by Haley Ryan
“Does this mean we get to tease you now?”
“Don’t dish it out unless you can take it,” I warned. “I’ve never had siblings, so there are nineteen years worth of arguments just waiting to happen if you provoke me.”
“I’ll take them all,” Ryker said, and pulled me into a hug I hadn’t known I needed.
Aunt Morgan really hadn’t been very physically affectionate, so in a way, I don’t think I’d realized just how much comfort there could be in simple physical contact. But Ryker’s hug made me feel warm, accepted, and safe. And when Declan hugged me too, I think the last, stubborn part of my heart finally agreed to believe that this was real.
And not only real—it was a thing I was willing to fight for, just as they had been willing to fight for me.
“So now that that’s settled…” I scrubbed my face with both sleeves. “Did Callum send you? Am I being brought before the council to be reprimanded for my actions?”
“The council does want to talk to you,” Declan said, “but they don’t get to reprimand you. They’re discussing the issue of Morghaine and the fae king’s request. Whether to sanction his investigation. Though it’s possible they may be in a bit more of a hurry because they want to be rid of the emissary as soon as possible.”
“I guess I probably shouldn’t insinuate that it’s because they’re scared of him?” I challenged.
Declan shrugged. “Don’t shoot the messenger, but I imagine after last night Callum might have asked them to expedite.”
He didn’t rise to my glare. “Are you really asking him to be happy about you being friends with a fae assassin?”
Fae assassins…
“Is that the main reason you all hate Draven? Because it was the fae who attacked me in the first place?”
My brothers both looked like I’d stated that the sky was up.
“That, and his reputation,” Ryker admitted. “We don’t hate him, but you could call us… cautious.”
“Well, can you be cautiously willing to keep an open mind? Because we just promised to go easier on each other, and this is not a friendship I’m willing to give up.”
Declan nodded without hesitation. Maybe because he would have the easiest time knowing whether Draven was secretly harboring villainous intentions.
“Yes,” he said. “I don’t think it would be smart to involve Callum just yet, but we would be willing to meet with your fae and try not to maim him.” He grinned and winked at me.
“Speak for yourself,” Ryker muttered, but he eventually conceded with a tortured groan. “Fine. We’ll meet. But as your brother, I reserve the right to test his commitment.”
I was so relieved, I laughed. “Feel free to test him however you like, as long as you don’t break him.”
“You have that much faith in your fae?”
“Half-fae,” I corrected, “and he’s not mine. But yes. I do.”
Ryker’s face said he would love to challenge me on that, but his phone buzzed. He pulled it out and made a face.
“Looks like we have to be done here.” He shot me a rueful look. “The council is ready for you.”
Nine
I made at least a marginal effort to appear put together for my meeting with the council. Given that I didn’t have any of my own clothes or toiletries to work with, I wasn’t sure I pulled it off, but at least I didn’t look like I’d been dragged out of my burning house at midnight anymore.
Had that only been two days ago? Felt like half a lifetime.
As I stood outside Lady Tairen’s council room in the Great Hall, trying to quiet my nerves, Callum appeared out of seemingly nowhere and joined me. His hands hung loosely at his sides, but his shoulders were stiff, and he seemed to be deliberately avoiding my gaze. Even without being able to read his face, I could still sense his tension.
“I don’t know if there’s any way to convince you of this,” he said under his breath, “but I don’t want to be your enemy.”
I turned to answer him and winced as I saw a rough bandage running from just under his jaw to somewhere beneath the collar of his shirt. Even shapeshifter healing hadn’t been enough to deal with the aftereffects of what I’d done to him.
“And I don’t want to be yours,” I replied honestly. “I’m sorry for burning you. I just wanted to make you stop and listen, and I didn’t know my fire could hurt you.”
“Neither did I,” Callum admitted, a bit grudgingly. “We’ll have to use caution until we can find any records that may exist on bronze dragons. It’s imperative that we learn more about what you may be capable of.”
“As long as you understand that our disagreement has nothing to do with what color my scales are.”
“And everything to do with whose daughter you are,” he agreed, as he shot me a sideways glance. “Titles aside, our family isn’t exactly known for conforming to expectations. As I understand it, that’s one of the reasons Mother was chosen as queen back when dragons first arrived here from Idria. She’s more flexible than usual, at least for a dragon. Capable of thinking outside the box. But she’s also the most stubborn person alive, on this or any other planet, so that flexibility only goes so far.”
I choked down a laugh.
“And Kira, before you judge her…” He paused before turning to me with the most earnest expression I’d ever seen him wear. “She’s terrified of losing you again, so whatever you do, go easy on her?”
My mouth was open to tell him that I had no idea what that even meant when the doors opened, and I found myself facing the same long conference table as the previous day. Except this time, it was surrounded by people—well, dragons—all of whom were staring at me.
“Why do they look like they can’t decide whether to throw me a party or eat me?” I muttered to Callum.
“Because they probably can’t.”
He strode forward, so I decided I might as well follow. We ended up standing beside Lady Tairen’s chair at the head of the table. She gestured to one of the empty seats next to her, so Callum sat on her left, and I sat next to Callum. Hoping to be ignored.
