Page 151 of House of Embers
“How are we going to fight a war without dragons?”
“Guess we’ll find out,” Kerrigan said before her eyes fluttered closed and she passed out.
Chapter Fifty-Three
The Crux
Kerrigan woke the next day to the frenzied chaos of their friends and allies. It took her a half dozen false starts before she could get dressed and ready to go. One long war council meeting later and Fordham jumped them to the valley, where both dragons and riders were assembled.
“What did you tell them?” she asked.
“What they needed to know,” Fordham said.
Fairgate had claimed that this was a loophole. That it wouldn’t take anything else from her. But it had still used her magic to power the crown. It had still drained her to do it. She could still feel the crown on her head like it had hooks in her scalp. Even though the crown was gone, back in its little hidey-hole that only an Ollivier could access.
She shot him a look. “That we weren’t under attack?”
“Yes. And you would have a solution today.”
“No pressure,” she muttered.
But she could hardly blame them for their anxiety. She knew exactly what it was like to split a bond. Her and Fordham’s had broken when her magic had been severed by Bastian’s circle of thirteen. It had felt like dying.
Kerrigan raised her hands, and the crowd slowly quieted. Fordham had a steadying hand on her waist. She used air magic to amplify her voice to speak to the crowd. “Right now, I speak not as your commander but as your friend. Your dragon bonds are no more. The Irena Bargain has been severed. No longer are your lifelines tied to each other. No longer will dragons perish by refusing. No longer will Fae houses suffer for the same thing.”
A chorus of opposition went up, and Fordham stepped forward as if to silence them, but she shook her head.
“Let them,” she whispered.
Kerrigan took the brunt of it. Their anger. Their grief. Their anguish. She understood. It was hers to bear.
Tieran dropped at her side and roared with all his might.“I have spoken for the dragons. I am not your friend. I am your commander, and you will listen when she speaks.”
Kerrigan straightened her spine and patted Tieran on his flank. “Thank you.”
At Tieran’s fury, the rest of the dragons and riders calmed down. He outranked them, and they all put more stock in that.
“I don’t need to justify my actions to you, but I will explain them. I believed there was a way to change the bargain and allow you to keep your bonds. There was not. Not without more unpredictable consequences. So I took the other choice, and that was to end the bonds,” Kerrigan explained. “If I could have warned you, I would have, but that was not a possibility. I did what had to be done.”
“Why?” a rider asked, her chin jutted upward in defiance.
“Because it was wrong,” Kerrigan said simply. “The bonding was wrong. Tying our lives and livelihoods to the dragons was wrong. It was done to them against their will, and I would undo the injustice if I could. So I did.”
“But now what?” another person yelled out. “How will we win without dragons?”
“The dragons remained,” Kerrigan said with a slow smile. “And now we have an advantage over our enemies.”
“An advantage?” a few people muttered derisively.
Tieran bowed his head.“Tell them.”
“Tieran and I are not bonded. We have, in fact, never been bonded.”
Gasps rang out through the crowd.
“The bonding didn’t take because I am not half-Fae, half-human. I am a demi-Doma.”
The silence was deafening. She had an idea of what they must all be thinking. To claim she was of the gods was absurd. Cyrene had done it when she entered the tournament, but it had been more of a lark, because she was a rare human with magic. Now Kerrigan knew differently. She knew differently about all of it.
