Her sister sneered as if that was the worst thing she could imagine. “Why would you do such an awful thing? Are you insane?”
“I had my reasons. What areyoudoing here?”
Ragna glanced around at the others before she tapped her claws against the ground with a thunderous tapping. “I was sent to find you and bring you home before you started a war.” She made an awful face. “Not like that, though. Ugh! Have you any idea what they’ll do to you if I take you home as ahuman? What were you thinking? Idiot!”
Something about this didn’t seem right.
It wasn’t her sister’s anger or outrage. That was completely normal. Ragna was eternally furious.
No...
There was something more going on here.
“You came to fetch me with an army?” Tanis gestured at the dragons that circled above them. That was what bothered her. Ragna barely tolerated anyone. And those weren’t just random guards.
They were an elite force.
And the fact that her sister was here at all. What was going on?
“After what happened to you last time, we were worried.” Ragna raked a furious glare over her. “And apparently, we had every right to be. Look at what you did to yourself!”
“Should I make her human, too?”
She cast a bemused stare at Dash who spoke silently in her head. “Not the time, love,” she whispered to him.
Although, to be honest, it might not be a bad idea. It would take some of the piss out of her sister. Ragna could probably use the humility.
If only.
But there was still something odd going on with all this that didn’t make sense. Ragna didn’t care about her. That was a cold, harsh fact.
Neither did their father. Not really. Her timid mother might. But Tanis couldn’t imagine her mother winning a fight with herfamily that would cause Ragna to come here with an army to fetch her. Their father would never allow such an encroachment into another king’s territory.
It would breach their treaty.
The only one who would have cared to come after her would have been her brother and maybe Marla, and they would have come alone. Right now, Marla was too concerned about her hatchlings, and was too caught up in her own grief to be worried about her. She didn’t blame Marla for either one of those. Marla should be more concerned about her children.
Which came back to the one mystery.
Why was her sister here? And how did she know this was where Tanis was? Who would have taken word to Ragna?
And why?
The battle gryphons...
One of them could have carried word back home that she was here. That made sense. While they might live and work here, they were still Indarian citizens, and they’d have family at home. Maybe one of the gryphons had thought to curry favor by telling her father of her location.
That made sense.
And it would explain some of Ragna’s hostility. Tanis considered how she might calm Ragna down.
Really, there was only one thing she could think of. But even it was a long shot. “We need to speak alone, Ragna. Meet me outside the gate in the outer bailey.”
Dash turned to face her so that his back was to her sister. He lowered his tone so that it wouldn’t reach up to Ragna’s ears. “Are you sure about this?”
“I need to talk to her. Find out why she’s really here. Trust me.” She ruffled his ears and mane, which didn’t appease him. If anything, he looked even more aggravated.
And it only made her sister all the angrier given how dragons felt about unicorns.
