by G. A. Aiken
The queen’s head turned toward Talan’s mother. “Are you all right, Annwyl?”
“Is she all right?” Talwyn exploded.
“Silence!”
Annwyl didn’t answer Rhiannon; instead, she walked over to Talwyn, who was still trapped on the ground because of her damaged leg.
With cold indifference, she gazed down at her daughter.
“Come after me, little girl,” their mother warned, “and you’d best be ready.”
“Annwyl,” Fearghus said, softly. But Annwyl raised her hand, keeping him quiet.
“Understand me, Talwyn?”
Breathing hard, her rage a palpable thing surrounding her, Talwyn spat out between gritted teeth, “Oh, I understand.”
“Good.”
Annwyl turned and walked across the training ring. As she passed Talan, she stopped to get him back to his feet and patted his shoulder. Then she went over the fence and headed toward the stables.
No one stopped her. No one tried to speak to her. They all just watched her until she disappeared.
Rhi was the first to move, rushing over to Talwyn’s side along with her mother and Morfyd. Together, they examined the damage to his sister’s leg.
His grandmother shifted to human and accepted a robe from her mate while Bercelak quickly put on human clothes and followed her into the house so that she could, most likely, meet with King Gaius.
Talan went to his sister’s side. He crouched beside her, putting his arms under her, careful of her damaged leg, and lifted her.
“Let’s get her in a room so we can fix this leg,” Morfyd suggested.
Talan had started to follow his aunts and cousin, when Talwyn grabbed the scruff of his shirt.
“Why did you stop me?” she demanded, the pain of her leg making her voice deeper, sweat rolling down her face from the recent battle.
“Because,” Talan replied, gazing deeply into his sister’s dark eyes, “she’s our mother.”
Talwyn blinked, as if she’d forgotten that very important fact. “Oh . . . yeah. Right.”
Gods in the heavens, she had forgotten!
Chapter Fifteen
“King Gaius!” a voice trilled.
Gaius cringed. He hadn’t bothered to go outside to watch the battle between mother and daughter, mostly because he hadn’t cared. Plus, he’d thought he’d have some time alone to eat.
Sadly . . . that was not to be.
Gaius stood and faced the Dragon Queen of the Southlands.
“Queen Rhiannon.”
She held out her hand, apparently a new bit of etiquette she’d borrowed from the humans.
Gaius grasped that hand and kissed the back of it, which got him a lovely growl from Rhiannon’s mate.
Exasperated, Gaius snapped, “She offered it to me!”
“Oh, stop it, Bercelak!” She crinkled up her nose in an adorable manner that Gaius found annoying, and said, “He gets so testy around other males. But nothing to worry about.”
Yeah . . . Gaius wasn’t so sure about that. Not with black smoke pouring out of the dragon’s human nostrils.
“You should have come to see, Gaius Domitus,” Zoya Kolesova stated as she and the other Riders returned to the hall. “Mother and daughter battling for dominance. It was beautiful sight to behold.”
The Dragon Queen’s eyes grew wide at the sight of Zoya as she exclaimed, “Good gods! When did we start letting giants in? Bercelak, I thought we had them banished!”
“Queen Rhiannon,” Gaius quickly stepped in, “please let me introduce you to the Riders of the Outerplains, brought here by Kachka Shestakova. First, this is Zoya Kolesova of the Mountain Movers of the Lands of Pain in the Far Reaches of—”
“No!” the queen snarled, hands up and swiping through the air. “Absolutely not! I will not sit here and listen to those ridiculous names! No!”
She turned on her heel and stormed toward the back of the castle. “Come, Iron. We have much to discuss!”
Gaius glanced at Kachka and she mouthed, Thank you, at him.
He gave a small smile and began to follow, but he’d barely gotten a step before the queen yelled through the doors at the back of the hall, “Are you coming or do you need an engraved invitation, Iron?”
Letting out a pained sigh, Gaius mouthed back, You owe me, female, which only made Kachka laugh.
