Authors: G. A. Aiken
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Romance, #dragons
The Lightnings moved past the cave, but one stopped, hovering in front of the entrance.
Gwenvael didn’t move or make a sound. He certainly didn’t charge the bastard. He wasn’t here to fight and he wasn’t a fool who thought he could take on a Lightning scout party and come out still intact.
The Lightning sniffed the air and inched a bit closer. As Gwenvael could smell the lightning inside the barbarian, the barbarian could scent the fire in Gwenvael.
So Gwenvael slowly lowered himself into a crouch, readying his body and flame to attack.
The Lightning was mere inches from entering the cave when Gwenvael heard the caw of a crow overhead. The Northlands were simply inundated with crows, it seemed. And, at the moment, Gwenvael had never been so grateful, as the crow’s shit unceremoniously landed on the Lightning’s snout.
The dragon’s eyes crossed as he tried to see it and he snarled. “Why you little mother—”
“Come on, you idiot!” another voice yelled farther ahead.
“Move!”
Wiping the shit from his face, the Lightning followed after his comrades.
Letting out a sigh, Gwenvael stood at the very edge of the cave and looked up at the crows overhead. There had to be hundreds of them making good use of the limbs and vines that protruded from the mountain’s rock face.
“Thank you for that,” he offered kindly. And in answer, another crow unloaded itself, and Gwenvael hastily stepped back. “Oy, you tiny bastards! Watch the hair!”
When all those damn birds began to laugh at him, he was not pleased.
Dagmar exited the library that only she ever went into and that only she ever maintained with Canute faithfully by her side. His paws silently padded against the stone floor as he kept pace with her.
It was time for training, and she didn’t like to be late. But she wasn’t exactly shocked when her father fell into step beside her, smartly staying on the opposite side of Canute.
“Well, that went well,” he grumbled. Her father had never been one for wasted words or preamble.
“Come to gloat?” she asked.
“No. Come to find out what you’re planning.”
Dagmar kept her gaze straight ahead and her expression purposely blank. “What makes you think I’m planning anything?”
“You’re still breathing, ain’t ya? Never known a day when you ain’t planning something. Plotting is what they call it.”
For once Dagmar didn’t have to step around people as they moved through the Main Hall; people automatically moved out of the way of The Reinholdt and anyone who happened to be with him.
“I’m not planning anything,” she assured him. “But don’t be surprised when it comes back in another day or two.”
“‘It?’ Don’t you mean ‘him’?”
“It. Him. Whatever.”
“And he’ll come back to what? Tear the place down?”
“Doubtful. He won’t want to harm the one who holds the information.”
“Always so sure, you are. Always so damn sure you’re right.”
With a shrug, she left her father by the doors leaving the Main Hall. “When have I ever been wrong?” she smugly asked.
Dagmar walked through the courtyard and around to the side near one of several barracks. She passed groups of men training hard to be the warriors her father expected. The Reinholdt had no patience for weakness or complaints of injuries. You fought and you fought well every time or dying in battle would be the least of your problems.
As she walked by, like every day when she walked by, she was completely ignored. Nothing new there.
Cutting through the training grounds and past some of the barracks, Dagmar headed to the large training area that was hers and hers alone. To get to it, she had to enter the vast building constructed under her direction. It housed all The Reinholdt’s battle dogs, and she never had to limit access to only the trainers chosen by her because few of her father’s warriors were idiotic enough to enter here and risk that even one of her dogs was loose.
As soon as Dagmar entered, the dogs still in their runs began to greet her with barks and howls. Using voice commands only, she eased her dogs’ excitement and walked through the back exit and toward the training ring. Johann, her assistant, was already working the young pups that would soon be two-hundred-pound warrior dogs. He’d been a good choice on her part. Like her, Johann preferred the company of dogs to the company of humans.
“How goes it, Johann?”
“Well, my lady.”
Dagmar gave the hand signal for Canute to lie down and stay outside the ring until she returned to him. Closing and locking the gate behind her, she patiently waited for Johann to finish. He had the dogs lying down, waiting for his next signal. They wouldn’t move until instructed to do so. They were the most obedient dogs one could find in the Northlands. And also the most obedient and the most bloodthirsty because of her training methods. Only the companion animals of the Kyvich witches—giant wolflike beasts with horns—were more feared than Dagmar’s dogs. She prided herself on that fact.
