House of Dragons: Royal Houses Book One

touch of iron as he dragged the gate open.
He jerked the gate shut behind him with another shudder and then turned toward the Wastes. After seeing Clover get arrested, he knew which direction Kerrigan was going. He took the most likely route, hoping to spot her along the alleyways. He knew Kinkadia like the back of his hand. Together, they had explored every inch of the city. Hadrian had been born here, so he knew so much more than them. But what Lyam hadn’t had from birth, he made up for with gusto.
No, Lyam, like Kerrigan and Darby, had been given up.
His parents had been fishermen off the coast of Venatrix tribe. They were drifters, those who were not part of a tribe, selling their wares at market days along the coast and living off their boat. It was a hard way of life for Fae who weren’t part of a tribe. The system had been set up to help the tribes, but his parents hadn’t wanted to be join. They preferred their nomadic way of life. Except the warrior tribe Venatrix decided his parents were interfering with tribe fishermen… and destroyed their boat.
They had no other choice but to move into the city and try to find a new life. They never found it. After they’d lost everything, Lyam had been left at Draco Mountain with a promise to join a tribe and his father’s compass, and then he never saw them again.
He liked to think that he’d gotten his sense of adventure from them. That he was always searching for the water again. It was the reason he’d agreed to the first tribe that would get him on a boat. Not that he wanted to leave Kerrigan behind. Especially now…
Lyam stepped out onto the main thoroughfare that led north toward the Wastes. It was busy for this time of night. The street was crowded with revelers, and the taverns were bursting at the seams. A sign of happy times. He remembered after the protests that the streets had been emptied, a curfew had been enacted, that no one could leave after nightfall. The winter had been harsh.
He strained his gaze through the crowd and saw a tuft of red hair. “Gotcha,” he muttered to himself and followed Kerrigan’s hair like a beacon in the night.
They wove through the crowd, deeper and deeper through the city until she abruptly turned left down an alleyway. It moved away from Central and into the darker fringes of the city. The Wastes were only another ten minutes through the Dregs and into Dozan Rook’s territory.
Kerrigan could handle herself, but he still worried that something would happen to her, especially in that fine pink dress and a prince’s cloak. She didn’t exactly blend in with the grudge. Come to think of it… neither did he.
He usually changed before he snuck out of the mountain to see where she was going. But obviously, coming from the party, he hadn’t had the chance. And now, he was distinctly aware that no one else was out. He hadn’t seen a soul since the main street.
Lyam gulped and pulled out his father’s compass, running his finger over the faceplate reassuringly. Kerrigan turned right again, then another right, and then a left. He took that next left and then froze. No one was there. Kerrigan was just… gone. That wasn’t possible. Had he been following too closely? Had she caught on to that fact? That wasn’t good. He’d been caught by her once, and he’d thought that she was going to break his nose before she realized it was him.
He tried to backtrack and see if he’d missed her. But no, she wasn’t there. So, he proceeded forward with caution into the alleyway. “Kerrigan?” he whispered. “It’s Lyam. I just wanted to check on you.”
But no answer came.
Only steel.
Lyam gasped, clutching his ribs as a blade slid into his back. He fell to his knees as pain flooded his system. Whoever had stabbed him yanked the blade from his back and came to stand before him. The person was slight with a flicker of white hair appearing from under her black cloak. But instead of a face… was a black mask.
“Please,” he croaked.
“No, dear boy,” a woman trilled.
Then, she brought her face, covered by a black mask, close to his and stabbed him in the heart.
He had just wanted to see the sea one more time… and now, he never would.

14
The Dealer
Kerrigan strode into the Wastes, sweeping the hood of Fordham’s cloak off her red hair. She was hardly inconspicuous today. Normally, she wanted so desperately to blend in here, to belong. But today, she needed to talk to Clover and knock some sense into her.
But attracting attention in the Wastes was dangerous. And she was attracting a lot of attention.
“Hey, baby, you want to go a round?” a male Fae asked, adjusting his crotch for emphasis. As if she wasn’t aware that he wasn’t talking about a fight in the Dragon Ring.
She rolled her eyes and kept walking.
He followed her when she didn’t reply. “What? Think you’re too good for me?”
Kerrigan almost laughed. “Yes.”
Then, she whipped up an easy wall of air between them and continued forward through the gambling hall. She knew where Clover would be after what had happened. She would want the familiar, and there was nothing more familiar to Clover than the sound of the Dragons Up tables.
Unsurprisingly, Kerrigan found her in front of a cheap tankard of ale, holding a loch cigarette between her fingers and laughing with a handful of regulars.
“Red!” Clover cried as she saw her approaching.
Kerrigan’s fury topped out, and she threw the punch before she could stop herself.
Clover toppled off her barstool, landing in a heap on the sticky floor of the gambling hall. “What the…”
“What in the gods’ name were you thinking?” she shouted.
The gaggle of regulars went deathly quiet. In fact, much of the area surrounding their fight had gone silent. Everyone waiting and watching