“Stand by the horse, Princess,” he ordered. “I’ll be right there.”

With much flouncing, the princess stomped off and Aidan said to Branwen, “I need your help. I can’t do this alone. Do you understand that?”

“I’m just so frustrated,” she bit out between brutally clenched teeth.

“I know. But let’s get Caswyn and Uther someplace safe, where they can heal. Food and a good night’s sleep is probably all you need. I won’t say tomorrow will be a better day, but it will be a new one. We’ll start again, and we’ll get it right.”

“But I want to kill her,” she admitted in a whisper.

“You can’t. Otherwise, most of my kin would have been dead a long time ago instead of irritating Rhiannon with their needy presence at Devenallt Mountain.”

A small smile managed to turn up the corners of her mouth. “Your mother will annoy our queen, won’t she?”

“Greatly. She will greatly annoy our queen. And, to be honest, probably already has annoyed her. My mother doesn’t usually waste time with that sort of thing.”

Brannie nodded. “Knowing that does help.”

Without another word, Brannie returned to her horse and mounted him. Once she was comfortable in the saddle, she took in a deep, cleansing breath, and let it out.

Closing her eyes, she finally said with obvious great pain, “Where to first, Keita?”

Keita, sitting sidesaddle behind Aidan, pointed down the road. “That way. There are friends of mine where we can stay with for the night. But remember, we’re not kin, you and I, and we’re definitely not dragons. All of you are my guards. Keep that in mind, and we’ll be able to get much from them without any trouble.”

Shaking her head, Brannie said, “You and I have vastly different definitions of the word friends.”

Keita shrugged. “That’s why I have so few. But who needs them,” she asked, flashing that brutally bitchy smile, “when you have kin?”

Brannie, with some great force of will, choked back her next words, and headed off down the road. The rest of them followed.

* * *

Briec the Mighty, Shield Hero of the Dragon Wars, Lord Defender of the Dragon Queen’s Throne, and extremely proud father of two of the most amazing and perfect, perfect daughters in the known universe, watched his first daughter, Iseabail the Dangerous, General of the Eighth, Fourteenth, and Twenty-Sixth Legions, help her men make quick work of a gigantic, burned tree stump.

Izzy didn’t have to help her troops do this sort of grunt work. Briec definitely wouldn’t. But she wasn’t just a royal with a title. She loved the world of the soldier. From the most mundane guard duty to creating elaborate battle plans, she could do it all. And do it all well.

Briec hadn’t been happy when his daughter had made it clear to one and all that she wanted to join Annwyl the Bloody’s army. She’d only been sixteen. A baby, even for a human. But he’d foolishly assumed that a few months of living in the muck and mire as an army private would change her opinion and she’d be back, safe, with him and her mother at Garbhán Isle.