As she waited on Johann, she pulled her list from her pocket and studied her remaining tasks for the day. But it wasn’t the words on the page that had her attention, it was that damn dragon.
Could that have gone any worse? She’d always doubted the Blood Queen would come herself, but Dagmar never thought the crazed monarch would send an actual dragon to represent her. Yet did she send one of the Southland Elders Brother Ragnar had told her about last time he’d visited? No! Instead she’d sent that…that…swine! He’d laughed at her.
Laughed!
Loudly. In front of her kinsmen.
That had been the worst part, in truth. That her brothers had heard it all—which meant her sisters-in-law had heard it all.
Johann made the dogs wait a few more seconds before he released them. When he did, they ran to Dagmar and began jumping on her, barking at her. They were chatty today. Excited. She smiled and petted them all.
She loved her dogs. With them, she never had to be anything but what she was. They never judged her or expected anything from her, and the plainness of her face meant nothing to them.
The dragon’s rudeness from earlier already forgotten, Dagmar crouched down and the dogs proceeded to lick her face and neck while trying to push each other out of the way. She was about to get them back into training formation when she heard Canute’s angry bark from the other side of the gate. He didn’t like it when she left him, but she didn’t dare bring him in the ring while the other dogs were around. But when he wouldn’t stop barking, she signaled for the other dogs to stay and walked over to the gate.
Putting her feet between the lower slats, Dagmar pulled herself up, leaned over the fence…and looked straight into gold eyes.
He was staring up at her, looking guilty, with his hand around the back of Canute’s neck.
“What are you doing to my dog?” she asked.
“Nothing?”
“Why are you saying that like a question?”
“I wasn’t?”
“Yes, you were. And unhand him.”
He had a handsome face, whoever he was. Even when he gave a little pout at her order. He looked down at the dog again and then, with a shrug, unclamped his hand. Canute charged back and started growling and barking again.
“Quiet,” she softly ordered.
Canute stopped barking, but he didn’t stop the growling.
“What do you want?” she asked the stranger, curious as to whom he was. He couldn’t be from the Northlands. His skin was too golden from exposure to the suns, and the gold hair that reached past his knees was loose and wild around his face. The Northland men didn’t wear their hair that long or free from their single braid except when they slept.
He slowly stood…and he kept standing until he towered over her more than her brothers did and that said something. Unlike their father, The Reinholdt’s sons were all tall, strapping men. But this one was unreasonably tall. And big. Large, powerful muscles rippled under his chain-mail shirt and leggings, the pale-red surcoat tight across his chest.
Oddly, he stared at her in such a way as to make her feel…but no. No man looked at Dagmar like that. Yet there was something so undeniably familiar about him—had she met him before? Long ago?
While she tried to remember where she’d seen or met him, he grinned.
And it was that grin she recognized. That damn mocking, rude grin. Even without the elongated muzzle or sharp fangs, she’d recognized that rude grin!
“You,” she said flatly.
His brow went up in surprise. “Very good. Most humans never put the two together.”
“I thought I made myself clear earlier.”
“Yes, but I have needs.”
She blinked, keeping her expression blank.
He has needs? What did that even mean?
“Your needs are not my concern.”
“But are you not lady of this house?”
He did have a point. Without a new wife for her father, etiquette demanded the task fall to Dagmar.
“And as lady of the house, isn’t it your job to care for your visitor?”
“Except I asked you to leave.”
“I did leave. Then I came back. As I’m sure you knew I would.” He rested his elbow on the gate, his chin in his palm. “I’m hungry.”
The way he said that…
honestly!
Dagmar simply didn’t know what to make of this dragon.
He glanced over her shoulder. “Think I can have one of those?”
Dagmar looked behind her and saw her dogs snarling and snapping in their direction while poor Johann stood around, completely baffled. For once the dogs ignored his commands, and he had no idea why.
“Have one?” she asked, also baffled.
