Page 114 of House of Embers
Isa’s fingers drifted to it as her eyes went from Kerrigan to Fordham and then Roake before going back to Kerrigan. Her face was perfectly neutral as if she had only been checking on a disturbance and was hoping to break up a fight, not find her greatest enemy within the shielded mountain.
“Isa! Kill them!” Roake commanded.
Isa’s eyes narrowed on him, and now they were predatory and furious. As if Roake thought he had the right to tell her what to do—as if he thought she had no free will of her own.
“You do not command me,” Isa told him. “If you got yourself into this, you can get yourself out of it.” Then she put her hands up and backed out of the room.
“She was wearing a collar,” Fordham said. “I’d recognize it anywhere. It was the same one I wore in Domara. I’m going to get it off her.”
“No, I’ll take it,” Kerrigan said with a frustrated snarl.
“Kerrigan,” he said, his voice on the brink of self-destructing.
“Deal with Roake,” she snapped, giving him an objective to keep him from falling apart.
Kerrigan raced after Isa, drawing a knife from her skirts. It didn’t matter that Isa was a liability. She would tell Bastian that Kerrigan was here, and she simply couldn’t have that.
Kerrigan threw all her energy into her air magic as she twisted it toward the assassin. Isa turned at the last second and bounded against the wall, executing a back flip to avoid Kerrigan’s magic.
“Go back,” Isa told Kerrigan.
“I can’t have you ruining all my plans.”
Kerrigan blasted her with fire magic. But Isa moved like water. One second, a fireball was going to singe her body, and the next, she was in front of the wave, unharmed.
“You don’t want this fight.”
“Maybe I do,” Kerrigan told her. She flipped her blade, letting shadows circle it. “You killed Thea!”
Isa didn’t even blink at her new talents. “Yeah, and I saved Clover.”
Kerrigan narrowed her eyes. “What does that mean?”
“I was told to kill the resistance leader. Who is that?”
“Thea.”
“Wrong,” Isa argued, making no move to come at Kerrigan. “Clover is the leader, but I convinced the collar to let it be Thea.”
“Convinced the collar?” Kerrigan didn’t know that was possible. If it was in fact the same one that Fordham had worn, he hadn’t been able to convince it of anything.
“It wanted the rebel leader’s death, but Clover did not deserve it.”
“Neither of them did!”
Isa shrugged. “I had no choice. I have no more choices. And yet I was able to make this one. I chose Thea over your Clover.”
“That doesn’t make up for what you did. You deserve to die for your cowardice.”
“I should have died long ago. What difference does it make? Send me back to the fire, and let me burn along with my mother.”
Kerrigan narrowed her eyes. Isa sounded hysterical. “Fire then.”
Then Kerrigan pulled up her fire magic once more and twirled it in her hand as a warning.
Isa stared into the fire as if she were happy to step into it. “He had to choose, you know? The humans had come to destroy our life. He either saved me or her—his little girl or the love of his life. I was carried out in a bundle in his arms, and she burned to death in the all-consuming flames. I went to that assassin school. He used his burns to take over the Society. All in her name.”
Kerrigan blinked at her. “Wait…”
