“Information.” They could afford to give her little else.
“You and that bloody information.”
“It’s what I barter in.” She leaned forward, looking him right in the eyes—one of the few unafraid to do so. “I need you to trust me on this.”
He snorted and stared down at the table, Dagmar patiently waiting.
When he finally grabbed hold of his ax handle, yanking the weapon from the table, she knew she’d won—or at least gotten a short-term reprieve.
“Don’t push your luck with me, little miss,” he grumbled.
Of course she would. She was so good at it.
As her father walked out, a servant rushed in. “My lady, Brother Ragnar approaches.”
She nodded and stood, her appetite long having left.
“Look all”—Kikka sneered, her husband still ranting about “all the bloody coin you spend!”—“another male who won’t be bedding our little Dagmar.”
“And then there’s you, sister.” Dagmar leaned down and finished on a whisper, “Who will apparently f**k anything.”
Heading toward the doors and her respite from idiocy, Dagmar heard her brother snap, “What did she say? What are you doing?”
Gwenvael skimmed the note quickly. “The Reinholdt wants you—they’re very clear on that ‘you’—to come to his territory to save the lives of your unborn children. You know, personally, I don’t appreciate him trying to order my lovely queen about, but what really bothers me—”
“Is that the barbarians already know I’m having twins?” At Gwenvael’s nod, she added, “And if they know that, they might already know I’m no longer as fierce as I once was.”
“You won’t be expecting forever, Annwyl. And once the twins are here, you’ll be as violently cruel and madly bloodthirsty as you always were.”
“Now you’re just trying to make me feel better.”
“Is it working?”
“A little.” She closed her eyes, and he knew she was in pain, the “twinges,” as she called them, happening more and more lately. She took a cleansing breath and went on. “But even if I wanted to go to the Northlands myself, Fearghus will never let that happen. And Morfyd! Gods, the whining.” Gwenvael’s older sister, a powerful Dragonwitch and healer, could wear the scales off a fast-moving snake when she was in a mood. “Besides, someone I thought adored me told me I was too fat to travel.”
“That is not what I said, although I love how all of you willfully misinterpret me. And how quick we are to forget I did notice that your br**sts had grown even fuller and more lovely. If that’s possible.”
Annwyl laughed and shook her head. “Not even a modicum of shame.”
“Not even a teaspoonful. Now, we both know you can’t travel, so what would you like me to do? Want me to write them back for you? I think we both have to admit that I have a way with the written word that you do not, my lovely.”
“This is very true.” She turned a bit on his lap so that she looked directly at him. “But I thought perhaps you could go in my stead.”
“Me? Go back to the Northlands?” he scoffed. “I’d rather eat bark.”
“Do you think I like asking you to take this risk? Especially with the reputation you left behind?” She raised a brow. “Ruiner.”
“You know, they weren’t virgins,” he argued as he’d been arguing for decades. “They stumbled upon me at the lake. Took advantage of me. They used their tails in a manner I found enticing, and I did what I had to do to survive the horrors of war.”
“Is it true you, and you alone, is specifically mentioned in the truce?”
“As long as I keep my distance from Lightning females—you may also know the Lightnings as the Horde dragons, my beautiful majesty”—he gave her his most appealing smile but she only stared at him, so he continued—“I can go into the Northlands for short periods of time.”
“Then I need you to go. But to be quite honest you’re the only one I can send.”
The admission surprised him. “I am?”
“I can’t send Morfyd. She’s female, and the Lightnings would snag her faster than you can lure a local girl to your bed.”
“What a lovely analogy. Thank you.”
“Besides, your sister is needed here because she’s the only one who can stop Fearghus from killing his own parents.”
Gwenvael barely stopped his angry frown, determined to keep the conversation as light as possible. “I see Mother still refuses to believe your babes are Fearghus’s.”
“I don’t know what she believes, and I don’t care. She hasn’t been here in six months since she was first told and that’s fine by me.” Gwenvael knew that to be a lie. That fight had been the ugliest he’d seen among his kin, and though all of Fearghus’s siblings had stood by him and Annwyl that day, the whole thing had hurt Annwyl more than anyone wanted to admit.
“I can’t send Keita,” she went on, “because she’ll have all the men turning on each other and won’t even remember why I sent her. Besides, when is she ever here for me to ask?”
Gwenvael couldn’t argue with her on that. His younger sister was more like him than anyone in their family. Only a couple of decades apart, they’d always been close and understood each other well. Yet he’d noticed that over the past few years, Keita had been spending almost all her time as far from Devenallt Mountain and Dark Plains as she could manage. She had her own cave but was rarely in it, and when she did return home, things often became uncomfortable between her and their mother. When he thought about it, Gwenvael couldn’t remember a time when mother and daughter had gotten along, making family get-togethers quite intense. Then again, Gwenvael lived for that sort of tension and often found perverse pleasure in making it worse.