And of course, she’d known. She’d certainly known it wasn’t great. She hid her magic and her ears enough to know. But it was one thing to know and another thing to know.
To be standing on a stage in front of hundreds of people and not get chosen. To be laughed at.
“I…” she muttered.
She needed to get out of here. She didn’t want to be their amusement. Her father stepped forward, and she shook her head once. Because if this wasn’t humiliating enough, having her father vouch for her might be worse. She didn’t want to be shackled to him for any reason.
She was ready to rush off that horrible stage when the doors to the ceremony room burst open. Everyone wrenched away from Kerrigan’s fate to see who had just entered.
It was a disheveled Helly. Her eyes wide. Her hair out of its tight bun.
“The protests have turned into riots. We need more security to hold them back. Quickly!” Helly cried.
The party fell apart in a matter of minutes. Dragon Blessed were left behind by their new chosen family. Society members burst through the crowd toward Helly. Even Moran, who was hardly a fighter, hastened off the stage.
Kerrigan was left standing all alone. At least now, no one was paying attention to her.
She strode away from her friends and off the stage. She didn’t know where she was going or what she had in mind. She just needed to get away. Away from the life she’d thought she knew and the humiliating laughter from the crowd and the slimy feeling of standing onstage and no one choosing her.
But then she heard her name, and she stalled.
Helly ran to her side. “Kerrigan, the protest…”
“Yes,” she said at once before Helly could ask the question about her visions. “I wanted to find you when I first got here.”
“And the Red Masks?” she asked, pitching her voice lower.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s the same protest as what I saw. But… it could be, Helly,” she whispered.
Helly nodded in understanding. “At least I know it is one and the same. It must mean that this is the beginning.”
“The beginning of what?”
“That, we will see,” Helly said evenly. She shook herself. “You were still onstage with Moran when I burst in. Was the ceremony not complete?”
“Oh, it was finished,” she said viciously.
Helly cocked her head to the side. “What happened?”
“No one chose me.”
Helly frowned. “That’s impossible.”
Kerrigan shot her a deadly look. “I do not jest.”
“Helly!” a voice called from the hall. “We need you to direct people.”
She waved at them. Her gaze was still on Kerrigan. “We will figure this out,” she told her confidently. “After this is complete, we will find a place for you.”
“Helly!” that voice yelled again.
She sighed and brushed a hand on Kerrigan’s shoulder before rushing out after the other Society members. The doors were closed and barred from the inside as the protests raged on in the night beyond.
Kerrigan only made it a dozen feet away from the stage before her friends caught up with her. Hadrian put his hand on her sleeve, but she pulled away. She didn’t want comfort like this. If anyone asked about her well-being, she might not be able to hold in her tears. The shape of humiliation still raged through her stomach, and she didn’t wish to unleash it until she was well and truly alone.
“Kerrigan, I’m so sorry,” Darby whispered.
“We never expected this to happen. Not in a million years,” Hadrian said.
“No,” she agreed. “In fact, it hasn’t happened in the nearly thousand since the inception of the House of Dragons.”
“It’s bullshit,” Lyam snapped, sharp as a whip.
That almost dragged a smile from her features.
“Lyam,” Darby admonished.
“It’s true,” he cut right in. “The whole thing is beneath the House of Dragons and the Society. They should have never let that happen.”
“He’s right,” Hadrian said softly. “I don’t know how it could have happened. You had already negotiated with Ellerby. He’d been your choice for months.”
“Yeah, and then he disappeared right before my turn came,” she told them.
Darby blinked in surprise. “He disappeared?”
“Yes. He just vanished. Left the room before he could pick me.”
“That’s odd.”
“Sabotage?” Lyam questioned.
Kerrigan shrugged. “Or a change of heart because of these.” She swept aside the braids in her hair and revealed her slightly pointed ears.
Darby shook her head. “It can’t be. That’s the lowest of the low.”
“You don’t know what it’s like out there, Darbs.”
Hadrian cut in, “We don’t. But the Society is honorable. They would never have let that happen. They took you in, knowing you were half.”
“And things have changed,” she reminded them. She gestured to the protests outside. “That isn’t normal either.”
“But they’re not protesting you,” Lyam said. “They’re protesting the tournament.”
“And you do remember the last time people started to protest the tournament?”
Her friends collectively fell silent. They remembered. They remembered that fateful night. She had come back bruised and bloody. Lucky not to be dead. Her world had never been the same.
“I can’t just stand here,” Kerrigan finally said. “I need to go see what’s happening with the protests.”
“What?” Hadrian asked.
“Kerrigan, just wait here. The Society will handle it.”
Maybe they would, but she hated standing around and feeling useless. She needed to do something. She had enough magic to help the Society if the protests got out of hand. And she wanted to be there to see if her vision came true. If the red-masked figure appeared again.
“There’s a back way out,” Kerrigan said.
They’d walked every inch of this building in the years before. Younger Dragon Blessed always helped prepare the ceremony, as surely as they had this year.
“Kerrigan, don’t go,” Darby said.
“Come with me.”
Darby shook her head. Kerrigan saw in Hadrian’s eyes that he couldn’t do it. When she turned to Lyam, she was expecting a similar no from him. He’d lost so much of his edge of adventure in the last year. One day, he’d been her right hand, and the next, he’d confessed his feelings and been determined to protect her.
But what she saw on his face today was what she remembered from so many years in the past. She couldn’t help her own face from mirroring it.
“I’ll go,” he agreed.
“Lyam!” Hadrian and Darby said together.
“We’ll be back soon,” Lyam told them.
Kerrigan just nodded, and they were off. They passed through the crowd barred inside, slipped through a side exit into a servants’ corridor, and then followed it until they reached a back entrance. Lyam unbarred the door as Kerrigan used her magic to lift the lock. It would be dangerous to leave it without barring the door again. But it was much harder to do magic when she couldn’t see. Instead, she flicked her wrist and put a bit of rock against the handle. She spelled it so that if someone tried to open the door, she would be alerted. It was a trick that she’d learned while living in the House of Dragons when everyone wanted to sneak into each other’s rooms.