Sitting up straight, Zachariah said, “Are you telling me your adoptive father is a—”
“Dragon? Aye. Briec the Mighty. Second oldest son of the Dragon Queen, second in line to the throne—”
“I don’t give a damn about his titles, girl. Why is your mother trapped with a dragon?”
“I wouldn’t say she’s trapped. Although she would, especially when Daddy hasn’t checked her fruit appropriately.”
“Checked her fruit?”
“You don’t want to know. But no. She’s not trapped. She could leave, but she’d break his heart. He loves her. Loves me and, of course, there’s Rhi, which is why I’m here.”
“And who’s Rhi again?”
“My sister. Their daughter.”
Appalled and confused at the same time, “Talaith had a child with that . . . that . . .”
“That dragon. Aye. They had my beautiful sister, Rhianwen. Rhi for short.”
“Izzy, how is that even possible?”
“Gods.”
“Gods?”
“Aye. That’s how Annwyl had her twins with my uncle Fearghus. But, you see,” she went on without a breath, “I thought it was Rhydderch Hael again who made it so she could get pregnant by Daddy—Rhydderch Hael is the father god of all dragons—but he said he wouldn’t do that for my mum because she wasn’t talking to him so he wasn’t talking to her. I’m not talking to him either, but with me, he won’t shut up.”
“The gods talk to you?”
“Only one. Now, my Aunt Dagmar—you might have heard of her as the Northland Beast—”
“I thought that was a man.”
“A lot of people make that mistake. Anyway, she talks to gods all the time.”
“A religious woman then?”
She laughed. “Dagmar? No. She’s a follower of Aoibhell.” “The heretic?”
“I wouldn’t call her that unless you have an hour or two to listen to why Aoibhell was not a heretic and why you should care about the distinction, which I’m assuming you really don’t want because that can be overwhelming and you seem like a man who has little time for what Daddy calls Dagmar the Beast’s Unholy and Nonsensical Ramblings.”
Zachariah stared at his son’s child for a long time, then finally said, “You are so like your mother.”
Izzy’s smile was wide and just like her father’s. “Awww, that’s so sweet. Thank you.”
A knock at the door helped Zachariah extract himself from the non-direction this conversation was taking.
“Enter.”
At first Zachariah thought a bear that had lost his fur in some sort of tragic accident had wandered into his forge. What other answer could explain the thing with long blue hair that took up his entire doorway?
“What’s wrong?” Izzy asked it, and that’s when Zachariah realized that the thing she was talking to was the Éibhear she’d spoken of earlier.
“Just checking on you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Having a nice chat then?”
“Not having an unpleasant chat.”
Zachariah heard a horrible, grinding noise, his gaze desperately searching the room in an attempt to find out where it might be coming from.
“Don’t look at me that way, Izzy,” the giant ordered her. “I’m hungry.”
“Go get something to eat then.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“I’ll be perfectly fine. I don’t need your protection.”
“I’m not leaving you anyway.”
“Because you’re my uncle and you love me?”
Zachariah watched the pair, the way the giant’s jaw clenched and unclenched. And the way Izzy smiled. Zachariah knew that damn smile. That mischievous, “I’m enjoying tormenting you” smile that his son had managed to perfect when he was still a boy.
Yes, this woman, this powerful general and warrior was his granddaughter.
And this giant . . . loved her.
“Izzy—”
“Say because you’re my uncle and you love me. It will make my grandfather feel more comfortable with you around his family. He wouldn’t want them to be unsafe just because of me.”
“I will not say—”
“You will or I’m telling Daddy!”
“Is that what you say to your troops?” the giant shot back. “You’ll tell your daddy on them if they don’t follow your orders?”
“If it’s necessary to get them to do what I want.”
Zachariah looked up at the giant. “So you’re Izzy’s uncle?”
“Not by blood.”
“And that matters?”
“It matters.”
Another grinding sound came from the giant’s stomach.
“Like two mountains shifting,” Izzy muttered.
“Well, if you fed me!”
“Should I feed you like a mother bird to a baby chick?”
“All right.” Zachariah stood. “You’ll both eat with us.” He glared at the giant. “With us, foreigner. With us.”
The giant scratched his big head. “As opposed to . . .”
“Dining on my family!”
Mouth open, the giant stepped back. “I would never do such a thing! I don’t eat humans.”
Izzy looked up, all wide-eyed innocence. “Even during battle—ow! What was that pinch for?”
“Nor do I believe in eating humans. Even though my parents did. And my brothers.” He shrugged, gazing off. “And Keita.” He looked back at them. “Well, they don’t do it now,” he sneered. “Not since Annwyl became part of the family. And when Talaith joined us, we stopped eating horses.” He gazed off again. “I think we’re beginning to run out of livestock, though.”
