Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
His father was a coward.
Fergal had suspected it for years—had danced around the word, substituting softer alternatives like cautious or pragmatic or set in his ways—but after watching King Lorcan dismiss Valerie’s beaten face with a wave of his hand and a lecture about omegas knowing their place, the truth sat on Fergal’s chest like a stone.
His father was a coward, and his cowardice was killing people. Maybe not literally, not yet, but the slow death of dignity was still death, and Lorcan was processing it with detached indifference like a man who had stopped seeing omegas as people long before Fergal was born.
The meeting had lasted eight minutes. Eight minutes for Fergal to lay out what had happened to Valerie, cite the relevant sections of the Code, and request that Duncan be formally disciplined.
Eight minutes for Lorcan to listen with increasingly visible irritation, glance at Duncan—who had been summoned and stood with an expression of wounded innocence that made Fergal’s blood boil—and deliver his verdict.
“Duncan assures me the omega was insubordinate, and I see no reason to doubt my advisor’s word. The matter is closed, Fergal. I suggest you focus on your studies and leave clan governance to those with more experience.”
Gregor had stood behind Fergal through the entire exchange, silent and still as a statue.
But Fergal had felt the barely perceptible shift in his breathing and the tension radiating from his body like heat from a furnace.
Gregor had been furious, and his fury had been a wall at Fergal’s back, solid and grounding even as everything else crumbled.
Now they were outside, and the cold hit Fergal’s face like a slap.
He’d stormed out of his father’s quarters without grabbing a jacket, and the spring air—which in northern Canada meant hovering just above freezing—immediately bit through his thin shirt.
He didn’t care. The cold was preferable to the suffocating warmth of a room where a king had considered evidence of abuse and chosen to look away.
Fergal didn’t stop walking until he reached the covered walkway that connected the main building to the eastern barracks.
It was exposed on one side, overlooking the valley below, and the view was the kind that usually calmed him—the vast sweep of boreal forest, the distant mountains, the sky purple with the approaching dusk. Tonight, he barely saw it.
“He’s afraid of Duncan.” Gregor’s voice, low and even, came from behind his left shoulder. He’d followed without being asked, as he always did, his footsteps so quiet on the wooden planks that Fergal wouldn’t have known he was there if he hadn’t been listening for him.
“You saw it too?” Fergal turned to face him.
“His hands. When you mentioned Duncan’s name, his left hand gripped the armrest of his chair. He let go before you noticed, but yes. The king is afraid of his own advisor.”
Of course Gregor had seen it. The man missed nothing, cataloged everything, and filed it all away behind those steel-gray eyes for future reference. It was maddening when directed at Fergal. Directed at a potential threat, it was invaluable.
“What could Duncan possibly have on my father?” Fergal leaned against the railing, the cold metal biting through his sleeves. “My father is king. He has absolute authority. What leverage could an advisor have that would make a king protect the man who beats his servants?”
Gregor moved to stand beside him, close enough that Fergal could feel the warmth radiating from his body—dragons ran hot, but Gregor ran hotter than most, a furnace of contained energy that Fergal had been gravitating toward for years. “I’ve been asking myself the same question for months.”
Fergal’s head snapped toward him. “Months? You’ve been watching Duncan for months?”
“Duncan and Donovan both. They arrived at the compound within weeks of each other, both from outside the clan. Your father vouched for them personally, which I found unusual since the king rarely takes an interest in staffing decisions. And since their arrival, they’ve been—” Gregor paused, choosing his words with the precision of a man laying bricks. “Consolidating.”
The two had arrived while Fergal was at college, maybe two years prior now? He hadn’t taken any interest in them, though now he wondered if he should have. “Consolidating how?”
“Meetings with your father that aren’t on the official schedule.
Influence over guard assignments that should go through Ruben but have increasingly gone through them.
Conversations that stop when I enter a room.
A growing network of loyalists among the younger guards—men who answer to Duncan and Donovan first and Ruben second. ”
Fergal stared at him. “You’ve been tracking all of this, and you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t have proof. I still don’t. Only a pattern, and we both know that’s not enough.” A pause. “I also didn’t want to burden you with suspicions I couldn’t substantiate.”
