by G. A. Aiken
“You’re my sister, Morfyd, not some whore. He’s treating you like a whore!”
“You treat everyone like whores.”
Gwenvael the Handsome shrugged. “And your point?”
Brastias, rarely taking her brothers seriously these days, pulled Morfyd around a glowering Gwenvael and toward the stairs that led into the Great Hall. As they walked down, she saw that most of her kin were awake and halfway through their first meal.
As soon as they stopped at the bottom step, Brastias released her hand and walked around so that the dining table separated them. Keeping inanimate objects between them seemed to lessen the glares from Briec and Fearghus. After two years, she’d thought her brothers would become used to her choice of mate. But for some reason they all seemed to feel “betrayed” by Brastias. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t care. The arrogant bastards would simply have to accept their union…one day. In the next thousand years or so.
“Annwyl?” Brastias asked the entire table, reaching between Talaith and Briec to grab a loaf of fresh bread.
“Training,” Fearghus mumbled, his attention on the parchments in front of him.
“My, my,” Gwenvael said, his big body dropping into a chair beside Morfyd, “she certainly does train a lot these days.”
Fearghus raised his eyes from the papers in front of him. “Meaning what exactly?”
“Just an observation, brother.” Gwenvael reached for his own loaf of bread and ripped it into several pieces before adding, “Although we never actually see her training. Not like we used to. She simply disappears for hours before returning all sweaty and looking rather used. I wonder where she goes…and who she goes with.”
Morfyd opened her mouth, a caustic reply on her tongue, but Talaith—Briec’s mate and, although human, a fellow witch—beat Morfyd to it, a big, round fruit winging its way across the table and slamming into Gwenvael’s nose.
“Owww!” he cried out. “You callous viper!”
“Sorry,” Talaith hissed with no obvious remorse to back up that apology. “But it seemed like your never-closed mouth needed something to fill it! Tragically, my aim was off.”
Briec threw his head back and laughed until black smoke snaked from Gwenvael’s nostrils. Then Briec sneered, silently daring Gwenvael to do something. Gwenvael, of course, sneered back, and then they were both reaching across the rather wide table for each other’s throats. Morfyd leaned in, swinging her arms wide to separate them.
“Stop it! Both of you, just stop it!” They pulled back—neither willing to hit her in the face—and Morfyd again wondered how much longer they could all tolerate living under one roof. As humans no less!
“Honestly!” she complained, tugging her witch’s robes back into place. “Lately all of you have been acting like fighting dogs in a pit.”
“Dagmar doesn’t let us do that anymore,” Gwenvael uselessly reminded her. “She says it’s wrong.” He glanced off. “Although I still haven’t figured out why.”
Morfyd slapped Gwenvael in the back of the head.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“For being a prat!” She pointed her finger across the table at Briec, cutting his laugh off. “You, too! Either both of you start acting like you’ve got some sense”—she moved her finger to Gwenvael to stop the next words out of his mouth—“even if you have none, or you find somewhere else to live.”
“You can’t throw us out,” Briec argued. He’d never liked being told what to do.
“I bloody well can. I’m vassal of Queen Annwyl’s lands, and I can toss anyone off them that I see fit. So don’t push me!” she finished on a healthy bellow.
“You mean Queen Annwyl who’s always off”—Gwenvael cleared his throat—“training?”
Morfyd had her fist pulled back, ready to pummel the whelp, when Brastias grabbed her arm and dragged her from the hall and out the enormous doors. He didn’t release her until they were down the stairs and around the corner.
“Brat! He’s such a brat!”
“He’s restless. So’s Briec, I think.”
“That’s not my problem!”
“Sssh,” Brastias crooned softly, big, calloused fingers gently brushing against her lips, across her jaw. Only Brastias knew how to settle her. The gods of mercy knew he had the kind of skills most males would kill for, and she thanked those gods every night for giving his heart to her. “Don’t let them trouble you so.”
