“Domitus? An Iron?” the king suddenly bellowed, jumping to his feet, and the dwarves around them also stood, their weapons now out.
Although these dwarves were small in height, they were wide, strong and, Kachka knew, well trained in warfare. From hand-to-hand combat to full-on assaults.
What the Dwarf King had said to Kachka had been what she’d expected. They heard this from many males outside the Outerplains who had never gone toe-to-toe with the Daughters of the Steppes. They’d all heard of the damage the Riders had done. The cities they’d destroyed. They saw the Daughters as a “challenge.” Females to be conquered and possessed before being tossed away for others younger and prettier.
They found out the very hardest way possible, though, that Kachka and her tribal sisters were not to be fucked with lightly. Or at all.
Yet despite all that, she had not expected their reaction to Gaius. The Sovereign Empire’s reputation had mellowed over the years under Gaius’s rule, but perhaps if Overlord Thracius had come after her people, she’d be less inclined to deal with anyone from his bloodline. Even an enemy of the old guard.
The Dwarf King glowered at Aidan. “You bring an Iron here? To my kingdom?”
“I didn’t—”
“Do you know what Thracius did to my people?” the king went on. “The lives he destroyed? What he did to our children?”
“He’s the Rebel King,” Brannie quickly explained. “Overlord Thracius’s enemy. He defeated him in battle and took his throne.”
“So? Blood is blood.”
Gaius took a step toward the Dwarf King, and the other dwarves moved a bit closer to the group, ready to strike should Gaius make the first move.
“When I was young,” Gaius said calmly, “Overlord Thracius thought my sister had been rude to his favored daughter. Vateria. But . . . my sister is very pretty and he had plans to mate her off to a friend of his. So he decided to teach her a lesson by using his talon to tear the eye from my head while we both begged him not to.” The Rebel King pulled off his eye patch, revealing the brutal scar and the eyelid sewn shut all those years ago to keep dirt and dust out of the now-empty space. “He wanted her to understand, you see, that he was not to be questioned. Not to be challenged in any way by anyone.”
“Why didn’t you kill your uncle then?”
“My sister and I were twelve winters old. We couldn’t even fly, much less take on my uncle. Then he killed our father in front of us and . . .” Gaius let out a breath. Kachka immediately understood this was still hard for him.
“But,” he finally went on, “we never forgot. And we never forgave. Not this. Not him.”
“So you killed him during the great battle of Euphrasia Valley?”
Gaius laughed. “No, no. That was her,” he said, pointing at Brannie.
“It was not me. I just distracted him until Izzy could fuck up his spine enough so he couldn’t fly away. My cousin éibhear did the rest.” She looked at the Dwarf King. “And it was not pretty. He was in a really bad place then. éibhear. You see, he blamed himself for the death of—”
“I don’t care,” the Dwarf King cut in.
Brannie stopped telling her story, but she did mutter, “Rude,” under her breath.
“There. Feel better, Dwarf King?” Kachka said. “Now will you help or not?”
“Come,” he ordered, walking past Kachka and Gaius to the pub’s front door. “I already know what you’ve come for.”
Aidan stared at his father. “Do you care at all about what’s happened to your family?”
Lord Jarlath continued to drink his ale, showing no interest in much of anything.
Brannie tapped her friend’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get this done. So we can get you back to your mates and your sister.”
He nodded and walked out, the rest of them following.
The Dwarf King led the way, a few of his warriors bringing up the rear. As they moved, Kachka asked, “How do you know what we are here for?”
He glanced back at her, smirking. “A god told me.”
“You know,” Brannie explained, “once you’ve been around Annwyl for a while, you’ll realize that information is not as shocking as you’d think it would be.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ainmire, eyeless, stared at his old home, but he felt nothing as he watched the True Believers use catapults. They weren’t trying to take the castle down. He’d warned them nothing would take it down. But the attack was keeping his father’s armed forces quite busy and that’s all they wanted.
It had hurt when they’d taken his eyes from his head, but his commitment to his god had given him vision he hadn’t had before. Now he could truly see.
And hear.
They came in without words or battle cries, but Ainmire heard the flutter of their wings, the tiny clacks of their talons.