by K. A. Linde
“Get moving,” Clover spat behind her.
Kerrigan grunted and then shoved herself toward the side entrance that all Dragon Blessed were supposed to have entered through an hour ago. Kerrigan should have already been there. In fact, she should have been in Draco Mountain all morning helping with preparations.
She cursed under her breath. Someone would hold her accountable for her actions. She just hoped they didn’t realize the extent of her absence and neglect. It wasn’t like she had planned to pass out in the gambling hall in the wee hours of the morning. Clover should have woken her up and shoved her out the doors long ago. As she had done on many such occasions. Though never one so fraught with importance.
Finally, Kerrigan reached the obscured door and yanked on the hidden handle. “Come on,” she muttered under her breath.
“It’s locked?” Clover gasped. “You said it’d be open.”
Kerrigan steeled her spine and yanked on the door again and again. But the gods be damned, the door wouldn’t budge.
“Can’t you use your…” Clover gestured to Kerrigan as if her elemental magical abilities wouldn’t draw significant attention.
She glared at Clover. She never spoke about her magic in public. Not because she was embarrassed by it. All Fae had some magic. Even a few humans had a bit of magic. But most hybrids, half-Fae half-human, like her, barely had any. The two races crossed infrequently enough and produced children even less frequently. Many thought hybrids were an abomination. That their lack of magical prowess was proof of that fact. Kerrigan just avoided politics at all costs. They never worked out in her favor.
“What are we going to do then?” Clover asked. “Break a lock or not see the opening ceremony?”
Kerrigan cursed under breath. Clover had a point. She looked left and right, tried to determine how many other magical Fae were nearby. It went against her personal rules. What if someone noticed? What if someone could determine her strength? Would she be persecuted for it? The tensions between her two people were near to a fever pitch after a foreign human, Cyrene, from another world had come and upended their entire system of governance.
Kerrigan had thought that what Cyrene had done was amazing. But instead of shifting all of Alandria toward a more open and accepting governance and yielding a new wave of leaders, those in power had buckled down. They’d held tight to the past rules and laws, held tight to the wealth and prominence that had put them in the seat of the Society to begin with. It had been tense ever since. She’d seen a human beaten on the streets for his ego of using magic so flippantly…as if in defiance of those in charge.
She had no intention of being one of them.
“Clover…I don’t know,” she whispered, fear getting the better of her.
“Can we go the other way?”
Kerrigan shook her head. “They’ve closed off all the entrances from Draco Mountain for competitors.”
“Gods,” Clover ground out.
She reached for the handle one more time, wondering how little magic she could use to twist the lock. Just as she’d worked up the courage to try it out, the door was pulled inward. Kerrigan stumbled forward with the force of her movement.
She quickly recovered and looked up, expecting to see Mistress Moran standing there ready to reprimand her for being late. But instead, a boy on the cusp of becoming a man with short blue hair and an easy smile stood with his arms crossed and eyebrow raised.
“I thought that might be you, Kerrigan.”
“Hadrian!” she gushed. Kerrigan threw her arms around his neck. “Thank the gods.”
Hadrian laughed and released her. “Here to save the day, as usual. Where have you been?”
Kerrigan shot him a sheepish grin and then gestured to Clover standing behind them. Clover had her hands in the pockets of her black slacks. She still wore the red button-up shirt and black vest that denoted she worked for Dozan, the biggest crime lord in the city and the proprietor of a dozen gambling rings, where Clover was a dealer.
Hadrian crinkled his nose. “Really, Ker?”
She shrugged. “She can come too, right?”
“If Mistress Moran sees her in that outfit…”
“Hey, no sweat off my back, sweetheart,” Clover said, retreating into street slang as she put up a defensive position against Hadrian.
He looked her over appraisingly. “I think Darby brought an extra set of clothes that might fit you.” He turned his gaze to Kerrigan. “They were for you.”
“Perfect,” Kerrigan exclaimed and then dragged them both out of the throng and into the private box of the Dragon Blessed.
“I’m not sure I’d say it’s perfect,” Hadrian muttered as they went in search of Darby. “You smell like a bar.”
“That’s because we were in a bar,” Clover said with a wink.
Hadrian shot Kerrigan a look that said they were going to have words later. But then Darby appeared around the corner. She was Kerrigan’s opposite in every way. Short and lithe and creamy white skin instead of tall and fit and spattered in freckles. Long straight blonde hair and clear sky blue eyes, while Kerrigan had a tangled mess of curly red hair that never did what she wanted and her eyes were so green they rivaled the emeralds mined in the north. Darby was soft-spoken, ever-polite, and the best in their year for all things dancing, etiquette, and propriety. There was not a part of Kerrigan that was soft and she was always challenging their instructors. She had a sharp mind for knowledge and didn’t care a whit for propriety. Which was probably why she smelled like a bar and Darby looked like a goddess out of legend.
