Authors: G. A. Aiken
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Romance, #dragons
But before Vigholf and Meinhard could fight to the death to see who would claim her hand, they suddenly had some Southland dragon in human form standing between them and their prize.
“Lightnings,” he sneered.
“Fire Breather,” they sneered back.
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “This one’s mine.”
“Oy!” came the woman’s voice from behind him.
“Tragically, this one doesn’t have wings for you to hack off anyway, but feel free to go for the one that took your hair.”
Vigholf roared at the insult, and Meinhard, hopping on one leg, reached for the battle ax tied to his back.
But good Princess Keita rushed between them. “No, no, no! All of you promised me!”
They had, and, as hard as it was, the cousins immediately apologized. The Fire Breather, however…
“I promised you
nothing
, baby sister.”
“You most certainly…” The princess’s words faded, and she studied Vigholf and Meinhard closely. “Where’s Ragnar?” she asked them.
Suddenly that detestable Gold known among their people as the Ruiner caught his sister’s arm and swung her around to face him.
Meinhard reached for his ax again as the Ruiner demanded, “That purple-haired bastard is here?”
Éibhear pulled his sister away from the Gold and said, “He is, and you will not act like an idiot.”
“Where is he?”
“He went off.”
The Ruiner grabbed his brother’s nose and twisted until he had Éibhear bent at the waist. “Where, you idiot? Where did he go off to?”
“I don’t know! Toward some house in the woods outside the main gates!”
“Bastard!”
The Ruiner snarled and took off running.
The silver dragon, laughing, yelled after him, “Run, brother! Run before that Lightning snatches her out from under you—again!”
“And on that note…” Princess Morfyd clapped her hands together. “Let’s get you upstairs, my lords, and get you settled.”
“I still didn’t agree to their stay—” a black dragon began.
But both princesses quickly barked out, “I don’t want to hear it!”
“Can you take care of our esteemed guests?” the beautiful Talaith, Daughter of Haldane, asked Princess Morfyd.
“Aye.”
“Good.” She caught hold of Princess Keita’s arm and dragged her toward the fortress steps. “Because this one has something to do that she’s left far too long.”
“We’re not going in there alone, are we?” Princess Keita asked, making Meinhard worried for her safety. “Shouldn’t we have guards or something to do this?”
“Stop it, Keita. They’re just children. It’s not like they bite…enough to cause permanently disabling injuries or death.”
Children?
“Explain to me why we can’t go home?” Meinhard asked.
“Because my brother’s an idiot,” Vigholf replied.
“That’s what I thought.”
“So explain this house to me, Lady Dagmar. I saw it, and I somehow knew you’d be here.”
Dagmar’s gaze roamed the room, and her accompanying smile was soft and very sweet. A smile once reserved for Ragnar alone, but now—he knew—it was strictly for another.
“I mentioned once to Gwenvael—after too much of his father’s wine, I imagine—that I’d always dreamed of having my own little house on my father’s lands. A little spinster home of my own. I said that I guess I wouldn’t get that now that I had a mate. A mate who, according to him, wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon since he knew how much I adored him and couldn’t live without his presence.” She laughed at an arrogance most couldn’t tolerate for two seconds. “A few months later, Gwenvael brought me here. He’d had the royal builders make this just for me. And it’s perfect, isn’t it? Exactly how I imagined it. I was concerned it was too close to the castle, but I am continually amazed at how lazy you dragons are. If I’m sitting right in the Great Hall, you’ll stop and talk to me or around me for hours. But to traipse a few hundred feet away from the gates to chat…that takes a taller order, apparently.”
“You forget, my good lady, that you can’t group us all together. There are many dragons, with all sorts of differences, and we hate each other equally.”
She laughed. “Good point. I always forget that.”
Ragnar reached across the table and took her hand, his gaze fixed on where his fingers stroked her knuckles. “I’m very glad to see you happy here, Dagmar. And I am sorry about how things ended for us.” No. This wasn’t right. He couldn’t look away from what he’d done. He had to face it directly as he’d done with Keita. “I’m sorry,” he said again, this time making his eyes meet hers. “For how I lied to you all those years about who I was and what I was. I truly never saw a choice and—”
“Stop,” she cut in.
Dagmar looked off for a moment, and he knew she was getting her thoughts organized as she liked to do. No dramatic emotional moments for her, and that was fine with him.