Morfyd took a breath and released it. “You are right, of course. It’s simply that we haven’t spent this much time together as a family since we were hatchlings. Now you can understand why Mother insisted on having a nanny and armed guards around us on most days. And when she didn’t—there went Gwenvael’s tail, Éibhear’s hair…Briec’s back fangs.”
Brastias chuckled, kissed her mouth. “What I see is you protecting Annwyl.” His head lowered with his voice. “Is there need to protect Annwyl?”
Morfyd couldn’t answer that, not honestly, so she didn’t answer at all. Instead she kissed Brastias until his arms wrapped around her, and he pulled her to his chain-mail-covered chest.
“You have work to do,” she finally reminded him when she pulled away, both of them panting.
“You’re right. Even if the legions are going nowhere at the moment, I need to make sure they keep up their training.” He kissed her forehead. “Perhaps we can meet later this afternoon…in our room? A quick luncheon.”
Morfyd grinned. Her day already looked brighter. “That sounds perfect.”
Brastias walked off, and, as she always did, she watched him. And, as he always did, he looked back at her and smiled.
As a group, they landed on a plateau that held steps leading directly into a mountain. Devenallt Mountain, the seat of power for those who ruled the dragon Clans and Houses of the Southland. And hundreds of leagues below was Garbhán Isle. The seat of power for the human queen.
“You two wait here,” Ragnar told his brother and cousin.
“You sure?” Vigholf asked. The idea of letting Ragnar go in alone bothered his brother, but it was for the best.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t worry,” Keita said, patting Vigholf’s shoulder. “Ren will stay here with you in case there’s trouble.”
“I will?” the foreign dragon asked. “You sure you don’t—”
“It will be easier and quicker to get through this if my mother doesn’t have you to fawn over. Besides, I need you to make sure my kin don’t mistake dear Vigholf and Meinhard for problems.”
“What fun for me.”
She laughed, a sound heard rarely during the last of their journey. “We won’t be long.”
“Better not be.”
“Come on!” the Blue demanded, sounding like the eager pup he was. “Let’s go!”
“All right,” Keita told him, waving him on. “We’re coming.”
“Good luck,” the Eastlander told her as she headed up the stairs behind the Blue. Ragnar glanced at him as he passed, but the foreign dragon turned away, giving him his back.
Of course, Ragnar had been told he’d deserved that and more.
“Good,” his mother had said. “You should feel ashamed. It was horrible what you said to her.”
“I know,” he’d responded.
“You’ll have to apologize to her, my son.”
“She won’t make that easy.”
“You can’t apologize on your own terms, Ragnar. That isn’t really an apology, but a perfunctory action simply meant to appease. To make you feel better. If you truly are sorry about what you said—”
“I am.”
“You’d better be, because I didn’t raise you to be mean, my son. And we both know that was mean.”
He did know. That’s what ate at him. It was one thing to be cold and calculating, a necessity when dealing with politics and world rulers. But it was another thing entirely to be mean and cruel because he had issues over his long-dead father. So whatever he had to do to fix this wit
h Keita—in all honesty, he could care less about the Eastlander, except for his connection to Keita—he would do. If only she’d give him the chance.
And, for the remainder of their journey, she hadn’t given him a chance. Since he and his kin planned to head home as soon as they were done here, he had no choice but to push the issue now. He refused to return to the Northlands with her hating him.
Ragnar met her at the top step before entering directly into the mountain. He touched her shoulder, and she stopped. After a moment, she faced him. He wanted to look away from her. All that royal coldness staring down at him made his shame even worse because he knew he had no one to blame for it but himself.
“Yes, Lord Ragnar?”
“Before we go in,” he said, “I want to tell you how sorry I am. About what I said to you. It was wrong, and I understand if you can’t forgive me, but I do hope that you’ll at least accept my apology.”
For a moment, Ragnar wasn’t sure he’d said those words out loud. Nothing about her changed. Neither the expression on her face nor the coldness in her eyes. She showed no anger, no sorrow, not even boredom.
