What a Dragon Should Know

Letting out a breath, Dagmar sat up and began to lean over the maps again when she saw him. He strode through the doors and absolutely no one paid him any mind. Considering the way the security had been ridiculously amplified—at Gwenvael’s firm direction—the fact that no one would even look his way irked her. She’d specifically added that even dragons in human form were to be questioned or Gwenvael’s kin alerted.

“Who is that?” She motioned to him with her chin and Talaith looked directly at the dragon.

“Who? Samuel the washing boy?”

Dagmar frowned and looked again, quickly realizing Talaith spoke of the boy currently on his knees scrubbing the floor.

“Not him.” She searched for him again and saw him casually walking up the stairs. “Him.”

Talaith stared blankly at the stairs. “Who?”

“You see nothing?”

“Am I supposed to see something?” She made it sound as if Dagmar had lost her mind. Dagmar knew witches like Talaith and Morfyd could see what others could not, but as long as Dagmar wore her spectacles, she wasn’t blind. She knew what she saw … so why hadn’t Talaith seen as well?

Pushing her chair back, she stood. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

Lifting the skirt of her gown, Dagmar went up the stairs after him. As she stepped into the hall, she realized he’d disappeared. Perhaps he was someone’s lover, stopping in for a visit. Yet she heard no doors opening or closing. Saw no midmorning light momentarily streaking into the hallway as someone entered a room.

She headed down one hall, turned, and went down another. She walked toward the room Annwyl lay in but stopped short when she saw the man reappear from the twins’ nursery. This time he held Annwyl’s twins in his arms. He stood in the hallway, bold as brass, in front of the guards who were supposed to be protecting the babes and their nursemaids. But the guards didn’t move. They didn’t even acknowledge his presence.

Then she understood. They didn’t see him, Talaith didn’t see him—no one saw him. No one but Dagmar.

It was something Aoibhell herself used to complain about in the letters Ragnar had given Dagmar. She wrote faithfully to a friend, mostly reiterating her beliefs—or lack thereof. But a few times, something she said hadn’t made much sense to Dagmar. Until now.

“At first they were always so surprised when I could see them, Anne. Now they stop by for chats. Tea. It’s like I can’t get rid of them. It seems to only happen to those who truly do not worship. Not the ones trying to annoy their family or who feel betrayed when someone close to them dies. But the ones who truly understand that the gods are no better than anyone else.”

Dagmar studied the male holding Annwyl’s babes. His mouth twisted a bit as he debated something and, with a small shrug, moved forward, heading toward Annwyl’s room.

Dagmar followed right behind him, the guards noticing her immediately. She waited a moment, took a breath, and entered the queen’s dying chamber.

He stood beside the bed, staring down at Annwyl.

“Wanted to give them a chance to say good-bye?” she asked coldly.

Looking up in surprise, he smiled. “Amazing. That you can see me, I mean.” When she didn’t comment on that, he seemed to lose interest.

“It seemed only fair to bring them to their mother. Don’t you think?” He placed the babes on their mother’s chest and stomach. His smile was indulgent, like a father’s over a puppy his children had grown fond of but could no longer have. “Now say bye-bye,” he told them, his voice teasing. “Can you say bye-bye?”

Dagmar’s eyes narrowed, her top lip curled, and her hands turned into tight fists.

God or not, she wouldn’t be letting this bastard off that easily.

Briec, thoroughly disgusted with his kin, rolled his eyes. The mate of his brother lay dying in the rooms above and all these idiots could do was argue about the best way to track down and decimate Minotaurs.

A waste of energy in his opinion. But typical of the way the Cadwaladr Clan handled something like this.

They couldn’t help Annwyl, and his father’s kin did like to “help.” So they would do what they did best: kill and destroy. But they couldn’t do that if what the tiny barbarian female had told them was true—that the Minotaur tracks may be in one location, but that only meant the Minotaurs themselves were surely in another. So they stood over maps and argued and debated and disagreed. All while Fearghus sat in a chair, staring at the table with the maps. Briec knew his brother saw nothing that was in front of him. Felt nothing except the loss of his mate.

Late every night Briec had to track an exhausted Talaith down and pull her away from her books so she could get at least a few hours of sleep. She didn’t sleep, though. She mostly cried. It was heartless and cruel, he knew, but it would be better for all if their mother—who sat silent across the room staring at Fearghus—would simply let Annwyl go. Let her go so they could release her ashes to the wind, and then move on to the business of raising her offspring the way she would have wanted.

It wasn’t that Briec wanted her to die. He’d never disliked her that much. But keeping her around for no reason other than to give Fearghus a still-breathing corpse to stare at ever, day and night didn’t seem like a much better idea.

Of course, whenever he thought of himself going through any of this—losing his Talaith this way—he felt the pain as a physical thing. Never before had he wanted so badly to do something, anything, that would help his brother. Fearghus had never been a happy-go-lucky dragon like Gwenvael, but Fearghus had never been like this. Broken.