Page 69 of House of Embers
“Will have no standing to disregard a champion,” Cathia said.
Audria blanched. “But then Evien would die too.”
“You are among dragons,” Cathia said flatly. “Did you expect mercy?”
Kerrigan swallowed. “Tieran’s got this.”
Audria turned to Cathia and began to drill her on the rules, but Kerrigan was elsewhere. She couldn’t reach Tieran from here, but it didn’t stop her from trying to push past the wall that suddenly kept him from her.
And as she reached down, down, down, she felt another presence. Not Tieran. Not Fordham.
“What…” she began.
Then her body dropped out from underneath her as she was yanked onto the spirit plane.
She wasn’t in the clouds where she normally entered the spirit plane. That was when she was controlling them, but she wasn’t in control of this plane. For a moment, she reached for her own spirit powers to yank back control. A thread formed at the intrusion. A thread that she was pretty sure she could break if she needed to.
“Tieran?” she called in confusion.
It didn’t feel like him, but who else could it be?
The world was a rocky, frozen mountain range. If she’d had true form, she would have been frozen. She turned in a circle and realized that she recognized the location. She had been here, or near here, once before.
Erewa.
This was the Fae house in the northern reaches of Alandria. Theywere known for being a disagreeable sort who used their magic for efficiency purposes, especially mining the hard ground north of the Earle River. She and Fordham had gone to these mountains to find a witch to break his curse, only they had found the mother of the Fae instead—Titania.
Why was she in Erewa?
“I bring you to my home, child,”a voice said into her mind.
Kerrigan whipped around and came face-to-face with one of the largest dragons she had ever seen. He was as big as a house, a great elder the likes of which the world may never see again, even larger than Thiery. His shimmering scales were a smoky black and gray, and his slitted, gold eyes stared down upon her.
“Gelryn,” she gasped.
Gelryn the Destroyer. One of the few dragons in existence to have survived the death of his rider. She just remembered that his rider had been from Erewa. The setting suddenly made more sense.
“Hello, Kerrigan Argon. Much has changed since our last meeting.”
“You’re telling me,” she said on a sigh. “Are you at the Holy Mountain?”
“Yes. We needed to speak, but I could not reach you directly. Not with the Threefold Test in progress. Had Tieran held his tongue, then we would be in a much different position.”
“He’s not really known for that.”
“Neither are you,”he admonished.“This test is about more than your request of the council. It is about honor. It is about his parents. It is about Risa.”
Kerrigan shivered at the mention of Tieran’s late mate. “I know. I mean, I didn’t know it was about Risa, but I could assume that it wasn’t for a boon or the council or whatever.”
“You could not have changed his mind, so put it out of your head. We have bigger challenges.”
“Bastian?” she guessed.
“I left the aerie at Draco Mountain to work with Mistress Zahina on her investigation into you as a harbinger.”
This was news to Kerrigan. Zina was her original spirit teacher. She hadn’t seen or heard from her after Zina’s father’s death on the battlefield at Lethbridge.
“She has gained control of her father’s assets in House Herasi and wishes to convey that she will rise to your cause along with the full might of Herasi.”
