Blood Heir (Aurelia Ryder, #1)(103)

BD: The warlord decided to make the girl into a killer, and he did. This woman can kill anything. There are reports of her fighting in the pits South of the Border when she was eight years old. Eventually, the warlord died, and from fifteen until eighteen she ended up in a guardianship under one of ours, Knight-Diviner Greg Feldman.



DA: We had her?



BD: Yep.



DA: Did Feldman know?



BD: Looks that way. He tried to enroll her into Academy twice and she bolted both times. You can check the enrollment logs yourself. She went by Kate Daniels.



DA: Well, fucking shit.



BD: Eventually she ended up in Atlanta and ran into Curran Lennart.



DA: The first Beastlord of the Pack?



BD: Yep. Apparently, there was some sort of instant attraction. It gets better. Ted Moynohan at this point is in charge of the Atlanta Chapter.



DA: That fuckwit again. The gift that keeps on giving. I still don’t understand how he got to be the Knight-Protector. If that man was in charge of nothing except his own dick, sooner or later he’d suspect it of presenting a danger to humanity.



BD: He was one of the original 50 people Stone knighted. Stone liked him for dependability and promoted him to Knight-Sergeant, and after he died, Heath took over and Heath prized seniority over ability. We’re taking about the same man who commissioned a life-size portrait of Stone and had it framed in gold…



DA: And if Stone was alive, he would’ve brained Heath with it.



BD: And I would’ve paid good money to see that. Greg Feldman, the Knight-Diviner who served as Kate’s guardian, is murdered. Myonohan isn’t investigating it.



DA: Why the hell not?



BD: Feldman had issues with him. Daniels shows up, and Moynohan hires Daniels as an agent of the Order to solve the murder.



DA: What the actual fuck?



BD: Your guess is as good as mine. This thing is actually a lot more complicated, but you asked for highlights. She works for us for a bit. Meanwhile, her daddy wakes up his sister. Her name is Erra and she is the human equivalent of a nuke. In ancient times, she was his warlord. She’s got a list of titles a mile long, things like Plaguebringer and City Eater, and she is even less sane than her brother. For some reason, Roland sends her to Atlanta, and she runs into her niece. Shit hits the fan. A plague almost wipes out the city, crazy crap happens, but eventually Daniels kills her. In the process, it becomes clear that she and Lennart are an item and Moynohan thinks shapeshifters aren’t people and should be put down. So our girl quits and goes off to be the Beastlady.



DA: …



BD: You okay?



DA: Just think about it. If only we’d managed to reel her in. We could’ve had our own nuke.



BD [sigh]: Yep. This is what happens when you promote people beyond their intelligence. Anyhow, some years pass and Roland and Daniels keep coming into conflict with each other remotely. Meanwhile, Heath is leading us into a political nightmare ass first. The Order’s reputation plummets. Moynohan, who is gone full lunatic by now, becomes convinced that the only way the Order can survive is to have a holy war against an evil enemy.



DA: And we know this how?



BD: He wrote a memo to Heath about it.



DA: … Continue.



BD: Moynohan looks around for some enemy to fight and settles on Roland. Roland decides it’s time to meet his daughter in person, so he sends his warlord to get her.



DA: Hugh d’Ambray, another massive pain in the ass.



BD: He was a pain until Roland threw him away.



DA: That man is a butcher. Right now, he sits safely in Kentucky playing house with his new wife, and the moment he steps foot outside of that state, I’ll be on him like white on rice.



BD: Okay. Moving on. Moynohan makes sure that d’Ambray slaughters the entire Atlanta Chapter and burns a deep-cover agent embedded with d’Ambray. That agent is…



DA: Are you going to tell us?



BD: It’s a dramatic pause, Damian. That agent is Knight-Crusader Nikolas Feldman, Greg Feldman’s son. Didn’t see that coming, did you?



DA: How does this woman keep doing this? How is it every time her trajectory intersects with the Order, we have a major disaster on our hands and she sees us in the worst possible light?



BD: Luck? Coincidence? Fate? Anyway, Heath refuses to go to war with Roland and for some reason decides to promote Feldman to Knight-Protector and set him up in charge of the Atlanta Chapter. Mariana de Leon calls for Heath to step down and your name is brought up as the possible replacement. You know what happened next. While we were busy sorting all that out and fighting our civil war, Roland and Daniels come into open conflict. This family has an inborn ability to claim land.



DA: Define claim.



BD: They become bound to the land and all living creatures within it. If a significant magic power enters their domain, they know and can track it. It’s something that had been deliberately bred into them to make them better rulers. Apparently, there is a big price tag attached to all this, but we won’t go into that. Short version: Roland tries to claim Atlanta and Daniels blocks him and claims it instead. They make a deal. Lennart gives up the Pack, and Daddy dearest will mind his manners for the next hundred years. Basically, Lennart and Daniels bought some time.