It seemed fair enough for what Caswyn had done, and for Uther sticking up for the idiot.

Of course, Éibhear wouldn’t be happy, but what did he expect when he allowed his Mì-runach brethren to roam around free, doing stupid, stupid things?

“Could you both do me a favor?” Aidan asked his friends. “And stop talking?”

When neither male responded, Aidan faced Brannie, and opened his mouth to speak . . . but the sound of crunching that came from Caswyn as he slowly began to chew on her precious horse’s hooves made him stop, his head dropping forward in silent defeat.

* * *

Talwyn, only daughter of Fearghus the Destroyer and Annwyl the Bloody, buried her ax into a brawny chest and forced her enemy to the ground. Once she had him there, she yanked her weapon out and slammed the blade into the man’s head, ignoring the spray of blood that splashed across her face.

She turned and looked through the battle raging around her until she locked eyes with her twin brother.

“What did you say?”

“I said get Mum!”

“Why is she my responsibility?” Talwyn wanted to know before cutting off the leg of a man standing next to her.

“She’s our mother.”

“Then why don’t you do it?”

Her brother, covered in blood, looked away from the corpse he was trying to raise. “I’m busy.”

“Busy failing. You can’t raise human dead. Accept it!”

“It takes practice!”

“Oy! You two!” General Brastias—or, as Talwyn used to call him when she was a little girl, Uncle Bra-Bra—motioned to both of them. “One of you idiots get your mother. No one watches her back!”

“Does anyone need to watch her back?”

Brastias grabbed one of their enemies by the neck and bent him over at the waist. He buried his sword into the back of the man’s exposed neck, killing him instantly. And not once did he take his disapproving gaze off Talwyn.

Always her! Why not Talan? How come her mother’s care always fell to her?

She cut the throat of another soldier coming at her and quickly looked over and through the battling crowd, trying to find her oh-so-precious mother.

One would think the ruler of the entire Southland regions could take care of her bloody self.

But after all these years of war, somehow Talwyn had become the overseer of all things that involved Queen Annwyl of the Garbhán Isle. Or, as she was more commonly known, Annwyl the Bloody, the Mad Bitch of the Southlands.

Talwyn just called her “Mum.” Mostly.

Finally spotting the queen, Talwyn saw that her mother was doing what she still did best. Killing anything near her that did not wear her colors.

The queen brought one sword down on her opponent, cutting into him from the shoulder through the torso at an angle, until he was in two pieces. She turned and slashed her sword again, taking a head. Turned once more and slashed. Turned and slashed. Over and over, cutting a swath through the battling men.

Her mother wasn’t like most queens. She didn’t stay in the safety of her castle and get information relayed to her from messengers on horseback. No. Talwyn’s mother was always knee-deep in the muck and blood and body parts. She hated her nickname, but the woman had truly earned it.

Talwyn sneered. What were her brother and uncle so worried about? If there was one being in this world who could take care of herself, it was Annwyl the Bloody.

She was about to tell the worried males just that when her mother suddenly stood tall, ignoring the enemies at her feet, begging to be finished off so that they could go to their god as a martyr.

That was usually something Talwyn’s mother took great joy in providing to her enemies, and Talwyn didn’t think she’d ever seen her stop in the middle of a bloodbath.

So why was she stopping now?

Annwyl lifted her head, gaze scanning above the heads of the soldiers battling before her. What was she searching for? It wasn’t prey. They were all around her.

“Mum?” Talwyn called out. “Mum!”

Her mother either didn’t hear her or ignored her completely, something she was known to do when she was in one of her rage-fits. But when that was happening, Annwyl the Bloody was usually hacking at anything that moved. Not standing and staring.

Annwyl’s head cocked to the side. Did she hear something? What could she hear that Talwyn couldn’t?

“Talan,” she called to her brother. “Something’s wrong.”

Talan finally left his now-rotting corpse—once dead, the Zealots seemed to decay faster than most humans, an annoyance to the queen, who really enjoyed planting the heads of her enemies on her castle walls—and moved to his sister’s side.

“What’s she doing?” he asked, using magicks to send a small passel of Zealots flying in the opposite direction with a quick twitch of his hands.

“I have no idea.” Talwyn went up on her toes to get a better look.

What disturbed Talwyn more than anything? That none of the Zealots were trying to kill her mother. None attacked. Suddenly Annwyl the Bloody was invisible to them. The woman they wanted dead more than anything else in this world for bringing forth what they called the Abominations—Talwyn and Talan, specifically—was the one woman they were suddenly not paying any attention to.

“We better get her.”

Talwyn agreed and followed her brother, briefly pausing once or twice to hack at a few attackers with her short sword. But as they neared Annwyl, the queen’s head twitched to one side . . . then another. Like Talwyn’s dog. She almost laughed until her mother suddenly charged off.

Talwyn and Talan ran after her, no longer bothering to fight the soldiers coming at them. They just pushed them aside and kept running, trying to catch up with their fast-moving mother.

If this was anyone else, Talwyn would be less concerned. But their mother was known for her “bouts of rage,” as their father put it. He was just being kind, though. Saying their mother had bouts of rage was like saying that a typhoon was a “little storm.”

The twins also knew that their mother’s rage could be coming from her frustration. She’d expected this war would have ended long ago. She’d had more legions, more supplies, and more seasoned generals and soldiers than the enemy. But Talwyn’s father had tried to warn her. Fighting Zealots was different. And all of Salebiri’s loyalist troops were Zealots. So loyal to their eyeless god that many of them had purposely had their eyes removed during some ceremony. Yet, even without eyes, the Zealots still fought amazingly well and did constant damage to Annwyl’s troops.

Then, in the last year, the Zealots tried a new tactic. Scorched earth.

They’d been destroying the Southland territories, burning down farms, towns, even cities. They’d done even more damage than the dragons when, several centuries ago, the dragons and humans had an all-out war.

Apparently Salebiri’s Zealots told the people whose land and lives they were destroying not to worry, “our god will replace all that you have lost once the whore is dead.”

Annwyl being that whore, of course.

The name-calling didn’t bother Annwyl as much as the suffering of her people. Knowing they’d lost their homes and livelihoods tore at the queen more than she could say, but she kept pushing forward.

Annwyl knew the gods well enough to know that the eyeless god would never hold true to his word. With or without their land, her people would never be safe under the rule of Chramnesind. So she fought on.

And, now, they were nearing the City of Levenez. The seat of power of Salebiri and his female.

Talwyn still wondered if Duke Roland Salebiri knew the true identity of his wife. The one he called Ageltrude, but that the rest of them knew as Vateria Domitus. A cousin to the Rebel King of the Quintilian Provinces and most hated bitch of the free world.

Salebiri had at least one son by Vateria, which meant he had his own “Abomination,” offspring of one human parent and one dragon. But despite the duke’s vow to destroy the Abominations, as far as any of them knew, the child still lived.

At least for now. Who knew what Annwyl would do once they took the city?

Although, these days, some of the soldiers were beginning to say, “if they took the city.” And no matter how quick Talwyn was to correct them . . . she was starting to think the same thing.