“Aye. I’m hungry and—”
Her head snapped around and she slapped her hand over his mouth. “If you say what I think you’re about to say,” she warned softly, “I’ll be forced to have you killed. So stop speaking.”
She felt it. Against her hand. That damn smile again. She ignored the feeling of another being’s flesh against her own. It had been so long that it felt disconcertingly strange to her.
She pulled her hand away and blatantly wiped her palm against her dress. “Leave.”
“Why?”
“Because the mere sight of you frightens my dogs.”
He leaned in closer to her. “And what does the mere sight of me do to
you
?”
She stared up at him and stated flatly, “Besides disgust me, you mean?”
His smug smile fell. “Sorry?”
“Disgust. Although you can hardly be surprised. You come to my father’s stronghold disguised as a human when in fact that’s nothing but a lie. But I wonder how many unsuspecting females fell for that insipid charm you believe yourself to have only to later realize they’d done nothing but bed a giant slimy lizard. So you, as human, disgust me.” She sneered a bit. “Now aren’t you glad you asked?”
Actually…no he wasn’t glad. How rude! She was rude! Gwenvael liked mean women, but he didn’t much like rude ones. Slimy? He was
not
slimy!
And if she wanted to play this way, fine.
He leaned in closer, studying her face. He could tell by the way her entire body tightened at his approach that she wasn’t remotely comfortable with him getting so close. He knew he could use that to his advantage if necessary. “What
are
those things on your face?”
Beyond a tiny little tic in her cheek, the rest of her face remained remarkably blank. “What exactly are you talking about?”
Gwenvael’s head tilted to the side a bit, not sure what else she thought he could mean. “The glass.” He went to poke one, but she slapped his hand away.
“They’re my spectacles.”
“Do you mean like a ‘spectacle of bad’? Or a ‘spectacle of horror’?”
“No,” she replied flatly. “They’re so I can see.”
“Are you blind?” He waved his hands in front of her face.
“Can you see me?”
he shouted, causing all those delicious-looking dogs to bark and snarl louder.
That constantly cold façade abruptly dropped as she again, but more viciously, slapped his hands away. “I am not blind. Nor am I deaf!”
“No need to get testy.”
“I don’t get testy.”
“Except around me.”
“Perhaps you bring out the worst in people, which is not anything one should be proud of.”
“You haven’t met my family. We’re proud of the oddest things.”
Her lip curled. “There are more of you?”
“None quite like me. I’m unbearably unique and, dare I say, adorable. But I do have kin.” He shrugged. “I’m so very sorry about earlier,” he lied. “And I’m hoping you’ll help me.”
There went that flat expression again. She had this constant expression of being unimpressed. By anything, everything. Yet he was beginning to find it kind of…cute. And annoyingly intriguing.
“I’m sure you’d rather I help you, but I delight in the fact that I won’t.”
That was her delighted expression?
Eeesh.
Gwenvael pulled back a bit. “And why wouldn’t you help me even after I apologized? So sweetly too!”
“One, because you didn’t really mean that apology, and two…I really don’t like you.”
“Everyone likes me. I’m loveable. Even those who start out hating me end up liking me.”
“Then they’re fools. Because I don’t like you, and I won’t like you.”
“I’m sure you’ll change your mind.”
“I don’t change my mind.”
Gwenvael frowned a bit. “Ever?”
“Once…but then I realized I was right the first time, so I never bothered to change my mind again.”
She was not going to be easy, this one. Yet she wasn’t resisting him as much as simply not responding to him. No matter how he taunted her, she refused to rise to the occasion. He couldn’t be more irritated by that!
“Fine,” he snapped. “I’ll talk to your father then. See if he can convince you to act like a true and proper hostess.”
“You do that.”
Gwenvael continued to stand there, staring down at her, until she was forced to ask, “Well…?”
“Don’t know where he is.”
“Find him.”
“A proper hostess would show me the way.”
“A proper hostess wouldn’t have your kind in her home.”
“That was mean.”
“Yes.”
“So you’re not going to help me?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I already explained this. I don’t like you. True, I don’t like most people, but I especially dislike you. I could start my own religion based on how much I dislike you.”