Kachka watched Gaius make the walk to the back of the hall, his feet dragging like a little boy sent to be reprimanded by his mother.
When she turned back around, Elina was staring at her.
“What?” she asked in their language.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“You’re smiling. It’s disturbing.”
“Do you want to go hunting or not?”
“All right. I was just letting you know.”
After the extremely long meeting with Rhiannon and Bercelak—discussing what he’d already discussed with Annwyl—Gaius had barely been able to get back to his room to change clothes for dinner before he heard the knock on his bedroom door and opened it to find Izzy standing there. She’d changed out of her chain mail and was in a dark blue dress that hugged every curve. She had small blue flowers weaved throughout her hair, but she still kept several of her warrior braids and had two decorative—but quite functional—swords strapped to her back.
“You look beautiful,” he noted.
Her smile was wide. There was something about her that still reminded Gaius of the young woman he’d met all those years ago. A cheerful innocence that belied the brutal warrior she’d become, who was feared throughout the realms.
Many warlords and generals called her “The Blood Queen’s Pit Dog.”
A rather dismissive name for a warrior who had personally destroyed the orc kingdom of the west and laid waste to the Three Kingdoms of Ice right outside the Ice Land territories.
And that same terrifying general was now outside his door . . . blushing.
“Thank you,” she gushed, giving an awkward little curtsy. Awkward because Izzy, like Annwyl, had not been raised in the court as most of the lords and ladies of this land had.
“Are you here to escort me to the dinner?”
“I am. Celyn was supposed to come get you. As you know, he’s sergeant major of the Dragon Queen’s Army now and he thought it was his duty to escort you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But his sister, Brannie, she wanted to escort you because she’s also a captain and she thinks you’re quite cute.” Gaius laughed as Izzy went on. “But Celyn wasn’t having it. And Brannie . . . she’s never been one to back down about anything. So the pair of them are in a right brawl now . . . that’s when I decided to come get you myself. I’m hungry and, as soon as we’re done eating, we can dance!”
She reached in and took his arm, pulling him out into the hall.
“Are you happy with your room?” she asked as they made their way toward the stairs.
“Much happier now.”
She winced. “Heard about that.”
“I’m sure everyone has heard about that.”
“You have to understand the Riders live differently than we do. I’m sure they didn’t see anything wrong with it.”
“I’m sure the Riders who arrived with me didn’t see anything wrong with sleeping in my bed. But I’m sure that Kachka Shestakova knew exactly what she was doing. She did it on purpose.”
“I doubt that. Kachka doesn’t seem to care about anyone enough to torment them.”
“You could say the same thing about a diseased jungle cat, and yet they still love to torment the large rats that live in burrows beneath them.”
Izzy laughed. “I guess you’re right.”
They reached the first floor and walked toward the head table, taking a moment to easily leap over the bodies of Celyn the Charming and Branwen the Awful as they rolled by, fists and curses flying.
“How many legions do you command now, General?” he aske
d her.
“Three. The Fifteenth, the Twenty-Third, and the Thirty-Ninth. All good, strong soldiers I’m proud to lead. I’ll be heading off to the base camps in a few days for inspections. Making sure everything is prepared for whenever Annwyl is ready to move.”
“We’re doing the same. But quietly.”
“Why quietly?”
“The Senate hasn’t approved our armies joining this war.”
Izzy stopped and faced him. “But don’t they understand—”
“Oh, they understand perfectly. But this is Sovereigns’ politics, which is a breed unto itself. I wouldn’t worry, though, Iseabail. Politics is what the House of Domitus is known for. Between me and my sister, they’ll give us what we want.”
“But it’s not about what you want. It’s about what’s right. If you’ve seen what the cult has done to some of the temples . . .” She briefly glanced off before snarling, “The orcs were kinder to their victims than the Cult of Chramnesind.”
Gaius grasped both the general’s hands, looked directly into her eyes. “Izzy, you and I . . . we have a very long history. And I owe you much.”
