Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Fergal had only been able to hear parts of what Kerry and Alistair had discussed with Duff, but Duff had filled him in on the rest. Duff’s intel was good.
Rough around the edges—the man thought like a hunter, not a lawyer—but the raw material was solid, and Fergal’s mind was already sorting it into categories: confirmed, probable, and requires further investigation.
Confirmed: Kerry had known Duff’s father personally. Had called him “useful” and “a weapon.” The Murphys had been running the dragon-slayer network for years, possibly decades, funding operations with one hand and eliminating operatives with the other.
Probable: the “bloodline” comment suggested the Murphys knew something about the Bás family that went beyond their role as hired killers. Something genetic. Something that made them more dangerous than ordinary humans, and more valuable.
Requires further investigation: Fergal had a suspicion about the actual reason for his kidnapping. Not evidence—not yet—but his instincts were screaming at him that there was a reason they’d taken him and not, say, Erwan or another Doyle dragon. He intended to find out more as soon as possible.
“They’ll come for me next,” Fergal said through the wall. “When they do, I need you to listen. Whatever you can hear through these walls, remember it.”
“I always listen,” Duff said. “Hunter’s habit.”
“Good. Because I’m going to make them talk, and they’re going to say more than they intend to.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve faced them before, and their weakness is their arrogance. They think they’re the smartest men in every room. They’re not.”
The footsteps came two hours later, the click of dress shoes on wooden floors. Kerry then. The man dressed for every occasion as if he were attending a board meeting, even when the occasion was imprisoning a king in a farmhouse.
The door opened. Two guards flanked Kerry, both large, both armed, both wearing the blank expressions of men who’d been trained to follow orders without questioning them. Behind them, Alistair’s broad frame filled the corridor.
“King Fergal.” Kerry’s smile was exactly as Fergal remembered from the Dragon Council—sleek, practiced, never reaching his eyes. “I trust you’ve been comfortable.”
“The accommodations are lacking. I’d leave a negative review, but I seem to have misplaced my phone.”
Kerry’s smile thinned by a fraction. Good.
The man enjoyed being in control but couldn’t stand being mocked.
Fergal had noticed that weakness at the Council, watching Kerry’s composure crack every time Gregor or Fergal landed a verbal blow.
Ego was a vulnerability, and Kerry’s ego was the size of the compound.
“Walk with me,” Kerry said in a tone that wasn’t a request.
Well, that meant Duff wouldn’t be able to listen in. Fuck.
They escorted him through the farmhouse, and while walking, Fergal took in everything.
A central hallway, doors on both sides—some open but most closed.
A kitchen where two omegas worked in silence, their eyes downcast like people who’d learned that being invisible was a survival strategy.
A staircase leading up, guards posted at the bottom.
Windows that showed the same flat, scrubby landscape he’d observed from his cell.
The room they brought him to had once been a dining room, judging by the proportions and the faded rectangular patch on the wall where a painting or mirror had hung. Now it contained a long table, several chairs, and the collected leadership of a clan that refused to acknowledge its demise.
Kerry took the head of the table. Alistair stood by the door. And at the far end, in chairs that had been positioned to suggest authority but only achieved a kind of shabby defiance, sat Cladhaire and Baoth.
Fergal hadn’t seen them since the Dragon Council, where they’d been publicly stripped of everything—their clan, their castle, their power, their legitimacy.
They’d looked diminished then, two old men watching their world collapse.
They looked worse now. Cladhaire’s face was gaunt, his eyes sunken, his hands—resting on the table with a deliberate casualness that didn’t quite mask their tremor—spotted with age.
Baoth was a shadow beside him, smaller than Fergal remembered, his expression bitter.
These were the men who had murdered their own father.
Who had probably killed their uncle and had definitely tried to murder their own son/nephew.
Who had used dark magic to imprison a queen, torture a librarian, and terrorize their own clan into submission for two centuries.
And now they sat at the end of someone else’s table, in someone else’s compound, clinging to the remnants of authority they’d forfeited through every conceivable violation of the Code.
Fergal felt nothing for them but contempt.
“Sit,” Kerry said, gesturing to a chair at the center of the table that was positioned, Fergal noted, so he’d be flanked on all sides. A classic interrogation setup. Kerry to his left, Alistair behind him, Cladhaire and Baoth at the far end. Nowhere to look that didn’t include an enemy.