When she returned her gaze to his, it was calm and controlled. Just like her. “I’ll admit that finding out that you’d lied to me did hurt. It hurt me in a way, I imagine, no one else could have. But I’ve also come to understand why you did it. More importantly, I now know and understand that everything you’ve ever done for me, ever shown or taught me, has led me to this. Has led me to a place where I can be who I am without fear or worry. For that alone, Lord Ragnar, all past transgressions are forgiven, and I strongly suggest we leave the past where it is and move on from there.”
A weight that had been on his shoulders for far too long lifted. “Do you understand, my Lady Dagmar, that you will always be one of my greatest triumphs?”
Her smile was small but powerful, yet whatever she was about to say in return was cut off when her dog got to his feet and began to bark hysterically at the front door. A moment later, the gold dragon who held Dagmar’s heart threw the front door open and stormed in.
Ignoring the frothing dog right in front of him, Gwenvael the Ruiner focused on Ragnar. “The Liar Monk has returned, I see.”
Since it appeared they would not even pretend to honor the basic rules of greeting, Ragnar replied, “Ruiner.”
Gwenvael’s eyes locked on where Ragnar held Dagmar’s hand. “I’m beginning to feel the need to start hurting things,” the Fire Breather announced.
“Quiet.” And it took Ragnar a moment to realize Dagmar was actually talking to Canute. The dog stopped barking, but he kept growling, his eyes fixed on Gwenvael’s throat.
Noticing the dog, the Fire Breather leaned in and asked it, “Miss me, old friend?”
The barking started again, and with a sigh, Dagmar pulled her hand away from Ragnar and walked to the door. She held it open and gestured to Canute. “Out. Now.”
Snarling and reluctant, the dog went outside, where it would most likely stare at the door until it opened again and he could be near his mistress once more.
“Why do you taunt him?” Dagmar demanded, slamming the door once the beast had gone.
“I wasn’t. That was me being nice to him.”
“Then we have much work to do, I fear. Because while
you
may be replaceable, Defiler, Canute is not!”
“It’s Ruiner! Even this idiot gets it right! And another thing,” the Gold went on, “when I gave you this house, my lady, I never expected you to entertain peasant males who may come wandering in unannounced, and I have to say I am extremely displeased at…cookies!”
His apparent rage gone as quickly as it had come, Gwenvael walked to the table and reached into the tin. And that’s when Dagmar slammed the lid on his hand.
“
Ow!
Viperous female!”
“You’re lucky I didn’t add blades to the lid so that they’d remove your fingers altogether.”
Sucking on his wounded body parts, the Fire Breather said around them, “As much as you love what I can do with my fingers? You’d only be hurting yourself in the long run.”
Dagmar slashed her hands through the air. “And now we’re done!” She grabbed the tin of cookies and held it to her chest.
Gwenvael snorted and leered, his eyes focused on Dagmar’s chest. “Like that’ll stop me.”
Not really wanting to see any of that sort of thing, Ragnar stood and said, “I guess I’ll be—”
“Why are you here, Lightning?” the Gold asked.
Ragnar had thought Keita’s moods and whims were impossible to follow. But
this
dragon…Ragnar had no idea how Dagmar tolerated the bastard.
“Your mother sent for me,” he replied.
“Are you her puppet warlord chief now—ow!” He grabbed his forearm and glared at his mate. “Pinching? Now we’re pinching?”
In even less of a mood for a fight than for leering, Ragnar confessed, “She asked me to pick up her sister Esyld in the Outerplains.”
The couple stared at each other for a moment before slowly focusing on him.
“Why did she want Esyld?” Dagmar asked.
“And you dragged her here?” Gwenvael demanded.
“I have no idea why she wanted to see Esyld,” he told Dagmar. “And I didn’t drag her anywhere,” he explained to her mate, “because she wasn’t there to be dragged.”
“She’s gone?”
“And has been for some time. Your mother seemed concerned about that. As did Keita. Perhaps you should talk to them about it.”
“I’m talking to you, Lightning.”
Ragnar smirked at Gwenvael. “Challenge me if you dare, Ruiner. Although I’m sure Keita will miss your presence greatly. She seems fond of you.”
“That’s enough,” Dagmar said softly. “From both of you.”