And without saying anything, Keita walked away from him and inside the Dragon Queen’s mountainous court. Ragnar followed, sighing heavily. It appeared as if he’d be going home with Keita hating him after all.
Another set of stairs awaited them, and the Blue stood in the middle of them, tapping his front claw and glaring. “You two are taking forever.”
Keita walked up to her brother and stood beside him on the step.
The Blue’s impatience turned to concern. “Are you all right, Keita? You’ve been looking like this the past couple of days. You’re not worried about Mum, are you? You know how she is sometimes. She doesn’t mean half of what she says.”
Keita didn’t respond to her brother, instead focusing on Ragnar, who now stood at the bottom of the stairs.
“You were saying, Lord Ragnar?”
Damn. He knew she wouldn’t make this easy, but…damn. Ragnar briefly closed his eyes, girded his loins, and said again, “I’m sorry, Keita, and I do hope you can forgive me.”
The Blue frowned, his gaze bouncing back and forth between them. “Sorry for what?”
Keita continued to stare at Ragnar. She wouldn’t answer her brother’s question, but instead patiently waited for Ragnar to do so.
Never before had the desire to run away like a panicked cub filled him like this. But he remembered his mother’s words clearly: “You can’t apologize on your own terms, Ragnar.”
As always, his mother was right. So, while gazing into Keita’s dark brown eyes, Ragnar admitted to the brother who adored her more than life itself, “I made the crude and completely reprehensible suggestion that your sister is a slag.”
Again, Keita’s expression didn’t change, and, even when that blue fist hit Ragnar with the power of a rampaging herd of cattle, he kept his gaze locked with hers.
Ragnar stumbled to the side, but didn’t fall. It wasn’t easy. It was a shame the cub didn’t have more of an edge—he had the power and strength to be a hell of a warrior, if not the skill and will.
A black talon pointed at him from a blue claw. “You talk to my sister like that again, and your brother and cousin won’t find enough of you to put on your funeral pyre. Do I make myself clear?”
Moving his jaw and trying to get feeling back on that side of his face, Ragnar nodded. “You do.”
“Good. Now”—the Blue huffed a little—“I strongly suggest we keep this between us. If our father gets a whiff, we’ll be back to Lightning versus Fire all over again with the alliance completely destroyed.” The Blue gently placed his claw on his sister’s shoulder. “Are you all right with that, Keita?”
She nodded, and, after one more disgusted scowl in Ragnar’s direction, the Blue said, “Let’s go then,” and headed up the rest of the stairs.
Ragnar continued to gaze into Keita’s eyes, still hoping for the forgiveness he had no right to ask for. Her smile, when it came, bloomed into Ragnar’s life like the two suns abruptly moving past dark storm clouds and lighting the world around him.
“Now,” she said with a wink, “I’ll accept your weak little barbarian apology.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Do you need a refresher on court etiquette?” Keita asked Ragnar, still shocked the Lightning had apologized to her. And not some stiff-upper-lip, “I apologize if I offended you, my lady” kind of apology. But an actual “I’m sorry” that he’d meant. And because he’d meant it, she had happily accepted. Because Keita simply didn’t believe in holding grudges unless it was necessary. Why sit around loathing someone because they had a moment of stark idiocy? Such a waste, in her opinion.
And as long as the Northlander meant what he said to her—and she knew he had because she could always spot a lie or a liar—she wouldn’t hold it against him.
Of course, if he said something like that to her again, she’d poison his drinking water and giggle at his deathbed. But that seemed only fair.
“Perhaps a small reminder wouldn’t hurt.”
“Don’t walk beside me,” she reminded him, “but only because it’s your first time here. Don’t approach the queen unless she summons you. Don’t touch her unless she touches you first. Don’t even think of unleashing your lightning inside these walls—it will be the last thing you ever do. Refer to her as ‘Your Majesty,’ even if she’s pissing you the bloody hells off, and my father as ‘my lord.’ Oh. And no challenging stares to my father. Although that’s not so much etiquette as good sense.”
“I’ll keep all that in mind.”
