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Kaja shrugged, one shoulder moving up and down as she eased the pack off Niall’s back. She rifled through it, coming back with yet another blade.
“I fight with tooth and claw. It’s the way of my people. And my main person is about to be in trouble. Dante is fighting. They’re all fighting, and there are so many of them. He’s telling me to get you someplace safe and then hide with you. He’s being quite loud about it. Does he have to scream at me like that? Doesn’t he know I can hear him?”
It struck Bronwyn suddenly that Kaja really was her family. She was Dante’s true consort if they could speak to each other like this. Her cos was here. He’d come for her. And if he’d come for her then it was because Beckett and Cian had sent him. Her brothers.
Dear goddess, she had a family again.
“Do you know how to use that thing?” Kaja asked, pointing to the knife.
It wasn’t her father’s knife, but it would do. And she was running out of time. Niall probably had it hidden on his person.
Her husbands or her knife? It was an easy choice to make.
She felt so much better with two knives in her hands. She’d been trained to use two, her body moving in a deadly dance. Never stop moving, the goblins had told her. “I can use it. And I’m not hiding.”
She didn’t want to admit it to herself, but Lach and Shim were there. It had been easy to walk away before, but now she couldn’t, not when she wasn’t sure they were safe. Niall lay in the dirt, his chest moving, but his eyes closed. She couldn’t help him. Not if she wanted to help Lach and Shim.
She kept her mental shields in place. It was becoming an easier thing to do. She had to keep them up. If they knew she was coming, they would stop her from fighting and from the sounds ahead, every fighter was needed.
Kaja shifted again. Bron nodded down at her and ran for the village, her heart in her throat.
Chaos reigned. She turned down the street that would lead her to the square. The eddy cloud hung over the square making it a damn fine bet that the worst of the fighting would happen there.
Bron stopped as the door to one of the shops flew open and screaming rang through the empty street. She watched as two guards started hauling a young woman out of her home. The woman wasn’t going quietly. She screamed her husband’s name and tried to fight, but the guards had her firmly in hand.
Bron had been to her wedding. It had been over a year ago, held right in the square. She and Gillian had walked with the bride through the very street where she was being dragged. Litha was a sweet woman who had just borne a daughter to her husband. They made candles and sold them at market. She was being hauled down the street, her face streaked with tears and her legs dragging. Her blonde hair hung in her face.
Kaja’s tail thumped and her graceful face was turned up as though waiting for the command. Kaja was acknowledging that Bron had more at stake. Bron was so deeply grateful to her cousin. “Go.”
Kaja jumped the first guard from behind, her predatory grace and speed on full display. The guard didn’t stand a chance. He let loose a strangled scream before Kaja bit into his neck. There was a loud cracking sound.
The second guard turned and hoisted his sword to bring it down on the wolf’s back. Bron reared back and saw her target. Her peripheral vision fled, so the whole world narrowed to one point on the guard’s vulnerable neck. The rest of him was covered with thick armor, but he still had to move and there was a nice white patch of skin, just the size for a blade to bury itself in.
She let the knife fly, sending the power of her throw through her whole body as the man in the wine-making district had taught her.
Her aim proved true. Just before the guard could start his sword’s descent toward Kaja, the knife found purchase. The sword fell from his hands and the guard’s body hit the ground.
Litha looked up, her eyes wide with fear. “Isolde?”
It was time to begin to reclaim herself. Niall was right about one thing. She could be a figurehead. It just wasn’t all she intended to be. “That’s the name I gave you, Litha, but it is not my own. I have kept a secret from you.”
Litha stared for a moment and then got to one knee. “Princess Bronwyn. You’re the one they’re looking for. The guards came into my home and beat my husband. They mentioned the Princess Bronwyn, and that they’re rounding up anyone who could possibly be you. I fear they intend to slaughter us all in the hopes that one of us will be you. Just last night as you were in your cell, Gillian told us the secret. We were ready to attack the guard to free you when the dark man came. The necromancer killed them all. Will he save us now? Where is he?”
Bron took a long breath. At least she wouldn’t have to prove who she was to the villagers. It seemed Gillian had convinced them.
“She is right. Those guards intend to kill everyone who could possibly be you.” Kaja stood over her victim, heedless to her nude state. “They won’t settle for the ones who look like you as you could easily change your appearance.”
Litha screamed and ran, hiding behind Bronwyn, though she had four inches and twenty pounds on Bron. Litha was a muscular woman, but the scream that had come from her throat was pure girl. “It was a wolf! Kill it, Your Highness. It must be the hag the guards spoke of.”
The hag was here? How many? The rumor was Torin had three in his employ, but one was off plane seeking her brothers. If the hags were here, then they would be the ones in charge. “She isn’t a hag, Litha. She’s my cousin. She’s an ally.”
Kaja grinned as though the very act of being called family brought her enormous pleasure. “I am Kaja. I am a wolf sometimes and always a woman.”
Then Litha’s husband staggered out, a frying pan in his hand. The candlemaker had been badly beaten, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to stop. He would have fought until the guards killed him. Litha cried and ran to him. He fell into her arms.
“Get your husband inside, Litha. Tell everyone you see to hide. We will take care of this.” She would. One way or another. She wouldn’t allow the women of her village to be rounded up and slaughtered.
Litha nodded, tears in her eyes as she helped her husband up. “Thank you, Your Highness, but we will fight. You are our hope. Now that we have hope again, we will not give up.”
