“Yes.”
“How is that possible?”
“Again,” Morfyd said patiently. “It gets very complex. If we look back at history and the beginning of—”
“The god Rhydderch Hael has been playing with my insides.”
“Gods dammit, Annwyl!”
“You’re taking too bloody long!”
“Before this gets ugly,” Dagmar easily coasted in, “perhaps we should discuss the tunnels I told you about?”
Morfyd studied her closely and asked, “Does it not bother you?”
She knew she didn’t mean the tunnels. “Bothered by what?”
“The soon-to-happen unholy birth of Annwyl’s spawn?”
“Oy!” Annwyl objected.
“Pardon?” Dagmar asked before popping another delicious something in her mouth.
“No offense, Dagmar, but so far every human who’s been told about Annwyl’s pregnancy without the necessary backstory has been quick to label Annwyl a whore and her babes demons. Yet you don’t seem to care.”
“Am I carrying her children?” Dagmar inquired while licking her fingers.
Morfyd raised a white brow. “Not that I’m aware.”
“Then to quote my father, ‘I really don’t give a battle-fuck.’ ”
Annwyl coughed up whatever she’d just put in her mouth, hitting Morfyd in the face.
“I do, however, have concerns over those tunnels, so we’ll focus on that.”
Gwenvael stretched his legs out and wiggled his toes. “I’m so exhausted. All that bloody flying.”
“Don’t sleep yet,” Briec said, comfortably sitting next to him. “You have to come to the dinner tonight, or you’ll never hear the end of if it from the aunts.”
“Do I have to?”
“Don’t whine,” Fearghus snapped, sitting next to Briec. “And yes, you have to. At the very least you need to entertain your Northland guest. And I still haven’t heard why you brought her here.”
“Because that Lightning wants her here, and until I find out why he wants her here—here she stays.”
“You just want to f**k her.”
“Yes,” he hissed at Briec’s question. “But that’s not all. She’s extremely smart and has a delightful sense of evil that I truly appreciate.”
“And you want to f**k her.”
He sighed. “Is it too much to ask that my brothers take their minds from the gutter and into the fresh air?”
“Watch your back, Gwenvael,” Fearghus warned. “She has been chumming around for twenty years with Olgeir’s son.”
“She didn’t know.”
“So she says. But at the end of the day, you have to remember, she is and always will be a Northlander. They live by a different set of rules than we do.”
“I know. They have a Code. How come we don’t have a code?”
“We can’t get you to adhere to the general rules of decency … how do we enforce a code?”
“Good point.” Gwenvael looked between his brothers. “One more time?”
They nodded in agreement.
“All right. On three. One, two … three!”
All three of them stood and as quickly dropped back down, slamming once more into Éibhear’s back. He let out a yelp of pain and tried again to straggle out from under them.
“You’re all bastards!”
“Don’t whine!” Gwenvael chastised. “Just admit that you’re crazy about Iz—”
“Shut up!”
Dagmar pulled on the much-too-large, but lusciously soft robe, belting it in the middle. She took another glass of wine from Morfyd and dropped into the chair Annwyl had vacated. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome.” Morfyd again studied the maps Dagmar had given her. “I’ll give these to Brastias. Perhaps he can figure out where all these lines go. Or my brother, Éibhear. He’s very good with maps.”
“I’ll help as much as I can,” she promised.
Morfyd looked up from her notes. “Tell me, Dagmar, do you talk to Gwenvael?”
“Yes.”
“Full conversations?”
“Yes.”
“And he holds your interest?”
Annwyl laughed at that, but Dagmar didn’t. “As a matter of fact, Lady Morfyd, I find your brother quite intelligent, with excellent ideas and thoughts on a range of topics. Perhaps you should find the time to have a full conversation with him before you judge what you don’t know.”
Morfyd stared at her with wide eyes and Dagmar felt a little guilty. But before she could apologize the bedroom door flew open and another woman marched in. She was a few inches taller than Dagmar and stunningly beautiful with brown skin just like the soldier-for-hire Dagmar had met. Now she’d seen two women of the desert lands in less than a week, when she’d seen none for the thirty years before that.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you two,” the woman snarled, slamming the door closed behind her. “And anyone like to explain what the hell Run and Jump is?”
Annwyl slowly rolled onto her side, away from the woman glaring at everyone in the room.
“Waiting for an answer!” she bellowed, looking quite comfortable yet gorgeous in the plain black leggings she wore with black boots, a loose off-white linen shirt, and a thin leather tie that pulled back her long mass of black curly hair. Nothing else adorned her body except a silver chain necklace that disappeared under her shirt and a small sheathed dagger she had tied to her upper thigh.