“Gaius—”
“No. Let me finish. I owe you much. But even my debt to you does not match the loyalty I have to my people. I will do whatever is necessary to protect them. I play the game now, with the Senate, because it’s in my best interest. But when the time comes, when it is necessary, nothing will stop me and my sister from doing what is right. Don’t forget who I am, General Iseabail. Who I’ve become at the talons of Overlord Thracius himself.”
Izzy—General Izzy—studied Gaius coldly. “Those were days past, Rebel King. With your sister back, many say you’ve . . . lost your edge.”
“And what do you think?” he asked her. “Do you think I’ve lost my edge?”
Her smile small, Izzy again took Gaius’s arm and continued toward the main table. “I think Duke Salebiri had best pray that you have.”
Talan pushed open the door to his sister’s room and walked in. Sitting up in the bed, she was in complete darkness. Even the pitfire was not lit, nor any candles or wall torches.
And, in that darkness, she gazed forlornly out the open window.
“Could you possibly look more pathetic?” he asked, in no mood for one of his sister’s dark episodes.
“Get out.”
Talan lifted his hand and, with a wave, lit all the candles and torches and the pitfire.
“Do stop feeling sorry for yourself,” he ordered her.
“I want to feel sorry for myself. I want to sit in the dark and be miserable.” Talwyn snapped her fingers and everything went out again.
Becoming truly annoyed, Talan flicked a finger and brought the light back. Snarling a little, Talwyn snapped. Growling back, Talan flicked. And it went on like that for so long that when Rhi walked in carrying a tray of food for Talwyn, the siblings were about to start lobbing the giant fireballs they held at each other.
“Stop that!” Rhi slammed the tray down on a nearby table. “Right now!” She clapped her hands together and the fireballs fizzled out. “Are you trying to set the whole house on fire?”
“She’s being a prat.”
“You’re being a right bastard!”
Talan geared up to start lobbing things at his sister again, Talwyn more than happy to fight back, her fingers twitching.
Rhi stomped across the room and pressed her hand against Talwyn’s wounded leg. The pain she was feeling as the bone quickly knitted itself together with the help of Morfyd’s magicks slashed through Talan’s system. Rhi was allowing him to feel what his sister was feeling but, in Talwyn’s usual way, refused to show anyone.
Talan dropped to one knee, unable to support his weight on that wounded leg.
Looking up at his sister, he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“That you were in so much pain?”
“Pain is a part of life.”
“See?” he told her, again lighting everything with a flick of his finger. “This is why I want to throw fireballs at you. Pain is a part of life, but that doesn’t mean you have to suffer in silence. Or, even worse, wallow in that pain.”
“It does when you’ve been an idiot.”
Rhi winced for Talwyn and asked, “Because you tried to kill your mother?”
Talwyn looked down at her hands, shrugged. “She made me mad,” she admitted.
“The big thing is,” Talan noted, moving over to the bed and sitting next to his sister as the pain he’d felt eased away, “is that she never got mad.”
“What?”
“Our mother is rage. Especially in a fight. But with you . . . she was calm, controlled . . . precise. Plus, I’ve never seen her fight like that before. Those new skills she has, combined with this newfound control of hers, just made her attacks on you more devastating. You need to find out what she did to get like that. Who she’s been training with, learning from. And then you need to start learning too. Learn everything you can.”
“He’s right,” Rhi agreed, placing the tray of food on Talwyn’s lap. “I’m sure if you talk to Auntie Annwyl—”
“How can I talk to her?” Talwyn asked, clearly ashamed. “I tried to kill her.”
“Oh, come on! You act like you’re the first in the family to try. You, sister, are not the first and, honestly, I doubt you’ll be the last.”
Rhi gave a sad little nod. “He’s right.”
“You’ll sit here. By Annwyl,” Izzy said, tapping the chair.
Gaius cringed. “Do I have to?”
