Light My Fire (Dragon Kin #7)(101)

“I have failed you,” Elina said flatly.

“Elina—” Kachka started to step in, to protect her as she’d always tried to do, but Elina wouldn’t have it.

Elina slashed her hand through the air. “No, Kachka. Let me do this.” She faced the woman who, Kachka now realized, was the infamous Annwyl the Bloody. “I have failed you,” Elina said again. “I did not get to see the Anne Atli. Glebovicha stopped me.”

“Is this bandage because of her?” the royal asked, reaching out to touch the cloth wrapped around Elina’s head, but Elina jerked back. When she got like this, she didn’t like to be touched by anyone.

“She did do this to you,” the queen quickly surmised.

“There was a fight,” Kachka explained for her sister. “And Glebovicha took her eye.”

The queen lowered her hand and blinked several times. “She . . . she took Elina’s eye? Because Elina wanted to talk to Anne Atli?”

“The ways of our people,” Kachka tried to explain to the Southland leader, “are complicated.”

“Well, what about your people? Did they not try to protect her?”

Kachka shrugged. “Some might have wanted to, but . . . well . . . no one gets between mother and daughter in the Outerplains.”

The queen’s body jerked as if she’d been struck. “Mo . . . mother? Glebovicha is your mother, Elina?”

Elina nodded.

“If you will let me explain—” Kachka began.

“No,” the queen said quickly. “I can’t. I have to . . .” She pointed, but Kachka felt the gesture was meaningless. “To go. I have to go.”

Then the queen stalked off.

Elina’s head dropped forward and she again faced the table. “I am pathetic,” she snarled in their language.

“Stop it, Elina.”

“Did you see her face? I failed her. I failed them all. Me with my grand promises, and instead I come back even more useless than when I left.”

“Stop it.”

A tear rolled down Elina’s face from the one eye she had left. “Our mother was right. She’s always been right about me.”

Arms crossed over her chest, Kachka turned away from her sister, resting her butt against the table. She hated when Elina got like this. Insisting on believing the lies their mother had told them all these years. But Kachka also knew there was no point arguing with her until Elina had gotten it out of her system.

A tall, silver-haired male ran into the hall from the courtyard steps. He stopped, turned in a circle, then looked at Kachka. She assumed he was looking for the queen, so she motioned to the stairs leading up to another floor with a tilt of her chin. He ran off, and Kachka continued to hear her sister going on and on about how pathetic and weak she was and how she’d failed the great Queen Annwyl.

That Annwyl didn’t seem so great to Kachka. To blame Elina for any of this was beyond ridiculous. Who would do that?

Kachka looked up to see the queen, now dressed for travel, with a travel pack on her back and weapons around her waist, heading toward the stairs. The silver-haired male was right beside her, and they were clearly arguing.

When the queen reached the top of the stairs, the man grabbed her arm to halt her, and Kachka wondered if this was the king of these lands. Who else would put their hands on a royal? And something about him screamed haughty.

But then that queen turned and kicked the silver-haired man in the knee. It was a hard kick, meant to shatter, but the male merely hissed in pain and released her. She made it down the stairs, but the man caught up with her again. He grabbed her around the waist and she brought her elbow back, hitting him right in the face. Blood immediately poured from his nose, but this time he kept his grip.

He lifted the queen off the ground and started to take her back toward the steps, but she pulled out a dagger she had sheathed at her side and rammed it into his thigh.

He dropped her then and stumbled back.

Readjusting her travel pack, she started for the hall doors. But two more males rushed in from the courtyard. One was big like a bear and had blue hair. Wait. Blue hair? The other was like a golden god, and Kachka knew he would be in great demand among the worthy warriors in need of husbands.

The two men stopped in front of the queen, hands up.

“Annwyl,” the golden one warned, “don’t make us hurt you.”

In reply, the queen cracked her neck, lowered her head, and snarled—like an animal. The golden one immediately stepped back. “Nope. I’m much too pretty for this. You handle her,” he told the bear.

“Why do I have to do it?” the enormous man asked, panic in his low voice. “I’m pretty, too!”

“Well, where the hell is Fearghus?”

“Not as close as we’d like.”

“Move!” the queen bellowed, startling Elina out of her self-pity.

She spun around. “What’s happening?” she asked Kachka.

“I have no idea. But it’s fascinating.”

“Annwyl . . .” the golden one tried. “Be reasonable.”

The queen unsheathed the sword at her side, and the golden one immediately turned away, hands up to cover his head. “Not the face!” he begged. “Not the face!”

“I have to agree with him,” Kachka said low to her sister. “Not that face. It is beautiful.”