Light My Fire (Dragon Kin #7)(136)

“Oh, shut up!”

“Why don’t just admit you’re wrong. For once in your life, just admit it!”

“I am not wrong about anything! And . . . and . . . och!” Rhiannon swung her forearms again, the feeling of being covered with something magickal becoming overpowering.

Unable to stand even a second more, Rhiannon lowered her claws, called a spell to mind, and spoke it while writing runes in the air with magickal flame.

“There!” she announced triumphantly. “It’s gone!”

But before Rhiannon could crow too much, the voices of her offspring railed in her head, most in mid-thought, as if they’d been blocked from her hearing all this time.

Rhiannon looked at Ghleanna. The black She-dragon had her claws to her head, her eyes wide in panic.

“Bram,” she said.

“Go,” Rhiannon ordered her.

“I can’t leave your—”

“It’s not me they want. So go! Go save our Bram!”

Brannie was nearing her father’s home when they slammed into her from above, and dragged her to the ground.

A squadron of dragons that Brannie had fought with before, as both dragon and human. Dragons she’d once called her comrades, she would now call her enemies.

Brannie brought her head up, slamming it into the dragon who had her pinned facedown.

“Bitch!” he cried out when she heard bone break.

Brannie knew she had only seconds to get to her claws or she’d die on her knees.

She scrambled up, her blade in her hand. She slammed the base against the nearest tree and, as it was designed, it extended to a length and width befitting a She-dragon of her size.

“You will die, blasphemer,” a green dragon needlessly warned her.

Brannie grinned. “But first, I will take all of you worthless shits with me.”

Kachka rode into the rundown courtyard outside Bram the Merciful’s castle. She urged her mare up the stairs and then had the horse rear up on her hindquarters so that when she came down, her hooves smashed the doors open.

She rode inside and across the hall. Bram stood in a circle of men that she now realized were also dragons. Older ones, but still dragons. So Kachka kept moving forward as Bram stared at her with his mouth open, his eyes wide in shock.

Keeping her right foot in one stirrup and pulling the left one out, Kachka leaned over and down. As she hung from the horse’s side, she gripped her saddle and held on tight as she swung her free arm out when she neared Bram.

“What the hells are you—oof!”

She picked up the dragon—thankfully still in his human form—by his waist. The other dragons dashed out of the way in a panic, giving her room to swing Bram up onto the back of her horse.

“What are you doing?” he demanded once she was sitting back in the saddle and had hold of the reins.

“Saving your life, dragon. You are welcome.”

“Kachka, what the hells is going on?”

Kachka turned a corner. “You are to be assassinated by the zealots of the one-eyed god.”

“Var—”

“Is safe. He is with Elina.”

She turned another corner and saw the back door ahead. Thankfully, it was open.

“Hold on, Bram the Merciful,” she ordered as the horse reached the doorway. “I will get you—”

Once past the door, the horse reared up again, took several steps back, then turned in circles.

The damn thing really had no choice with all those soldiers outside Bram the Merciful’s back door.

Dagmar grabbed her daughter’s arm, but Arlais easily pulled away and walked over to her sisters.

Seva pulled back, her face covered in blood. There were so many fangs. So gods-damn many.

“Finish him,” Seva told Arlais in a voice that did not sound like hers or anything from this world.

“Arlais . . . don’t.”

But when Arlais looked over her shoulder at her mother, Dagmar realized that she was no different from her sisters. Not with those gold eyes that were now black with a tinge of dark red around the iris.

“Do it!” Seva ordered in a harsh whisper.

Arlais raised the blade high, but Dagmar shoved Arlais aside and dropped to her knees. Taking her eating dagger in both hands, Dagmar brought it down and buried it to the hilt in Mabsant’s chest.

Now, with the threat gone, the fangs and strange eyes disappeared and, suddenly Dagmar was staring at her children. Her babies.

Crying, they ran to her, wrapping their arms around her waist, her legs, the youngest trying to get her to pick her up, which Dagmar did.

That’s when she realized that Frederik, Éibhear, and Izzy were in the room. They had been for a bit, the door now sitting against the far wall, its hinges torn away.

They’d seen everything. Dagmar could tell by the look of horror on their faces.

Dagmar faced them. “You will say nothing of what you’ve seen here today. Not a word. Do you understand me? This can never get out. This can never be known.”

After all three agreed, Dagmar swallowed and held her daughters closer. “Now . . . go get my son.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Elina turned and shot, her arrow ramming directly into the nostril of the dragon who was chasing them. He fell back with a roar as Elina pulled another arrow and nocked it.