Bring the Heat

Yet they didn’t have time for anything and moved through the crowd quickly until they reached a tavern.

The red-haired dwarf led them inside to a dwarf with a shaved head covered in tattoos and a braided black beard that reached the floor. He had one leg up on the table and a pint in his big hands. Also at the table was Lord Jarlath.

“Boy!” Jarlath called out when he saw his son. “So you made it!” It was easy to see the dragon had perhaps had more than his share of dwarven wine. “And you brought your . . . weird friends. Good for you!”

Appearing embarrassed, Aidan glanced at Gaius before walking close to his father.

“Father, the Stone Castle is under attack.”

Jarlath smirked, and looked to his tattooed dwarf friend.

“Which one?” he asked his son.

“Which one what?”

“Which of those bastards betrayed me? Their father.”

“It was Ainmire, but—”

“Ha!” Lord Jarlath rapped his knuckles against the wood table and pointed at the Dwarf King. “Told ya it’d be that weak boy. You owe me thirty gold, dwarf.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Aidan snapped. “Your home is under attack. Our lands are under attack.”

“The Stone Castle will stand. It will always stand.”

“And your family?” Aidan pushed.

“Not to be trusted, are they? Except you, but only because you’re loyal to the queen and the Mì-runach scum.”

Aidan almost had his hands around his father’s throat when Kachka shoved the dragon back.

“You,” she said, pointing at the tattooed dwarf. “You are Dwarf King?”

The dwarf coldly eyed her back. “An Outerplains whore in my city. Sometimes you just can’t keep the trash out, can you, Jarlath?”

Before Gaius even had a chance to react to that insult, the remaining Daughters of the Steppes had their weapons drawn and were moving forward, but without flinching, Kachka raised her hand, stopping them in their tracks. The group, as a whole, had come a long way since Gaius had met them on his death trek a few months back.

Kachka stepped forward and, hooking her foot under his wooden chair, she rocked it hard, so the back of the dwarf’s head slammed against the wall.

The dwarves in the pub stopped speaking, all attention now on Kachka and their king.

If Kachka noticed any of them, Gaius had no idea. Everything about her at that moment was focused on the Dwarf King—and Gaius didn’t envy the dwarf one bit.

Pinning the chair against the wall with her foot, Kachka stared down at the defiant royal.

“I am Kachka Shestakova, Scourge of the Gods. Tell me, Dwarf King, did your great sin bring us here to you?”

The tattoos on the Dwarf King’s head told a story. A story of heroic deeds. So typical of men, to put their rare feats of greatness right on their bodies. As if they constantly had to prove themselves.

“You know why I am here, Dwarf King,” Kachka said when he continued to just stare at her. “What I need from you.”

“I’ve been told,” he finally said, his voice like rough gravel.

“Then where is it? Tell me and then we can go. And we will never know your great sin.”

“Or what?” he shot back. “You Whores of the Steppes will kill us all?”

“No,” she told him flatly. “We will just kill you, Dwarf King.”

As the pair glared at each other, Gaius suddenly felt the need to step in. It was his way, Kachka now understood, and perhaps she needed that balance. It helped that her cousin Tatyana performed the same task for the team. But with her off with the siblings and Nina Chechneva that left poor Gaius to stick his thick neck out.

“Or perhaps we can come up with another option,” Gaius suggested. “One that involves little to no bloodshed.”

Now the Dwarf King locked on Gaius. “Who are you?”

“Gaius Domitus of the—”

“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?”