She turned, the sharp tip of her white tail nearly slicing Bercelak’s snout in two before she disappeared into a nearby chamber.
“You do realize you don’t have a chance with her, don’t you?” Ghleanna asked their younger brother.
“Shut up before I remove your scales.”
“Your father’s betrayal,” the Queen went on, “does not sit well with me, Braith of the Darkness.”
And Braith didn’t bother replying to that or anything else the Queen said. What was the point? Braith could tell by the way this was going that nothing would save her, and speaking out would probably only make it worse. In fact, she hoped if she kept silent the end would be quick. So she kept her eyes lowered and waited for it all to be over.
“Uh . . . excuse me, Your Majesty?” a voice said from behind Braith.
She didn’t turn around, but she could hear another dragon moving up behind her.
“What is it, Bram?” the Queen testily asked.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Your Majesty, but I was hoping to involve myself in this.”
“Involve yourself?”
“Uh . . . yes. Involve myself. With Braith’s defense.”
“Defense?”
“Why, yes, Your Majesty. Braith will get a defense, won’t she? Since the accusation has been against her father and not actually Braith herself. Correct?”
There was a long, painful pause, and Braith expected the Queen to order her guards to just cleave off Braith’s head. No one would exactly be surprised if she did, and the way the entire chamber became quiet . . .
Braith simply closed her eyes and waited, but in the silence, she heard something. The sound of wood striking stone and it kept moving closer.
It was curious how everyone became so silent, even the Queen. Unable to wait any longer, Braith looked over her shoulder. And that’s when she saw Brigida the Foul slowly moving across the throne room, her dragon body leaning heavily on her wooden walking stick, her left back claw dragging behind her as if unable to function at all.
As she moved forward, everyone stepped out of her way. Royals, guards . . . everyone. Braith had never seen anything quite like it.
Brigida was a Cadwaladr. Not mated into the Clan but born into it like Ailean and Addolgar and all the rest. She was, as far as Southland royalty was concerned . . . a low-born dragon. And royals didn’t move back from low-born dragons unless they needed the low borns to remove a half-eaten carcass. Yet no one approached Brigida. No one stopped her. And the Queen gazed at her with something that Braith truly believed to be fear.
“Gods,” Bram whispered to her. “This was Ailean’s idea to save you?”
Braith could only shrug, because she had no idea what the Cadwaladrs were planning. Which, at the moment, was the most horrifying thing about all this.
Addolgar looked at his siblings, but all they could do was shrug helplessly. Why their father would send Brigida to help Braith, he didn’t know. The Queen was not a fan of witches in general, and seemed to loathe White Dragonwitches specifically. No one knew why, but many suspected it had to do with her daughter, Rhiannon. Rhiannon was a white She-dragon after all. But she did not seem to have the same level of mystical power that Brigida or the few other White Dragonwitches of the Southlands had.
But, honestly, none of that mattered. Not with Braith’s life on the line.
“Come on,” Ghleanna said, tugging at Addolgar’s forearm. She headed inside the chamber, Addolgar and Bercelak following. The guards let them by, but watched closely.
Brigida was still making her very slow way across the chamber toward the Queen.
Addolgar was about to storm around her one way while Bercelak went the other, but Ghleanna caught them both by the hair and yanked them back.
“But—” Addolgar began.
“We follow,” Ghleanna whispered.
“She’s moving like a snail,” Bercelak grumbled.
“We follow,” Ghleanna insisted.
So they did . . . very slowly. Painfully slowly. Addolgar hadn’t known anything could move that slowly and still be moving.
Even stranger, though, was the fact that everyone waited for Brigida. They watched. They waited. They moved out of her way. The She-dragon was clearly feared by one and all in this hall.
Except Braith, he realized. She’d been the only one he’d ever met, even among his kin, willing to brazenly, as Brigida called it, “back talk” her.
He found something rather endearing about that. Well . . . maybe not endearing. But charming. No. Not charming.
Cute. It was cute. She was cute. Very, very cute.
“Stop staring at her!” Ghleanna whispered.
“Huh?”
“At Braith,” she continued to whisper. “Stop staring at her like you’re planning to kill her yourself.”
“Was I?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“That is such an open-ended question,” Bercelak scoffed.
“Nothing,” Addolgar replied. “I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“How cute she is,” he answered honestly.
Bercelak stopped. “Brigida?”
Addolgar thought on that a moment. “I don’t know if I’d call Brigida cute. Would you, Ghleanna?”
Ghleanna stopped, covered her eyes with her claws. “You two have to be the dumbest centaur-fuckers ever.”
“Gods, you are so hostile,” Bercelak complained.
“I was thinking that,” Addolgar agreed.
Braith didn’t know what Ailean’s offspring were doing. They kept stopping and bickering. Stopping and bickering. Even worse, they kept whispering—but they were in a cave chamber . . . everyone could hear them.
