What a Dragon Should Know (Dragon Kin #3)(112)

And it was as the males were moving closer to her that Dagmar saw her, standing in the midst of them—unseen. Except by Dagmar. She seemed taller this time and no longer the poor sword-for-hire. How could Dagmar not have seen it before? How could she not have known?

“Are you just going to stand there?” Dagmar snapped, angry. “Are you going to do nothing?”

The Minotaurs stopped, glancing at each other while a few muttered, wondering who she was talking to.

“You hurt his feelings,” she chastised. “That’s why you’re here, Dagmar Reinholdt. You really have no one to blame but yourself.”

“You’re blaming me for this?”

“We weren’t blaming you for anything,” one of the Minotaurs contested.

“Shut up,” she snapped and focused again on Eir. “You have to do something.”

“Like what? Kill them all?”

“Excellent start.”

“I can’t. They haven’t actually done anything to me. And you don’t worship me … or anyone. The twins aren’t mine to protect. I really shouldn’t interfere with other gods.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“This isn’t going to work,” the head Minotaur said. “Pretending to be crazy won’t help you.”

“Gods have rules,” Eir went on, ignoring the Minotaur as Dagmar was. “A code, if you will, like you have in the north.”

“So that’s it? You’re going to walk away?”

“You talked yourself down here … Seems to me, you’re on your own.”

The goddess began to turn away, but Dagmar pulled her arm away from one of her captors and pointed it at her. “You said you owe me one!”

Eir faced her again, blinking in surprise. “For your wool socks.”

“It was an open-ended ‘I owe you one.’ ”

“What?”

“If you’d specifically stated, ‘I owe you one set of wool socks,’ that would be one thing. But you just said you owe me for the wool socks. Thereby leaving it completely open to interpretation and final payment.”

One of the Minotaurs leaned close to his commander. “She’s centaur-shit crazy.”

“The fear must have scrambled her mind,” the commander suggested.

Eir stared at her for a moment before nodding her head. “You are good. But it was only one favor. So you choose who I save. The twins or—”

“The twins,” she said, and all the Minotaurs looked over at their priestess, busy pulling out daggers and herbs for a proper sacrifice.

“The twins,” Dagmar repeated.

“All right. Think you can keep them busy for a bit?”

“I have to ask you again, are you kidding?”

“Come on. You’re very good. You’ll come up with something.”

Frustrated, confused, and quite terrified, Dagmar threw up her hands and said, “Hear me, Minotaurs!” And all those bovine faces looked at her. “The dragon gods will not stand for this! And it will not be you they come after. It will be your people. Your females. Your calves. They will wipe your people from the earth for this betrayal!”

That made the males pause. They were on a suicide mission, but that didn’t mean their families were.

Eir raised her thumb up and smiled. “Nice!”

“Ignore her,” the priestess said while carefully arranging the now screaming twins to her liking on a quickly made altar. “Use her as you will—no one will care.”

“But”—one said carefully through his teeth—“we think this one’s crazy.”

The priestess gaped at him. “That’s never stopped you before.”

While the Minotaurs debated the rape and murder of the insane, Dagmar watched Eir. She’d promised to help the twins and yet she wasn’t walking toward them, but away, eventually stopping at Annwyl’s prone body. She knelt down beside the dead queen and turned the body over. She placed her hand on Annwyl’s head and dragged it down the length of her body, down her face, across her chest and stomach, down her legs to her feet. Annwyl herself didn’t move, her eyes still staring unseeing at the ceiling, but her corpse twitched as bones locked back into place.

With a hand under Annwyl’s neck, her head gently tilted back, the goddess, like Rhydderch Hael had done a short while ago, pressed her lips against Annwyl’s …

The Minotaurs, obviously overcoming their moral dilemma, grabbed Dagmar and pulled her to the floor, onto her back. She fought back at the hands grabbing for her, but her focus was on the babes and the priestess who had them. The callous cow hummed as she prepared her ritual, ignoring everything else that was going on around her.

“Look at me, human.”

Dagmar did, staring up at the Minotaur now over her while the others held her pinned to the ground.

“Your pain,” he said softly, “will be my pleasure.”

“And your death,” said Annwyl behind him, “will be mine.”

The Blood Queen then grabbed his head, her fingers digging into his eyes, pressing in until she had them deep into the sockets.

The Minotaur screeched and stood, Annwyl attached to his back, holding on as he desperately tried to get her off.

The others released Dagmar as they went to their commander’s aid. But he was shrieking and turning in circles, unintentionally keeping Annwyl from their grasp while at the same time using her body as a weapon.