Light My Fire (Dragon Kin #7)(19)

“Gods, Celyn!” Rhiannon gasped. “Tell me you didn’t kill her!”

“No, no! You ordered me to keep her safe. So that’s what I did.”

Gwenvael snorted, easily spotting the hole in that story in seconds. He was so much smarter than any of his siblings gave him credit for. “And what exactly did keeping her safe entail, cousin?”

Celyn cleared his throat. “I . . . uh . . . I put her in the Garbhán Isle . . . jail.”

Rhiannon’s eyes grew wide as Annwyl and Talaith gasped in horror, Dagmar groaned and rolled her eyes, and Gwenvael laughed outright. The prissy bastard.

“You put that woman in jail?” Rhiannon yelled.

“She tried to kill you!”

“Oh, come on! She didn’t try very hard!”

“That’s not the point! Auntie Rhiannon—”

“Don’t you dare!” she snapped. “I gave you strict orders. And as my guard—”

“You gave me vague orders. ‘Keep her safe.’ That’s what I did. Because behind bars . . . where was she going?”

Dagmar lifted her hand and silenced everyone. Honestly, Celyn wanted to know, who really ruled the Southlands?

“It may not be that bad,” Dagmar said calmly. She focused on Celyn. “How many days since you put her in jail?”

“Uh . . . eight or nine . . .” Celyn cleared his throat. “. . . months ago.”

“Months?” Izzy roared. “You left a human female alone in a jail for months?”

“She tried to kill my queen!” he reasoned.

Rhiannon dramatically threw up her arms. “She’s probably been raped to death by now!”

“Rhiannon!” Talaith snapped.

“Don’t blame me, little girl. It’s your human males with no self-control. They see a * and they just have to f*ck it!”

“Mum!”

“Oh, pipe down, Morfyd.”

“I’ll go get her,” Celyn stated, trying to keep everyone calm. “I’ll go get her.”

“Don’t you mean get what’s left of her, cousin?” Gwenvael asked.

Finally sick to death of the prissy royal, Celyn started to stalk across the room to cut his tongue out, but Brannie grabbed him by the hair and led him through the doorway and out into the hall.

“We’ll be right back,” she said before closing the door.

“I hate him,” Celyn snarled. “I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.”

“Be grateful he’s just a cousin and not one of our brothers.”

“If he was one of our brothers, he’d be scale-less, bald, and alone.”

“Let’s just go, brother,” she said, pushing him toward the exit.

As they walked, Brannie chastised, “I can’t believe you left some human female alone in a jail run by human men.”

Celyn winced at his sister’s words. “None of this is my fault!”

“How is this not your fault?”

“It simply slipped my mind. I have a lot of things to worry about and some female who attempted to kill my queen was not exactly top of my list. And I don’t need to hear this from you, sister.”

“If she’s dead or damaged—”

Celyn halted in the middle of the courtyard they were now in and faced his sister. “Please stop.”

Brannie blinked and gazed up at him, her smile fading. “Gods, Celyn . . . you feel terrible about this.”

“Wouldn’t you? I mean”—Celyn rubbed his once-again-throbbing forehead—“she tried to kill my queen. But I did mean to go back for her. I just . . . I forgot.”

Brannie placed her hand on Celyn’s shoulder. “Brother, you can’t blame yourself for this. She was an assassin.”

“Not a very good one.”

“That doesn’t change anything,” Brannie said on a laugh.

“Still, if anything has happened to her at the hands of those humans . . .”

Brannie took his arm. “Come on.”

“Where to?”

“Where do you think? To get your sad little assassin.” She tugged his arm. “Don’t walk, brother! Run!”

And they did. All the way to the jail.

Chapter Seven

Branwen the Awful—a name she was immensely proud of because her own mother had given it to her after a particularly brutal battle—pulled open the jail door and walked inside, her brother behind her. The building wasn’t very large, but Annwyl kept control of crime with the fear of her wrath. Those who went beyond some mild stealing, ended up executed faster than they could imagine.

Well-lit and relatively clean, this jail didn’t stink of death and pain like many others Brannie had been to over the years. There were no guards at the front. And no one was manning the wood desk.

With her hand on the hilt of her sword, Brannie slowly and carefully made her way down the hall toward the cells. She didn’t bother to turn to see if her brother followed suit. Battle readiness was trained into each Cadwaladr offspring from hatching. Being close in age, Brannie and Celyn had been trained together by their older siblings, cousins, and mother, while their father, however, had patiently taught them how to read and write.

Brannie held up her hand to halt her brother and tilted her head to the side to hear a little better. But she needn’t have bothered. A burst of raucous male laughter had Brannie charging down a hall filled with cells. She turned a corner and quickly stopped, holding out her arm to again halt her brother.