“Where have you two been?” Dagmar asked the women, since they rarely left her side these days.

“We do not trust these lizards the Dragon Queen has put in charge of your lands. So we went around to make sure all is well.”

“Those lizards,” Var informed them, “are my kin. I’d strongly suggest you remember that.”

“Does it not bother you, boy,” Nika, the eldest sister asked, “to be half of one thing and half of another? Would you not rather be all human, like me and my sister?”

Var laughed until he noticed the sisters did not join him. “Oh. You’re serious?”

“Come, Oksana,” Nika ordered her sister. “Let us go feed.”

They came up the steps, Oksana pausing to glare at Var. “I think our amazing daughters deserve better than this . . . strange boy.”

Var smirked, looking more like his father than Dagmar wanted to think about.

Leaning in, he said to the Rider, “I can unhinge my jaw and swallow your soul whole . . . or you can get out of my sight, Oksana Kolesova of the Mountain Movers of the Lands of Pain in the Far Reaches of the Steppes of the Outerplains.”

Lifting her chin, trying to at least pretend she wasn’t terrified at the threat of her soul ending up inside Dagmar’s son, Oksana sniffed and followed her sister into the Main Hall.

“Can you really do that?” Frederick asked Var.

“Do what?”

“Swallow her soul whole?”

Var snorted. “Of course not . . . but I can unhinge my jaw.” He shrugged at Frederick’s concerned expression. “At least I don’t have a tail. Some of my fellow Abominations have tails.”

* * *

Elina Shestakova of the Black Bear Riders of the Midnight Mountains of Despair in the Far Reaches of the Steppes of the Outerplains came out of her room, tying the black patch she often wore to cover her missing eye, only to immediately stop when she found the Kolesova sisters waiting for her.

She hated dealing with the Kolesova sisters. They were nice enough, usually. But they were such—such!—pains in the ass.

But they were here to protect Dagmar Reinholdt who Elina had become quite fond of over the last few years.

“Do you want something, Kolesovas?” she asked in the language of their people as her stomach grumbled. “You are denying me food.”

“You have become soft, Elina Shestakova, living among these decadent people who give you everything.”

“Yes. I know. My sister informed me of that last time she was here. I’ve just learned to accept it. Is there anything else?”

“That boy,” Nika said.

“You’ll have to be much more specific.”

“Dagmar Reinholdt’s son. Is he a demon who can eat souls?”

“Are you talking about Var?”

“Yes.”

Talaith, mate of Briec the Mighty, and mother of her own Abomination, was heading toward the Main Hall. She smiled at Elina as she walked by.