She’d actually said “universe” not just “the world.”

“Think of your favorite weapon and see what happens,” she finally told Brannie.

Of course, Brannie liked lots of weapons. But her favorite? Well . . . that would be the halberd, wouldn’t it? But she did love swords. Short swords. And she did love axes . . . and hammers! Gods, she adored hammers!

“You are overthinking this, Branwen the Awful!” Rhona yelled in the same voice she’d used when she’d been training Brannie. “Make a decision!”

Startled, Brannie thought halberd! because she wanted to use it to strike down her bellowing cousin.

And the metal stick in her hand immediately began to grow. It lengthened and thickened right in her palm. The tip turned into a spearhead and from the right side of the tip grew an ax head.

Brannie immediately stood, her mouth open. She’d never seen anything so beautiful before.

“It automatically knows if you’re in human form or dragon and will adjust accordingly,” she heard her cousin explain, but Brannie was barely paying attention anymore.

She thought about a hammer and watched her halberd turn into a war hammer with an oversized head. Then it turned into a gladius. Then a spear. Then a bow. Then a long sword. Then back into a halberd.

That’s when she squealed.

* * *

It was that smile. He watched it spread across Brannie’s face. So wide, it almost made her eyes disappear entirely, her poor nose forced into a scrunched-up position, her shoulders coming up until they practically covered her ears.

Her glee exploded from every pore on her body and she went up on her toes as she began to sort of . . . dance around with her newly formed halberd in her hands. Yes. She danced.

Over a weapon.

And then there was the squealing. Aidan was sure he could hear nearby wolves howling in response, and Uther and Caswyn moved as far away as they could without leaving the fresh roasting meat the triplets had hunted down and put on the fire. But Aidan wasn’t annoyed at all. How could he be when he’d never seen Branwen the Awful this happy or excited before?

She was so busy hugging her new weapon to her chest and grinning that Brannie didn’t notice that her triplet cousins were walking up behind her, their own weapons at the ready. Triplet one had a hammer. Triplet two had a double-headed lance. Triplet three had a long sword.

Triplet one brought her hammer up and over, aiming toward Branwen’s head. The second swung the sharp end of her lance at Brannie’s legs. The third went straight for her gut.

No one said a word to Brannie. Not one word of warning. Not even a grunt from her cousins. They did nothing but attack. With full force.

Yet she must have sensed them. She must have known they were there. How else could she move so quickly, using the blunt end of the halberd to block the blades of the lance so they never reached her legs? At the same time, she used the curved spike on the opposite side of the halberd’s ax-head to catch hold of the wood handle of the hammer.