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.

But Triplet three was still coming with her sword. So Brannie, gripping her weapon tight, jerked just her torso far enough over that the blade missed her and sent her cousin falling forward. She would have landed on Brannie, but the army captain stepped back and her kin hit the ground hard. Then Brannie twisted her weapon and body, sending the other two flipping up and over in different directions.

Her cousins immediately tried to get back up but Brannie brought the blunt end of her weapon down against Triplet one’s head. As she roared in pain, Brannie flipped backward, away from the hammer Triplet two was swinging at Brannie’s legs while she was still on the ground.

When Brannie landed, she brought the ax-head of her weapon down on the wood part of the hammer, breaking the handle into two pieces.