House of Dragons (Royal Houses #1) - K.A. Linde Page 0,139
Tieran headed back toward the city.
“The opera house,” she yelled over the wind whipping in her face.
Tieran dove low over the village, and with a deluge, she released the water magic over the burning opera house and nearby buildings. Other Society members had taken up the call. Dragons filled the air, heading for the river.
Kerrigan’s eyes searched the ground for the rioters who had started this.
And as Tieran began to bank away from the river, she nudged him forward. “Straight ahead.”
I see them.
Tieran came in low, and just before he reached the wide city street, Kerrigan dropped off his back and landed heavily on the ground. She winced at the pain that flared up her knees. She was going to need to work on that. She’d never made a landing like that before, but she had no more time to consider it. She took off at a run, straight for the line of people in black robes and red masks, who were dispersing back into their hidey-holes now that the Society had been called in to break up their fight.
It should have felt just like any other fight she had ever walked into, but it felt like more. It felt like every Red Mask who had beaten her that night almost exactly five years ago. She couldn’t let them get away with this. She couldn’t let their leader go free.
Footsteps sounded behind her, and she didn’t have to turn her head to know that Fordham had followed her into the mayhem, as he had been doing for weeks. She didn’t slow. He would catch up to her. She kept moving forward, glad for those hours and hours of running so that by the time she reached the first line of Red Masks, she wasn’t winded.
Kerrigan used her wind magic to bowl through the first group, and they hastily fled. But she could see the leader up ahead. Their leader was holding up a large, swirling gray orb, much like the amber one Basem had used against her.
This was her chance to get revenge for what those people had done to her. This was her chance to end it. No longer would Red Masks walk her streets. No longer would they terrorize humans and half-Fae. No longer would they try to take away their rights. It could end right here, right now.
The crowd had cleared enough for Kerrigan to slow as she approached the leader of the Red Masks. He turned to face her. He was a large man. The black robes barely covering all of his bulk. His hand held the object aloft, and she could see the thick veins where he gripped it in place. The red mask obscured his features, hiding who he was.
“This ends here,” Kerrigan shouted at him. “Drop the orb, and no one gets hurt.”
A sharp laughed resonated through the stone path. “Is that what you think?”
Kerrigan tried not to let her shock register, but she couldn’t completely mask it. “Basem?”
“Who else, leatha?”
Basem was the leader of the Red Masks. Her stomach tilted and gurgled in disgust. Of course, it made sense. She had wondered how he had so much power. Money alone wasn’t enough, but a cult following of like-minded bigots to spread his hate speech? That would do it.
“It was you all along. You’re the leader of the Red Masks. You killed Lyam. You tried to kill me. And now, when I’ve exposed who you really are to the Society, you burn down a part of the city and riot against it? You’re a monster.”
“A monster I might be, but no one ever gets anywhere without breaking a few rules. It’s just me and you, Red.” He held the gray orb aloft. “I almost killed you once. Are you ready to see if I can do it again?”
“You can’t beat me without your bag of tricks,” she spat.
He shrugged. “Then, there’s no reason to fight fair.”
And at that moment, he thrust the gray orb toward her. Lightning shot out of the eye of the storm. She yelled and threw her body out of the way of the lightning bolt that would have electrocuted her. Fordham dove the other direction, just barely missing being singed, but another building took the brunt of the attack and went up in flames.
“Come out, come out wherever you are,” Basem taunted.
“There’s something you don’t know this time, Bruiser,” she yelled back.
“And what’s that?”
Kerrigan looked to the skies and grinned. “I have a dragon.”