by Aiken G. A.
But, after she’d turned sixteen, Gemma had suddenly disappeared one night before the winter frost, leaving nothing but a note for their parents to find.
That was more than a decade ago, and none of them had seen her since. It was true, their parents had received a few letters here and there through the years, letting them know Gemma was safe and had left of her own free will. But no messages for Keeley or their other siblings. As if Gemma expected them to forget she’d ever been a part of the family. As if she wasn’t blood. Their blood.
Keeley just didn’t understand what could have kept Gemma from her own for all that time. Keeley couldn’t imagine that sitting around all day—or kneeling—to pray to a god that might or might not answer could ever replace being with family.
But now Gemma was back! Gliding into Keeley’s shop with her pristine white robes and gloved hands, acting like they were old acquaintances rather than sisters.
She was so busy seething, Keeley had no idea how long she’d worked on that last pommel, letting her anger and annoyance at the current situation flow into her work. Usually, working was just how she enjoyed her day, but at the moment . . . it was keeping her from putting her sister in a headlock and squeezing until she’d put some sense back into her.
When she finally stopped, her hair drenched, her arms and hands dirty, she stepped back from the forge and into one of the Amichais.
Keeley faced the one called Caid. Well . . . she faced his thick neck. She had to tilt her head back a bit to meet his eyes, which was strange for her. She was tall, like her mother, and there were few men who could match her height except for her father. “It was the fact he could look me in the eyes and not the tits that sold me on your da,” her mother liked to say.
“Something wrong?” she asked when Caid just stared down at her with what appeared to be a dangerous scowl. But that could be just the way he looked at everyone.
It was hard to tell, but she had yet to see a hint of a smile on his face or anything resembling happiness. Even when Keran got Caid and his cohorts’ food, he just appeared angry at his bread and cheese. As if the meal had threatened him in some way.
What Keeley found secretly funny was looking at Caid’s angry face beneath all that hair. A literal mane of brown and gray hair with some thin streaks of white, although she doubted any of those colors had anything to do with his age. She could also see his sharp cheekbones, wide nose, and deep-set brown eyes; but she refused to find someone so eternally pissed off attractive. Life was too short to be that angry.
“The boy’s gone,” Caid finally announced.
Keeley frowned. “What boy?”
“The one you risked your life for.”
It did take her a minute to realize who he was talking about, but she blamed Gemma for that too. The little cow had distracted her.
“Why did he leave?” She raised a brow. “Did you say something to him?”
“I said nothing to him,” he replied flatly. “I had nothing to say.”
“Did you frighten him with your glare?”
His scowl became decidedly worse. “What?”
“Your glare. I’m sure that nice young boy found your glare terrifying. I’m used to it,” she said, pointing at herself. “I get glared at all the time. Insecure males mostly. But that boy has been through enough today and he doesn’t need your . . .”
“Glaring?”
Keeley fought her urge to laugh. There was something about this Amichai that entertained her; she just wasn’t sure what it could be. “Yes. Exactly. You probably terrified him.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then why did he leave?”
“He saw your sister and—”
“My sister?”
“The current expression on your face,” he said, “makes me feel like your sister may be currently unsafe. Like I should warn her to run away.”
“Too late!” Keeley spun away from Caid, marched through her shop, and stormed over to her sister, who was sitting and sipping tea.
Calmly, Keeley leaned down and said, “What did you do to that boy?”
* * *
Keeley’s bellow startled Caid and everyone else in his unit; his sister quickly sidestepped away from the two women. Not that he blamed her. The blacksmith was frightening when angry. Especially since he was guessing that Keeley wasn’t angry very often. Even after she’d fought for her life and the life of the boy against those soldiers, she had nothing but a smile and a laugh for them all.
But when she screamed into her sister’s face . . .
Caid would never do that to his sister. Not because he was above that sort of behavior but because Laila was a puncher. Despite being the youngest of them all, she’d been a fighter since birth.
But sister fighting sister was a different and decidedly more dangerous thing.
Then again . . . one of the sisters in this current dispute was a nun.
Still holding her mouthful of tea, Gemma gazed up at her sister, eyes narrowed. Caid briefly thought she was going to spit her tea directly at Keeley, but instead, after a moment, she swallowed. With dainty precision, she placed her cup of tea down on the wood table beside her.
Lowering her gaze, she seemed to center herself, letting out a small breath before she abruptly slammed both her hands against her sister, sending her big-shouldered sibling sliding back several feet.
Shocked, Caid quickly moved between the two women just as Keeley came charging back.
Caid had to use both hands to keep her from attacking her sister, and he could sense the nun now standing behind him. Once the pair couldn’t get to each other, the screaming began. Caid hated screaming. Not the words. He could not care less what the sisters were saying to each other. For him it was just the sound. If one was not in danger, one should not be screaming. But it seemed the Smythe sisters had never heard that before. Because they were yelling now and he was not happy about it.
While Caid and Farlan did their best to keep the two females from killing each other, the workers stood around, gawking, and his sister and Cadell stood back, waiting for the fighting to stop because they didn’t like screaming either.
