Zoh finally called it all to order. “This is not a debate, council. Silence.” Everything settled back down, and Zoh nodded at her. “This is a meeting to decide your fate. Before we brought you in here, we called for a vote on whether to introduce you back into the Society due to your heroic actions and help in discovering the mole in our midst.”

Kerrigan nodded, holding her breath as fear crept in.

“And we have agreed to give you full robes and make you a Society member,” Zoh said.

Her face broke into a smile. “Oh, thank you!”

“With conditions,” he clarified.

Her smile dropped. “Conditions, sir?”

“The terms of the treaty with the House of Shadows states that no new Society member may be admitted from tribe Charbonnet for the next hundred years,” Lockney said, reading directly from his notes on the treaty. “As you would be admitted as a new member, we simply cannot break the bounds of the peace treaty for you.”

Kerrigan gulped. Scales. “But… what about Fordham?”

“He was already a member of the Society at the time of signing,” Lockney said as if it were obvious. “The training group was granted full member status by the council before embarking to Lethbridge for battle. You, however, were not.”

“Oh,” she muttered.

“We have come up with a proposition,” Bastian said, nodding at Zoh. “If you renounce the House of Shadows as your tribe and give up your affiliation, the council will grant you leave to return to the tribe of your origin.”

Kerrigan blinked. They’d found a loophole to let her back in. And that meant… that meant she would have to leave the House of Shadows. Leave the very tribe that Fordham had given her when she had nowhere else to go. But also the tribe that had never wanted a half-Fae in the first place. She had never officially been a member of the House of Shadows. The king had never, would never recognize her. Though Fordham, as king, obviously could… if he ever took up the mantle.

But if she renounced it, she would have to return to Bryonica, to the House of Cruse, to her birthright as the lost princess. The thought of returning to the House of Cruse didn’t bring the same sense of terror that it once had. She had come to a truce with her father. She’d returned to Waisley and seen the people of Lillington. She had found hope in her lands and people. She had already decided to do anything she could to save them from a terrible fate. In fact, she had worn the House of Cruse livery to the winter ball. What difference would it make if she made it all official again?