Light My Fire. G.A. Aiken

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СКАЧАТЬ course you know. I told you to take her someplace safe.”

      “You did?”

      “You knew about this?” Bercelak asked Celyn.

      Celyn blinked and calmly asked, “Knew about what?”

      “The girl,” his queen said.

      “What girl?”

      “The girl I asked you to keep safe.”

      Celyn scratched his chin. “The girl you asked me to keep safe . . .”

      The queen sighed. “You don’t remember, do you?”

      “Not even a little.”

      Bercelak started to stalk toward Celyn, but Ghleanna quickly grabbed his arm, halting him.

      “The girl who came to kill Rhiannon?” his mother prompted. “And she wasn’t very good at it?”

      “Ohhhh! That girl.”

      “Aye!” the queen cheered. “That girl!”

      “Some bitch comes to kill your queen,” Bercelak snarled, Ghleanna still holding him away from Celyn. “And you did nothing?” He ended on a bellow.

      “I followed my queen’s orders.” Celyn repeated the creed of the Queen’s Personal Guard. A creed that had been rewritten by Bercelak himself when Rhiannon came into power. “My duty is to follow her orders and no one else’s. For I am—”

      “Shut up!” Bercelak roared.

      “Oh, stop it, Bercelak!” Rhiannon snapped. “We have no time for this.” The queen smiled at Celyn. “Now, dear boy, where did you put that pale little girl? In that cute pub in town?” She snapped her fingers. “Or that lovely house by the river?”

      “Uh . . .” Everyone was staring at Celyn again, so he had no option but to admit the truth. “Well . . . since she did try to kill you, my queen—”

      “Gods, Celyn!” Rhiannon gasped. “Tell me you didn’t kill her!”

      “No, no! You ordered me to keep her safe. So that’s what I did.”

      Gwenvael snorted, easily spotting the hole in that story in seconds. He was so much smarter than any of his siblings gave him credit for. “And what exactly did keeping her safe entail, cousin?”

      Celyn cleared his throat. “I . . . uh . . . I put her in the Garbhán Isle . . . jail.”

      Rhiannon’s eyes grew wide as Annwyl and Talaith gasped in horror, Dagmar groaned and rolled her eyes, and Gwenvael laughed outright. The prissy bastard.

      “You put that woman in jail?” Rhiannon yelled.

      “She tried to kill you!”

      “Oh, come on! She didn’t try very hard!”

      “That’s not the point! Auntie Rhiannon—”

      “Don’t you dare!” she snapped. “I gave you strict orders. And as my guard—”

      “You gave me vague orders. ‘Keep her safe.’ That’s what I did. Because behind bars . . . where was she going?”

      Dagmar lifted her hand and silenced everyone. Honestly, Celyn wanted to know, who really ruled the Southlands?

      “It may not be that bad,” Dagmar said calmly. She focused on Celyn. “How many days since you put her in jail?”

      “Uh . . . eight or nine . . .” Celyn cleared his throat. “. . . months ago.”

      “Months?” Izzy roared. “You left a human female alone in a jail for months?”

      “She tried to kill my queen!” he reasoned.

      Rhiannon dramatically threw up her arms. “She’s probably been raped to death by now!”

      “Rhiannon!” Talaith snapped.

      “Don’t blame me, little girl. It’s your human males with no self-control. They see a pussy and they just have to fuck it!”

      “Mum!”

      “Oh, pipe down, Morfyd.”

      “I’ll go get her,” Celyn stated, trying to keep everyone calm. “I’ll go get her.”

      “Don’t you mean get what’s left of her, cousin?” Gwenvael asked.

      Finally sick to death of the prissy royal, Celyn started to stalk across the room to cut his tongue out, but Brannie grabbed him by the hair and led him through the doorway and out into the hall.

      “We’ll be right back,” she said before closing the door.

      “I hate him,” Celyn snarled. “I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.”

      “Be grateful he’s just a cousin and not one of our brothers.”

      “If he was one of our brothers, he’d be scale-less, bald, and alone.”

      “Let’s just go, brother,” she said, pushing him toward the exit.

      As they walked, Brannie chastised, “I can’t believe you left some human female alone in a jail run by human men.”

      Celyn winced at his sister’s words. “None of this is my fault!”

      “How is this not your fault?”

      “It simply slipped my mind. I have a lot of things to worry about and some female who attempted to kill my queen was not exactly top of my list. And I don’t need to hear this from you, sister.”

      “If she’s dead or damaged—”

      Celyn halted in the middle of the courtyard they were now in and faced his sister. “Please stop.”

      Brannie blinked and gazed up at him, her smile fading. “Gods, Celyn . . . you feel terrible about this.”

      “Wouldn’t you? I mean”—Celyn rubbed his once-again-throbbing forehead—“she tried to kill my queen. But I did mean to go back for her. I just . . . I forgot.”

      Brannie placed her hand on Celyn’s shoulder. “Brother, you can’t blame yourself for this. She was an assassin.”

      “Not a very good one.”

      “That doesn’t change anything,” Brannie said on a laugh.

      “Still, if anything has happened to her at the hands of those humans . . .”

      Brannie took his arm. “Come on.”

      “Where to?”

      “Where do you think? To get your СКАЧАТЬ