“Owwwww!” the Gold cried out when he hit the hard stone floor below. Gods, that poor floor took a lot of abuse.

“Feel better now that you hurt another?” Kachka asked.

“Shut up.”

“King Gaius,” Dagmar said, standing. “Please. Allow me to show you to another room. Your own room.”

“Yes. Horse gods forbid some royal should be forced to share anything with another.”

“Shut up,” Dagmar snarled at Kachka. Then she took in a deep breath, let it out, and stretched out her arm. She motioned to Gaius with a twitch of her fingers. “Please, my lord. This way.”

Gaius stood, trying to pull the fur covering around his bare ass. But none of the Riders would move. So, he yanked, sending them all flipping to the floor.

Feeling sadly triumphant over that, he wrapped the covering around his waist and allowed Lady Dagmar to show him from this room and these ridiculous people!

Dagmar placed him in a room beside Annwyl’s.

“King Gaius, I am so sorry—”

“No, no,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “No need to apologize, Lady Dagmar. This was not your fault.”

And it wasn’t! Gaius wasn’t lying or trying to ease her discomfort. It really wasn’t Dagmar’s fault.

It was Kachka’s!

“Would you like me to order water for your bath?” Dagmar asked.

“Actually, I think I’ll go out to one of the lakes.” He needed to shift to his natural form. He needed to feel water against his scales. He needed to be away from here!

Dagmar nodded. She’d lived with dragons long enough now to understand. She stepped out into the hallway and peered in both directions. She finally raised her hand. “You. Boy. Come here.”

A young boy ran over and Dagmar gestured to Gaius. “Please escort the king to the lake that Prince Fearghus likes to use.”

“Aye, my lady.”

“And make sure to stop by the gates and get some clothes for his majesty as well. He’ll need them when he’s done bathing.”

“Aye, my lady.”

Gaius moved into the hallway, stopping by Dagmar’s side long enough to nod down at her. “Thank you.”

“Of course. Anything you need, King Gaius.”

Normally, Gaius would never need so much use of his title, but at the moment . . .

Gods! That woman!

Kachka was pissing in the chamber pot, sighing loudly from the pleasure of it. She’d drunk much the evening before and was glad she hadn’t pissed the bed.

Honestly, she didn’t remember getting in bed with the dragon. Or bringing the others with her, but she truly did not see the big deal of it all. Riders shared beds. The winters on the Outerplains were brutally cold and sharing beds for warmth was typical. Yet these Southlanders acted like it was the most outrageous thing one could do.

Whatever. Let the dragon be pissed at her. She didn’t care. Life was too short for such bullshit!

Deciding she wouldn’t worry about it for one more second, Kachka was about to stand when the door slammed open again.

“What is wrong with you?” the tiny Northland female bellowed from the doorway, her pale face red with rage, her entire body shaking like a small dog’s.

Kachka glanced around. “Nothing,” she replied honestly. “Why?”

“Why would you all get in bed with him?”

“Because we were tired.”

“And drunk,” Zoya Kolesova volunteered as she got to her incredibly large feet. She’d tried to sleep in the bed with them, but there just hadn’t been enough room for her, so they’d rolled her off and onto the floor. Like a thousand-year-old oak chopped at its roots, she’d gone over, and never woke. Not even for a second. She slept like the dead.

Nina Chechneva rubbed the sides of her head. “Very drunk.”

“I don’t give a battle-fuck!” the Northlander raged. “He is a royal and an ally of this court and every last gods-damn one of you will treat him with respect!”

“I do not think—”

“Do I make myself clear!” Dagmar Reinholdt briefly closed her eyes behind those small round pieces of glass. “Because I swear,” she finally said, her voice low, but oddly more terrifying than when she was yelling, “by all reason, that if you don’t, I will personally hunt down each and every one of your kinswomen and kill them, starting from youngest to oldest until I’ve wiped out your entire fucking bloodlines. Do I make myself clear?”

Zoya sauntered up to the Northlander. “Look, little person, I—”

“Do I make myself,” and the Northlander’s head tipped to the side a bit before she finished with, “clear?”

Zoya and the Beast locked eyes for a very long time before Zoya finally looked away and nodded. “You make yourself clear.”

The Beast looked at the others and they all nodded in agreement.

She stepped out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Zoya spun around, raised her hands, and, in their language, demanded, “Where the fuck did you bring us, Kachka Shestakova?”

Gaius was very pleased with the lake the boy led him to before leaving a pile of clean clothes carefully placed on a rock nearby.

Of course, the Southlands were known for their lakes. And the dragons here loved them, even though they were made of fire.

The Irons had fewer lakes to choose from, so they built their own inside the Quintilian Provinces, allowing for communal bathing, where political ideas and decisions could easily flow. Many deals were struck among those easing sore muscles in the communal baths.

Dropping the fur around his hips, Gaius dove into the water. When he pulled himself up, he was dragon again. Just that alone made him feel better.

Gaius dove under the water again. The lake was much deeper than he’d thought it would be, and he wondered if dragons had dug it out over time.

When he swam back up, breaking the surface, he launched himself up and out, unleashing his wings and taking to the skies. As he flew toward the two suns, he realized that he hadn’t flown simply for the feel of it since his capture. He’d flown out of the cave the day before, but that had been in a desperate search for food.

Gods, how he’d missed it.

Gaius turned over so that the suns warmed his belly, his wings keeping him aloft. A trick he and his sister had taught themselves at a very young age.

He put his claws behind his head, closed his eyes, and let out a long, relieved sigh.

Gaius didn’t know how long he flew like that. He’d heard the cheers and laughter for a bit, but he just assumed it was other Southland dragons. Something that didn’t worry him. He knew he was as safe as he was ever going to be among the Southlanders as long as he had his alliance with the two queens.

Still, he never expected anyone to crash on top of him in mid-flight and then immediately flip off.

His eyes snapped open and he stared at the large round shield that bore Annwyl’s coat of arms—two black dragons with two crossed steel swords between them and a shock of red that represented the “blood” in “Annwyl the Bloody.”

As he gazed at the shield, he heard the screamed, “Shit!” and flipped over in time to see a human warrior falling toward the lake below.

“Fuck,” Gaius growled before diving down, his front forearms out. He caught the human seconds before the warrior hit the water, turning his body and pulling the human in tight.