“Those last two barely counted.”

“Look, woman”—Fridmar tossed his apple core onto her floor and Dagmar gasped in outrage—“that dragon outside demanded to see Da, and Da demanded to see you.”

“It demanded?” She widened her eyes and blinked at her brother. Her “surprised look” she called it. “You’re letting a dragon demand things of The Reinholdt? Where’s your bravery? Your honor?”

“Would you shut up?” A small tick began in her brother’s jaw. “You get mad when we start killing without … without …” His face twisted up a bit as he thought really hard. It pained her to watch her kin try to think. It honestly physically hurt. “What’s that word?” he finally asked.

“Provocation?”

“Yeah. Right. You get mad when we start killing without that ‘prov’ word, and now you’re mad cause we haven’t killed it yet.”

“I’m not mad you haven’t … there’s a difference between …” She shook her head. “Forget it.”

“Where the hell is she?” Valdís—second-born son to The Reinholdt and most nervous ninny—stormed into Dagmar’s room. “What’s going on? Why are you still sitting here? Father has summoned you.”

“And I don’t jump at every demand. Go find out what he wants first.”

“What who wants?”

“The dragon.” She motioned both away with her hands. “Go and find out.”

Without another thought toward her brothers, Dagmar went back to her work.

Sigmar Reinholdt, Protector of the Reinholdt Lands and People, Warlord of the Northwest Properties, Eighteenth Born to Dechard Reinholdt, Killer of Dechard Reinholdt, and Sire of The Beast turned to face his male offspring.

“She said what now?”

One of his sons—don’t ask him the name, because he really couldn’t remember and didn’t care enough to try—shrugged. “She said to ask the dragon what he wants.”

“And you let her get away with that?”

“You know how she is, Da. Besides, she looked real busy.”

“Busy doing what?”

One son glanced at another son whose name Sigmar couldn’t remember.

“Well?” he pushed when they didn’t answer quickly enough.

“Readin’ … I think.”

“Readin’? You couldn’t pull her away from reading some bloomin’ book?”

“You know how she is,” he repeated.

’Twas quite true. They all knew how she was. After so many bloody sons, Sigmar had held out hope for a daughter. A sweet, tame thing who would bring a solid marriage connection to the Reinholdts and then perhaps a few granddaughters. But he’d gotten Dagmar. The Beast. Cruelly named by his long-dead nephew, but she’d been living up to that moniker ever since. Yet she always seemed the tamest of them all.

Sigmar grabbed his second oldest by the collar and yanked him close. “You take your scrawny ass back to her room and you tell her to get her royal self out here … now!”

“I’m here.” Dagmar glanced at her brother. “I somehow knew Valdís wouldn’t get it right.”

Seconds away from asking who the hell Valdís was—and then realizing it was the son whose collar he still held in his hand—Sigmar snarled and snapped at his daughter, “Dragon. Outside.”

“Yes. I’ve heard.” Always calm that Dagmar. Always controlled and unruffled. Like a crow watching from the top of a building, knowing it was too far up to reach with a bow and arrow. “He’s a little far north if he’s a Gold. But if he hasn’t attacked yet, I’d say he has a purpose here.”

“That Blood Queen you’re so interested in—she sent him.”

His daughter’s eyes widened, and she glanced at the door, then back at him. It was, in many years, the first truly startled reaction he’d gotten out of the little miss.

“The Blood Queen sent him? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. He said, real clear like, ‘I was sent by Queen Annwyl of the Southlands. I’m here to see The Reinholdt or The Beast.’ Then he added something like, ‘Feel free to piss on yourselves.’ I decided it was best not to ask him more questions on that.”

She chuckled. “He’s used to the dragonfear from the Southlanders.”

“I don’t care what kind of fear you call it. Ain’t no Northland man going to—”

“I know. I know. No Northland man will show fear.” She dismissed the Code, by which all Northland men lived, with a wave of her hand. “What’s important now is whether he can bargain on her behalf.”

“You want us to bargain with a lizard?”

“They’re not lizards, Father. They’re extraordinary creatures who were here long before any human was crawling on this earth. They are warriors and scholars and—”

“He has long hair like a woman,” one of Sigmar’s sons blathered—which son, however, still could be anyone’s guess.

The girl closed her eyes and sighed. Deeply. She did that sometimes when around the men of her family. “To avoid all of this, I’ll simply go ask him why he’s here and what he wants.” She made it sound simple enough, stepping past her brothers and heading for the door, but Sigmar caught her upper arm, yanked her back.