“Good.” They turned a corner, and Keita stopped. “For everything else follow my lead and you should be fine.”
“I will.”
This corridor led to the first floor of the queen’s court, the walls lined with her armored guards, each holding a pilum in one hand and a long shield in the other. As they walked through the hallway, none of the guards looked at them or noted their presence. Keita kept her gaze fixed firmly on the floor. When she was younger, she used to play a game to see which of her mother’s guards she could get to pay attention to her, but when a few lost their positions, Keita stopped. It was only fun if everyone got a laugh out of it. She had no desire to ruin someone’s dream or career because she was bored.
The trio reached the far end of the hallway, and the final two guards stepped away from their post and moved in front of the opening, blocking them from entering the next chamber. These guards still had the sharp metal tip of their pila aimed at the ceiling, their shields held in front of them but not in battle position.
“Princess Keita,” one of them said. “We weren’t aware of your returning.”
“I adore surprises, don’t you?” She motioned to Ragnar. “He’s with us. Mother summoned him.”
The guard looked her over, searching for any obvious signs of weapons. Her mother’s personal guard always did this to her. As Gorlas had said, Keita might protect the throne, but it was the Queen’s Royal Guard, led by her cousin Elestren, who protected Her Majesty. Even if it meant protecting her from her own children.
“He leaves his weapons,” the guard finally said.
Keita turned to Ragnar and held out her claws. She feared he’d spew some Northland nonsense about never putting down his weapons, but, without a word, he pulled off the sheathed sword and battle ax tied to his back, and removed the warhammer he had tied at his waist. With a grin, he dropped them in Keita’s arms, and she nearly buckled under the weight of all his crap.
“Éibhear,” she squeaked, and her brother quickly removed the weapons. The fact that her baby brother held those weapons easily did nothing but annoy her. “Rude,” she hissed at Ragnar, and he had the nerve to laugh.
Once Éibhear placed the weapons aside, the two guards moved out of the way, allowing them to enter.
Gods.
Up to this point, Ragnar had been a bit disappointed with the queen’s court. All star
k, dank walls and cold caverns. But this…this was what Ragnar had expected to see all along: mountain walls plastered in pure gold, the history of the Fire Breathers etched into each section; chalices, made of gold, crystal, or ivory, held by dragons of noble birth, some of them wearing items made of the finest metals and gems; the floors lined with furs so the nobles’ precious talons wouldn’t be forced to touch actual stone; fresh meats turning on spits over big fire pits while uncooked and unseasoned meats rested a few feet away so the royals had their choice of meals.
It was as decadent and wasteful as Ragnar had been led to believe by his kinsmen, making him wonder how much of a threat the Southlanders could possibly be to his kind. Ragnar couldn’t imagine even one of these pampered lizards raising a claw in defense against a dragonfly much less a powerful Dragonlord Chief of the Hordes.
As the small group walked by, the royals turned away from their conversations to watch them. The females focused on the Blue, their cold eyes turning calculating at the sight of him; the males focused on the princess. Then one male, a Red, pushed through the others, his expression angry, his demeanor threatening. Ragnar felt the way he had when dealing with that human noble at Castle Moor. But this time Ragnar wasn’t trapped in his human form. He wasn’t weakened by another’s Magick. So when the Red moved too close in Ragnar’s estimation, Ragnar faced him and slammed his tail down between them.
The strength of the Northland tail ensured that the metal spiked tip tore through the fur they stood on and straight into the stone floor beneath.
“Move out of my way, low born,” the Red ordered.
“You need to calm yourself and step away.”
Frustrated, the Red yelled out, “Keita! Don’t walk away from me!”
Keita stopped, her front claw barely catching hold of her baby brother’s forearm before he could run over and beat the Red to death.
“I know,” she said, without turning around, “that you didn’t just bellow at me as if I were some barmaid.”
“You will talk to me.”
“Tragically for you, I’ve never been desperate enough to take orders from anyone. Now if you’ll excuse us, our mother awaits.”