She gestured toward the door. “Let’s return to your brother and cousin, my lord. And then we can talk to Keita.”
The two males continued to glare at each other until Dagmar added, “Please don’t make me get terse.”
Ragnar could see from the Gold’s expression that he understood—as Ragnar did—that Dagmar’s terse was equivalent to a dragon army destroying an entire continent. They gestured to the front door and said to Dagmar together, “After you.”
“Here.” Talaith shoved the bundle into Keita’s arms. “Say hello to your newest niece since you couldn’t be bothered to come and meet her when she was born.”
“I thought you weren’t mad at me,” Keita complained, barely glancing at the child.
“And when, pray tell, did I say that? You fly off in a pouty princess rage and leave me, Dagmar, and Annwyl to deal with all that gods-damn brotherly whining that followed. You’re lucky I didn’t lock you in a room with those three.”
“It’s not like I lived here, Talaith. All of you rarely saw me anyway.”
“Very true. But your brothers have always been in contact with you. At least once every few moons or so. But this time…nothing.” Wearing simple black leggings, a sheathed dagger tied to her right thigh, black leather boots that reached her knees, and a rather large grey cotton shirt, Talaith dropped into a chair. Considering how she dressed and, to a degree, how she acted, it amazed Keita that Talaith, Daughter of Haldane, was one of the most beautiful females she’d ever met. “And why is it that we haven’t heard from you exactly?”
“If you must know,” Keita said, holding the blanketcovered baby in her arms but staring out one of the windows and the bright sky just out of reach, “I guess I was embarrassed.”
“I didn’t know any of you were capable of being embarrassed.”
“Only the females have that issue,” she said without much thought.
Talaith laughed, and, as Keita glanced over to smile back, an impossibly tiny brown hand touched her chin. Something strong and electric shot through Keita’s system, and she immediately focused on the babe.
Wide violet eyes gazed up at her from a tiny brown face surrounded by curly silver hair. Not in all her years had Keita seen anything quite so beautiful. Quite so…clear. Yes. That was the word for it. Clear. Pure and clear and untouched by centuries of anything.
Voice thick with emotion, she said, “She has Briec’s eyes. And his hair color.”
“Aye,” Talaith agreed, watching Keita closely. “She does. And you do know what that means for the rest of us, don’t you?”
Keita winced in sympathy, knowing exactly what it meant. “It means that as far as her father’s concerned, she’s the most perfect child ever to walk the world if for no other reason than she came from his loins?”
Talaith briefly raised her hands. “Now you see what you’ve left us to deal with all this time. For that alone, we should oust you from the family ranks.”
Grinning, Keita asked, “Has my brother been completely insufferable?”
“He’s always been completely insufferable. Now he’s also intolerable.” The displaced Nolwenn witch rested the heel of her foot on the chair and wrapped her arm around her bent leg. “He adores that child as wolves adore the moon. All day, every day, we all hear about how perfect she is. ‘Look how she perfectly squeezes my finger. Look how she perfectly throws up her breakfast. Look how she
perfectly
shits her diapers.’ It’s endless!”
Keita laughed.
“Of course you laugh. You don’t have to live with it. And what will I do if she believes him? I mean arrogance in a man is one thing, since few of us take them seriously anyway, but in a woman? And if she becomes even a tenth as arrogant as Briec, then she’ll be well on her way to becoming—”
“My mother?”
Talaith agreed with a nod of her head and a flip of her hand. “Exactly.”
Keita walked over to one of the bigger windows so she could get a good look at her niece in the bright light of day. She was an astoundingly beautiful child and barely a year and a half old, but it wasn’t her beauty that snared Keita. Nor was it the fact that she had her father’s eyes. It was what Keita saw in those eyes for someone so young. Intelligence. Vast intelligence and kindness. A benevolence and understanding that Keita had rarely seen in adult beings, much less the eyes of a child.
“Talaith…”
“I know. I know. Those eyes stop everyone in their tracks. And it’s not the color, is it? It’s like she can sense everything you feel or will ever feel.”
“If there’s truth to that, my friend, her life will not be easy.”
“I know that as well.”
Wincing that she had to ask the question because she had not been here to witness it or help, “Was it a hard birth for you?”
“Do you mean did I die, only to be brought back from the other side by a god so that I could slaughter a herd of Minotaurs trying to kill my child?”