There was one who did seem to be enjoying herself . . . Keran the cousin. She sat on a windowsill, a leg hanging down and swinging while she ate an apple and laughed but did not help. She was not helping.
Caid continued to push back against Keeley, whose intense strength was really beginning to impress him. He glanced over at his sister, about to ask for her help, when he noticed one of the older workers standing behind her . . . and staring at the long bare legs stretching from underneath her leather kilt. The man leered and, after making sure his boss was truly busy with the nun, he stretched out his arm and began to snake his hand under Laila’s kilt.
Despite all that was going on, Caid couldn’t help but smirk when his sister’s gaze moved from the fighting siblings to a spot across the room. Before the worker could even touch her, she had sensed him. With a slight tilt of her head, her eyes spotted him behind her.
Laila folded her arms over her chest and did what Caid had known she would.
* * *
Keran adored her family.
Well . . . not all of it. Her own mother and siblings she had no patience for because they didn’t understand her and had never tried. It was her choices that bothered them. But what did they expect? For her to go into a forge every day, pick up a hammer, and work with steel? Just the thought . . .
In her early years, the boredom would have destroyed her.
It wasn’t her fault either. That she had not only the love of a good fight, but the skill to win. Her own mother had said she “came out of my womb swinging! Nearly knocked out poor Nelly, the midwife who was helping with the birth.”
So Keran had gone off one day and entered the fighting guild. Unlike the stonemasons and blacksmiths, she didn’t have to start off as an apprentice, working for nothing and tolerating the general abuse of the elders. Instead, she just started fighting thos
e who were her age, her size. Eventually, she moved up the ranks until she was known throughout the lands.
But, also unlike stonemasons and blacksmiths, eventually all fighters had to stop. If they wanted to live. She was more than forty springs and had gone out on top. She could have returned to the guild and instructed the younger fighters but . . . that wasn’t her. She had no desire to teach others.
Keran also could have gone home, but . . . for what? Her family had no use for her. And she didn’t plan to spend the rest of her days listening to her siblings and their youngsters chastising her about her choices. So Keran had come to see her aunt. Also a blacksmith, but she’d always been kind and Keran had liked her young cousins.
It still had shocked her, though, the way they’d welcomed her. Without question. Without judgment. And Keeley . . . sweet Keeley had given Keran a job. “Stay at the forge,” she’d said over some ale at the local pub. “Keep an eye on things when I’m not around.”
“I can swing a hammer, Cousin, but only to break someone’s jaw,” she’d reminded her.
“Really? I can crush a man’s entire face with one hammer swing.” She’d grinned, showing those adorable dimples. “I have enough blacksmiths working for me. All men, by the way, which should keep you highly entertained.”
“I do have an appetite.” She’d studied her cousin. “You sure you don’t mind?”
“You’re family!” Keeley had exclaimed. “We always make room for family. It’s just about finding what you’re good at. And keeping those bastards in line when I’m not around . . . that, my cousin, sounds exactly like what you would be good at.”
And she was. As always, her cousin had been right.
Still, sweet Keeley had one weakness. Her only weakness. Her siblings. All the younger ones, she kept in line just by being herself. But the second oldest . . . dear, pious Gemma? She’d always refused to fall in line.
Which made seeing her in her holy garb, covering herself completely as if even the wind touching her was a sin against the higher ones, more entertaining to Keran more than she could say. Because she knew how Keeley would react.
Exactly the way she was reacting now. Like a crazed banshee exploding from all her rage.
How dare her sister not do exactly what she’d told her to do!
Ahhhh. The women in her family. They were amazing. And insane. Because you needed to be both if you wanted to survive this world the way they did. Making their own choices and rules and ignoring all the men who tried to tell them no.
Even better, though, was that Keeley hadn’t returned from the forest alone. She’d brought friends! Amichai friends!
Keran had met Amichais before, but they weren’t a friendly people. Not that she blamed them. Those in the Hill Lands didn’t like those from the mountains and made that clear by their treatment. So the Amichais wisely kept to themselves, sticking to the wooded areas and bigger cities—where they could mostly be ignored—in their kilts, chainmail shirts, and heavy armaments.
She still wanted to keep an eye on the Amichais since she had no idea why they would help her cousin and that skittish boy. There was just one problem: She was unable to see out of the corner of her left eye. Not since that brutal battle with a man three times her size; Keran woke up three days afterward with the winner’s gold purse and a blood-filled eye that didn’t clear up for weeks.
So it wasn’t her sight that told her something had happened off to her left. It was the sounds: a man’s cry of pain and the destruction of the wall separating her room from the rest of the shop.
Keran was off the windowsill and facing the rest of the Amichais in seconds. But they were just standing there, while one of the workers was writhing on the floor of her bedroom, holding his chest with one arm . . . and sobbing.
She jutted her chin at the female Amichai—since she seemed to be in charge—and asked, “What happened to him?”
“He tripped.”
Keran smirked. “Into your ass?”
Keeley stood beside her now. “What are you talking about?”
