House of Shadows (Royal Houses 2)

“I’m surprised she’d go to the masses.” It seemed beneath her.

Fordham’s jaw was set. “She’d do it if it meant having enough support to go up against our father.”

“You think that’s what she’s doing?”

“Don’t you?”

Kerrigan couldn’t disagree. With this many people in attendance at one meeting, it was a veritable legion. And Wynter was mad enough to try it.

“Plus, if everything I’ve been dealing with this week is any indication, these are the people most upset about our continued isolation.”

“What does it look like on your end?”

“The poor are taking the brunt of the strain on products. The human village we trade with, Lethbridge, heard about me leaving and are withholding most trade.”

“What? Why?”

Fordham glanced at her. “The city of Lethbridge fear it means the House of Shadows is soon going to get out of the mountain. Apparently, a sizable number of their citizens has already picked up and left. They said they wouldn’t be subjugated again.”

Kerrigan sighed. “Well, I don’t blame them.”

“No,” he agreed begrudgingly. “As a result, prices have increased for all goods. There aren’t enough jobs to satisfy everyone. Not enough land to feed everyone. Meanwhile, the court is feasting every night. It doesn’t look good. The inequity is going to get my father killed before his enemies ever touch him.”

Kerrigan had seen kids starving on the streets of Kinkadia while the Society ate fine and the wealthy on the Row lived like kings. Couple that with a thousand years of forced isolation, their only source of trade evaporating, and she hardly blamed anyone for wanting to do something about it.

“One thing is for sure,” Fordham said as he maneuvered them closer to the stage at the front of the room. “With this many people, it cannot be beyond my father’s notice.”

That pronouncement made the meeting seem all the more precarious. As if at any moment, the king would rush in here with his guards and stop the meeting. Kerrigan tightened her grip on Fordham’s hand, and then a flash of light circled the room.

“Wynter’s magic,” he breathed to her.

But that was clear by the way the room immediately went silent. Everything settled, thick with anticipation. As quickly as it had come, all the candles in the massive cavern dropped at the same time. Gasps of excitement and fear rippled through the crowd.

Before it could crescendo, a figure stepped onto the stage, a flame in her hand illuminating the space. She was taller and broader than Wynter’s lithe form with a thin lace mask covering the stretch of her dark eyes. Her clothes were militant and sturdy with a thick blonde braid over one shoulder.

“Welcome one and all to the first annual Wynter Masquerade. I am Aisling of family Laurent, but in these halls, we are one and all the same. For those who are here for the first time, we appreciate your interest in our great princess’s vision. For those who have come to meetings before, we welcome you back and into a bigger, brighter future. Rise of Charbonnet!”

The room erupted with an echoing of the phrase. “Charbonnet!”

“Rise of the House of Shadows!”

“House of Shadows!” they chanted back.

Kerrigan’s jaw tensed with the effort to keep from doing anything that would give her away. Already, she could tell that Wynter had whipped these people up into zealotry, and she had no way to get them out of the mountain.

“I’m happy to announce your princess, Wynter Ollivier,” Aisling said, holding her hand out and offering the stage to Wynter.

Wynter made quite an entrance in a perfectly white dress to match her long, unbound white locks. The stage illuminated around her, showing the barely blue look she cast across the crowd. From here, Kerrigan might even believe she was completely with it. But her sanity seemed tenuous at best.

She held her hands up, and silence settled back into the crowd who had been applauding her entrance. Her nails were painted a deep blood red. The only color on her at all.

“Charbonnet,” she said in her low, melodic voice. “Once a term to claim a tribe of Alandria. We were the original Fae who came to this great island. Irena, who they worship, came from our halls. She met the great Ferrinix in the halls of Ravinia Mountain. They were bound in our throne room. The line of dragon riders began with us. And the Society deemed it fit to strip us of that right because they did not approve of our treatment of the lesser races.”

Kerrigan winced. Of course, everyone here was Fae. She was probably the only half-Fae in attendance. She doubted any humans were stupid enough to do this.

“They shackled us to this mountain, which had once been the seat of power. And on the eve of our thousand-year imprisonment, what happens? My brother was cast out and able to pass through the barrier.”