“Of course. She’s the queen and you’re a king. Grandmum will be up here with you as well.” She leaned in and whispered, “But don’t worry. Annwyl mostly reads at these things. And Grandmum is too busy sniping with Ghleanna about . . . well . . . everything to bother paying any attention to you at all.”
“Excellent.” He took Izzy’s hand and kissed the back of it. “As always, General Iseabail, it’s been a delight. You’ll have to save me a dance tonight.”
She giggled. “I will!”
“Izzy?”
Izzy cringed before plastering on a big smile and spinning around to face her mate, Éibhear the Contemptible. He stood behind her, his untrusting gaze locked on Gaius, his small team of Mì-runach warriors behind him. The lot of them were covered in travel dirt, wearing the heavy fur coverings of the Northlander.
“Éibhear!” Izzy cheered. “You’re home!”
The youngest offspring of Queen Rhiannon nodded at his mate, but kept his angry gaze right on Gaius.
“Prince Éibhear,” Gaius greeted.
“Iron scum.”
One of the Mì-runach, the one they called Aidan the Divine, quickly pulled his overly large friend back. “Isn’t this nice?” Aidan asked. “We’ve come just in time for a feast in honor of your mother’s ally.”
“I don’t give a battle-fuck who he is.”
Aidan gave Éibhear a shove and said to Izzy, “Why don’t you take your mate upstairs, General, and get him cleaned up for the evening.”
The blue-haired dragon snarled at his friend. “But I’m not done here.”
Izzy grabbed her mate by the collar of his chain-mail shirt. “Oh, yes, you are.” She pulled him away with that strength she was known for, and Aidan gave Gaius a smile he could only call “perfectly royal” in its attempt to soothe the situation. But before he could add words to that smile, one of the other Mì-runach next to him complained, “I’m hungry.”
Aidan glared at his friend. “Then get food.”
The Mì-runach thought on that for a rather long moment before nodding. “Yeah. All right.”
“That was Caswyn,” Aidan said. “And this is Uther.” He pointed to the last Mì-runach standing next to him. “Who’s going to walk away now.”
“I am?”
“Yes.”
Uther shrugged. “Yeah, all right.”
Once his friends were gone, Aidan let out a breath and gree
ted Gaius with, “My lord.”
“Aidan.”
The Mì-runach turned toward the stairs just as a seething Brannie stormed past him, gesturing with two fingers at her equally seething brother Celyn.
“Hello, Brannie,” Aidan happily greeted.
“Shut up!”
Aidan watched her stomp away before Gaius heard him sarcastically mutter to himself, “I’m just so glad to be back.”
Kachka glanced at her sister, then turned back to the female holding up the exceedingly bright pink gown.
“Get away from me,” she told the female.
“If you would just—”
“Get awayyyyy from me, She-demon!”
Keita the Viper stamped her bare foot. “Why won’t you at least try it on? This color would look divine on you!”
Kachka nearly had her blade pulled from her scabbard, but Elina caught her hand and held it in place.
With her free hand, Elina reached over and took a bright red patch from Keita’s hand. “Here. I will wear this. Happy? Yes?”
“At least one of you has some style!” the royal snarled before storming out of the room.
“What does that even mean?” Kachka demanded.
“I do not know. I stopped asking.” Elina removed her simple—but completely useful!—black eye patch and replaced it with the ridiculous-looking red one.
“You are actually going to wear that?” Kachka asked, unable to hide her disgust.
“Do you want her to go on and on about that dress, sister? Because she will. Trust me. She will.”
Slamming her sword back into the scabbard, Kachka walked out of the room and down the stairs, her sister right behind her.
Most of the tables were already filled and the food was being passed around. Big platters of ribs and sliced roast boar and roasted potatoes. All of it smelled good.
So Kachka reached over and took a rib from a plate, before heading to a free chair beside Gaius. Deciding she wasn’t done annoying him, she sat down, tossing the now-clean rib bone behind her.