military prowess. Then with a performance Kerrigan had never witnessed, Alura whirled and drove her sword through Aisling’s heart. The great warrior fell backward, felled like a tree.

  Wynter appeared then in the middle of the fight. Her scream of torment ached everywhere. Aisling was her lover, if not acknowledged. Her eyes were glowing orbs of death and destruction as she leveled her sword at Alura.

  “You.”

  Alura rose stiffly to her feet and beckoned Wynter forward. But Wynter had no intention of fighting fair. She threw a blast of straight black power into the center of Alura’s chest.

  “No!” Fordham roared as he materialized before Wynter. He struck his sister across the face and center her stumbling backward, but it was too late.

  Alura had taken the brunt of Wynter’s attack and was thrown backward. She tumbled a few feet before collapsing entirely. We all yelled as one, and Audria finished her fight long enough to dash to Alura’s side.

  “She’s alive,” Audria said. “But I don’t know for how long.”

  “Get her out of here,” Kerrigan cried.

  Audria tried to get away with Alura, but suddenly the acolytes engaged them again. There was nothing to do but leave her there and hope for the best.

  “She deserved it for what she did to my Aisling,” Wynter snarled.

  “Then let us finish it,” Fordham said.

  He was flagging. Wynter panted but looked as maniacal as ever. Perhaps more than normal.

  She threw the shadows at Fordham, as if they could cut through him. He pushed them away, as if they meant nothing, and thrust his sword out toward her. Wynter made a sword of solid air and parried every thrust. She was a marvel. They were an even match in every way. Raised in the same way. Honed to be deadly.

  Wynter knew every one of his tricks. Except one.

  Kerrigan ignored the remaining acolytes. Fordham needed her help or Wynter would end him too. She rushed to his side. She had no sword. Only her powers to sustain her. But Fordham was not best on his own, as he had always been trained to be. He was best with his team. He was best with her.

  “Get out of here,” he barked at her.

  “I’m not leaving you.” She met Wynter’s gleeful strikes with her own magic. “I’ll never leave you.”

  “I can’t protect us both.”

  “Then, let me help,” she snapped.

  He shot her a look of recognition. They had learned new ways to move, new ways to exist together in the last year. Wynter was one lonely girl who thought herself special. Wynter’s mania was pure ego. She thought she was blessed. She believed wholeheartedly that she had been chosen for this and that she was their savior, carrying them out of the isolated mountains, and that she would always rein triumphant.

  Well, Kerrigan actually was special. She’d taken the wall down. She had visions of the future and ones that told her of the past. She was the one Wynter couldn’t understand, had only tried to use.

  “Together,” Fordham said, and they launched forward.

  But Wynter hadn’t prepared for what Fordham and Kerrigan could do together. And for a fraction of a second, that mania slipped into fear.

  Wynter had control over the black shadows that Fordham used for short jumps. Kerrigan had seen him use them once to take down an assailant. Wynter seemed to have no gumption against using them, and she threw the shadows like knives.

  Kerrigan smiled as she met Wynter’s black shadows with the four elements. Air to blast the dark power away from them. Water to douse them where they crawled. Earth to pull Wynter from her feet. And fire to distract her long enough for Fordham to close in.

  “You were never good enough,” Wynter snarled at Fordham, coiling her shadows in like a whip and striking at him. “It should have been me!”

  He dodged and then drew the edge of his Tendrille blade across her magic, disrupting the shadows. “Perhaps it would have been you, Wynter. Maybe it even should have been. You had more control,” Fordham spat. She wrapped the dark around his ankles and tried to pull him off his feet. Kerrigan stepped in, using her Dragon Ring fighting skills to slice the air down and sever the connection. “But you were always crazy.”

  “I am the chosen one!” Wynter roared.

  Kerrigan snorted. “Chosen for what?”

  Fordham actually chuckled. It sounded good on him, and it threw Wynter off-balance. “Your cult followers can’t make you the next queen.”

  “No,” she agreed, her eyes narrowing. “All I have to do is kill you.”

  Wynter put her hands to her chest, tipped her head back, and threw her arms wide. Black ink released from her chest like a torrent. Kerrigan dropped to the ground as it enveloped the whole of the docks in a burst. Fordham didn’t move. He stood stoic in the darkness of Wynter’s magic. The magic that had kept his family in power for thousands of years.

  Kerrigan could barely breathe in the flood of night. She had no idea how Fordham could stand it. Le
t alone stand against it. But he put one foot in front of the other until he was directly before his sister.

