Page 171 of House of Embers
“That’s why you haven’t killed her, isn’t it? She’s your flesh and blood. You made her into this assassin and then used her like a puppet. You collared her. You did everything to hurt her save from killing her. But what I find strange about this is that there is no official record of Isa’s birth or you having a daughter.”
Bastian ground his teeth together. “This is irrelevant.”
“Stick with me,” Kerrigan said, pacing the length of the little trap. “We’re not to the good part yet.”
“Kerrigan,” Isa began and then stopped.
“The story goes that you saved yourself from a house fire. Your face and body were burned. And healing couldn’t get to you quick enough because of Elsiande’s backward views on magic. So you used your position in the Society to make sure that happened to no one else. We’ve all heard this.”
The council seemed invested now. They nodded along to her explanation.
“No reports mention a daughter. Especially not one that hesavedout of a burning building while hiswifeburned to death in the flames.” Kerrigan met Bastian’s steely gaze. “You’d be a hero and not just a martyr. Why exactly was the report redacted?”
He fumed. “Do not dare mention her.”
“Who?” she asked. “Your wife? Dionnet.”
Bastian went stock-still at the name he had scrubbed from history—the name that even his daughter seemingly didn’t know.
“So why doesn’t the official record say that she burned to death as you saved your only child?”
The crowd leaned forward, hungry for the answer.
“I found one of Dionnet’s old friends. It was hard to find someone who knew her. Even harder to find someone who would talk to me about it. You did your work thoroughly,” Kerrigan said. “Killed all her friends and family too—just like you killed her.”
“Father?” Isa asked in horror.
“She was working with the humans and half-Fae. You talked a lot of trouble about her being ‘brainwashed’ by the opposition to hurt you. She went to some quack treatment leaving her all but brain-dead.” Kerrigan’s voice broke at the last words. “Her friend was the last person to see her alive, and she said Dionnet was unrecognizable. And you stand here and act as if you’re doing all this inherhonor, when you destroyed everything that made her a person and then killed her when she no longer fit your purpose.”
Bastian stepped forward. He pointed his finger at her in fury as the council tittered behind him.
“No clever quip now?” Kerrigan asked.
She was finished recounting the draining conversation with Eira, who had been in hiding for much of her adult life on the coast, where Bastian’s agents couldn’t find her. It had been Ellerby who had trackedher down from rumors and convinced her to flee with them. It was through Eira and her memory of Dionnet that Kerrigan had finally put the whole picture together.
Bastian cared about nothing and no one except power. Isa was not his weakness. He had killed his own wife and twisted the reality to seem like a savior, to do things in honor of the woman he had destroyed. There was no ounce of goodness left in him.
“Isa, kill her” was all he said in response.
Kerrigan held her breath as she waited for her biggest gamble.
Isa glanced up at her father,theFather, and said, “No.”
Aclicksounded, and the collar sprang free.
Chapter Sixty-Two
The Father
Bastian nearly fell as he scurried back, away from his daughter. “How did you do that?”
Isa’s hand went to her bare neck. The skin was red and bruised and flaking like an old wound. Whatever the collar had done to her, she had been rejecting it a long time. “It’s gone.”
Kerrigan smirked at her mate. “You were right.”
“Usually am,” Fordham said.
Fordham had not been able to get out of his collar. He could not defy Iris. But Isa had proven that she could defy Bastian’s commands, and it had been Fordham’s idea to push at those edges to see if maybe, just maybe…Isa could do what he could not.
