It took all of Dagmar’s self-training to not cry out. To not order them as Only Daughter of the Reinholdt to treat the remains of the Great Blood Queen with reverence …
The Only Daughter of the Reinholdt …
“And as for you—”
She saw fur-covered hands reaching for her. “I am the Only Daughter of the Reinholdt,” she snapped. “You will not put your hands on me! And know that my father sent me here as an ambassador to the south so that I may assist you in your holy quest in retrieving the spawn of the demon queen.”
“Why”—another of them demanded—“would he send his daughter on such a mission?”
She got to her feet, the babes still tight in her arms. “He knew the demon queen would only trust a woman. And because I am The Beast.”
“You? You’re The Beast?”
“My father knew sending me here was dangerous, but no one else would be able to get close enough.”
“Or had the strength of will of The Beast to be around the whore.”
“Very true, my lord.” She looked at Annwyl’s broken body and her expression of disgust was real enough—but most likely not for the reasons they thought. “I’ve seen many things in that place that will keep me up at nights. Many horrors. But my father will be proud, for I have retrieved the spawn as he has commanded.”
“You’ve done well.” The head Minotaur praised, reaching for them. “Now we can cut their throats and head home this very night.”
“No.” Dagmar turned her body away from him to keep his hands off them. “We cannot kill them here. We must return with them to the north and give my father the prize of cutting off their useless little heads.”
“We cannot do that. They need to die before those dragons can find us.”
“We’ll have more to bargain with if they live.”
“Going home was never our intent, my lady. Killing them is. If any of us survive that and make it home alive, then it will be an extra gift from the gods. But our main goal—our only goal—is to see these atrocities dead before we do anything else.”
Would they understand the hypocrisy of referring to the twins as atrocities when they were standing cows? Talking standing cows?
No. Probably not.
“I cannot allow that,” she said with as much royal rudeness as she could muster. “Their deaths are not for … you.”
“But the gods—”
“Your only purpose here, bovine, is to ensure my safe passage home. They will come for us and you will fight to protect me and most likely die. That is your only task.”
The males stood in confusion, glancing between each other. She knew she had them. Men were always so easy for her to twist when she needed to.
Tragically, Dagmar hadn’t counted on the female.
“She lies,” the female hissed, moving out from the shadows. Her dress was also made of animal skin but covered her from shoulders to hooves. She had no horns as the males did, but was slightly shorter than the tallest among them. The brown cape over her dress was wool. She had the hood pulled up to cover her hair and Dagmar could see the runes sewn into the fabric.
A priestess of Arzhela. Of some power, too.
“She protects those things she carries, with her very life.” She slammed her fist into the shoulder of whatever male stood closest to her, eliciting a grunt. “And you fools believe her.”
Dagmar could barely understand the female’s words because of the damage that had been done to her throat, which bore the old scar of a sword cut that went right across it. She could have gotten it in battle, but most likely it was the sacrifice she made to Arzhela. A true servant of the goddess that once was.
The priestess came closer, her hooves stomping loudly on the rocky ground. She stared hard at Dagmar as she approached.
“You’re wrong,” Dagmar tried again, attempting to sound bored and unimpressed. “My task is as simple as yours. Retrieve the spawn, return to my father. The Reinholdt.”
“She lies,” she hissed again.
“Are you doubting my word as a Northlander? Are you doubting I’m a Reinholdt?”
“You are a Reinholdt, Lady Dagmar. I have seen you before when I’ve passed through the Reinholdt lands. You are Dagmar Reinholdt. But you lie.” She leaned in close, her wet nose sniffing around her. “She has the smell of Rhydderch Hael all over her.”
“She is his disciple!” one of the males accused.
“No.” The priestess gave a small smile. “No. She worships no one. No god protects her. Cares for her. Even Rhydderch Hael. He is the one who sent her here. For us.”
“And the spawn?”
“They have failed him. He wants nothing to do with them.”
She reached to touch one and Dagmar immediately turned her body away.
Her voice low and controlled, she growled, “Keep your grubby, cow hands off them.”
The priestess leered. “The spawn are mine.” Her gaze moved to the males. “The woman … is all yours.”
Dagmar didn’t even manage the thought that she should run before a hand gripped her hair and yanked her back, the priestess quickly ripping Annwyl’s babes from her arms.
“No!” She reached out for the babes, desperate to get them back. Desperate to protect them with her life.
The head Minotaur stepped in front of her, his hand wrapping around her throat. “How could you not worship the gods? Even now they reward our sacrifice”—he shoved her back into the other Minotaurs—“with you.”