I was doomed to disappointment.
“How sure are you?” was the first thing I heard, from the pursed lips of a prune-faced woman sitting about mid-table.
“Beyond all doubt, Lady Ingrid,” Lady Tairen replied, her eyes colder than space. “This is my daughter and heir, Kirasha-li-Tairen. She was recognized as such by this assembly almost twenty years ago, and has now returned to be reinstated to that position.”
“Perhaps that is her wish,” a middle-aged male said, with a glance at me that confirmed he considered me little better than a presumptuous child. “But we have long since recognized the need for a new heir. You had even begun the process of determining a suitable candidate while your daughter was believed dead. Given that such a process requires the approval of the council, would it not seem wise for us to consider carefully before changing course?”
Lady Tairen turned her amber gaze on the speaker. “Yes, let us consider carefully. Dragon law permits my offspring to inherit without question unless I have no daughter. But here she sits, with no females of my line offering to challenge her.”
“And are we supposed to simply believe this without proof?” An ancient man sitting at the foot of the table stood up and banged what appeared to be a cane on the floor. “Or am I the only one who finds it highly suspicious that you have produced this”— he threw me a disgusted glance—“daughter at the eleventh hour? A daughter whose identity no one can corroborate!”
The queen’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Tread carefully, Granver, unless you wish to come right out and accuse me of lying.”
“Perhaps,” Lady Ingrid interjected, “it would be sufficient to locate a person who was old enough and close enough to your family to remember the child. Someone who could offer an unbiased identification. What of your sister, Your Majesty? Should she not be summoned and questioned as well? Especially considering that she might well have been your heir had the
child never been born.”
“The child,” Lady Tairen said icily, “is Kirasha-li-Tairen. Commit the name to memory. Use it. And I wish you all the luck in the world with summoning my sister to appear before you.”
Her lips twisted as if in regret. “As you are all very well aware, Jaida has never expressed the smallest interest in being my heir. Since Skye came of age, my sister spends the vast majority of her time traveling, away from Riverhaven, and has said many times that she prefers to remain unencumbered. If your intention is to include her in these proceedings, you will have to find her and convince her to come home.”
I thought she looked a little wistful, as though she almost wished they would.
“Perhaps a better question,” another woman said, “is whether this child of yours can ever be a suitable heir, given her history and…” she cast me an assessing glance, “other factors.”
“Such as?” I said, a little heatedly.
“Such as your willingness to interrupt your elders,” the old man at the foot of the table—Granver— said, looking like he’d bitten into a lemon.
Callum jerked to his feet, his whole body taut with anger. “Perhaps we should not accuse anyone else of rudeness when the true rudeness here is ours. Kira, allow me to introduce you to the council members.”
He named the twelve dragons at the table, and I swear I tried to remember them, but I didn’t think much of my chances.
“Now may we proceed?” Lady Ingrid asked rather sarcastically. “I think we should all be honest about the fact that we are faced with a dilemma—a potential heir who has been raised apart from our laws and our traditions, who has no training for the role, and whose temperament is entirely unknown. Not to mention she is hardly of the stature to command respect among other shifters. If dragons are to continue to be recognized as leaders in the shapeshifter community, our power must remain beyond question.”
“Are you really suggesting we choose our queen based on how she will be viewed by the community at large?” Another male, whose name I failed to dredge up, burst in on the conversation. “We have always valued continuity, and I see no reason to change that now. As long as we trust our leaders, the remainder of the Shapeshifter Court will have no reason to do otherwise.”
I listened in growing alarm as they continued to debate. Lady Tairen just watched, slumped back in her chair, hands folded together, eyes slightly narrowed.
Callum, unlike anyone else, was watching Lady Tairen, probably because he knew something the rest of them didn’t.
But I was quickly gaining an education and could suddenly appreciate Skye’s warnings from the night before. There were definitely factions among the leadership, and all of them seemed to have vocal supporters.
What did that mean about the monarchy? Did the queen truly rule here, or was she more of a puppet? A figurehead, yanked from one side to the other by currents in popular opinion?
I recalled something Ryker had told me that first night—that the court had been using my absence to pressure her into stepping down. Had they seen an opportunity in the fading health of an aging queen and imagined themselves filling the power gap?
And just how disappointed were they that I had returned?
Disappointed enough to attack the queen’s personal jet? To hire an elemental to blow up my house?
How much of their objection to my appearance was genuine, and how much an excuse?
So much for my cozy little homecoming.
In the midst of this spirited discussion, Lady Tairen appeared to finally have had enough. She yawned once, then came to her feet with a jerk and slammed both hands on the table.
It cracked right down the middle.
Councilors on both sides stared, first at the table, then her. You could have heard a feather fall to the floor.
“Now that I have your attention,” the queen said, casually inspecting her nails, “would any of you care to remind your fellow councilors of my title?”
The silence got even louder.
