“And my nephew takes so much patience,” Bram sighed.
Elina pointed at the younger man. “Are you dragon, too?”
“No.”
“Your aunt? Is she dragon?”
“No.”
“But the golden one . . . ?”
“Very dragon.”
Elina took a breath. “So the rumors are true. Dragons and humans . . . they can create the baby.”
“As my aunt has shown in true Northlander style . . . they can create many of the baby.”
“The Abominations grow in number then?”
Panicked, the two males looked around desperately, eyes wide. When they saw no one, they focused back on Elina and leaned in.
“You shouldn’t use that word,” Bram quickly, but quietly, explained. “It’s not a good idea.”
“Both queens take it personally,” the younger male added.
“Do not see why. There is no shame to being scourge of gods.”
Bram waved his hands. “No, no, no. No scourge. No abominations. These are not good words to use when discussing the offspring of dragons and humans.”
“Words. You Southlanders worry so much about words.”
“You don’t worry about words?”
“I love words, but I know they are just . . . noise. To ignore truth that sits in our face. Like angry cat about to claw.”
Bram glanced at Frederik. “Well . . . I have nothing pressing to run to at this moment. So please, Elina Shestakova . . . tell us about this truth.”
Shrugging . . . that’s exactly what Elina did.
Chapter Nine
Gisa held the flower bud in her hand and focused all her inner magicks toward getting the flower to bloom. It had taken her teacher five minutes to make the bloom happen. . . . Gisa had been staring at this bloom for near on an hour.
She hated this. She’d rather be in battle training. She was good at battle training. Good at battle, which was important for the Kyvich witches. They were warrior witches. They didn’t do one or the other, but both.
Sadly, even though Gisa had the warrior part down, she was still struggling with the witch part.
Then again, as she glanced around at the other students, she discovered she wasn’t the only one struggling.
“You got it yet?” Fia whispered.
“Nah. You?”
“Nope. Think we’ll really need to make flowers bloom during a battle?” she asked.
“Doubt it,” Gisa whispered back.
“And yet,” their teacher suddenly announced, “once you learn to control nature, you can use it to your advantage during a battle with sword-wielding soldiers.”
Gisa and Fia glanced at each other. Their teacher had her back to them and was a good fifty feet away. How had she heard them?
She looked at them over her shoulder. “So even if it bores you, work on it.”
Gisa went back to the flower she held, again trying her best to get it to bloom when Fia tapped her ribs with her elbow. When Gisa looked at her, Fia gestured with her chin.
She saw Princess Talwyn of the Southland kingdoms standing a few feet away from the group of Kyvich, her arms crossed over her ample chest, her long hair in warrior braids, her powerful legs braced apart, her attention seemingly far from what was going on right in front of her.
Princess Talwyn was an anomaly among the Kyvich. First off, she was a royal. The Ice Lands had warlords, but not a lot of princes. None that lived long anyway. She had also not been taken from her family at birth. All Gisa knew was the Kyvich. She’d been taken from her mother’s home near the Western Mountains when she was barely three months old. Some of her Kyvich sisters had been taken earlier than that, others no later than five or six years old. But the royal hadn’t come to the Kyvich until she was ten winters and eight. She involved herself in all training, battle and magicks, and yet she never seemed part of the Kyvich. She never seemed like one of them.
Their teacher turned, suddenly noticing that Talwyn wasn’t paying her the least bit of attention.
“Princess Talwyn . . . care to join us?”
Without turning around, Talwyn replied, “No.”
Gritting her teeth, the teacher picked up a flower bud and held it out to the princess. “Perhaps you can at least attempt the spell and—”
Before their teacher could finish her sentence, Talwyn—her back still turned—waved her hand once in the air and the bud in the teacher’s hand bloomed into a beautiful, healthy flower.
Shocked, the teacher stepped back, the flower still in her hand, still blooming. Then the stem began to grow, extending, wrapping around the teacher’s fingers and palm. Their teacher finally dropped the flower, but the stem was now attached to her hand and steadily winding its way around her arm and up toward her shoulder.
“I have to go,” Talwyn announced to no one. Of course, none of them were actually shocked. They’d never really thought she’d be spending the next thousand years living among the Kyvich until she died in battle and was honored the Old Way.
What did surprise everyone was when she looked over her shoulder at Gisa and Fia and asked, “Want to come with me?”
Gisa and Fia glanced at each other, then looked behind them to see if she was talking to someone else.
“Oy. You two. In or out?” the royal pushed, not really sounding like a royal.
“You don’t even know our names,” Fia said.
“Isn’t that something I can learn . . . eventually?”
Frowning, Gisa and Fia kept staring at Talwyn until they heard a scream.
Gisa watched in horror as the stem from that small flower—now nearly the size of a ten-year-old tree trunk—covered most of their teacher’s body, dragging her to the ground. The other students were trying to help, desperately cutting at it with their swords and daggers or trying to pull it off with their hands.
“Come on,” Talwyn said with a toss of her head. She walked off, assuming, it seemed, that Gisa and Fia would follow.
“We’re not going, are we?” Fia asked.
“I . . .” Gisa shook her head. “I feel a pull,” she finally admitted. “As if somehow our lives are with her rather than here.”
“Perhaps she cast a spell to make us feel that way.”
“Perhaps.” Gisa studied Fia. “Do you feel she cast a spell?”
“No.”
Again, they glanced at their teacher. She was now pinned to the ground, the stem digging into the soil around her, trying to drag her down with it.
That was power. Gisa knew that much. Power and strength poured off Princess Talwyn like sweat.
“She’s hated,” Fia noted.
“That’s true.”
“Which means wherever she goes, battle and mayhem are sure to follow.”
“Excellent point.”
Together they jumped up and followed after the royal. As they ran, they could still hear their teacher and the other Kyvich struggling with whatever Talwyn had cursed