Soldiers, guards, and servants—the humans—all quickly moved out of their way as Gwenvael and his kin poured from the castle into the courtyard. They immediately shifted, Addolgar and Ghleanna heading off in opposite directions to scour the countryside, calling on their sons and daughters to join them. Rhiannon and Morfyd headed toward the lake to call upon gods to help them. Leaving the four brothers and their father.
Gwenvael, Briec, Éibhear, Bercelak, and Fearghus would start where the hoof prints were first located and move out from there, hoping that they were no more than a few leagues off.
But as Gwenvael took to the air, he heard a voice calling to him. He looked down and saw that it was Izzy. She waved her hands wildly and screamed his name.
He dropped lower. “What is it, Izzy?”
“Annwyl’s horse! Can you not hear him?”
Briec was by him now and they hovered for a moment trying to hear around and through the other noises of humans.
“I hear him,” Briec said. They both could. The horse was banging against his stall. He could have merely gone mad, sensing his mistress was dead. But Gwenvael didn’t think so. And neither did Izzy, it seemed. She took off running, cutting through and around humans with ease while her uncle and father flew low until they reached the queen’s personal stable.
Izzy ran inside even as her mother ran up behind her telling her to wait.
Éibhear moved past them all, grabbing hold of the stable roof and yanking it off with one great pull.
None of them had ever seen Violence act this way. He’d always been the calm center of the storm that was Annwyl, which was why Fearghus had chosen the stallion for his mate in the first place.
“Mourning?” Briec asked.
“I don’t think so.” Fearghus dropped a bit lower. “Izzy. Let him out.”
Izzy gripped the metal bolt holding the stall gate closed and locked, and yanked it back. The gate slammed open as the horse hit it again with his front hooves and without a moment’s hesitation, he charged out, running toward the great gates.
The horse no longer seemed mad with grief. Instead, he had a purpose and a destination.
“Open the gates! Now!” Fearghus yelled to the guards before taking off after the beast, his brothers and father right by his side.
They grabbed her now-empty arms—and reason help her but she felt that emptiness to her soul—and dragged her back across the tunnel floor to where they’d stopped digging. They threw her to the ground and she scrambled back up.
Her mind desperately searched for a way out of this, but the power of the priestess over these males was absolute. In the north, a priestess of power was the one woman no man would dare argue with. Unfortunately the Minotaurs were no different from her kinsmen.
“You’ll have to forgive our roughness, my lady,” the head Minotaur said with absolute disdain. “It’s been months that we’ve been on this road and our priestess is rarely accommodating. But truly you won’t live long enough to mind that much.”
“You will pay for your betrayal of the Northland Code.”
“We are from the mighty Ice Lands. We are the true Northlanders. So any code you southerners use means nothing to us.”
And it was as the males were moving closer to her that Dagmar saw her, standing in the midst of them—unseen. Except by Dagmar. She seemed taller this time and no longer the poor sword-for-hire. How could Dagmar not have seen it before? How could she not have known?
“Are you just going to stand there?” Dagmar snapped, angry. “Are you going to do nothing?”
The Minotaurs stopped, glancing at each other while a few muttered, wondering who she was talking to.
“You hurt his feelings,” she chastised. “That’s why you’re here, Dagmar Reinholdt. You really have no one to blame but yourself.”
“You’re blaming me for this?”
“We weren’t blaming you for anything,” one of the Minotaurs contested.
“Shut up,” she snapped and focused again on Eir. “You have to do something.”
“Like what? Kill them all?”
“Excellent start.”
“I can’t. They haven’t actually done anything to me. And you don’t worship me … or anyone. The twins aren’t mine to protect. I really shouldn’t interfere with other gods.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“This isn’t going to work,” the head Minotaur said. “Pretending to be crazy won’t help you.”
“Gods have rules,” Eir went on, ignoring the Minotaur as Dagmar was. “A code, if you will, like you have in the north.”
“So that’s it? You’re going to walk away?”
“You talked yourself down here … Seems to me, you’re on your own.”
The goddess began to turn away, but Dagmar pulled her arm away from one of her captors and pointed it at her. “You said you owe me one!”
Eir faced her again, blinking in surprise. “For your wool socks.”
“It was an open-ended ‘I owe you one.’ ”
“What?”
“If you’d specifically stated, ‘I owe you one set of wool socks,’ that would be one thing. But you just said you owe me for the wool socks. Thereby leaving it completely open to interpretation and final payment.”
One of the Minotaurs leaned close to his commander. “She’s centaur-shit crazy.”
“The fear must have scrambled her mind,” the commander suggested.
Eir stared at her for a moment before nodding her head. “You are good. But it was only one favor. So you choose who I save. The twins or—”