Despite it all, Darby was the only one who had been a Dragon Blessed as long as Kerrigan. Hadrian was older but had shown up later. Darby was more a sister than anything.
“I told you that she would make it,” Darby said with a knowing smile as she took in Kerrigan and Clover together. She sighed a little, polite thing. “I suppose these are for you.” She passed the clothes to Clover then turned back to Kerrigan. “Let me see what I can do with your hair.”
As Clover found a space to change, Kerrigan let Darby try to control the madness on her head. It didn’t help that it was the middle of the summer and Kinkadian humidity was so intense that she felt as if she could drink the air. How did Darby even keep her hair glossy and her dress perfect in this weather?
“Do you want to explain how you ended up at a Dozan gambling hall on the night before the opening ceremonies to arguably the most important tournament of our lifetime?” Hadrian asked with humor in his gray eyes.
Kerrigan winced as Darby’s fingers tugged on her curls. “Uh…poor life choices?”
Darby snickered behind her. “You can say that again.”
“Did you at least win?” Hadrian asked.
“You think I was gambling?” Kerrigan asked accusingly.
“I shudder to think what else you could be doing in one of Dozan’s places.”
“Yes, I’ve taken up casual whoring on the side,” Kerrigan said with a straight face.
Hadrian choked. “You what?”
“Hey, it pays well.”
“Stop teasing him, Ker,” Darby said, tying off her hair with a ribbon. “You’re going to make him go apoplectic.”
Kerrigan smiled at him mischievously and then winked. “How does my hair looked?”
“Lovely,” Darby answered before Hadrian could say anything.
Then Clover stepped out of the shadows in an oatmeal-colored tunic dress with a black belt wrapped tight around her narrow waist. Her black hair was cut severely to her chin, and her black eyes sparkled with gold flecks. The dress accentuated her curvaceous figure and her silky smooth brown skin. Kerrigan felt more than heard Darby’s breath catch at the sight of Clover. She squeezed her friend’s hand. Darby had known from a young age that she was interested in other women. But she hadn’t come out to anyone else in fear of what it would do for her prospects when she came of age.
“I look like an idiot,” Clover said, breaking the silence. She pluc
ked at the dress.
“You look great,” Kerrigan reassured her.
Just then a cheer rose up from the stadium. The four of them all jumped at the unexpected noise and then raced to the front of the box where they congregated with the fifty or so other Dragon Blessed currently over the age of ten. The rest of the littlings had been left behind in the mountain with handlers. Many of them throwing fits to get to stand where Kerrigan stood now, looking out across the sand strewn arena.
Hadrian made a way for the lot of them to get closer to the action. And together, they watched the representatives of the twelve tribes stride into the arena guided by the sponsor Society member in long flowing black robes. Each of them held a banner in their tribe colors with the coat of arms embroidered in black. When a tribe was announced, a cheer went up in the crowd from the others of their home. The marauding Venatrix in their scale-like silver armor made the crowd roar. But it wasn’t until the blue and silver of Bryonica, holding three banners denoting the three royal lines, strode confidently into the stadium that the entire place seemed to erupt at once.
Kerrigan looked over their faces, wondering if in a different life she would have known them, would have been one of them. Mistress Helly was at the front of the Bryonican line with a proud smile on her face. Last tournament she had been the game administrator and had had to remain neutral. This year she was able to play favorites as she walked with an unprecedented hundred potential competitors for the healing tribe.
“Look at that pomp,” Clover muttered in distaste. “A hundred potentials? Absurd.”
“It makes perfect logical sense,” Darby said. Her voice was earnest.
Kerrigan knew that she desperately wanted to be chosen for Bryonica tribe after her coming of age. A fact that did nothing but make Kerrigan cringe…though she’d never explained why.
“No. It makes them look desperate,” Clover countered. “Twenty to fifty is sufficient to guarantee that you find a champion. A hundred is ridiculous.”
“It’s a show of strength.”
“I’d expect that from Venatrix or even Galanthea. They’re warriors. But Bryonica? It’s beneath them.”
Kerrigan tuned them out as they continued to argue about the merits of how many potential competitors to put forward. Her attention was drawn to what no one else had noticed in the crowd now that all the twelve tribes were out. A black smoke was spinning into existence at the center of the arena.
“Gods, do you see that?” Kerrigan whispered.
Her friends snapped to attention, taking in what was happening.
Hadrian touched Kerrigan’s shoulder. “Have you ever seen anything like that?”
