But as Gwenvael took to the air, he heard a voice calling to him. He looked down and saw that it was Izzy. She waved her hands wildly and screamed his name.
He dropped lower. “What is it, Izzy?”
“Annwyl’s horse! Can you not hear him?”
Briec was by him now and they hovered for a moment trying to hear around and through the other noises of humans.
“I hear him,” Briec said. They both could. The horse was banging against his stall. He could have merely gone mad, sensing his mistress was dead. But Gwenvael didn’t think so. And neither did Izzy, it seemed. She took off running, cutting through and around humans with ease while her uncle and father flew low until they reached the queen’s personal stable.
Izzy ran inside even as her mother ran up behind her telling her to wait.
Éibhear moved past them all, grabbing hold of the stable roof and yanking it off with one great pull.
None of them had ever seen Violence act this way. He’d always been the calm center of the storm that was Annwyl, which was why Fearghus had chosen the stallion for his mate in the first place.
“Mourning?” Briec asked.
“I don’t think so.” Fearghus dropped a bit lower. “Izzy. Let him out.”
Izzy gripped the metal bolt holding the stall gate closed and locked, and yanked it back. The gate slammed open as the horse hit it again with his front hooves and without a moment’s hesitation, he charged out, running toward the great gates.
The horse no longer seemed mad with grief. Instead, he had a purpose and a destination.
“Open the gates! Now!” Fearghus yelled to the guards before taking off after the beast, his brothers and father right by his side.
They grabbed her now-empty arms—and reason help her but she felt that emptiness to her soul—and dragged her back across the tunnel floor to where they’d stopped digging. They threw her to the ground and she scrambled back up.
Her mind desperately searched for a way out of this, but the power of the priestess over these males was absolute. In the north, a priestess of power was the one woman no man would dare argue with. Unfortunately the Minotaurs were no different from her kinsmen.
“You’ll have to forgive our roughness, my lady,” the head Minotaur said with absolute disdain. “It’s been months that we’ve been on this road and our priestess is rarely accommodating. But truly you won’t live long enough to mind that much.”
“You will pay for your betrayal of the Northland Code.”
“We are from the mighty Ice Lands. We are the true Northlanders. So any code you southerners use means nothing to us.”
And it was as the males were moving closer to her that Dagmar saw her, standing in the midst of them—unseen. Except by Dagmar. She seemed taller this time and no longer the poor sword-for-hire. How could Dagmar not have seen it before? How could she not have known?
“Are you just going to stand there?” Dagmar snapped, angry. “Are you going to do nothing?”
The Minotaurs stopped, glancing at each other while a few muttered, wondering who she was talking to.
“You hurt his feelings,” she chastised. “That’s why you’re here, Dagmar Reinholdt. You really have no one to blame but yourself.”
“You’re blaming me for this?”
“We weren’t blaming you for anything,” one of the Minotaurs contested.
“Shut up,” she snapped and focused again on Eir. “You have to do something.”
“Like what? Kill them all?”
“Excellent start.”
“I can’t. They haven’t actually done anything to me. And you don’t worship me … or anyone. The twins aren’t mine to protect. I really shouldn’t interfere with other gods.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“This isn’t going to work,” the head Minotaur said. “Pretending to be crazy won’t help you.”
“Gods have rules,” Eir went on, ignoring the Minotaur as Dagmar was. “A code, if you will, like you have in the north.”
“So that’s it? You’re going to walk away?”
“You talked yourself down here … Seems to me, you’re on your own.”
The goddess began to turn away, but Dagmar pulled her arm away from one of her captors and pointed it at her. “You said you owe me one!”
Eir faced her again, blinking in surprise. “For your wool socks.”
“It was an open-ended ‘I owe you one.’ ”
“What?”
“If you’d specifically stated, ‘I owe you one set of wool socks,’ that would be one thing. But you just said you owe me for the wool socks. Thereby leaving it completely open to interpretation and final payment.”
One of the Minotaurs leaned close to his commander. “She’s centaur-shit crazy.”
“The fear must have scrambled her mind,” the commander suggested.
Eir stared at her for a moment before nodding her head. “You are good. But it was only one favor. So you choose who I save. The twins or—”
“The twins,” she said, and all the Minotaurs looked over at their priestess, busy pulling out daggers and herbs for a proper sacrifice.
“The twins,” Dagmar repeated.
“All right. Think you can keep them busy for a bit?”
“I have to ask you again, are you kidding?”
“Come on. You’re very good. You’ll come up with something.”