Page 68 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Chapter 29

I watched Axe jerk his head in acknowledgement before holding Poll still as our horses passed him by, his hand rising, a small smile forming as he waved to me.

“Won’t take long?” I said to Gael when Axe was out of earshot. “You know what I want to talk to you about?”

“You were with the women. Women gossip,” he replied, then did something I hadn’t seen him do. I was riding on his right side, his blind side, the one he kept shrouded under his hair, so when he reached up and pushed the sweep of it behind his ear, I sucked in a breath.

I shouldn’t have. It made it seem like it was his eye, his face, that I was reacting to, and I saw his fingers pause mid-way in response. But he resolutely shoved the hair back, revealing the hidden side of his face to the bright sun.

Someone had tried very hard to ruin Gael. Long angry red scars scraped across his face, the deep ridges showing just how far the claws had dug in, but that wasn’t all. I’d seen blind people before. Some of the older villagers had eyes cloudy with cataracts, some were born with perfect looking eyes that just didn’t work, but that wasn’t what was happening in Gael’s case. I’m fairly sure he could still see me through the fractured blue orb. It moved, studying me like it could. But where his other eye was a deep blue that lightened when he was roused, this one was milky pale and shattered, like a smashed porcelain vase that had been hastily put back together.

My hand shot out, landing on his arm and gripping him hard, which he tolerated for just a second before throwing it off. He released his hair from where it was tucked away, and it fell like a curtain, hiding away the source of his shame.

“Who did that to you?” I asked in a low growl, my voice taking on an echoey sound, something that had the horses snorting warily.

“The queen,” he said. “My father’s wife. My brothers’ mother. Fucking Aurora. Now, your curiosity has been satisfied, so you can go back to your place in the line.”

“Gael—”

“Don’t.” That’s all he would say, but when I didn’t move Arden, he let out a small hiss before jerking his horse’s head sideways, kicking the animal into a canter as soon as he was out of line and went riding up to the head of the riders.

For a moment all I could see was that eye, those scratches, and I realised why Gael didn’t want me to see them. I wasn’t seeing him, I was seeing what had been done to him, and he couldn’t bear that.

“So he showed you.” Axe moved Poll into the space Gael had vacated, but there was none of the man’s usual roguish charm in his expression now. He watched me closely, scanning my body, my face, trying to work out exactly what I was thinking. So I told him.

“What kind of person…? What kind of place allows a queen to brutalise a child like that?”

“He wasn’t a child when it happened,” Axe said, the words coming out in a hurry, a well-practised excuse, but his lips thinned down as he reconsidered what he’d said. “Not much older than one, but that doesn’t matter. She did it, sure enough, and for no good reason, even if she thought she had one. And as for the place we’re going to?”

He let out a sigh, throwing back his head and staring down the line to the road beyond, like he could see Snowmere if he looked hard enough.

“Dane didn’t want me to tell you, fearing you’d turn that horse around and sprint for the borders and, lass, I wouldn’t blame you if you did. On some level, I love my father.” He wrinkled his brow at that, as if considering whether that was true. “Even my mother too, despite all that she does, but the court? It’s a brutal place, one where you have to fight every day to maintain a place you don’t even want.”

I considered his words, rolling them over inside my head, in time with the clop of Arden’s steps, before I turned back to Axe.

“You were just going to let me ride into that blind?” I snapped out and he just stared at me, taking the hit head on. “And you’re going to make Gael go back there?”

“You, more than anyone, would know what it's like to be forced into a space you’ll never fit,” he replied. “One where you bide your time, hoping for things to get better. Waiting for the moment when you might be the one to make it better. You have the chance to do that now, Darcy, for yourself, for Gael, for everyone. Nordred trained you to be a fighter, didn’t he? Well, we need all the warriors we can gather, because we’re preparing for the fight of our lives.”

I rodebeside Axe for the rest of the day. What I’d seen, what I’d heard, was like a stone in my stomach, hard and indigestible, and yet I had to try to make sense of it. By the time the sun began to set and we stopped for the day, I’d come to a decision about Gael’s situation. I slid off Arden’s back, removing as much of his tack as I was allowed, then feeding and watering the horse before I turned to go and find him.

Gael was talking to some of the soldiers as I approached, giving them strict instructions in a voice that resonated with command, the men nodding and moving to do as he bade. As I drew nearer, I stared at his back, at the line of his shoulders and then down to his hand before I reached out and slotted mine into it.

“Darcy—?”

“I’ll go with you,” I said, trying to inject all of the fire that burned inside me when I did. “We can cut away from the pack tomorrow and go back to Bayard, to wherever you want. You don’t have to go back to Snowmere and see that… woman, put up with that bullshit anymore. There’s a whole world out there. We could find a place in it— Oh!”

He used my grip on his hand to yank me closer, pulling me into his body, so I felt the seams of his leather armour, the links of his chain mail shirt, but the other hand went to my hair, just sinking his fingers into my unravelled braid.

“I never understood my mother,” he told me. “Why she would take such a risk, tarrying with my father. She knew he had a queen back home, that lying with a lord had its risks, but at least a Granian one would have paid for the upkeep of a boy bastard.” His grip tightened, my arms going around him now and that feel of him, the weight of his body against mine, it helped uncoil a twist of tension I’d only been half aware of. “I’m beginning to understand it now. Finding your mate? It’s like being hit by a fucking thunderbolt by the one person who knows just how to get under your defences, and there I am, craving another blow.”

Gael lifted my chin with his fingers, forcing me to look up at his face, seeing both eyes staring down at me from this angle, his hair falling away from his face.

“If a woman had said she would run away with me even a month ago, I’d have gone without a thought,” he replied, then smiled when my teeth bared in a snarl as I imagined some mystery woman doing just that. “Anything to get the fuck away from that place, from the court, from… But finding you? It’s changed my priorities, just like my mother, like Dane, said it would.”

His thumb brushed across the top of my cheekbone then.

“I don’t know if you’ll accept us, accept me. I don't know what the hell our father is going to make of this deal, but… Every single fibre of my being wants to be the one standing between you and anything that might come for you. And they will come for you, Darcy. Don’t think for a second they won’t. You’re a power, my mate, and that’s a glorious, dangerous thing in this world.”

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