But that was clear by the way the room immediately went silent. Everything settled, thick with anticipation. As quickly as it had come, all the candles in the massive cavern dropped at the same time. Gasps of excitement and fear rippled through the crowd.

Before it could crescendo, a figure stepped onto the stage, a flame in her hand illuminating the space. She was taller and broader than Wynter’s lithe form with a thin lace mask covering the stretch of her dark eyes. Her clothes were militant and sturdy with a thick blonde braid over one shoulder.

“Welcome one and all to the first annual Wynter Masquerade. I am Aisling of family Laurent, but in these halls, we are one and all the same. For those who are here for the first time, we appreciate your interest in our great princess’s vision. For those who have come to meetings before, we welcome you back and into a bigger, brighter future. Rise of Charbonnet!”

The room erupted with an echoing of the phrase. “Charbonnet!”

“Rise of the House of Shadows!”

“House of Shadows!” they chanted back.

Kerrigan’s jaw tensed with the effort to keep from doing anything that would give her away. Already, she could tell that Wynter had whipped these people up into zealotry, and she had no way to get them out of the mountain.

“I’m happy to announce your princess, Wynter Ollivier,” Aisling said, holding her hand out and offering the stage to Wynter.

Wynter made quite an entrance in a perfectly white dress to match her long, unbound white locks. The stage illuminated around her, showing the barely blue look she cast across the crowd. From here, Kerrigan might even believe she was completely with it. But her sanity seemed tenuous at best.

She held her hands up, and silence settled back into the crowd who had been applauding her entrance. Her nails were painted a deep blood red. The only color on her at all.

“Charbonnet,” she said in her low, melodic voice. “Once a term to claim a tribe of Alandria. We were the original Fae who came to this great island. Irena, who they worship, came from our halls. She met the great Ferrinix in the halls of Ravinia Mountain. They were bound in our throne room. The line of dragon riders began with us. And the Society deemed it fit to strip us of that right because they did not approve of our treatment of the lesser races.”

Kerrigan winced. Of course, everyone here was Fae. She was probably the only half-Fae in attendance. She doubted any humans were stupid enough to do this.

“They shackled us to this mountain, which had once been the seat of power. And on the eve of our thousand-year imprisonment, what happens? My brother was cast out and able to pass through the barrier.”

Fordham tensed at the mention of his exile.