House of Shadows (Royal Houses 2)

“He’s just too stubborn to go into the abyss.”

“I am sorry that you had to hear about your mother the way you did.”

Zina shrugged. “He should have told me about her when it happened. Not a thousand years later. It was selfish. And look, it brought us right back to another battlefield.” Zina hopped into another hover. “Anyway, I’m not training you. I used it as an excuse to get out of that tent. You know all that you need to know for tomorrow. Just follow that boy before he does something stupid.”

Kerrigan’s gaze landed on Fordham, still heading back to the tent. She was afraid that Zina was right.

56

The Negotiations

“Do you want to talk about it?” Kerrigan asked when she found Fordham staring blankly into the fire.

Audria arched an eyebrow, but Kerrigan just shook her head. There was no point in getting her involved. Fordham’s hurt couldn’t be understood by someone who had never seen him with his people.

It was complicated. He hated the House of Shadows in a deep and personal way. He also loved his home and his people just as deeply. He was their crowned prince. He had always planned to serve as their king. Only everything had changed with his exile. He’d learned the hard way that things were both better and worse than he’d known.

“No,” he growled.

“Okay. I can just sit here then.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be training?”

“Zina said I knew everything I needed to know.”

He shrugged. “Probably true.”

“And anyway, she didn’t want you to do anything stupid.”

He jerked his head toward her, and there was anger in his eyes. “Like betraying my people by giving information to defeat them to the Society?”

“Like betraying the Society and giving information to the House of Shadows.”

“I would never do that,” he snapped. “Society before tribe.”

“In the abstract, yes. In reality, they’re still your people.”

He didn’t say anything, just crossed his arms and stared into the endless flames. Finally, when she didn’t speak again, he asked, “Did you take the wall down?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? I was still connected to the wall through Mei.” Kerrigan looked down and then met his mercurial gaze. “She was one of you, you know?”

“One of what?”

“She was from Charbonnet. She was the ambassador.”

Fordham looked back at her, all defiance in his expression. “No, she wasn’t. I would have known that. Our people wouldn’t have done that to us.”

“The Society was going to bring down the mountain and kill everyone inside,” Kerrigan told him. “Men, women, and children.”

He stilled. “They were going to destroy Ravinia Mountain?”

“Yes. Mei believed the only way to save you was to make the Society forget where the House of Shadows was. There were unintended consequences, and truly, I believe it lasted longer than she’d thought it would.”

“It was done as protection… and not punishment,” he said, as if tasting that for the first time.

“Yes. And when I learned that, I was connected to the wall, to her memories.”

Fordham nodded solemnly. “It’s good that it’s down. People should have a choice.”

“They should,” she agreed. “I wish it hadn’t come to this.”

He nodded, and then without a word, he stepped into his tent and shut the flap. She closed her eyes with a sigh. She’d tried. He knew everything she did now. What he did with it was another thing.

Kerrigan wasn’t sure what woke her up.

The camp was alive at all hours of the night. Everyone was on a rotating watch. Scouts were moving in and out. Not to mention, the rustling, groaning, and snoring that made up a war camp. It was dirty, smelly, and loud.

But something was different, and it wasn’t the camp that had woken her in the middle of the night. Well before dawn—when they would convene for their opening attack. She grabbed her cloak and scrambled out of the tent. She stepped silently to the next tent. As gently as she could, she pushed the flap open to nothing but air.

Fordham wasn’t here.

She knew it.

She and Fordham weren’t bonded by anything more than trust and love and more. But she had felt connected to him long before they met in the hot springs. Whatever had brought them together, whatever part of her that had visions about him during the tournament, had pinged. And that usually meant one or the both of them were in trouble.

Kerrigan’s gaze swept the camp. He wouldn’t be in there. He’d be where the shadows were the darkest. And following that tug, she moved away from the heart of camp and toward the surrounding forest. She made it to the tree line when she heard the rustling of wings.

Her eyes caught on a falcon rushing down into the trees. She stalked across the forest as quiet as a mouse until she came upon Fordham with the bird on his arm.

His face shifted at the barest touch of her foot upon the ground, and then the shadows settled around his body.