deal with this later. We have bigger issues to worry about. Let’s just head inside.”
“Wait.” Katla held out a scroll.
“What’s that?” Gemma asked, reaching for it.
“It’s from Joshua. Thomassin—”
Gemma snatched her hand back so quickly everyone froze.
“Have you lost your mind?” Gemma demanded.
“What?”
“I can’t read that now!”
“Why not?”
“Everything that’s going on and you take this moment to hand me Joshua’s missive from beyond the funeral pyre and then you have the nerve to ask me why I can’t read it now? Really? It’s like you don’t think at all, Katla!” With that, Gemma stormed inside, shaking her head.
“Well, she’s tense,” Katla sarcastically noted.
“If I were you,” Quinn suggested, “I’d wait until things here settle down a bit and then give it to one of the servants to give to her.”
“Why?”
“Because Gemma will never yell at a servant. You, though? She’ll yell at you all day long.”
Katla thought on it a moment before nodding. “Good plan.”
The others started to head inside but Quinn noticed that Shona was staring at him.
“What?” he asked.
“I like your horns.”
“These are antlers. And compliment me all you want. Hurt my sister, and I’ll tear your legs off.”
“Quinn.”
“What?” he asked Laila. “What?”
“You’re embarrassing me.”
“Make better choices then.” Laila grabbed his arm and pulled him off to the side.
“You’re actually telling me to make better choices?”
“Yes. What about that nice merchant in town?” he suggested.
“You just like her because she gives you all those extra cooked chickens!”
“And she’s nice. Not some soldier nailing every innocent girl she meets!” he finished on a yell in Shona’s direction, prompting her to walk inside.
“Innocent girl?” Laila asked.
“Yes. That’s you. Mostly. You’re nice and innocent. And you deserve nice and innocent.”
He went toward the main hall.
“But, Quinn, in what world am I an innocent—”
“Don’t want to hear it!”
* * *
As the warlock had said, Keeley was not in the main hall yet. So everyone stood around and waited for her. Not surprisingly, the longer they waited, the more tense everyone became.
Until Keeley’s demon wolves came in. The priests, temple virgins, and the Abbess were immediately uncomfortable when the creatures trotted in from the kitchens. Adela attempted to approach the wolves again, but they went around her in a way that had Gemma smirking. She enjoyed that they completely ignored the witch. What she didn’t like was how they went right to the blood warlock, circling his legs and then sitting on either side of him. He reached down and petted two of them on the head and all of those who’d traveled back to the castle with her turned to stare at Gemma.
“What’s going on there?” Ragna asked Gemma.
She leaned in close to the master general and confided, “I’ll tell you what’s going on between him and those dogs when you tell me what’s going on between you and the Abbess.”
Ragna’s eyes narrowed the slightest bit. “Don’t forget whom you’re speaking to, Brother Gemma.”
“Don’t forget that we’re the last of our order. We’re starting over. You’re starting over.”
“That just means I’m in charge. Not a novitiate.”
Gemma stepped closer to Ragna. “Would you like to test that point?”
Ragna appeared ready to do just that when a massive horse body wedged its way between them.
“Gods-dammit, Quinn!”
“Don’t make me lift my tail,” he warned.
“I have no idea what that means,” Ragna said with an eye roll.
“You’ve worked with enough horses, Master General. You know exactly what I mean.”
Quinn stomped off, tail swishing, but Ragna didn’t watch him go. She had her eyes closed.
“That’s disgusting,” she complained.
“At least he warned you,” Gemma said with a shrug. “From what he’s told me . . . there are others he has not warned.”
“These are the people you’re associating with, Brother Gemma?”
“At least they like me. Sadly, you cannot say the same.”
* * *
Keeley finally made an entrance as only Keeley could. While yelling at her uncle.
“Mention the family axe again, old man, and I’ll use the ones I do have to split your head open!”
“Should have killed him when I had the chance,” her father tossed in while petting a baby goat. He put his feet up on a table that Quinn had just noticed was brand-new. What had happened to the old dining table?
“Daddy,” Ainsley chided.
“What? He’s an asshole. Bothering my baby girl.”
His “baby girl” stalked across the room. She’d wiped the blood of the earlier battle off her face, neck, and arms but it was still on her sleeveless brown leather jerkin.
Keeley stepped on the chair and from the chair onto the table in one easy