“This one is a bit of a grabber,” Keran told her cousin with a shrug, “and I think he was rude to one of your friends here.”
“If you knew that about him before this, why haven’t you dealt with it?”
“I did,” she said, rubbing her nose. “I twisted his arm and shoulder until they splintered like kindling; once he healed up, he came back to work. I thought he’d learned his lesson.”
Keeley let out a long sigh, her gaze locked on Keran. “Why did I put you in charge when I’m away?” she finally asked.
“I have no idea,” Keran admitted.
* * *
Keeley knew what she’d seen over her sister’s shoulder. Even though they were arguing, there was no way to miss how Laila’s lower half had changed just before she sent Rob flying through a wall.
Thankfully, though, Gemma hadn’t seen it. Who knew what her religious fervor would make of what Keeley had seen? Keeley already knew what the Amichai were and she didn’t care. Her sister, though . . . she was no longer the girl Keeley had once known. She knew she couldn’t trust Gemma. Not with her new friends. But she knew who could be trusted with their safety.
“I’m going home,” Keeley abruptly announced, motioning to her workers to toss the grabby idiot out of her establishment. He could find work somewhere else. She turned to the Amichais. “And you lot are coming with me. You’ll get some rest and figure out what you want to do in the morning.”
Laila nodded. “That would be—”
Gemma caught Keeley’s upper arm and yanked her toward the door.
“Give us a moment,” she politely asked the Amichais before dragging Keeley into the street.
“What are you doing?” her sister demanded once they were outside.
“Remembering how I was raised,” Keeley spit back. “I see people who need help . . . and I’m helping them. That’s what we do.”
“You’re spouting Da’s goat shit right now? In this moment?”
Keeley shook her head. “What the fuck are you talking about? What moment?”
“We can’t bring strangers home.”
“I’m assuming you’re coming home. You’re practically a stranger.”
“You are such a—” Gemma clenched her jaw and closed her eyes. “Can’t you see the danger all around you?”
Daniel the shoemaker walked up to them and abruptly put a baby lamb in Keeley’s arms. “For your mum. Tell her I’ll get her the baby goat in another week or two.”
They stared at the lamb bleating in Keeley’s arms as Daniel returned to his shop.
“Yes, Sister, the danger is everywhere.”
“Keeley—”
“The Amichais saved my life and the life of that boy you scared away. They didn’t have to. They could have left me to fend for meself, but they didn’t. So the least I can do is offer them supper and a safe place to stay for the night.”
“You can put them up in the pub.”
“Old Stump isn’t going to let Amichais into his pub and you know it.”
Keeley could tell her sister was attempting to think of more arguments to dissuade her but she didn’t want to hear them. She didn’t want to hear anything. So she used her elbow to push open the door to the shop and leaned in.
“You, lot!” she bellowed. “Let’s go!”
The Amichais walked out and Keeley motioned to her cousin. “You too.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re family,” she lied. Not that Keran wasn’t family. She was. But that wasn’t why she was bringing her home this night. No, it was because she was the best fighter Keeley knew and if her sister turned out to be right, she wanted the extra defense. But she wouldn’t say any of that in front of Gemma. Not now. Not ever.
Keran walked out of the shop and closed the door behind her. The three kin stared at one another for a long few seconds before Keeley lifted the baby lamb a bit and said, “By the way, we’re not sacrificing this one
for your gods. In case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t wondering actually, but feel free to fuck off,” Gemma shot back before stomping off after their guests.
Keran glanced at her. “You know, I could be wrong but . . . it seems that nuns have changed since my day.”
CHAPTER 4
“It’s like she expects me to forget what she’s done! But I’ll not forget. I’ll never forget!”
It took some time, but Caid was starting to think that this woman was talking to him.
Maybe she wasn’t.
He looked around at the others. Laila was chatting up the nun, trying to find out what she was doing here. He knew his sister’s way of thinking and in Laila’s mind it would seem strange that the nun should suddenly appear when she’d been gone for so long. But Caid also got the feeling the nun was chatting up Laila in the hopes of finding out what they were doing here. Unlike Keeley, though, he didn’t think this one or the cousin knew what they were.
He glanced behind him and there were Farlan and Cadell. For some unknown reason, Keeley had suddenly handed them each a sword from her shop. “I just finished these yesterday,” she’d said before they began to walk through town. “They’re a bit nicer than what you have and will serve you both well.”
She’d been right too. The swords she’d given them were definitely superior to what they had, which was why they were both busy examining their new weapons and discussing them rather than chatting with the blacksmith who’d created them.
And then there was Keran. The cousin. She was bringing up the rear . . . and seemed to be talking to herself because no one was around her. Whatever conversation she was having, though, she seemed to be enjoying it.
So what did all that mean?
He glanced down and to his left. Aye. Keeley was talking to him.
“What are your thoughts?” she asked, a baby lamb draped over her neck like a fur cape.
“I . . . I honestly don’t know because I didn’t know you were talking to me.”
“Who else would I be talking to?”
“Anyone?” Caid gestured to the world around them. “Literally anyone.”