Laughter wiped the awkward moment away, and Keita nodded. “That’s
exactly
what I’m asking.”
“Sorry. Nothing so exciting as what happened to Annwyl. Just your typical, miserable labor with lots of screaming and swearing blood oaths at your brother for doing this to me. Very similar to my Izzy’s birth.” Talaith studied the babe in Keita’s arms. “But this time no one took my daughter from me. This time I can hold her whenever I want to. She’s mine to raise as I like.”
Knowing the human female spoke of how the god Arzhela had secured Talaith’s obedience for some sixteen years by holding her now-eldest daughter hostage, Keita said, “Gods, Izzy must be so excited by this. Her own little sister.”
When Talaith didn’t answer, Keita looked away from her niece’s intense little face. “Talaith? You have told her, haven’t you?”
“Well, like you, Izzy hasn’t been home in two years.”
“
So you haven’t told her?
”
“Don’t yell at me!”
“How could you not have told her?”
Talaith rubbed her forehead with her fingers. “It just never seemed the right time.”
“Well, two years later is certainly
not
the right time. It’s bad enough she didn’t even know you were pregnant, but when she finds out there’s been a child and no one told her—”
Talaith slapped her hand against her leg. “You know, for someone who hasn’t deigned to reward us with her presence in two bloody years, you certainly seem aware of what’s going on. And have opinions!”
Iseabail, Daughter of Talaith and Briec, Future Champion of Rhydderch Hael—probably—Future General of Queen Annwyl’s Armies—She hoped! She hoped!—and sometimes Squire to Ghleanna the Decimator, kept her head down and tried hard not to show any reaction at all. She’d learned this approach after the first time her unit had come into one of these small towns, only to find it decimated by one of the barbaric Western tribes. When she’d first arrived as a new recruit for Queen Annwyl, the troops often went into towns just like this one, either to protect the residents or to deal with the aftermath, if they were too late. But even when they were too late, they usually found only the men dead. The women and children were taken off to be slaves, and more than once, some of the units were able to rescue them before they’d been sold at the slave market.
But in the last eight months or so, things had changed. Instead of finding a lot of dead men, they’d been finding dead everything. Men, women, children, pets, cattle, crops. Nothing had been spared. And seeing a dead child for the first time had taken Izzy by surprise, leading to silent but noted tears. By the end of the evening, after cleaning up the bodies, she’d been called in front of her commander to be told not to be “so damn weak.” Izzy knew her commander was being intentionally cold. There was no other way to get through a day when you had to put one, let alone many, corpses of children on funeral pyres.
So Izzy had taught herself to stare at something innocuous. A tree. A cart. Today it was the bushes surrounding a burnt-out husk of a house. It was strange how the house had burned, leaving the lower-left frame standing but nothing else.
Grumbling about “bastard barbarians,” her commander began to snap out orders to the young recruits. “Grab this, get that, burn them…” It was all the same.
Not exactly the glamorous battle life Izzy still dreamed of, but she knew everyone had to start somewhere and it was her dreams of earning more that made getting through the set-up of more funeral pyres for the innocent tolerable.
“Iseabail,” her commander ordered, “check the rest of the houses.”
“Uh-huh,” Izzy said without thinking, her gaze catching something buried in the dirt by the burned house she’d been focusing on. She walked over to the husk and crouched down by what was left of the bushes. Curiosity getting the better of her, Izzy dug her hand into the dirt and caught hold of the strip of red leather. She pulled it out and brushed at it, trying to see the emblem.
“Iseabail! Daughter of Talaith!
Do you hear me?
”
In the back of her mind, Izzy knew she should be jumping at her commander’s bellowing, but she didn’t know how. To say she’d been through more than most of the recruits was kind of an understatement, and after facing down gods, dragons, and, most terrifying of all at times, her mother, some bellowing unit leader who could have the skin stripped off her back for insubordination really didn’t worry her much.
“Commander?” she said, running over to him. “What do you make of this?”
The commander, always annoyed Izzy didn’t jump in terror at a mere word from him, snatched the leather from her hand. He wiped at the emblem with his thumb, his scowl suddenly fading away. “Where’d you find this?”
She pointed. “Over at that house there. In the dirt.”
