Feel the Burn (Dragon Kin #8)(96)

“I didn’t—”

“Do you know what Thracius did to my people?” the king went on. “The lives he destroyed? What he did to our children?”

“He’s the Rebel King,” Brannie quickly explained. “Overlord Thracius’s enemy. He defeated him in battle and took his throne.”

“So? Blood is blood.”

Gaius took a step toward the Dwarf King, and the other dwarves moved a bit closer to the group, ready to strike should Gaius make the first move.

“When I was young,” Gaius said calmly, “Overlord Thracius thought my sister had been rude to his favored daughter. Vateria. But . . . my sister is very pretty and he had plans to mate her off to a friend of his. So he decided to teach her a lesson by using his talon to tear the eye from my head while we both begged him not to.” The Rebel King pulled off his eye patch, revealing the brutal scar and the eyelid sewn shut all those years ago to keep dirt and dust out of the now-empty space. “He wanted her to understand, you see, that he was not to be questioned. Not to be challenged in any way by anyone.”

“Why didn’t you kill your uncle then?”

“My sister and I were twelve winters old. We couldn’t even fly, much less take on my uncle. Then he killed our father in front of us and . . .” Gaius let out a breath. Kachka immediately understood this was still hard for him.

“But,” he finally went on, “we never forgot. And we never forgave. Not this. Not him.”

“So you killed him during the great battle of Euphrasia Valley?”

Gaius laughed. “No, no. That was her,” he said, pointing at Brannie.

“It was not me. I just distracted him until Izzy could f*ck up his spine enough so he couldn’t fly away. My cousin Éibhear did the rest.” She looked at the Dwarf King. “And it was not pretty. He was in a really bad place then. Éibhear. You see, he blamed himself for the death of—”

“I don’t care,” the Dwarf King cut in.

Brannie stopped telling her story, but she did mutter, “Rude,” under her breath.

“There. Feel better, Dwarf King?” Kachka said. “Now will you help or not?”

“Come,” he ordered, walking past Kachka and Gaius to the pub’s front door. “I already know what you’ve come for.”

Aidan stared at his father. “Do you care at all about what’s happened to your family?”

Lord Jarlath continued to drink his ale, showing no interest in much of anything.

Brannie tapped her friend’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get this done. So we can get you back to your mates and your sister.”

He nodded and walked out, the rest of them following.

The Dwarf King led the way, a few of his warriors bringing up the rear. As they moved, Kachka asked, “How do you know what we are here for?”

He glanced back at her, smirking. “A god told me.”

“You know,” Brannie explained, “once you’ve been around Annwyl for a while, you’ll realize that information is not as shocking as you’d think it would be.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Ainmire, eyeless, stared at his old home, but he felt nothing as he watched the True Believers use catapults. They weren’t trying to take the castle down. He’d warned them nothing would take it down. But the attack was keeping his father’s armed forces quite busy and that’s all they wanted.

It had hurt when they’d taken his eyes from his head, but his commitment to his god had given him vision he hadn’t had before. Now he could truly see.

And hear.

They came in without words or battle cries, but Ainmire heard the flutter of their wings, the tiny clacks of their talons.

A female came down onto the dragon beside Ainmire. That dragon had not fully committed to Chramnesind. He still had both his eyes. So he never saw the She-dragon until she’d landed on his back and slammed her broadsword into his spine.

It took a lot to fully commit to their god the way Ainmire had, so many of his brothers and sisters didn’t know they were under attack from behind until it was too late.

Moving quickly, Ainmire backed away from the battle, which was now much closer. And, as he did, he prayed to his god. Not for salvation, but for what was happening inside that mountain to be a success. Before he’d walked into his old home earlier that evening, both his eyes still in his head, he hadn’t been worried. But then he’d seen Aidan and his Mì-runach chums. And the Cadwaladr bitch.

That’s when he’d become worried.

The Dwarf King led them out of his city but deeper still into the Western Mountains until they came down a long passageway to a narrow crevice protected by a small battalion of dwarf warriors.

The king moved them aside with a gesture and pointed. “In there.”

“You must be joking,” Gaius said to him. “We can’t fit through that crevice.”

“Neither can we. But what you want is in there, Iron. Placed there by the gods an age ago. How you get it out is your problem.”

Gaius shrugged. “Fair enough.” He gestured to the crevice. “Zoya.”

The dwarves moved farther back as she approached, then faced the crevice. Doubling up her fists, she began to pummel the stone face. They all turned their heads as chunks of rock began to fly.