“It is not president, or chancellor, or prime minister, or any of those other little mouthfuls that say very little except ‘not-actually-in-charge.’ I am Queen. And I am Queen because among us all, I am most capable of holding our people together and protecting them from all outside threats. If this has changed, perhaps you would be good enough to inform me of it in the usual way.”
She was literally daring them to challenge her, and not a single one of them had the temerity to so much as blink.
Okay, so Lady Tairen was kind of a badass.
“We are not here to discuss Kira’s suitability as heir. That is not up for debate.”
Her tone added a ‘now or ever’ to the end of that sentence, but I didn’t think the issue was going to go away that easily.
“We are here to review a request from Dathair, High King of the Fae—that we sanction their court’s investigation of one of our own. Morghaine, as you know, was my most trusted seneschal. She has cared for Kira alone for the past nineteen years, keeping her safe until we were able to determine the identity of the traitor who allowed assassins into our enclave. But Morghaine has since disappeared, and it is the opinion of the fae that she was involved in a treasonous plot by Llyr Elduvar, heir to the fae throne, to depose his father.”
A buzz of whispers began, only to be cut off by Lady Tairen’s next statement.
“We have decided to ask some questions of our own before proceeding, and it is for that purpose we have asked Kira to be present.”
She turned to me. “I have shared with the council everything that we know from what you’ve told us already,” she said coolly. “But perhaps you would be kind enough to answer some specific questions from the members of the council.”
I would do pretty much anything if it meant they weren’t talking about me anymore.
“I’ll do my best.”
For the next hour, they grilled me, asking questions about where we’d lived, who Morghaine had been friends with, how often she’d been gone, and so on.
And I answered honestly, but not without the occasional pang of conscience, wondering if I was betraying the one person who had loved and cared for me over the years.
When I told them what I’d learned from Faris—that he believed Morghaine had been doing mercenary work for the fae—the entire council recoiled visibly.
“She did it for the money,” I insisted. “So she could be home to take care of me. The jobs paid well, which meant she didn’t have to be gone so much.”
“She shouldn’t have needed money at all,” Lady Tairen objected, her expression frustrated. “I provided her with everything she could have needed, and she used that money freely up until about eleven years ago.”
“About the time we moved to Oklahoma,” I said.
The same time all contact had ceased. The same time so many other things had changed.
“I think something happened to spook her,” I said tentatively. “There has to be a reason why she did what she did. Why she stopped taking the money or talking to anyone.”
“But that doesn’t explain why she would ever stoop to working for the fae,” Lady Tairen insisted. “She knew what they’d done. Why would she risk your safety again? I feel as though Faris must have been mistaken.”
“Maybe,” I said, and cringed on the inside as I realized there was more I had to tell them.
I had to explain what Draven had told me last night—the most incriminating piece of evidence yet, and the one even I couldn’t explain away, no matter how badly I wanted to.
So I laid it all out, while I stared at the broken table, not wanting to see anyone’s faces. I told them about Hugh, and what he’d seen at the castle. Told them he’d observed Morghaine coming and going—that she was not a prisoner, but a guest.
And I explained why he was unlikely to be lying.
With every word, it felt like I was driving a knife into the heart of my past, and it hurt, even more than my own silent, internal doubt.
I k
new there was still a lot to be learned. We couldn’t yet draw any actual conclusions about what she’d done and why. But my unflinching belief in Morghaine’s innocence had finally been destroyed, and it felt as though it had taken my own innocence along with it.
The council was silent until I finished, and when I finally dared a peek at Lady Tairen, it was to see a different woman than the one who’d broken the table. Her skin was ashen, and ten years had been added to her face. Even Callum appeared grim, though he gave me a nod as if to say that I’d done the right thing.
But had I?
“I can see we will need time to think this over,” Lady Ingrid said, appearing almost as shaken as Lady Tairen. “Perhaps an adjournment would be in order?”
“Yes.” Lady Tairen stood and shoved back from the table. “We will reconvene in an hour.”
She strode off, never once looking at me, and Callum followed, with a brief shake of his head as if to say that I should stay put. Their dismissal hurt, but I could appreciate that I’d just shocked them deeply. I’d had months of wondering, plus the growing suspicions of everyone around me to bring me to this point. The news would have come as a terribly unpleasant surprise to anyone who’d known Morghaine only as a dedicated seneschal and a good friend.
But there was no way I was staying in the council room to endure the scrutiny of twelve people who didn’t like me very much. The longer I stayed, the more likely one of them would start asking more questions about my own experiences in Idria, which I had no intention of recapping for them. I couldn’t very well explain my survival without revealing the color of my scales, and there had to be a reason neither Lady Tairen nor Callum had chosen to do so yet.
So after a short wait—I knew better than to let a roomful of dragons figure out I was scared of them—I stood up. After a brief stretch, I made my way around the table, pushing past the doors and into the foyer of the Great Hall with a silent, internal sigh of relief.
The area seemed more crowded than before, with several handfuls of people standing around talking in low voices. They were all watching the emerging council members with naked curiosity, but the best part of my day was when I spotted Draven standing on the far side of the room. He appeared to be alone, except for…