  “You have long lived in the shadows. You have let them consume you when you should have been looking to the light,” Fordham whispered through the roar of her power.

  He took that final step and thrust the sword toward her. Wynter’s eyes widened, and at the last second, she jerked away but not fast enough as the sword sliced through her shoulder. She screamed. Her black shadows intensified, sending Kerrigan facedown onto the docks. Then, the shadows disappeared in a rush.

  Fordham yanked his sword from Wynter’s shoulder. He hesitated for the span of a second. Even though Wynter deserved death, he still hesitated. And in that second, Wynter pulled a knife.

  Kerrigan gasped. Without thinking, Kerrigan sank as deep as she could go and pulled on that place where she entered the spirit world. It snapped to attention, and she shouted, “Fordham, down!”

  Fordham didn’t hesitate at her command. He dropped to the stones, and Kerrigan unleashed. A boom shook the docks as her spirit energy collided with Wynter. She was thrown backward, her body crashing into the stone battlement. To Kerrigan’s shock, the rocks moved with the force and began to crumble. Shouts sounded overhead as the entrance to Lethbridge collapsed. Soldiers fell from their posts, and Wynter was buried under the rubble.

  “No,” Fordham shouted and began to dig through the stones to get to his sister. “We deserve justice.”

  But Kerrigan wasn’t looking at the wreckage. Her eyes were fixed beyond—to the hundreds of soldiers who had waited on Wynter’s command and were now forcing their way through to attack.

  “Ford, we have to go,” she shouted.

  “What in the gods’ names was that?” Roake asked.

  Kerrigan whipped around to find Audria already on Evien’s back with Alura cradled against her. Roake rose slowly to his feet. He’d never seen her spirit magic, and every instinct in her body told her that she couldn’t tell him. They couldn’t know. Kerrigan opened her mouth, having no idea how to explain to them what she’d done.

  “Some help over here,” Fordham interrupted.

  Kerrigan grabbed his arm. “We have to go. Look.”

  His manic gaze shifted to the Lethbridge gates. His face paled. “Gods.”

  “Call Netta. Let’s go.”

  Kerrigan tugged on the bond with Tieran, dragging Fordham away from the advancing soldiers.

  “Was it one of those magical artifacts?” Roaked asked in confusion.

  “Yes,” Kerrigan said, glad to have been given an out.

  Fordham frowned. “Kerrigan and I have seen them back home.”

  “Good thinking,” Roake said.

  Roake narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t see you holding anything.”

  Kerrigan shrugged. “I picked one off of the first group before you landed. I knew what it was better than they did.”

  Fordham shoved his sword back into its sheath. “We’ll come back for my sister when this is over,” he promised. “She’ll pay for what she’s done.” And then he ran as Netta approached.

  “Head back to camp. We’ll regroup from there,” Kerrigan yelled as Roake got on his dragon.

  Kerrigan felt shaky, like she might pass out. There was no way that she could do a running mount. She let her current feeling flow through Tieran, and he responded in turn, diving down toward her and picking her up. They soared over the river before he released her on the bank. She climbed onto his back and collapsed forward.

  They made it into the skies when the sound of wings carried across the wind. Hundreds of dragons flew in formation in the distance, heading toward them. Kerrigan’s heart soared. Reinforcements were finally here. The stomp of feet drew her attention away from the Society. Then, a line of navy-blue soldiers crested the hill toward Lethbridge. Her heart caught as she recognized the Bryonican uniforms. Her people had heard the call and come to help.

  The fight had only begun, but the odds were turning.

  Reinforcements swelled their camp from a meager forty to thousands. Kerrigan barely registered the difference because as soon as her feet hit the ground in the clearing, she passed out. Hours later, she gasped awake, rushing out of her tent to find dozens of campfires still lit.

  “Hey, you’re okay,” Roake called. He was seated before the fire but scrambled up to assist her. She waved him off.

  “I’m okay. How’s Alura?”

  Roake grimaced. “She’s with Helly. The healers are keeping her stable, but she hasn’t woken yet.”

  “Gods,” she breathed. “Will she wake?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Scales,” she said gruffly.

  Roake sat back down. “I’m on watch.”

  “It’s the same day?” she asked with a wince as she flopped in front of the fire.