Fergal sat. He crossed one leg over the other, leaned back, and adopted the expression of mild academic interest that had served him so well at the Council—the look of a man who was here to observe rather than to be observed.
“Let’s dispense with the posturing,” Kerry said, sliding a folder across the table. “We’ve prepared a set of demands that will be communicated to your allies.”
Fergal opened the folder. Four demands, neatly typed, precisely worded. He had to hold the paper a little farther away to be able to read it without his glasses, but he managed.
Erwan Doyle renounces his claim to the Doyle throne and cedes leadership to King Cladhaire.
All omegas who left the Murphy and O’Connor clans are returned to their original clans.
The blood oath between the Doyle clan and the wolf packs is dissolved.
Erwan surrenders himself to the Dragon Council to face charges of insurrection.
Fergal read them twice, his legal mind dissecting each one automatically. Then he closed the folder and set it on the table. “These are absurd,” he said pleasantly. “You know Erwan won’t agree to any of them.”
“That’s not your concern.”
“It is, actually, since I’m apparently the leverage you’re using to force compliance. And leverage only works if the demands are achievable. These aren’t. They’re theater.”
Kerry’s jaw tightened. The micro-expression was tiny and most likely invisible to anyone who hadn’t spent years studying faces across negotiation tables, but Fergal caught it.
He’d hit a nerve. Kerry didn’t like being called out on strategy, especially by a man fifteen years his junior in human terms and roughly two centuries his junior in dragon years.
“The demands are nonnegotiable,” Kerry said.
“They’re also nonfunctional. Erwan can’t renounce a claim that’s been ratified by the Dragon Council.
The omegas left voluntarily under provisions of the Code that you yourself acknowledged at the Council.
The blood oath is a sovereign agreement between the Doyle clan and the wolf packs, which cannot be dissolved by a third party.
And the Dragon Council can’t try Erwan for insurrection when the Council itself voted to recognize his legitimacy.
” Fergal ticked each point off on his fingers.
“Legally, these demands are worthless. You know that. So the question is: what are they actually for?”
The silence that followed was satisfying.
Kerry recovered smoothly—the man was skilled, Fergal would give him that. “Perhaps the demands are aspirational rather than immediate. Perhaps they’re designed to open a negotiation.”
“Or perhaps they’re designed to occupy Erwan and Rhene while you execute your actual plan.” Fergal held Kerry’s gaze. “How are Duncan and Donovan doing, by the way? Making progress with the transition?”
The hit landed. Kerry’s mask slipped for a full second—surprise, quickly followed by calculation, and then the careful reassembly of composure.
But the damage was done. Fergal had confirmed what he’d suspected.
They weren’t demanding the Fitzgeralds because they were already taking them.
Duncan and Donovan were executing a takeover while Fergal sat in a cell, unable to stop them, and Gregor was distracted by finding Fergal.
“You’re well-informed for a prisoner,” Kerry said.
“I’m well-informed for a king. There’s a difference.”
“Not at the moment there isn’t.”
“At the moment, no.” Fergal uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his expression shifting from academic interest to something harder.
“But moments pass. And when this one does, you’re going to find yourself on the wrong side of the Code, the wrong side of history, and the wrong side of every alliance your maneuvering has created. ”
“Is that a threat, Your Majesty?”
“It’s a legal assessment. Free of charge. Consider it a professional courtesy.”
Alistair shifted behind him with a subtle redistribution of weight that Fergal’s Gregor-trained awareness registered as a threat display. He ignored it. Alistair was a blunt instrument, dangerous but predictable. Kerry was the one who required careful handling.
“We’re not unreasonable men,” Kerry said, changing tack with the smooth efficiency of a seasoned negotiator. “Your cooperation would make this considerably easier for everyone involved. Including yourself.”
“Define cooperation.”
Another folder, this one thinner. Kerry slid it across with the casual confidence of a man presenting a contract he expected to be signed.
Fergal opened it and found a single document—a formal statement, bearing the Fitzgerald clan’s seal, authorizing Duncan and Donovan to act as regents in the king’s absence with full executive authority.