Isa eyed the guard who stood at her back as she strode toward Bastian’s private chambers. He had come to find her sometime earlier and insisted on escorting her the entire way.
“You really don’t have to continue. I know the way.”
He nodded his head demurely. “Orders are orders.”
She ground her teeth together and continued purposefully forward. Things had been on high alert since Kivrin’s mysterious disappearance. The guards who had been on duty had been disciplined, but no one could make out how he had gotten out. A Fae male who couldn’t even put weight on his destroyed legs.
The Father had raged about it for days, breaking artifacts and swearing up and down that someone would be held accountable. Eventually, the brunt of it fell on the poor guard she had dosed with a hallucinogenic. She'd barely felt a pang of remorse when he was beheaded in the open as a traitor. As long as it didn’t come back to her, she didn’t care.
And the Father suspected nothing.
The guard moved past her and knocked on the door. “I have Isa, as requested, Your Excellency.”
“Let her in,” the Father said.
Isa brushed past the guard and walked inside her father’s sanctum. The lights were low to match the dying sun on the horizon. She stumbled a step when she saw that he wore the metallic red mask that was the indicator of his rank among the Red Masks. A blood-red cloak flowed out behind him, and he was otherwise in all-black robes. He looked like he was about to walk onto a battlefield.
She dropped to a knee. “Father.”
“My Isa,” he said. She made to rise, but he tsked. “Stay where you are.”
She wanted to bark a protest, but the shift in the air kept her where she was. Her head bowed. Her knee protesting the hard gray stone. Her stomach twisting in worry.
“You look magnificent,” she told him. “To what battle are you charging into next?”
“Not into … but a battle I have just walked out of.”
Isa wanted to look up at him in confusion, but she couldn’t move her neck. She couldn’t do more than blink. His wind magic was holding her in place, keeping her down. She tried to relax, as if this were everyday. Why should she worry?
Worry would betray her. And she would not be stupid enough to give her new allegiance away.
“What battle?”
Bastian stepped forward until he was directly before her. Still, she couldn’t move. Not until he put his fingers under her chin, lifting until her eyes met his.
“I have just confronted Kerrigan Argon.”
Isa’s eyes widened. “You found her?”
“Indeed. One of my little spies came to me as soon as her presence was known in Alandria. I must ask, Isa, darling, why was it not you who delivered this news?”
She hadn’t known Kerrigan was back. She hadn’t heard. No one had told her. Did Clover know? Was the RFA mobilizing to her aid? All of that sneaking around, getting Kivrin out of the dungeons, going against everything she had worked for and everything that she was, and Clover hadn’t even told her that Kerrigan was back?
Did they assume she would murder Kerrigan if given the chance? It wasn’t a far-off assumption. Part of her still wanted to fulfill her destiny. Killing Kerrigan would be the easiest way to make amends for her failure with the Father.
If that was even what she wanted. It hadn’t been what Valia wanted. And it would make everything else she had done pointless.
“I see you did not know.” He stepped away, his back to her.
Still, she remained on one knee, the pain radiating up her leg. She had endured far worse. She would endure worse still if she had to.
“I have searched high and low for her,” she told him. “If she’d been in Alandria, I would have known.”
“Yet you did not know.”
She ground her teeth together. No, she hadn’t known. She hadn’t given him the one thing that he wanted … again.
“Did you finally kill her?”
“Would I be here with you if I had her in my grasp?” he asked, his voice low and menacing.
No. Of course not. Then, what was this about?
She didn’t even see his fist before it struck her across the face. He released her on impact so she collapsed backward against the hard stones. Her shock was worse than the pain blooming against her cheek. He had struck her.
Then, he stepped forward into her space, pinning her against the stones as thoroughly as if he were using his air magic once more. She looked up at him with terror in her expression. She hadn’t felt this way in years. Not since she had been a little girl. Before he sent her to the assassin training school.
Back when he had just been her father and not the Father.
She’d closed her mind to it for so many years. The reality that this man, this monster, could have had anything to do with her birth. That she had come from him. Instead, she’d left it all safely cocooned away in her mind. Her real father had sent her away. Her real father had taken what she was and molded her into a killer. Her real father had just struck her down.
Her father and the Father blurred into one image. A male and a mask. A monster in both respects. And she could no longer protect herself against who he was. Could no longer separate the two in her mind.
“Did you think I would not know your handiwork?” her father asked.
“Please,” she heard herself whisper. The same pleading she had heard herself make when she was young and weak and vulnerable. Before she found her calling and cloaked herself in darkness.
“I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. That you were getting in their good graces to get to Kerrigan. But then you did not even deliver the half-breed to me.”
“Father—”
“Silence!” he roared.
She cowered. All her training flying out the window. The broken little girl returning as her father’s familiar rage filled the room.
“My own blood has betrayed me,” he snarled. “What is a proper punishment for such a transgression?”
She said nothing. He was going to kill her. Just like he had Valia.
He smiled at her terrified expression. And somehow, that was worse.
“I own you, my little Isannah.”
She shivered at the use of her given name. One she had shortened and cut off from herself, along with the knowledge of who her father truly was.
“And you will not forget it ever again.”
Thank you so much for reading HOUSE OF GODS! This one I’ve been waiting to write since 2015 when I first introduced Domara in the Ascension series. It’s been quite a ride. And there’s more to come!
Kerrigan & Fordham’s adventure will finish in HOUSE OF EMBERS coming Fall 2024.
“Kerrigan Argon fell home from the land of the gods with nothing but her mate and her mother’s bangle.
Now she has to save the world.
Half-Fae and humans are relegated to third class citizens. They’re disappearing en masse. And the Red Masks—a terrorist organization now running the dragon Society—are behind it all.
Only Kerrigan can stop them.
She has to light the ember to forge a revolution.”
Want to meet Cyrene, Ahlvie, Vera, and Basille Selby in their own book? Start with THE AFFILIATE! “A girl discovers she has magic where magic doesn't exist...and falls for the king in the process!” Currently FREE!