“Perhaps you haven’t noticed,” Rhona pointed out, “that we’re in the middle of a gods-damn war. Perhaps you haven’t noticed that every time you two idiots do this, you put your fellow soldiers at risk. Our troops risk their lives every day and yet you two peck at each other like angry birds! As if you have nothing better to do!”
“Rhona—”
“I don’t want to hear it, Éibhear. Not a word!”
She rested her front claws on her hips. “I should just send both of you back to the Southlands. A few years’ suspension while your kin earn glory or death would certainly get my point across.”
As she expected, Rhona saw the panic in their eyes at the threat. And it was a threat she’d carry through on—if they could afford to lose the brute strength of either idiot. Of course as low-level privates neither idiot would know that.
“Please don’t, Rhona,” Éibhear begged. “It won’t happen again.”
“It won’t,” Celyn pleaded. “Just don’t send us back.”
“I don’t know. . . .” she hedged.
“We won’t fight again.”
“Ever.”
Rhona didn’t bother making them swear to that. What was the point when they didn’t even realize they were lying? But at the very least she was sure she’d put some fear into them.
“All right,” she finally told them, watching their bodies sag in relief. “But if I catch you fighting with each other one more time—”
“You won’t,” Éibhear was quick to promise. “You won’t.”
“I better not,” she warned.
And with that, she headed out of the chamber and to her gods-damn bath.
Éibhear the Blue glared across the chamber at his cousin. “This is your fault.”
“My fault? You started it!”
“I started it? If you’d kept your cock tucked—”
“This again? Really?”
“Yeah! Really!”
“Let me assure you, cousin, that everything I did with Izzy the Dangerous was at her explicit consent!”
They were chest to chest again, Éibhear enjoying the fact he stood quite a bit taller than his cousin since his last few growth spurts.
“I know I don’t hear more arguing. . . .” Rhona’s voice called from outside the chamber. “I know I don’t hear that.”
Austell the Red rushed in and pushed his way between the pair. “No, no,” he yelled out. “You don’t hear anything.” He shoved the pair apart as Rhona had. “Not a thing.”
Austell, a fellow soldier and friend to both Éibhear and Celyn, scowled at each dragon. “What is wrong with you two? This fighting has to stop.”
“It’s this prat’s fault,” Celyn snapped.
“My fault?”
“Go.” Austell pushed Celyn away. “Just go.”
“I’ve got watch anyway,” he said, stomping off.
“Don’t die a tragic death while you’re out there,” Éibhear called after him.
“Fuck you.”
Austell shook his head. “Cousins shouldn’t fight like this.”
“It’s his fault.”
“Over a woman.”
“She’s an innocent.”
Austell shrugged. “Not from what I’ve heard.”
And Éibhear had his friend by the throat and slammed up against the wall before either even realized it.
“At what point,” Austell asked once he’d pried Éibhear’s claw off his throat, “are you going to admit how you feel about—”
“She’s my niece.”
“Not by blood.” He patted Éibhear’s shoulder. “Just be smart, friend. There’s no female in the world worth fighting over.”
“I’m not fighting over anyone. I’m merely protecting one of my own.”
“Do you really believe your own ox shit?”
Éibhear sighed and headed off to get something to eat. “Usually.”
Vateria, eldest daughter in the House of Atia Flominia, walked into the room where her younger sisters prepared for their night out. There was a monthlong worth of games being thrown by the sons of the human ruler of these lands, Laudaricus, and Vateria’s family would be blessing them with their presence on the royal dais. Family members would be going in their human forms as they often did, although they never allowed their human pets to forget who or what they were.
For they were the true rulers of these lands. The ruling Imperium of the Quintilian Sovereigns for the last six hundred years. The Iron dragons.
At one time, the Iron dragons were part of the dragons of the Dark Plains. But Vateria’s grandfather grew bored at being ruled by another, so he and his allies moved their families far past the Western and Aricia Mountains and into what was the Quintilian Province. Unlike the Dark Plains dragons, Grandfather refused to hide his true form from the humans. Instead, he presented the small ruling body of Quintilian humans with a choice: Accept the Iron dragons as your rulers or watch your men burn and your women and children enslaved to the dragon’s will. Weak, like most humans, the rulers quickly agreed. In their minds, they thought they’d let their invaders get comfortable in their underground cave homes and then go about destroying them.
But Vateria’s grandfather had been much too smart for that. From the beginning he worked to make the Quintilian Province his own, without question. He kept actual killing to a minimum—he needed the humans as farmers, herders, and general labor—while using the threat of killing and much worse as the sword he used. When a senator dared question one of his decisions, the senator’s children were taken and turned into slaves, his wife or wives turned into whores, his land burned to embers. The senator in question, however, was kept alive, so that all could see him, day after day, wandering the streets without a home and penniless. His enslaved family sometimes passing him on the way to do their duty, their bodies covered in whip marks, their faces seared with their owner’s brand. Sometimes several brands if they were sold more than once.
By the time Grandfather handed over rule to his eldest son and Vateria’s father, Thracius, the Irons’ rule of Quintilian was without question and without challenge. That’s when Thracius captured the mate of Adienna, the Southland Dragon Queen of that time, during the Great Battle of Aricia and took him back to Quintilian. While the queen sent messengers with offers of treaties and promises of no retribution for the safe return of her mate, Thracius
