House of Dragons (Royal Houses 1)

Footsteps sounded behind her, and she didn’t have to turn her head to know that Fordham had followed her into the mayhem, as he had been doing for weeks. She didn’t slow. He would catch up to her. She kept moving forward, glad for those hours and hours of running so that by the time she reached the first line of Red Masks, she wasn’t winded.

Kerrigan used her wind magic to bowl through the first group, and they hastily fled. But she could see the leader up ahead. Their leader was holding up a large, swirling gray orb, much like the amber one Basem had used against her.

This was her chance to get revenge for what those people had done to her. This was her chance to end it. No longer would Red Masks walk her streets. No longer would they terrorize humans and half-Fae. No longer would they try to take away their rights. It could end right here, right now.

The crowd had cleared enough for Kerrigan to slow as she approached the leader of the Red Masks. He turned to face her. He was a large man. The black robes barely covering all of his bulk. His hand held the object aloft, and she could see the thick veins where he gripped it in place. The red mask obscured his features, hiding who he was.

“This ends here,” Kerrigan shouted at him. “Drop the orb, and no one gets hurt.”

A sharp laughed resonated through the stone path. “Is that what you think?”

Kerrigan tried not to let her shock register, but she couldn’t completely mask it. “Basem?”

“Who else, leatha?”

Basem was the leader of the Red Masks. Her stomach tilted and gurgled in disgust. Of course, it made sense. She had wondered how he had so much power. Money alone wasn’t enough, but a cult following of like-minded bigots to spread his hate speech? That would do it.

“It was you all along. You’re the leader of the Red Masks. You killed Lyam. You tried to kill me. And now, when I’ve exposed who you really are to the Society, you burn down a part of the city and riot against it? You’re a monster.”

“A monster I might be, but no one ever gets anywhere without breaking a few rules. It’s just me and you, Red.” He held the gray orb aloft. “I almost killed you once. Are you ready to see if I can do it again?”

“You can’t beat me without your bag of tricks,” she spat.

He shrugged. “Then, there’s no reason to fight fair.”

And at that moment, he thrust the gray orb toward her. Lightning shot out of the eye of the storm. She yelled and threw her body out of the way of the lightning bolt that would have electrocuted her. Fordham dove the other direction, just barely missing being singed, but another building took the brunt of the attack and went up in flames.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” Basem taunted.

“There’s something you don’t know this time, Bruiser,” she yelled back.

“And what’s that?”

Kerrigan looked to the skies and grinned. “I have a dragon.”

Tieran burst through the open alleyway that Kerrigan had cleared for him, and before Basem could get another shot off, Tieran slammed his bulk into Basem. He flew backward twenty feet and landed on his back with a crunch, continuing to roll a few times. The gray orb shot from his hand and skittered harmlessly against the cobblestones.

“The orb,” she shouted at Fordham as she jumped up and ran for Basem.

Fordham was already on his feet, running to grab the weapon Basem had been wielding. Kerrigan dashed for the man who had done so much damage in her life. She scooped him off the ground with a burst of air magic, cocooning him in a tight cyclone as she wrenched his arms back.

Basem’s mask had fallen off in Tieran’s attack, and a cut at his eyebrow was dripping blood into his eye. “This… isn’t… over!”

“I think it is,” she spat at him as Society members flooded the street. “I think it’s finally over.”

“We can take it from here,” a guard said, stepping up to her and putting a hand on her shoulder. “You can let him go.”

Kerrigan hadn’t realized how tightly she’d been holding on to her magic until she was told she could release it. She set Basem back down onto the ground and took a step backward. A pair of Society members rushed forward, shackling him with magic-dampening cuffs.

“That was great work,” said Mistress Corinna, chief of the Guard. She inclined her head, and the dying rays of sunlight caught against her red-clay brown skin. “When you go through Society training, come find me. I think you have a real future in law enforcement.”

Kerrigan blinked in surprise. When she went through Society training. She’d said it as if it were a certainty. Which Kerrigan did not think it was. Not if Lorian had anything to say about it.