Chapter 30 #2
Fergal read it carefully. It was well-drafted, so someone with legal training had prepared it, possibly Fergal’s own documents and templates, stolen from the compound’s records. The language was precise enough to be legally binding if signed by the king.
“No,” Fergal said and closed the folder.
“You haven’t considered—”
“I don’t need to consider. The answer is no.
It was no before I read it, it’s no now that I’ve read it, and it will be no tomorrow and every day after that until you run out of days to ask.
” He pushed the folder back across the table.
“I will not sign my clan over to Murphy operatives. Not under duress, not under torture, not under any circumstances you can construct. And if you think a piece of paper with my signature would hold up under the Code after it became known I signed it as a prisoner, then your legal education is even more deficient than I thought.”
The room was very quiet. Kerry’s expression had gone flat, the pleasant mask abandoned for something colder, more calculating. Alistair’s weight had shifted farther forward. And at the far end of the table, Cladhaire spoke for the first time.
“You’re a fool.” The old king’s voice was a rasp, dried out and bitter. “Just like your father. Lorcan never understood the realities of power either. He thought honor would protect him.”
Fergal turned to face him. The man who had murdered his own father and uncle. Who had tried to kill his own son. Looking at Cladhaire was like looking at the physical embodiment of everything the Code was written to prevent.
“Honor didn’t protect my father,” Fergal said quietly. “You made sure of that. But the difference between my father and you is that when the history of this is written, people will remember him as a king who was murdered by cowards. They won’t remember you at all.”
Cladhaire’s face went purple. Baoth half-rose from his chair, dark magic flickering at his fingertips before Kerry raised a hand and the old dragon subsided, sinking back into his seat with the impotent fury of a man who had been declawed and hadn’t accepted it.
“Take him back,” Kerry said, his voice clipped.
The guards escorted Fergal through the corridor, and this time, Fergal let his attention wander from the map he was building in his head to the sounds beyond the closed doors.
Footsteps overhead—multiple people moving on the floor above.
A low murmur of conversation from behind a door to his left, too muffled to make out words but clearly more than two voices.
And from somewhere deeper in the building, a sound that stopped his heart.
Crying. High-pitched, thin, exhausted. The crying of someone young—a teenager, maybe—who had been crying for so long the sound had worn itself raw.
Fergal’s hands clenched at his sides. He couldn’t stop.
Couldn’t help. Couldn’t do anything except catalog the location—second corridor, third door on the left—and file it away for when the time came.
Because the time would come. Gregor would come. Of that, Fergal had no doubt. The man who had protected him since birth, who had built his entire life around Fergal’s safety, would tear this compound apart brick by brick to get him back.
And when he did, Fergal would have the map.
Every corridor, every door, every guard position, every prisoner’s location.
He’d have the legal case—the demands, the forged document, the admissions Kerry had made.
And he’d gather the testimony of every person imprisoned in this building, ready to be deployed against the Murphy conspiracy with the deadly precision of a lawyer who had been preparing his closing argument from the moment they’d locked him in a cell.
Back in his room, he pressed his palm against the wall. “Duff.”
“How did it go?”
Fergal caught him up, including—after briefly wondering if he really should share everything—the part about Duncan and Donovan, which he’d kept from Duff so far.
When he was done, Duff was quiet for a few beats. “You’ve got serious balls, Fergal. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Gregor. Frequently. Usually when I’ve done something he considers reckless.”
“Smart man, your commander.” Another pause, more thoughtful. “So they’re after your clan?”
“They’re after every clan. I have no doubt that if they were to succeed, they’d go after the O’Connors as well.”
“Fucking bastards,” Duff mumbled.
“The crying. Down the corridor. Did you hear it?” Fergal asked.
“Yes. We need to know how many people are here.”
“And where their loyalty lies. Because after everything I have learned, I highly doubt many omegas would willingly be loyal to the Murphys.”
“Agreed. Question is how.”
“I’m working on that.”
“So am I.” Duff was quiet for a moment, and then, “Kerry called my father a weapon. Said he was useful. Consistent. That our bloodline was ‘more troublesome than expected.’”
“Yeah.”
“He knows more than I do.”
Fergal pressed his forehead against the cool plaster. “When we get out of here, Duff—and we will get out of here—I promise we’ll find those answers. All of them. Every lie they told you, every truth they hid. We’ll find it.”
The silence from the other side was long enough that Fergal wondered if Duff had retreated into his own thoughts. Then, quietly, “You know, for a dragon, you’re not half bad.”
Fergal smiled against the wall. “For a dragon slayer, neither are you.”