The commander slapped the leather back in Izzy’s hand. “Take this to the general.”
Izzy grinned. “Can I get a horse?”
“No!” he bellowed back. “You cannot get a horse. You haven’t earned one!”
“I was just asking,” she muttered.
Bringing two fingers to his lips, the commander whistled.
Izzy shook her head. “No. Please, sir. No.”
Her commander leered at her. It was the one way he knew to get to her. The one thing that set her teeth on edge. Because it was the one thing Izzy had absolutely no control over.
“Enjoy the ride, Iseabail.”
Before Izzy could beg more, the dragon’s tail wrapped around her waist and lifted her out of the small town. As always, she screamed when that happened. Begged to be put down, because she knew
exactly
what would happen when they arrived at their destination. Because it happened to her at least once a day now. Sometimes more, rarely less.
Yet the cruel beast holding her was no different from all the others who did the same to her—heartless and relentless, thoroughly enjoying the pain she suffered. And usually—family!
“No!” she begged, as she always begged. Especially when she saw the expansive camp that belonged to Annwyl’s troops, right outside the Western Mountains. “Don’t!” Izzy tried again as they flew through the camp. “Please!”
“Hold on!” was the only warning she got before the tail pulled back and then flicked forward, tossing her through tent flaps and inside the tent.
“Bull’s-eye! Ten points!” the dragon cheered.
Izzy flailed wildly, trying to find a way to land that wouldn’t shatter a shoulder or knee. But before Izzy could fly out the other end of the tent, where she was often grabbed by another tail and tossed somewhere else, big hands plucked her out of midair.
Panting, relieved, she looked up into a face she knew well because it looked so much like her grandfather’s.
“Honestly, Izzy,” her Great Uncle Addolgar chastised. “What are you playing at?”
“
Me?
” Why did they think it was always her? True, she’d been known to throw herself from one dragon back to another while hundreds of miles above the earth, but that was her choice, wasn’t it?
This
particular game was
not
her choice, but it had turned out that those dragons she thought of as cousins and kin, didn’t care. They insisted on treating her like a human shot, and no one seemed to care! Least of all her great aunt and great uncle.
“Don’t start all that caterwauling,” her uncle warned.
“I do not cater—”
“Why are you here?”
“My commander sent me back. He wanted you to see this.” She held out the strip of leather, and her uncle took it, then dropped her. Izzy’s ass hit the ground hard, but she kept in her grunt of pain. It wasn’t easy.
“Where’d you get this?”
“From that little town you sent us to check out. The barbarians had already been and gone. I found that in the dirt by a house.”
“Oy. Ghleanna. Look at this.”
Izzy’s Great Aunt Ghleanna got up from the chair she’d been sitting in, drinking her afternoon ale. With her hand still around the battered mug, she took the leather from Addolgar and studied it. “Shit and piss,” she finally said.
“What is it?” Izzy asked, trying to get another look.
“Mind your own,” Addolgar told her, pushing her back by planting his excessively large hand against her forehead and doing just that—pushing her back.
She hated when he did that.
The siblings walked over to a corner and talked in hushed whispers while Izzy tried to listen without appearing to. Eventually, as they sometimes did, the pair began to argue, but for some reason Izzy got the feeling they were arguing about her. That was strange. It seemed as if they barely noticed her these days.
“It’s a mistake,” Addolgar said to his sister’s back as she walked up to Izzy. But, like most days, Ghleanna ignored him.
“You were coming back with us to Garbhán Isle, yeah? When we leave in four days?”
Izzy nodded and held her breath. She’d feared this would happen. That something would come up and she’d be unable to return home. She wanted to go home so badly. Not to stay, of course—she had too much to do—but she hadn’t seen her family in two years. She missed them all, but especially her mum. She wanted to see her mum.
“Looks like you’ll be going back earlier.”
Izzy bit the inside of her cheek so she wouldn’t smile. “Oh?”
“Yeah. But before you go,
I
think there’s something you should know first.”
“And I think you should stay out of it,” Addolgar snapped.
“Shut up, brother.”
Izzy began to panic. “Is everyone all right? Is Mum—”
“She’s fine, Izzy. She’s fine.” Ghleanna handed the leather to her. “When you get back, give this to Annwyl. Tell her it’s the fourth bit like this that we’ve found. She’ll understand.”
“All right.”