What a Dragon Should Know (Dragon Kin #3)(111)

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.”