  “Same day,” he confirmed.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing much. We retreated when the reinforcements came since it was almost dark. We’re going to break through the line and into Lethbridge tomorrow at dawn.” He pushed a plate toward her. “We saved you dinner. Thought you might want it when you woke up.”

  “Thanks,” she said, digging into the food with abandon.

  “Helly checked you over after she stabilized Alura. She said it wasn’t the magic sickness. They wanted to bench you tomorrow. She said it looked like exhaustion and you just needed to sleep.”

  She bit her lip. “You think she was telling the truth?”

  Roake shrugged. “Who knows? You’re in it tomorrow with us at least.”

  Kerrigan sighed and glanced up at the moon. She gasped when she saw it was full in her sky. Was it time for her to meet with Cleora? Had she gotten her days right?

  “You should get some more sleep,” Roake said. “I’ll wake Audria in a few hours.”

  “Thanks.”

  She finished her food and then crawled back into her tent. With a breath, she dropped into the spirit plane. She left the clouds immediately and landed on the stretch of land where she had met with the spiritcaster. She turned in a circle and called out, “Cleora?”

  But there was no answer. Cleora had been certain that their moon cycles matched, but perhaps they had been wrong. Maybe wherever Cleora’s world was, day was night, and night was day. Maybe they were drastically off from each other. Kerrigan had no idea. She’d never met anyone from a different world. Cyrene had been strange enough, and she’d come from a different continent.

  “Anyone here?”

  Kerrigan sighed in exasperation and then sat down to wait. It could be that she was just early… or late. She’d give it an hour. Unfortunately, she couldn’t sit around and wait forever. She would need to get some actual sleep to fight tomorrow. Already, her body hurt in places she’d never imagined. And that was after a full year of training.

  Then, after a few minutes, a piece of paper appeared before her. Kerrigan jumped like the thing was set to explode. When it gently swayed to the ground and landed harmlessly, Kerrigan picked it up between her fingers and read what was on it.

  Emergency back home. Meet next full moon.

  —Cleo

  Kerrigan huffed. Of course, right when she could really use spiritcasting to help win this battle, Cleora was absent. Well, at least Kerrigan hadn’t missed her.

  Kerrigan folded the note and put it in her pocket before dropping back down into her body. She reached into the folds of her nightclothes and was surprised to find the paper had come with her. What kind of trick was that?

  Next time, she’d find out.

  She shoved the paper into her bag and promptly passed back out. Spiritcasting would wait for her. The battle tomorrow would not.

  60

  The Battle

  Trulian called Kerrigan and Fordham into the commander’s tent before dawn. They dressed in haste, only stopping briefly to see that there was no change in Alura, before crossing the clearing to the tent. Fordham said not a word. His eyes were dark and a litt
le lost. He knew the cost of what was to come. Kerrigan stifled a yawn as she followed him into the tent. Her eyes scanned the room that had been nearly empty. Now, all twenty-one of the council members were in attendance.

  Helly frowned at her entrance. Bastian hung back with Kress, who stroked his ginger beard as he listened to whatever Bastian was saying. Anahi read the notes over Lockney’s shoulder. Alsia checked and double-checked her weapons, pulling knives out of various places on her body. Lorian stared off into nothing. He must have taken the news of his daughter hard.

  Then, another figure stepped out of the crowd. Kerrigan stopped dead in her tracks when her fiancé appeared before her.

  “March,” she said flatly.

  He shot her the most dazzling smile he could muster. “There you are.” He swept forward, taking her hand in his and pressing a firm kiss upon it. “When I heard that my fiancée was among those set for battle, I came as fast as I could.”

  “You’re… with the military?” she asked, pulling her hand back from his.

  “Lord March brought the foot soldiers,” Helly said with an arched eyebrow.

  “The House of Medallion is at your service,” March said.

  “Oh,” Kerrigan whispered. Her stomach roiled. She was glad to have the reinforcements, but she had never considered that March would lead the charge.

  “You can leave the reunion for later,” Trulian said gruffly. “You lot have proven your merit against the opposition. I’m putting your contingent in my regiment on the front lines.”

  “They’re new recruits!” Helly objected.

  “I agreed with you when we got here. Now, they’re veterans as far as I’m concerned, and we’ll use them where they can be best utilized,” Trulian said, rejecting Helly’s worries. “They took down the princess. Let’s cut off the king’s head.”

  Fordham didn’t even blink at the talk of killing his father. He hated the man for all he had put him through, but still… it was his father.

  “To your stations. We fly with the sun.”