And, at first, Braith thought that Addolgar was suggesting she was cute but then Bercelak mentioned Brigida . . . ?
Was this really how the end of her life would look? Really?
“You must have faith,” Bram said low, his voice managing not to carry.
“Faith? In what?”
His smile was small but there. “In them.”
Perhaps Bram the Merciful was right. The Cadwaladrs were known to successfully manage two things—fix things completely or make them a thousand times worse.
And since she didn’t see how any of this could get worse . . .
“My Queen!” Brigida greeted Addiena when she finally arrived before her throne. “How good to see you looking so well.”
“And you . . . you look . . .” Addiena let out a breath. “So what brings you here, dear Brigida the White?” Only the title one received at hatching was used while in the Queen’s chamber. But Braith was sure everyone was thinking “foul.”
“Ahh, my dear sweet Majesty. I’ve come here to offer my assistance in such a trying time.”
“Trying time?” the Queen asked.
“The betrayal of Elder Emyr. How horrifying for you. That such betrayal was going on here, right under your beautiful snout.”
The Queen’s eyes narrowed into slits and Braith began wondering again if anyone would actually claim her headless corpse or if it would be tossed off the side of Devenallt Mountain.
“Even his poor daughter, Braith here, has no idea why her father did this. Or that he was about to do it. She was trapped in his horrible web of deceit and lies.” Brigida reached over and patted Braith on the shoulder. She’d flinched away, but a claw on her opposite side from Bram kept her from moving anywhere. “He’s betrayed us all, my lady.”
“And what do you suggest we do about that?”
“He must be caught and brought back for trial as soon as possible. There is no other way. You must try and convict Elder Lord Emyr. No one else can do it but you, Your Majesty . . . and Elder Lord Emyr himself must know the true wrath of your domain.” Brigida’s head tilted to the side and the entire chamber cringed at the sounds coming from her old neck. “Don’t you agree, Your Majesty?”
The Queen studied Brigida for a long moment, her mind turning, searching—desperately, by the looks of it—for a way out of this. She wanted an execution and she wanted one now. But Brigida the Foul had made a very good point. To execute Emyr’s daughter—who hadn’t been caught while escaping with her kin, but debating what to do next with the loyal Cadwaladrs—rather than Emyr himself, would put a dark stain on Queen Addiena’s reign.
Since, Braith was guessing, there would be many dark stains Addiena had to worry about during her reign, she was most likely weighing whether having Braith’s head now would be worth it later.
Braith, however, wouldn’t bother to get her hopes up. She had no faith in . . . anything at the moment. So she just stood there, waiting for the ax to fall—literally and figuratively—until she felt something brush against her spine. She glanced behind her and saw Addolgar. He gave her a small wink and the tiniest smile, and, Braith would be forced to admit, she’d never felt so . . . safe before. Not safe in the sense that her head would not go rolling across the chamber floor, but just that someone, other than herself or her still-missed mother, actually cared for her. That someone was watching out for her.
And that someone was Addolgar.
“You have a very good point, Brigida the White,” Addiena finally stated. “But what will I do with Braith the Blue?”
“My liege,” Brigida practically purred, “that’s very simple.” She focused those cold, dead eyes at Braith, sending a chill down her spine. “We send Braith the Blue to bring back her father—dead or alive.”
Addolgar had his claw on Braith’s back so he felt her entire body go rigid at Brigida’s words. And he understood why. He wouldn’t want to have to hunt down his father either. Mostly because his father scared him a little and Addolgar was quite sure the old dragon would kick his ass, but still . . .
“Me?” Braith said. “You want me to hunt my father?”
It was the perfect reaction, wasn’t it? The perfect reaction for the Queen. To see Braith’s fear, her absolute horror at the prospect. If she’d been eager, the Queen would have immediately said no. But there was no eagerness there—and the Queen loved it. She lived on others’ misery.
“Aye,” the Queen said, her smile so wide, her bright white fangs nearly blinding everyone in the entire chamber. “You will hunt your father. Hunt him down and bring him to me. Or,” she added for good measure, “I’ll assume you were part of all this.”
The Queen leaned in a bit, the tip of her tail eagerly scratching against the stone flooring. “That you were a part of it . . . and anyone who may have helped you was part of it as well.”
Braith’s mouth dropped open in shock that the Queen was openly threatening all the Cadwaladrs who’d been at Ailean’s castle during her stay, and she immediately looked to Addolgar, then Ghleanna. She glanced at Bercelak, but quickly sneered, before moving her gaze back to Addolgar. She stared at him for several seconds before focusing again on the Queen.
“Your Majesty—” Braith began.
“She’ll do it,” Addolgar quickly said for her, terrified she was going to do something stupid and “honorable.”