“Burden me?” Fergal pushed off the railing. “I’m the crown prince, Gregor. If there’s a threat to this clan, I need to know about it, substantiated or not. I’m not a child who needs to be shielded from—”
“I know you’re not a child.”
The way he said it stopped Fergal mid-sentence. After yesterday’s events in the training room, those words carried weight they wouldn’t have a week ago.
Fergal took a breath and pulled himself back to the matter at hand. “Where did they come from? Duncan and Donovan. Before my father brought them in.”
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to trace their backgrounds, but the records are thin. They claim to be from a small Fitzgerald offshoot in the east, a group that disbanded decades ago. I haven’t been able to verify or disprove that.”
“Could they be from another clan entirely?”
Gregor’s expression didn’t change, but something shifted behind his eyes. “The thought has crossed my mind.”
“Which clan?”
A long pause. The wind picked up, sending a flurry of snow crystals skating across the walkway between them. “I don’t want to say it without evidence.”
“Gregor.”
“The Murphys.”
The name landed between them with the weight of a stone dropped into still water.
Fergal felt the ripples spread outward—through his understanding of the last few years, through every interaction he’d had with Duncan and Donovan, through every dismissive response his father had given when Fergal raised concerns about omega treatment.
“If they’re Murphy plants,” Fergal said slowly, his mind spinning, “then everything they’ve done—the influence over my father, the guard loyalists, the consolidation of power—it’s not ambition. It’s an operation.”
“Yes.”
“They’re not trying to advance their careers. They’re trying to control the clan from the inside.”
“That would be consistent with the Murphy tactics. It’s how they’ve always operated—not through direct conquest but through infiltration and influence. Why fight a war when you can win it from within?”
Fergal turned back to the valley view, but he wasn’t seeing the mountains or the forest or the darkening sky. He was seeing a chessboard, and for the first time, the pieces were arranging themselves into a pattern that made terrible sense. “I could talk to my uncle.”
His Uncle Brian, his father’s younger brother, was more engaged with the clan and its operations than the king. He could, from time to time, be made to see reason, especially when it concerned things he knew his brother wouldn’t care about.
“I doubt he’d go against your father’s wishes,” Gregor said. “And alerting him to the possibility of Duncan and Donovan being traitors could backfire if he confronts them.”
True. So how could they find out the truth then? That left only one way.
“I need to tell you something,” he said. He felt Gregor’s attention sharpen, the way it always did when he assessed a potential threat. “My influencer ability… It’s not my only gift.”
Silence. Then, carefully, “Go on.”
“I can read minds. That time I touched your consciousness,” Fergal continued, keeping his voice steady even as his pulse hammered.
“I wasn’t trying to influence you. I was trying to read you.
I hadn’t refined the distinction yet—I was still learning to separate the two gifts—but what I did was closer to mind-reading than influencing. ”
Gregor was quiet for a long moment, his gaze fixed on the mountains. The last light was fading from the sky, leaving behind the deep blue-black of a northern dusk. Stars were beginning to appear, sharp and bright in the thin air. “I knew it wasn’t your influencer gift.”
“You did?”
“I wasn’t certain it was mind-reading, but I suspected it.”
“You did?” He was starting to sound like a parrot, and the quick quirk upward of Gregor’s lips showed he’d noticed too.
“How long have you had this ability?”
“I discovered it about two years ago. Accidentally. I was trying to use my influencer gift on one of the servants and instead slipped into her mind completely. Her thoughts, her emotions, everything. It was—” He searched for the right word. “Overwhelming. And terrifying.”
“Who else knows?”
“No one. You’re the first person I’ve told.”
Fergal could practically hear the gears turning behind Gregor’s carefully neutral expression. “That time in the library, when I caught you, you said you wouldn’t use your abilities on me again. You’ve kept that promise.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been practicing,” Gregor said.
“Carefully. Never on anyone with strong magical training or the gift of magic, and never for too long. I can control it now and slip in and out without being detected.” He hesitated. “I used it on my father.”
Gregor’s eyes cut to him. “And?”