Deciding he was done with this bizarre conversation, Zachariah headed toward the door. “Tomorrow we’ll take you to the Nolwenn sanctuary. Perhaps using my mother’s name can help you get in to meet Haldane. She was the city’s commander general for thirty years until she retired. And you’ll stay here for the night.” Zachariah stopped and glared at the giant. “In separate rooms, Uncle.”
He looked back at his granddaughter, smiled, and walked out.
Once the old man walked out, Éibhear closed the door and faced Iseabail. “Would you stop calling me uncle?” he spit out between clenched teeth.
“But you are my uncle. An uncle who loves his dear, sweet, and much younger niece. What’s wrong with that?”
“Have you noticed that everyone in this family of yours is a warrior? Or a soldier? Or a giant-armed blacksmith?”
She clapped her hands together. “I can’t wait for him to meet Rhona and Uncle Sulien!” she cheered, mentioning two of the family’s best blacksmiths. “Imagine the weapons we’ll get when they compare ideas.”
“You may not have noticed this, but your entire Desert Land family of warriors and soldiers and blacksmiths hate dragons.”
“Oh, no, no. I think they’re simply frightened of dragons because they don’t know them yet or understand them. I just think they hate you specifically, which is a completely different issue.” She jumped up. “Gods!”
“What’s wrong?”
“I forgot Macsen. I left him outside.”
“He’s fine. I let him in while I was trying to track you down. I gave him some rocks to eat.”
“He doesn’t eat rocks. He just chews on them until they break into pieces.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“Should it?”
“Yes!” Izzy chuckled, but it faded away, and he saw the worry on her face. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know if we should eat with them.”
“Other than their hating me, why not?”
She rubbed her hands against her leggings. “What if, after they talk to me, they don’t like me? What if they’re disappointed?”
“You think these people will be disappointed? In you?”
“What do you—”
“They’re casually sitting around in their armor. The men and the women. The children have toy swords . . . and maces . . . and morning stars. Your great grandmother Zarah is missing three fingers from one hand and has an axe wound in her back. She pointed it out to me with great pride. That’s your great grandmother. While you are a revered and feared general in Annwyl the Bloody’s army. A monarch they seem relatively terrified of. So I really don’t think you’re going to disappoint your father’s family, Izzy. In fact, the way they’ve all been glaring at me—as if I’m running around wagging my c*ck at everyone—proves, to me at least, that they at the very least feel protective of you if they don’t already adore you. Now”—he pushed her toward the door—“can we eat before I’m forced to gnaw my own arm off?”
She pulled the door open. “Can I call you Uncle Éibhear at the dinner table?”
“No, you may not, evil viper.”
Chapter 35
Dinner wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as Izzy had feared. In fact, she enjoyed herself. She didn’t think Éibhear did, but he put up with it, which she truly appreciated.
“Can I ask,” Izzy said to her Aunt Layla, who was the one who’d taken her out of the jail, “why were Éibhear and I taken into custody? I understood this to be an open city?”
“It is.” Layla shrugged. “Or perhaps was. We’ve been having problems with cults lately.”
“What cult?” Éibhear asked.
“It has no name, but we’ve been finding sacrifices in the tunnels under the city. Found a few bodies out in the desert, too. Nasty bit of business.”
“So I’ve ordered,” Izzy’s general grandmother, Maskini, interjected, “that anyone armed but not wearing colors is to be brought in and detained until we can question them.” She smiled at Izzy. “You were armed and not wearing any colors.” She glanced at Éibhear. “And you were just sort of terrifying.”
He shrugged. “Sorry.”
“You know”—Izzy looked at everyone around the table—“I’m a little surprised.”
“About what?”
“That there are so many female soldiers here. Mum told me about my father, but she didn’t really discuss life here in the Desert Lands except to say that women didn’t travel alone.”
“No one should travel alone,” Layla said before sipping her wine.
“And,” Zarah explained, “the women of our lands have been warriors for a few centuries now. But we weren’t always. At one time, we followed the rules the human gods set up. Men fought the wars and the women had and raised the children.”
“What changed?”
“Long ago an enemy battled with the men of this very city far out in the desert.”
“Leaving the city defenseless.”
“Exactly. The gates were closed and barricaded, but it was no good. Those gates came down. It was . . . very bad. Some of the women chose to kill themselves and their children. But one woman, who’d already lost three of her children during the siege, was so filled with rage, she rallied the surviving women to fight. They were smart, though. They waited until the soldiers were quite drunk and then they killed them. They killed them all. When the men returned, it was decided that the men would never leave their women defenseless again, but they all knew that wasn’t good enough. Because a woman has to know how to protect herself. So the women trained, their daughters were trained, then their granddaughters. And with every generation we’ve become stronger, more powerful. Now we’re a force. Now we’re never left defenseless, no matter who is in or out of the city.”