What a Dragon Should Know (Dragon Kin #3)(73)

“Don’t sleep yet,” Briec said, comfortably sitting next to him. “You have to come to the dinner tonight, or you’ll never hear the end of if it from the aunts.”

“Do I have to?”

“Don’t whine,” Fearghus snapped, sitting next to Briec. “And yes, you have to. At the very least you need to entertain your Northland guest. And I still haven’t heard why you brought her here.”

“Because that Lightning wants her here, and until I find out why he wants her here—here she stays.”

“You just want to f**k her.”

“Yes,” he hissed at Briec’s question. “But that’s not all. She’s extremely smart and has a delightful sense of evil that I truly appreciate.”

“And you want to f**k her.”

He sighed. “Is it too much to ask that my brothers take their minds from the gutter and into the fresh air?”

“Watch your back, Gwenvael,” Fearghus warned. “She has been chumming around for twenty years with Olgeir’s son.”

“She didn’t know.”

“So she says. But at the end of the day, you have to remember, she is and always will be a Northlander. They live by a different set of rules than we do.”

“I know. They have a Code. How come we don’t have a code?”

“We can’t get you to adhere to the general rules of decency … how do we enforce a code?”

“Good point.” Gwenvael looked between his brothers. “One more time?”

They nodded in agreement.

“All right. On three. One, two … three!”

All three of them stood and as quickly dropped back down, slamming once more into Éibhear’s back. He let out a yelp of pain and tried again to straggle out from under them.

“You’re all bastards!”

“Don’t whine!” Gwenvael chastised. “Just admit that you’re crazy about Iz—”

“Shut up!”

Dagmar pulled on the much-too-large, but lusciously soft robe, belting it in the middle. She took another glass of wine from Morfyd and dropped into the chair Annwyl had vacated. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.” Morfyd again studied the maps Dagmar had given her. “I’ll give these to Brastias. Perhaps he can figure out where all these lines go. Or my brother, Éibhear. He’s very good with maps.”

“I’ll help as much as I can,” she promised.

Morfyd looked up from her notes. “Tell me, Dagmar, do you talk to Gwenvael?”

“Yes.”

“Full conversations?”

“Yes.”

“And he holds your interest?”

Annwyl laughed at that, but Dagmar didn’t. “As a matter of fact, Lady Morfyd, I find your brother quite intelligent, with excellent ideas and thoughts on a range of topics. Perhaps you should find the time to have a full conversation with him before you judge what you don’t know.”

Morfyd stared at her with wide eyes and Dagmar felt a little guilty. But before she could apologize the bedroom door flew open and another woman marched in. She was a few inches taller than Dagmar and stunningly beautiful with brown skin just like the soldier-for-hire Dagmar had met. Now she’d seen two women of the desert lands in less than a week, when she’d seen none for the thirty years before that.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you two,” the woman snarled, slamming the door closed behind her. “And anyone like to explain what the hell Run and Jump is?”

Annwyl slowly rolled onto her side, away from the woman glaring at everyone in the room.

“Waiting for an answer!” she bellowed, looking quite comfortable yet gorgeous in the plain black leggings she wore with black boots, a loose off-white linen shirt, and a thin leather tie that pulled back her long mass of black curly hair. Nothing else adorned her body except a silver chain necklace that disappeared under her shirt and a small sheathed dagger she had tied to her upper thigh.

It probably took her all of five minutes to dress every day, but Dagmar knew her brothers’ wives spent hours attempting to look as effortlessly beautiful as this woman.

“Well …” Morfyd gave a small shrug. “If you’re talking about dragons, it’s a little game hatchlings play with their parents. You know, before their wings can actually carry them, when the family’s out flying. The hatchlings will run and jump from one parent to the next. I did it with mine. It was fun, but it also helps the hatchlings learn how to fly because very often you’ll catch the wind and you learn to coast.”

“Right,” the woman said, her smile not fooling Dagmar at all, “fun and a learning experience.” That’s when she leaned down and screamed into poor Morfyd’s face, “And that’s why my daughter is doing it with your family!”

Morfyd’s eyes grew wide. “Oh.”

“Yeah! ‘Oh’!” She turned toward Annwyl. “And I blame your fat ass for this, you pregnant sow!”

“Me?” Rolling back to her other side, Annwyl faced them. “How is this my bloody fault?”

“She’s out of control and it is your fault.” The woman threw herself into a chair and said in a mocking, childlike voice, “ ‘They say I can go to war. They say I’m really good. I want to be the Queen’s Champion one day.’ Your fault!” she finished in her own healthy yell.