“Can’t say the same for you though, lizard.”
“No,” he replied with a weak but relieved smile, steel-colored hair falling into his face. “I guess you can’t.”
Kachka, sensing movement behind her, reached for the sword at her side, but it was too late. The man moving up behind her was now in the grip of Zoya Kolesova. An angry Zoya Kolesova.
“What is this?” Zoya demanded. “You strike at our back? Deceitful male!”
Another male came toward Zoya from her right, but she backhanded that one away, crushing his cheek and jaw in the process.
“None of you are to be trusted!” she bellowed. “None of you!”
Kachka watched Zoya batter the slaver’s face in with her fist. While, from the safety of the trees, the siblings killed more of the slavers with their arrows and Marina finished off two more slavers charging at her.
Tatyana, sadly, was still fussing with the blade at her side, so Kachka grabbed her arm and yanked her down beside her.
“My cousin,” she said to the dragon in human form. “Tatyana Shestakova of the Black Bear Riders of the Midnight Mountains of—”
“Yes,” he cut in. “I remember well.”
“This, cousin, is Gaius Lucius Domitus.”
Tatyana gasped. “The king himself.”
Kachka snorted as more slavers behind her died at the hands and arrows of her companions. “So impressed by rank is she, lizard. You two should get along well.”
He was still smiling, but then, slowly, it began to fade, as his eye moved from Kachka to whatever was behind her.
On instinct, she stood and turned, facing an eyeless woman in a simple white dress. Those eyes had been removed purposely, she’d guess, since there were no ugly scars. Her eyelids were simply sewn shut, so that the woman’s beauty was not lost.
With arms raised at her sides, the woman grinned at Kachka.
“Greetings, my—”
Kachka rammed her blade into the woman’s belly, not letting her finish whatever she’d been planning to say.
The woman’s mouth dropped open in shock and she discovered the blade and the blood pouring onto the ground.
“But . . .” she panted. “But . . . I am unarmed.”
“I am Rider,” Kachka said in return, yanking her blade from the woman, pulling it back and slashing it forward, removing the woman’s head in one swipe. “So I do not care that you are unarmed.”
Tatyana stood, eyes wide. “Cousin! What did you do?”
“She was enemy. I killed her. That is what we do.” It galled her she had to remind her cousin of that.
“Look at her,” Zoya said as she tossed away a man whose spine she’d snapped. “She has no eyes. She was suffering. Your cousin did what she must.”
Tatyana, always so sensitive, growled and crouched by the woman’s body. She pulled her dress down in the front until she revealed a mark burned into the woman’s flesh.
“Horse gods,” Tatyana whispered. “She is Chramnesind.”
“What?” Marina asked. “She is what?”
“She is a priestess of the Chramnesind cult.”
“Is that a real thing?” Marina shrugged. “I thought that was made up.”
“It is not made up.” Tatyana stood. “We need to go.”
“But we have boar,” Zoya argued.
“We must release these slaves and we must go,” Tatyana said as she walked toward the weak ones who’d allowed themselves to be captured.
“I get to keep the boys, though, yes?”
“No!” Tatyana shot back. “You do not get to keep slaves!”
“Not slaves! Future husbands for my daughters!”
“Och!” Tatyana snarled with a wave of her hand before she began removing the slaves’ chains, Ivan at her side helping.
“And who is that one?” Marina asked, pointing at the Sovereign with her blood-wet sword.
“That,” Kachka said, “is Gaius Lucius Domitus. The One-Eyed Rebel King of the Quintilian Empire—”
“And Iron dragon,” Nina Chechneva finished, although to be honest, Kachka had forgotten all about the witch in the last ten minutes.
“He cannot be dragon,” Zoya argued. “A dragon would burn all these slavers to embers. Not sit around shackled like weak human male.”
“It is not the shackles that stop him from being dragon.” Nina crouched beside him and pulled the fur cape from his body, revealing the gold torc around his neck. “It is this thing.” She nodded at the headless corpse. “She placed this on him and now he cannot be dragon. He cannot fight. He can do nothing but wait.”
“Then take it off,” Kachka snapped. She desperately wanted to get back to that boar.
“I cannot.”
“I thought you were witch. With all your dark magicks and hip undulating.”
“This is dragon magicks, Kachka Shestakova. I have no gods in the dragon pantheon.”
“I do not know what that means, but I do know that you have disappointed me, Nina Chechneva.”
“That will keep me up nights,” she shot back.
Kachka was about to go to Nina and slap her, just to make a point, but her cousin pulled her back.