Page 28 of House of Embers
“I’m not seeing what you think is a misunderstanding in that,” Fordham said.
Wynter flipped her knife, catching it and throwing it skyward again. She let it embed itself in the wooden table. “If you’re a Society goon, then I will have no qualms slowly peeling your skin off with this knife.”
The male blanched. “I…I… Please, I don’t want that. That isn’t why I came through here. I mean, yes, I was looking for Kerrigan. That was the mandate by the Society, but I wasn’t doing it to hurt her. I wasn’t even sure she was really alive.”
“Your poor choice of words said otherwise,” Wynter said. She plucked the knife out of the wood and began to pick at her nails.
“My apologies,” he said quickly. “Sincerely. If you were alive, I wanted to ally with you or at least find out if you were worth allying with.”
Kerrigan frowned. “Why would you run if that’s what you wanted?”
“A dragon comes hurtling after you, you get out of the way,” he said with a defeated shrug. “I didn’t know it was you until too late, and then you were talking about killing me. What was I supposed to do?”
“I asked you to land.”
He huffed. “It felt like a trick or an attack. Either way, I was afraid and worried you would kill me. I was wrong, but it was all I could do to escape.”
Wynter leaned forward with her elbow on the table. “And what does the Society want with our Kerrigan?”
“They want her brought in alive to the Father,” he said with distaste.
She used the knife to flip a honey-blond curl that had escaped his hair tie. A few hairs fell to the table. “And what wasyourplan?”
Gerrond stared down at the strands of his hair and then back to Kerrigan. “I’ve been working with the drifters, and I wanted you to help free them too.”
Kerrigan blinked. That wasnotwhat she had been expecting. Her gaze cut to Fordham’s, and she could see in his terrifying gaze that he too hadn’t known that was what Gerrond was going to say. They thought he would beg or plead or lie. Not this.
Drifters were Fae who didn’t have a house. Either they had been kicked out of their house or raised by drifter parents. Some chose the lifestyle to escape the Society’s interference, but there were many who had it thrust upon them. It was more difficult to get work without house support, as Kerrigan well knew, but she had always assumed most full-blooded Fae were in a better position than humans and half-Fae, regardless of circumstances.
“You want me tofreethe drifters?” Kerrigan asked. “Aren’t the drifters already free?”
Gerrond put his back up at that comment. “Absolutely not!They’re shunned by society and the Society,” he said, emphasizing the capital letter of the government word. “They’re just as demonized as the humans and half-Fae. The Red Masks have already turned their eyes toward them in their bigotry, and they don’t deserve any of that. I thought you of all people would recognize that, considering I heard the story of you mourning the son of a pair of drifters I knew.”
Kerrigan froze at that. “You knew Lyam’s parents?”
“I did,” he said somberly. “Sending him to the House of Dragons was one of the hardest things they ever did.”
Kerrigan turned away from the male. She didn’t want him to be able to dissect her expression, not when it came to Lyam. Growing up in the House of Dragons, it had always been the four of them—Kerrigan, Hadrian, Darby, and Lyam—against the world. Lyam was her partner in crime until he’d been killed by Isa one night in the Dregs. Finding his murderer had led her on this hunt for the Red Masks. She still missed him and hated that she’d lost his compass—the last thing his parents had given him as drifter Fae who couldn’t support him any longer.
“Why do you care about the drifters?” Fordham asked as she recovered herself.
“I have been trying to help for the last fifty years,” Gerrond explained. “After completing dragon training, I went on a mission to visit and record information about all the houses’ customs. But on each voyage, I ended up befriending drifters who helped me along the way. Gradually my mission changed. No longer was I as interested in the houses themselves but those who lived on the outskirts of them. If you go through my bags, you’ll find my research. I record the stories of the drifters so that they won’t be forgotten. I have one of Lyam’s parents as well.”
Kerrigan turned back around at that. “And how would I help the drifters in your perfect world?”
“It’s not just humans and half-Fae that are suffering under thehands of this new regime. It’s everyone at the margins, anyone who dissents. I have been trying for years to get the Society to heed my advice regarding these Fae. There’s enough that, if they mobilized, they could truly hurt the house system, but it is their primarily nomadic lifestyle that is keeping them from doing that. I want them to have their own voice in the government, but the Society is strict, and they change slowly.”
“That’s a fact,” Kerrigan muttered.
“If you’re enacting change, then I want it to be for everyone,” he said on a shrug. “I’m sorry that I don’t care about your plight as much as I do theirs, but we are all in similar boats, and the tide would lift us all.”
Wynter sat back hard in her chair. “That’s a pretty story,” she said with a soft clap. “Did the Society plant that in your head?”
Gerrond had fire in his eyes at her suggestion, and it was not just terror. “I’m in the Society, a leader of House Sayair, and a renowned researcher. There’s no reason I would need to be sympathetic to your cause. I would just say the might of the Society would crush your two little dragons. Instead, I’m telling you the truth.”
“And what’s that?” Fordham drawled.
“They’re weak. The houses are fractured. Not everyone agrees with what the Red Masks did. I can get into the Society and tell them what they need to know. I can help you if you help me.”