“No. I thought they had extra security this year,” Kerrigan said.
“They do,” Darby confirmed. “They didn’t want the same thing to happen as when…uh, Cyrene came.”
Kerrigan frowned. What in the gods’ name was happening? The smoke was growing stronger, almost solidifying at the center. She had never seen anything like it. And she had no idea how it could happen. There were hundreds of barriers around the arena. No one should be able to penetrate it.
The crowd had grown restless, taking over the announcer who was trying to calm the arena. Society members already on the ground reached for their magic, stepping forward to protect their contestants. Others in black robes began to appear on the outskirts. Kerrigan recognized the protections they were reinforcing on the perimeter. And still that black cloud continued to spiral.
Then just as soon as it had come, it disappeared and standing at the center of the entire arena was a man dressed head to toe in black. He was tall, impossibly tall with long lean legs in fitted black pants. He wore a suit jacket at the height of fashion with a black shirt buttoned high, nearly to his collar, just barely exposing his pale, nearly translucent throat. He ran a hand back through his dark as night hair and then leisurely surveyed the crowd with eyes that were pure sin.
Kerrigan’s throat bobbed as those eyes cast across the Dragon Blessed box. Gods, he radiated sinister energy. And yet, he was the most beautiful person she had ever seen in her life.
“What is the meaning of this?” the master of ceremonies managed to recover his voice to ask.
The man tilted his head just slightly and smiled something wicked. “My name is Fordham Ollivier, prince and heir to the House of Shadows. And I have come to enter the Dragon Tournament and reclaim what was once stolen from us.”
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Acknowledgments
This has been a long journey. Seven years with these incredibly characters and Cyrene’s amazing journey. It’s both thrilling and incredibly bittersweet to say good-bye. There are so many people who have helped me with this series over the years. Those who helped promote it or read it in its early stages or listened to me rant for long hours about the plot. Each and every one of you made a huge difference and I’m certain I wouldn’t be where I am today without you. So, in no particular order, I would like to thank—
Rebecca Kimmerling, Katie Pruitt Miller, Anjee Sapp, Bridget Peoples, Danielle Sanchez, Carrie Ann Ryan, the Linde Squad, Rebecca Gibson, Christy Peckham, Adriana Locke, SC Stephens, KP Simmon, Lori Francis, Diana Peterfreund, Mari Mancusi, Carrie Ryan, Jenn Barnes, Susan Dennard, Bethany Hagen, Gennifer Albin, Nadege Richards, Sarah Hansen, Jovana Shirley, Lauren Perry, and of course, my husband, Joel!
But most importantly, YOU!
You make this all worth it. Falling in love with Cyrene, cheering for Ahlvie, fighting over who she should end up with, it makes the work pure joy. I feel so lucky to have the chance to give you this story straight from my heart. And I look forward to bringing you House of Dragons with Kerrigan next year!
A L S O B Y K. A. L I N D E
ASCENSION SERIES
The Affiliate
The Bound
The Consort
The Society
The Domina
* * *
ROYAL HOUSES SERIES
House of Dragons
* * *
Adult Romance Series
* * *
CRUEL
One Cruel Night ✦ Cruel Money
Cruel Fortune ✦ Cruel Legacy
* * *
WRIGHTS
The Wright Brother ✦ The Wright Boss
The Wright Mistake ✦ The Wright Secret
The Wright Love ✦ The Wright One
* * *
AVOIDING SERIES
Avoiding Commitment ✦ Avoiding Responsibility
Avoiding Temptation
* * *
Avoiding Extras
Avoiding Intimacy ✦Avoiding Decisions
* * *
RECORD SERIES
Off the Record ✦ On the Record ✦ For the Record
Struck from the Record ✦ Broken Record
* * *
DIAMOND GIRLS SERIES
Rock Hard ✦ A Girl’s Best Friend
In the Rough ✦ Shine Bright
Under Pressure
* * *
TAKE ME DUET
Take Me for Granted ✦ Take Me with You
* * *
BLOOD TYPE SERIES
Blood Type ✦ Blood Match ✦ Blood Cure
* * *
STAND ALONE
Following Me
About the Author
USA Today Bestselling author K.A. Linde grew up as a military brat and has a Master’s degree in political science from the University of Georgia. She creates fantastical stories based off of her love for Disney movies, fairy tales, and Star Wars. In her spare time, she loves traveling, binge-watching Supernatural, playing piano, and dancing. She currently lives in Lubbock, TX with her husband and two super adorable puppies.
Kyla is the author of more than thirty adult novels, but does not encourage anyone younger than eighteen to pick those up.
Feel free to contact her:
www.kalinde.com
* * *
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