Pres pulled his magic to him, ready to throw something at their attacker.
The man thrust his sword against Prescott’s throat. “Try me.”
“Roake!” a voice boomed down the corridor.
“Down here,” Roake called back.
And then their cousin stepped into the hallway. Fordham eyed them as if he had no idea who they were. Not a single clue. Gods, he had always been a good actor.
“Audria needs help with some nobles on the hallway over. She asked for you. I can take this lot.”
Roake scoffed, “Good luck. This one”—he pointed his sword at Arbor—“tried to bribe me. The other is a sore excuse for a magic user.”
“Then, I’ll have no trouble.”
“You know them?” Roake asked, eyeing Fordham.
Fordham’s jaw tightened. “I know everyone,” he ground out. “And they’re all prisoners of war until the council can come to some treaty agreement with the queen.”
Roake shrugged, sheathing his sword. “Fine. I’ll go see what Audria needs.”
Fordham clapped him on the back as he departed. He waited until Roake was out of earshot and then sighed.
“You should have listened to me,” he told them.
Prescott sneered, “We had superior numbers!”
“It didn’t matter,” Fordham cut him off.
Arbor held her head high. “Are you going to take us to the dungeons?”
“Of course not,” Fordham said. He shook his head. “Look, I have one more jump in me. I can get you outside of the city. But then you need to disappear. I cannot be responsible for you after this. Go underground.”
“You’re really going to help us?” Arbor asked.
“Unless you want to become a prisoner of war for who knows how long. I can get you out. Others got out on their own.”
Arbor and Pres cut each other a glance before nodding. “Do it.”
Fordham pulled his shadows tight to himself, and then they surrounded them both. Arbor tightened her grip on her cousin, clinging to him and her brother as they disappeared. She hadn’t thought that Fordham’s magic worked this well. He’d never been able to jump this far before, let alone with two people.
But then they were on the other side of the river in the safety of the trees. Arbor looked at Lethbridge from the outside for the first time and gasped. The city was nothing like it had been when they first came to conquer it. The walls were caved in. The place was a disaster. The docks burned. It would hardly be livable from here.
“Go. Be safe by disappearing,” Fordham said, and then he jumped back across the river.
“Well, sister,” Prescott said, leaning against a tree, “this wasn’t in the plans.”
“It was not.”
“What are we going to do now? Go underground?”
She snorted. “Hardly. Someone in the Society sold us those magical artifacts. Someone in their ranks is sympathetic to our cause. We just need to show them how valuable we are alive.”
Prescott grinned. “I love the way you think.” He held his hand out, and she put hers in his. “Shall we?”
She nodded, and they slunk out of the view of the city.
Today was a defeat but not the end of their schemes.
62
The Treaty
“I never found her,” Fordham said in frustration. He and Kerrigan stood before the commander’s tent and waited for the reading of the treaty that had been signed with Queen Viviana.
“Wynter?”
He tersely nodded. “I pulled apart the entire rubble. Dug everything out myself, and she wasn’t there.”
“How is that possible?”
He ground his teeth and shook his head. “I don’t know. I should have found a body if she was dead.”
“Do you think that she used her magic to escape? Jumped somewhere?”
“I thought she was sufficiently incapacitated.” He sighed. “But she must have.”
“Gods…”
“It’s not the last we’ve seen of her.”
Kerrigan gulped. That was not a good sign. Not at all. Wynter was powerful. And the last thing they needed was a loose cannon with that amount of power as an enemy.
The crowd grew silent as Presiding Officer Malwin Zoh stepped forward to read the treaty. It had taken a full day of negotiations and the approval of the council for Queen Viviana to sign her seal on the document. And it was a litany of demands.
The House of Shadows will become the thirteenth tribe of Alandria, sovereign to the Society and hereto known as tribe Charbonnet.
All full-Fae will remain within the arranged boundaries of Charbonnet for a duration of five years with no standing army.
A Society occupation will exist within the bounds of the tribe until the Society dictates that they are able to rejoin the greater world.
No member of tribe Charbonnet will be permitted to enter the dragon tournament or join the Society for a period of one hundred years.
All held slaves will be immediately released and slavery abolished in all forms.
Any and all illegal magical artifacts will be handed over to the Society for destruction.
A fine of a million marks a year will be paid to the Society for the rebuilding of the city of Lethbridge and reparations for lives lost.